The wafting smoke from the barbecue was undeniably sweet.

But to Michael Harper, 30, the atmosphere was something sweeter.

“To see people out here, coming together to celebrate something beautiful in our community, in the Iron Triangle: this is a great thing,” Harper said. “I’ve been in this neighborhood a long time and I’ve seen worse times. This reminds me that God is good.”

Harper was one of more than 100 residents who turned out Saturday to see the newly-remodeled L.I.F.E. Center at the corner of Second Street and MacDonald Avenue, in the heart of the city’s Iron Triangle neighborhood.

The L.I.F.E. Center is a community jewel, said pastor Sydney Keys, who also serves as director of the center. The two-story complex combines a church worship hall, computer labs, child care and fitness centers and other recreational and educational amenities.

Keys said the Feb. 14 shooting inside a local church, which prompted several peace rallies and drew national attention, influenced his decision to hold the Saturday community gathering. Several smaller community festivals went on throughout the city Saturday.

“This place is open seven days a week, Monday through Sunday, because that’s what the people need,” Keys said. “The timing is right for us to play a greater role in our community.”

L.I.F.E. stands for Love Involvement Family and Education, Keys said.

The L.I.F.E. center is one of the few places in the area that is licensed by the county to care for infants, a capability that is in particular need in the immediate community, one of the poorest in the Bay Area. The center also has a computer lab, with several high-speed Internet terminals that residents can use for research and employment searches.

The event drew local dignitaries, including Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, Councilmen Tom Butt and Nat Bates, and council candidate Corky Booze.

Keys’ wife, Patrice, who is the center’s co-director, gave McLaughlin a tour of their newly-renovated facility.

“These kinds of services should be provided to everyone,” McLaughlin told Keys while being shown the childcare center. “It’s really wonderful that the church is picking this up and providing this, so thank you so much.”

Later, McLaughlin and others manned a free giveaway table, where the L.I.F.E. center handed out a cache of donated shoes and clothing. Dozens of locals lined up for the goods.

Booze said the infant care capability that the center offers is vital to the health of community.

“Single parents right here in the Iron Triangle have a resource where they can safely leave their young children while they go to work,” Booze said. “We can’t say enough how much that is appreciated.”

It was scheduled as a retreat to Napa, but it turned out to be anything but a relaxing repose in wine country.

Instead, the gathering for top police brass would become a point of no return.

The time was September 2006, and inter-departmental complaints about newly-minted chief Chris Magnus had grown louder.

High-level black officers grumbled about what they alleged were racist and racially-insensitive comments made by Magnus, a white North Dakota import whose hiring came over other longtime local police leaders.

At the same time, Magnus planned to use the retreat to explain some clear goals he had for the department, a strategy that included shifts in management structure and new responsibilities for those in leadership posts. He knew his reforms could encounter resistance.

With critics arrayed against him at an evening meeting, Magnus was ready to respond.

Earlier, Magnus had confided in another high ranking officer, current Deputy Chief Edward Medina, that he wanted to confront his accusers.

Tensions ran high.

Magnus’ deputy chief at the time, Lori Ritter came under fire from the black officers present at the meeting. Ritter was a divisive figure in the department who drew criticism for keeping a prominently displayed photo of “The Cowboys,” a disgraced clique of allegedly racist and violent former cops, in her office.

Magnus first stood aside, hoping Ritter would rise to her own defense.

Her diffident responses seemed to emboldened the critics.

One black police official, Arnold Threets, angrily paraphrased a quote from Malcolm X, demanding that fairness be restored to the department under the Magnus regime.

Magnus said it was time to move forward and get passed the squabbles. He tried to focus on his structural reforms, but his command staff leaned toward revolt.

Captain Cleveland Brown suggested that the command staff may instead just disregard Magnus and take their concerns directly to his boss, City Manager Bill Lindsay.

The chief bristled at the open defiance.

Magnus erupted into an impassioned defense. He threw down a gauntlet, inveighing the professionals in the room against such a course – in savage terms.

“The statement was, you better kill him, because if you wound him, he’ll be like a wounded animal,” remembered Lt. Michael Booker.

That is the narrative that emerges from a DVD featuring sworn testimony by Booker, Magnus, former Deputy Chief Ritter, City Manager Lindsay and several other high level police officials. The DVD was circulated to area media by the plaintiff’s attorneys earlier this year, before the judge in the case issued a gag order. The discrimination suit was filed in March 2007 against Magnus and the city.

But the video, which has been edited and came from the plaintiffs’ side, succeeds in casting a disturbing light on a department that has not yet shaken a checkered past.

The DVD clocks in at more than one hour and runs the gamut of forgettable episodes, from footage of Magnus wrestling with questions about his alleged use of racially insensitive jokes to clips from the 60 Minutes episode years ago that brought the department’s “cowboy” culture to national attention.

Magnus attended a March 13 peace rally coordinated by black religious leaders.

The re-creation of events in Napa nearly four years ago comes from recordings of sworn depositions given last year by more than a half-dozen department officials.

On several occasions, Ritter appears to admit racist behavior during sworn depositions.

City spokespersons, and others, maintain that the video is edited in a way that undermines its validity. Only one news station has used footage from the video in a report.

U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel issued a gag order on all parties last month in response to the circulation of the DVDs containing edited deposition testimony.

Magnus declined comment last week, citing the judge’s gag order.

In the DVD, Medina said that Magnus told him before the meeting that he wanted to confront allegations and suspicions about his comments once and for all. The testimony from the sworn deposition is dated Oct. 30, 2009.

Tension was high, Medina testified.

Magnus said it was time to move forward and get passed the squabbles, Medina testified, a sentiment that was seconded in taped testimony by Lt. Mark Gagan.

Several other witnesses corroborated that Magnus made something close to those  statements.

“Did you find that to be a little bit out of the norm for a commanding officer” to say such a thing, said an unidentified lawyer in the video.

“I did,” Gagan replied.

Ritter is married to a former member of the 1980s “Cowboys,” a clique of white officers so dubbed by the media because of a well-circulated photo of members suited in Western garb. The allegedly racist, violent group gained national notoriety when “60 Minutes” host Mike Wallace narrated a segment on them years ago.

“It was going to be a problem, yeah,” Medina said of Magnus’ intention of addressing the issues at the retreat. Medina testified that he also worried that Magnus’ desire to take on the issue would inflame, rather than soothe, racial tensions.

But Magnus disregarded that advice.

According to several sworn depositions, several black officers accused Ritter of disfavoring black officers.

The DVD features sworn testimony by Magnus, former Deputy Chiefs Lori Ritter and Ed Medina, City Manager Bill Lindsay, Lt. Arnold Threets,  Lt. Michael Booker, Lt. Mark Gagan, Lt. Richard Clark, Captain Cleveland Brown,  Captain Allwyn Brown, and other police and city officials was circulated to area media by the plaintiff’s attorneys earlier this year, before the judge in the case issued a gag order.

At a different point during the interrogation, Office of Neighborhood Safety Director Devone Boggan testified that during a conversation with Magnus, Magnus characterized the tensions inside his department as a “civil war.”

City officials have been wary about speaking on the matter.

Last month, prior to the gag order being issued, the lone black City Council member, Nat Bates, said a trial is not a foregone conclusion.

“If there is not a settlement, it’s going to trial,” Bates said.

Bates dismissed the DVD as being unreliable, noting that it represents the plaintiff’s argument in a favorable light.

He did acknowledge that the ongoing issue represents a distraction in the city, where the homicide rate nearly doubled last year as opposed to 2008.

“When you have a case this serious, it’s going to be a distraction,” Bates said.  ”A case of this magnitude doesn’t come without distractions, but you’ve got to wait until all the evidence is in.”

Councilman Tom Butt agreed.

“It’s a huge distraction, everybody knows that,” Butt said.

City Manager Lindsay, who has discretion over the hire and fire of the police chief, said at a recent council meeting that he has not wavered in his support of Magnus.

“Not at all,” Lindsay said when asked whether Magnus’ removal had been discussed.

Magnus has been lauded by city officials and civic leaders for his leadership of the department. Crime has generally trended downward since he took his post in early 2006, with a particularly notable drop in 2008. That year, killings in the city were cut nearly in half from 2007. Homicides spiked again in 2009, but overall crime was down slightly.

Rhonda Harris, a local contractor, questioned the city’s allocation of resources in defense against the charges. The city has retained private counsel.

“For me, it’s a public policy issue,” Harris said. ”When does the city say stop, enough is enough. We have parks in this city that don’t have restrooms.”

The city made a historic statement with its response to a Feb. 14 shooting inside a local church, but more work must be done to achieve lasting peace.

That was the message from both elected officials and faith-based leaders at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, where the city honored Bishop J.W. Macklin, Rev. Andre Shumake and other religious leaders with a proclamation for their work in leading “Operation Richmond.”

The two-week schedule of peace rallies, prayer and festivals represented the largest outpouring of popular response to local violence since the “Tent City” events of 2006.

Macklin said the Feb. 14 shooting inside New Gethsemane Church of God in Christ, which left two people wounded during a Sunday prayer service, was a turning point.

“It had an impact and an effect on every church, not just in Richmond, but in every church across the country,” Macklin said.

City leaders agreed. Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said the response, led by the city’s faith community, represented “unity” against violence and generated “a lot of positive energy.”

Councilman Nat Bates called for the reinstatement of controversial police checkpoints on roadways, and said the city should crack down on truancy and impose curfew restrictions. At one point, Bates asked everyone seated in council chambers to stand if they or a loved one had been “affected” by deadly violence.

More than half the audience stood.

“There you see evidence of the hold of this problem we have in our community,” Bates said.

The key point Macklin stressed Tuesday was the need to sustain momentum. Other religious leaders noted Tuesday that no homicides have occurred in the city since Operation Richmond began late early this month.

Macklin made a series of suggestions to the Council:

* Improve the aesthetics of neighborhoods, including landscaping and graffiti cleanup.

* Provide forums or events to bring mothers and fathers of those killed in local violence into civic groups.

* Declare churches as “safe zones,” similar to schools, a designation that stiffens penalties for some crimes committed on or near such properties.

Macklin also invited local leaders to Hayward, where he leads a congregation, for a dinner and walking tour. Macklin said south Hayward was similar to Richmond, before anti-violence efforts succeeded in lowering crime rates and improving safety.

Macklin also said he is working to bring to Richmond a national peace conference headed by religious leaders.

More than 300 people, nearly all black men, simultaneously canvassed the city in small teams Saturday.

They focused on 23 of the city’s most troubled neighborhoods. They delivered bundles of Bibles along with health, education and public resource literature door-to-door at apartments and homes.

They also clasped hands with residents and led them in prayers.

Rev. Andre Shumake, one of the event’s organizers, estimated that volunteers made contact with about 3,500 households Saturday.

The event was in response to a Feb. 14 church shooting that shook the community and drew national attention.

Richmond was born an industrial town of sooty petroleum refineries and locomotives, but its future should be based on low-emission, high-tech industries, the City Council declared Tuesday.

After a long, and sometimes contentious, public debate, the Council voted 5-1 to declare the city in recognition of a lower standard of carbon dioxide levels in the air.

<View resolution and supporting materials here.>

The new standard, 350 CO2 parts-per-million (ppm), was established by a team of scientists and environmentalists who argue that the ratio should be the upper limit for how much carbon dioxide is in the earth’s air. According to research published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2008, the current level worldwide stands at 387 ppm; about 40 percent higher than at the onset of the Industrial Revolution.

Although the recognition has no legal force nor costs, Councilman Jeff Ritterman, who introduced the resolution with the support of Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and Councilman Jim Rogers, said he hoped the resolution would raise awareness and spur public debate about climate change.

“I really wanted to do something on the local level,” Ritterman said. “We didn’t get much international leadership on this in Copenhagen,” Ritterman added, referring to the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009.

The Council’s adoption of the measure, which includes an agreement to begin organizing community meetings to draw input for possible future local climate measures, comes amid intensifying public debate over the city’s largest employer, Chevron Corp.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has proposed that the local Chevron refinery upgrade old infrastructure and improve energy efficiency in exchange for environmental groups’ dropping their objections to expansion in Chevron’s refining operations.

Dozens of community members spoke out during public debate, most in criticism of Chevron.

The lone dissent on the council for the air quality declaration came from Councilman Nat Bates, who at one point called his council colleagues “socialists.” He also accused McLaughlin, a member of the Green Party, and Ritterman of working to “run Chevron out of town.”

“This city is going to be a ghost town,” Bates said of what would happen if Chevron ceased local operations. Rumors that Chevron may consider closing its Richmond refinery have swirled of late. The refinery employs about 1,200 workers. Bates said Chevron pays the city nearly $35 million annually in total taxes.

McLaughlin and Councilman Tom Butt said they hoped the resolution would be part of a larger effort to establish Richmond as an environmentally-friendly city and a hot spot for green technology and industry. Butt said Richmond had recently been accepted to Green Cities California, a coalition of local governments calling for policies that support sustainable development.

On Jan. 27, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger toured a local solar panel manufacturing company to tout his statewide jobs growth plan.

Since early 2007, Richmond has held the distinction of being the largest United States city with an elected mayor identified as a member of the Green Party.

Whether that is still the case after November, when Mayor Gayle McLaughlin faces re-election, remains to be seen.

About 10 months out from the Nov. 2 election, the only thing that seems clear is that McLaughlin will run for re-election, but she’s leaving it at that for the time being.

“Right now I’m very focused on moving forward ongoing issues and policies in my day-to-day work as mayor,” McLaughlin wrote in an e-mail response to inquiries about the coming election.

Mayor McLaughlin, right, and Vice Mayor Maria Viramontes in November.

McLaughlin indicated in the same e-mail that an official announcement that she will seek re-election is coming sometime in the next few months.

As for who will challenge her, no one has officially declared. Rumors are rampant, however, about two current City Council members.

Nat Bates, the city’s most experienced politician and one with long-cultivated constituencies, has been privately talking with close friends and aides about making a run, according to sources who declined to speak on record. Speculation is also swirling about Vice Mayor Maria Viramontes, McLaughlin’s consistent political foe and a politician whose blunt personal style and work, particularly on children’s issues and in support of the city’s growing Latino community, could translate into a formidable candidacy.

Bates, who was reached by telephone while in Southern California last week, acknowledged the possibility that he could run for the office he held during two separate stints in the 1970s.

“It is too early to make a decision with respect to the upcoming election,” Bates said. “At this point, I’m undecided.”

Bates, who was first elected to the public office when Richmond voters sat him on the City Council in 1967, has developed strengths and liabilities over a career that has made him the longest-serving councilmember in the city’s history.

Bates supports an investment in facility upgrades at the local Chevron refinery, which McLaughlin opposed and is currently winding through court. He has also called for tougher policing strategies, such as sobriety checkpoints, a measure which has unsettled many city residents, particularly immigrant communities. Bates has also had rubs with election law. In 2005, he paid fines to the state Fair Political Practices Commission for failing to disclose contributions to his campaign.

Bates supports the Point Molate Casino project, as does Viramontes.

On Jan. 11, the City Council voted 4-3 to extend a developer’s deadline to produced a plan to develop an Indian gaming casino on the former Point Molate Naval Fuel Depot. Bates and Viramontes headed the narrow majority, with McLaughlin on the other side.

Bates, center, was first elected to Richmond City Council in 1967.

With three City Council seats also up for grabs in what are expected to be competitive races, some city leaders are reluctant to cast their lot in a particular direction at this early juncture.

Councilman Jim Rogers, who faces his own re-election battle this November, acknowledged that he and McLaughlin have frequently seen eye-to-eye, but declined to weigh in on the race.

“The mayor and I, we have our similarities, particularly on the issues involving Chevron and our schools … certainly overall more similarities than differences,” Rogers said. “But I’m not going to endorse, I have my own plate full.”

Viramontes, who did not return calls seeking comment, has strong support among the city’s Latino residents and has sat on the council since 2002. A fourth generation Richmond native, Viramontes frequently clashes with McLaughlin on the dais, leading some to believe the two harbor personal animus toward each other. She is seen by many as pro-business and pro-casino, a diametrically opposite foil to McLaughlin, who never wavers from her green credentials and uses phrases like “social justice” as often as a street-level activist.

But Viramontes also touts youth-related issues and community policing along with her pro-business stances.

McLaughlin, who came to the city from Chicago earlier in 2000, relied on significant support from both black and Latino communities in 2006, when she narrowly defeated the incumbent, Irma Anderson, by barely 300 votes.

Councilman Tom Butt said he’ll “probably” support McLaughlin for re-election.

“She thinks close to the way I do on most subjects,” Butt said. Both have been critical of Chevron Corp.

Viramontes and McLaughlin have been known to have sharp exchanges during public meetings.

But they have differences as well. McLaughlin voted against a $350,000 pool divider for the Plunge in Point Richmond, a project Butt adamantly supported.

Butt has written in his own e-newsletter about how Bates would complicate the race, possibly siphoning off sizable numbers of both McLaughlin and Viramontes’ supporters.

However, McLaughlin has generally performed consistent with the expectations that preceded her term. She has vociferously battled with Chevron Corp. over taxes, fees and pollution. She is also among the most well-traveled elected officials in the city, often being sighted at multiple community events in a given day, giving crowd-pleasing speeches at events ranging from homicide memorials to a small gathering last week protesting the possible closure of a local post office.

“Word on the street is that she maintains an electable popularity that may have even expanded since her razor-thin win” in 2006, Butt wrote on Jan. 10.