Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Here is City Councilman Don Bankhead, who wants to propose changes to the recommended City position on High Speed Rail. For a while he seems to think he knows what he’s talking about.
Oops. Now we’ll never know what Bankhead thought was necessary to delete before his screen went dark.
The DA’s press release:
FORMER FULLERTON POLICE OFFICER CHARGED WITH DESTROYING EVIDENCE FOR BREAKING AUDIO-RECORDER AFTER INMATE’S SUICIDE
FULLERTON – A former Fullerton Police Department (FPD) officer has been charged with destroying evidence for crushing his audio-recorder after an inmate committed suicide in jail following a driving under the influence (DUI) arrest by the defendant. Vincent Thomas Mater, 41, is charged with one misdemeanor count of destruction of evidence and one misdemeanor count of vandalism. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of one year and six months in jail. Mater is scheduled to be arraigned March 26, 2012, at the North Justice Center in Fullerton. The Department is to be determined.
At the time of the crime, Mater was a police officer with FPD.
At approximately 9:45 p.m. on April 14, 2011, Mater is accused of conducting a DUI investigation after making a traffic stop of a vehicle being driven without its lights on in the dark. The defendant was in uniform and driving a marked FPD patrol car. Mater is accused arresting the driver, Dean Gochenour, upon determining that Gochenour was under the influence of alcohol.
Mater is accused of transporting Gochenour in in his patrol car to the Fullerton City Jail (FCJ) and turning him over to FPD jailers to be booked upon arrival. Throughout the duration of his contact with Gochenour, Mater is accused of wearing an FPD-issued Digital Audio Recording device (DAR), which was activated and would have audio-recorded any statements made by Mater or Gochenour.
At approximately 11:30 p.m., inmate Gochenour committed suicide by hanging himself in a cell at FCJ. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office (OCDA) was subsequently contacted to conduct the custodial death investigation.
In the hours after Mater learned of Gochenour’s death, the defendant is accused of destroying his DAR by crushing it and removing the mother board and circuit board. The audio captured on Mater’s DAR of the defendant’s interaction with Gochenour could not be recovered as a result of the damage. The defendant is accused of destroying evidence that would have been relevant to the OCDA’s custodial death investigation.
FPD investigated the case against Mater regarding the destruction of evidence and submitted it to the OCDA for criminal prosecution.
To read the OCDA’s full report on the custodial death of Gochenour, visit www.OrangeCountyDA.com and select “OCDA Report Custodial Death Investigation – Inmate Dean Gochenour” from the Investigation Letters tab under the Media Center. The report was issued today, March 13, 2012.
Deputy District Attorney Brock Zimmon of the Special Prosecutions Unit is prosecuting this case.
The DA’s letter describes the details of the event.
Curiously, this event took place 11 long months ago. Still, better late than never.
Our Friends over at the Orange Juice blog are reporting that Fullerton’s Sharon Quirk has pulled papers to run against Chris Norby in the new 65th State Assembly District.
Good luck Sharon! And wake up Chris! You may have an opponent!
The real interest for FFF is that this will free up Quirk’s seat on Fullerton’s City Council, and will give Fullerton residents a chance to elect a pro-accountability candidate in November.
With a little hard work we can clean up Fullerton for a long, long time.
Here’s an irate e-mail we received from a Golden Hills Little League parent explaining that despite his political troubles, Fullerton FPD Culture of Corruption architect Pat McPension just couldn’t be denied his place as a speaker at opening day ceremonies. Strings were pulled, leverage was exerted.
But what’s this?
Subject: McKinley – Little League Opening Day
I contacted you last week informing you that McKinley had strong armed Golden Hill Little League via Parks & rec’s John Clements to speak at GHLL’s Opening Day this past weekend. Despite the league’s concerns given recent news re: Mr. McKinley and the fact that this is a children’s event, they were informed in no uncertain terms that as Mr. McKinley sat on committe responsible for assigning fields to youth programs, not letting him speak would be a bad idea. With their backs against the wall GHLL, a non-profit youth baseball league, decided to allow McKinley a few words.
And the dude NO-SHOWED…
So after strongarming GHLL and indirectly threatening to look unfavorably on their requests for city fields in the future, McKinley didn’t even show…or have the courtesy to have his people call GHLL to let them know. He was a no call/no show.
Lovely.
Message to Golden Hills Little League organizers: no good deed goes unpunished.
With the deadline for filing papers to run in the Recall election approaching – it’s at the end of the week – it seems like an opportune moment to invite our Friends to suggest names of people they would like to see run for the seats held by the Tyrannic Triad, Jones, Bankhead and McKinley.
During the past eight months we’ve seen lots of people step up and take leadership roles, challenging the Old Regime for its incompetence, corruption and detachment from the very people they were elected to serve.
The issues have centered around the serial criminal behavior by members of the Fullerton police department that culminated in the beating death of Kelly Thomas; the illegal grifting of a 10% water tax; and the land development giveaways handed out to campaign contributors.
There is no doubt in my mind that there are dozens of folks in these protests that would do an immeasurably better job governing our City than the The Three Fissured Fossils up there on the dais now.
So share your ideas. Maybe we can talk some of these good people into running.
A few weeks ago Larry Bennett posted some wild-ass claim on his website that the Recall had broken some rule about reporting expenses . He was threatening to call the Fair Political Practices Commission by February 22. In the words of Doc HeeHaw, it looks like Larry’s a-steppin’ on his own weenie, again.
Our Recall Treasurer, Helen Myers, called the FPPC, and here’s what she learned:
Dear Tony,
As per your request I reviewed the assertions made by Larry Bennett on the anti-recall website and discussed them at length with the FPPC. As per my initial beliefs I confirmed that we are in compliance in all matters raised by Mr. Bennett’s post.
Obviously we are aware that we did not launder funds or misreport income and expenses, but the claim that we’re in violation of an election code by not reporting payments made by Tim Whitacre to his people is incorrect according to the FPPC. All expenditures, large and small, were correctly reported on form 460 and form 461. It is pretty clear to me that Mr. Bennett was reaching rather desperately, which was made even more obvious by the fact that he would have simply filed a complaint had he truly had legal basis. In case you care to read for yourself, According to the FPPC Campaign Manual 3, page 7-19; you will read:
The names of individuals paid to collect signatures (petition circulators) are not required to be disclosed on the campaign statement. However, a business entity, including a sole proprietorship, that contracts with a committee to obtain signatures must be identified. For example, if Hector Gonzales is an independent contractor that contracts with a ballot measure committee to obtain signatures in Sacramento County and he does not personally ask voters to sign petitions, but contracts the work to college students, the names of the college students are not required to be disclosed. Hector Gonzales must be identified as a vendor to the committee.
I correctly issued to Mr. Tim Whitacre a 1099-misc. form in the amount of $64,177. And he, in turn, issued 1099-misc. forms to those persons who collected signatures through his company. I also verified with the FPPC via telephone that these expenses were, indeed, properly reported. Frankly, Bennett’s comments are simply foolish.
As a side note, it amazes me that somebody like Larry Bennett is working so hard to keep such persons in office. Does he somehow have his snout in the pig trough?
Sincerely,
Helen Myers
Well, the Fullerton Culture of Corruption is in the news again, and, naturally, not in a good way. The star of the show is Fullerton’s own Jim Blake. Here is a CBS undercover report on Metropolitan Water District board members wining and dining themselves on our dime – even as they keep jacking up the commodity cost of water to us, a cost to which our wise City Fathers then tack on an illegal 10% tax!
Jim Blake has been the choice of Fullerton’s establishment to represent our City on the MWD since the Third Day, when God gathered the waters.
Of course this is no news to us here at FFFF. We reported on Blake and Linda Ackerwoman running up huge “travel” tabs a long time ago, here and here. Blake has been reappointed by Bankhead and Jones over and over again. Why?
Well, Blake is supposedly calling it quits at MWD, but not before causing Fullerton more embarrassment.
Dear Friends, yesterday was a very significant day in Fullerton. Our very own blogger Travis Kiger pulled papers for the replacement election. For those of you that don’t know much about Travis Kiger and how he thinks, I would like to introduce you to him here:
FFFF’s own Travis Kiger, a member of the City’s Planning Commission hit a home run last week in his comments about the proposed high-density government subsidized housing project on W. Santa Fe Avenue in downtown Fullerton.
Barry Levinson had his microphone cut off on Tuesday before he could finish his exposé on Pat McKinley’s boldfaced lie about crime under his watch. That’s OK, because we can just reprint it here for everyone to see.
I recently saw Councilman McKinley appear on a PBS TV show that originally aired last October, called Inside Orange County hosted by David Nazar.
The Host asks Councilman McKinley: Should you be recalled and is it fair?
McKinley responds: No, I shouldn’t and it is not fair
Host: Why?
McKinley responds: Well I really don’t understand the, the allegations. The allegations I hired some people.
McKinley continues: I am very proud of the agency (i.e. the Fullerton Police Dept.) and what we accomplished over the 16 years I was there .
McKinley: We reduced crime every year I was there.
I had heard the comment about reducing crime by Candidate McKinley many times during his campaign for city council.
Here are the facts: The FBI statistics for the City of Fullerton from 2005 through 2009, the last 5 years that McKinley was Chief of Police are as follows:
Pat McKinley, I find it reprehensible that you would intentionally and repeatedly mislead the people of Fullerton and the country about the actual level of crime committed in our great city under your stewardship. Repeatedly you have reminded us that being a police officer has been your life’s work. Yet you cannot even tell the truth about your own record as chief of police.
You have disgraced this city with your misinformation campaigns. You have disgraced this city with your stating that Officer Rincon was not guilty of sexual assault, and allowed him under your command to continue assaulting more and more women after the 1st ladies reported it to your department. You disgraced this city by hiring Jay Cicinelli, who did not meet the minimum standards to be a police officer in Fullerton or for that matter anywhere in these United States of America. Officer Cicinelli ended up beating an innocent man to death while he was lying motionless on the ground with a Taser gun that is supposed to save lives not take them.
FOR ALL THESE REASONS AND MANY MORE, PAT MCKINLEY MUST BE RECALLED. And the only thing that is not fair about this recall is that you had the honor and privilege to be our police chief for 16 years and our councilman for another 2 years. The damage you have caused this city, emotionally, ethically, legally and monetarily will take us literally decades to recover from. That is the real injustice here!
