Mr. Peabody, Author at Friends For Fullerton's Future

November 23, 2016July 29, 2017Behind Closed Doors

The Sound of Silence

I would have done it even cheaper... — I would have done it even cheaper…

Not much has come out of Fullerton Junior College lately on the case of cop-turned-security guard Dino Skokos who handed out an unwarranted beat down on an undernourished FJC student in October.

A writer for The Hornet named Madalyn Amato, reports that although an “independent investigator” has been engaged, nothing else has been forthcoming. The fact that the investigator, a law firm called Currier & Hudson, solely specializes in acting as defense counsel for government agencies, should send out appropriate warning bells. See where this is going?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9KyMyo-fcA

In the aftermath of outrage, the bureaucratic playbook is being executed as expected.

First, ignore any criminality on the part of the district employee and announce an independent investigation, with the goal of diverting responsibility, or even better, procrastinating ’til everybody’s forgotten about the incident.

Naturally, the independent investigator is really just a carefully selected government defense pettifogger, hired to relieve the agency of as much liability as possible and absorb any leftover PR issues. Of course, hiring a law firm comes with desirable effects, such as the benefit of attorney client privilege. See, it’s easier to control an investigation if the investigator can’t actually reveal any findings detrimental to the institution.

And now we wait. The employee takes a paid vacation, the real police fail to deliver a criminal investigation, and NOCCCD eventually pays out a quiet settlement to the victim who will make a deal in a civil courtroom. Nothing to see here.

And now let’s let Fullerton Junior College President Greg Schulz take us home via The Hornet article:

President Greg Schulz promised the college’s full dedication in reaching a conclusion regarding the incident.

November 18, 2016A Step in the Right Direction

We Get Mail

by Mr. Peabody23 Comments

FFFF has always been a drop box for mail from sources that prefer not to be identified. Some are obviously credible; others perhaps less so – sort of like like Sgt. Andrew Goodrich the FPD spokeshole who claimed that the cops who killed Kelly Thomas suffered broken bones, etc.

Yesterday, we received an e-mail from one of our readers identifying himself as “DTF” who passed along what was presented as information sent out by a disgusted cop who was hired, and departed the FPD for a different agency during former POChief Danny Hughes reign:

cop-letter

And there’s more, relating to the Joe Felz incident:

I have excellent sources at FPD who hate the Hughes clan because of the lies and double standards.

Get a hold of those videos before they are erased, hopefully that hasnt already happen. Admin is trying to make the officers sign a new policy to prevent them from talking about the incident.

When the first two officers arived on scene, Felz was still in his car trying to free it from the sidewalk and tree. The officers pull up behind Felz just as he dislodges his car and drives away. The officers purse him and actually perform a semi pit maneuver to stop his vehicle. (There is minor damage to one of the police cars if not both)

This next part is sketchy. One version he was pulled out of his car at gunpoint and Felz identifies his self and immediately says to call Hughes. The other version is he flees his car when it has been immobilized and there is a short foot pursuit.

But one thing I know is that the officers on scene said Felz was HAMMERED there was no doubt he was drunk.

There is definitely video of the whole incident from the point the officers arrive on scene.

FYI no breathalyzer is necessary on scene. You can’t make a person take one at the scene. But the accident it self, coupled with his obvious impairment is plenty to have arrested him.

Put pressure on the PD to release the video. This is another huge cover-up by Hughes and his boys.

DTF

Friends, feel free to lend credence to this information in any degree that makes you feel comfortable.

November 17, 2016November 17, 2016Behind Closed Doors

The Odd Case of the Client Newsletter

by Mr. Peabody13 Comments

richard_jones

Okay, you may have painfully listened to the five-minute drone of Fullerton City Attorney Richard Jones on a previous post, explaining why no information was forthcoming in the Case of the City Manager and the Dead Parkway Tree. Sorry to inflict that on you, but no pain, no gain, as they say.

If your cerebral synapses are sufficiently recovered, reflect back on what Mr. Jones, Esq. said, and what he was asked to repeat twice by our Mayor, about electronic records generated at the scene and how they could not be released via PRA request because they were part of an “ongoing investigation;” but moreover, because they were somehow part of some sort of double-top secret “personnel” proceedings.

But wait! A quick trip to Jones and Meyer’s website newsletter to clients (we are clients, aren’t we?) reveals some interesting case law that seems to show exactly the opposite of the malarkey Jones was pitching to a remarkably incurious Council the other night. Here’s the synopsis:

mav-evidence

See? The video was created before any administrative investigation, or internal affairs investigation even started.

So let’s get this straight. A “client alert” sent out less than four months ago seems to contradict what Jones said, and reiterated twice on Tuesday night. Hmm. Hopefully someone can drop by to explain why the case of City Manager Joe Felz isn’t covered by the Greenson case finding by the Court of Appeal.

November 13, 2016November 13, 2016Food and Drink

Resquiat in Pacem

by Mr. Peabody10 Comments

Poor Sappy McTree. So young. So promising! Thy youthful branches had hardly begun their embrace of the sky; thy roots had hardly delved into Fullerton’s loamy fundament.

Thou verdant thing, thou honorable creature of God. Thou hast passed in the mere twinkling of an eye on a moon-dark night.

We miss thee, O Sappy.

November 11, 2016November 13, 2016Bruce Whitaker

Taco Tuesday. No, Wait, That’s Not Right…

by Mr. Peabody8 Comments

Here’s a tidbit from Tuesday’s upcoming Fullerton City Council Closed Session Agenda. The Closed Session is where the council secretes itself away from public scrutiny to discuss lawsuits and personnel and real estate deals.

felzonagenda

#2 deals with the replacement of of our recently departed PoChief, Danny Hughes, who was last seen applying his fingerprints all over a case involving helping out a pal in serious trouble.

#4 deals with the “performance evaluation” of the very person Hughes helped out – his boss, City Manager, Joe Felz, who was seen early Wednesday morning swerving down Glenwood Ave on his rims, after ploughing over a tree in the parkway, unable to negotiate the intersection at Highland Avenue in a, um, er, ahem, competent manner.

I’ve got it on pretty good authority that item 4 was agendized by the City Attorney; but at whose behest? Will the topic of Mr. Felz’s Wild Ride come up? How about the apparent cover up that is now being investigated not only by us, but by numerous mainstream media outlets?

Could there be action taken? If there were we would never know, because this is “personnel matter” not a criminal one – as the very same City Attorney has informed the media.

November 10, 2016November 13, 2016Chronic Failure

The Mouse Comes A-visitin’

by Mr. Peabody16 Comments

Wow what an honor. Today our humble blog received 19 visits from Disney Corporate, the new employers of soon-to-be-minted Vice President of Security and Tom Sawyer Island Bilge Water, ex Fullerton Chief of police, Dan Hughes.

February 24, 2013December 16, 2016Boohooism

A Streetcar Named Desire

by Mr. Peabody101 Comments

Last week the ever helpful Fullerton City Hall scribe Lou Ponsi scribbled a story about how Fullerton needs a transit dedicated line from the CSUF area to the Fullerton “metro center.”

No, I am not kidding. “Senior” Planner Jay Eastman believes Fullerton has a metro center.

A cynic might conclude that the sole purpose of this venture is to more efficiently direct college kids into the open air saloon that downtown Fullerton has become.

Trolley? Bus? Light rail(!)? The world is Jay Eastman’s oyster, just so long as somebody else is picking up the tab. In this case the OCTA is going to pay 90% of the cost of a “study” to determine just what Fullerton needs: $270,000 worth, with us paying the other $30,000.

All of which goes to show that OCTA has an awful lot more money than they know what to do with.

February 9, 2013Patdown Pat McPension

Armed And Dangerous

by Mr. Peabody188 Comments

Bad Cop, Good Cop

Christopher Jordan Dorner is on the loose. Heavily armed and with nothing to lose, this ex-LAPD cop is bent on deploying any means necessary to implement his “manifesto” of revenge on those he deems as dirty cops, and even their families.

So far three people are dead and Torrance cops have shot up two women in an incompetent case of mistaken identity.

While we may ponder the outcome of the current manhunt for this apparently deranged former police officer, it also behooves us to contemplate the means and methods that created and permitted Dorner’s cophood in the first place.

The LAPD is now quick to point out this guy’s history of nutsiness, and yet somehow Dorner was given access to training and weaponry in both the military and in the LAPD that are now being used effectively against civilians and the cops themselves.

How did that happen?

At FFFF we have offered a glimpse of the LAPD mindset in the personages of former Fullerton Police Chief Pat “Patdown” McKinley and his idol, LAPD Chief Darryl Gates. And we have seen an influx of LAPD cops and tactics into Fullerton since McKinley’s arrival in 1993 – current Police Chief Danny Hughes’ formative years, in fact.

Then there was the flurry of claims and allegations against FPD cops for brutality, culminating in the callous and lethal assaults on Veth Mam and Kelly Thomas in 2010 and 2011, caught on video.

It appears that in the police business potential violent instability is seen as less of a problem than a tool to be unleashed on an unruly citizenry.

All of which begs the questions: how hard is it to become an LAPD (or Fullerton) cop, particularly for ex-soldiers, and why in the world aren’t we weeding out the Christopher Dorners before they get a badge and a gun?

January 30, 2013Boohooism

Two Kinds of Deflection

by Mr. Peabody62 Comments

In the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder at the hands of the FPD, two different yet eerily similar tactics emerged for deflecting responsibility away from the cops.

Fullerton’s antique liberal crowd quickly banded together so that society itself could be blamed, not the FPD: the problem was not murderous, corrupt or even incompetent cops. Oh, no. The problem was one of homelessness and the solution was to provide a homeless shelter! Why Kelly would probably even be alive today!

On the other hand, the anonymous cop-protectors keep insisting that the problem lay with poor parenting for Kelly’s death, as if a schizophrenic, 35 year-old man was somehow the responsibility of his parents, and as if that somehow exculpates the six cops who beat him to death and stood around laughing as he died in a pool of his own blood.

Of course both groups relied heavily upon a completely comical whitewash of the FPD Culture of Corruption by paid-for opinion of Michael Gennaco.

Two different cliques, two very similar tactics.

January 26, 2013Boohooism

The Great Plutonium Scare and The Local Media Dust Up

by Mr. Peabody58 Comments

It is no secret that we here at FFFF have little use for the brainless Establishment boosterism that some clown named Davis Barber dishes out at a website called FullertonStories under the rubric of fair, balanced journalism. Of course this man is entitled to ladle out any crappy pabulum he likes and can call it anything he likes, even “journalism.” Who can ever for get the ridiculous lies by Richard Fritschie, happily passed along by Barber in the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder.

However, this story is about a hoax earlier this month, a false tale that somebody was in possession of plutonium at the FPD HQ. Apparently the Homeland Security apparatchiks rode to our rescue and our local leaders, as usual, were given little or no information about what was going on. This was reported in The Fullertonion, here, and here. A news source was Mayor Bruce Whitaker.

At the next council meeting Mr. Barber, apparently offended that he had not been granted an interview, showed up to chide mayor Bruce Whitaker for not returning his frequent entreaties to talk to him. This public importuning resulted in offending the good folks at The Fullertonion who took umbrage at the assertion that they were somehow inferior to FullertonStories as a journalistic endeavor, and who share the whole story, here.

A tempest in a teapot to be sure. But underlying this fracas is the reality that Whitaker didn‘t choose to communicate with Barber, a choice obviously based on some cause.

It may very well be that Whitaker, like FFFF, sees FullertonStories and Mr. Barber just a shill for whatever his pals in the Fullerton City Hall bureaucracy want him to promote. During the past two-years’ revelations of serial crimes committed by the FPD, and an illegal rip-off of almost $30,000,000 in an illegal water tax we’ve heard virtually nothing from Barber that could possibly be construed as reflecting negatively on the egregious behavior of the City Manager, the City Attorney or any employees of Fullerton or their protectors on the City Council.

And when you think about it that’s quite a feat.

Anyway, thumbs up to The Fullertonion whose mission really appears to be promoting an informed public.