FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Author: Mr. Peabody
Mr. Peabody is a Child of Aquarius, a former hard drug user, and a devotee of lawn bowling. He abandoned a profitable career as an curb address number painter to fulfill a lifetime dream of mastering the zither.
Here is an interesting clip of Councilman Don Bankhead from the last meeting opining on the subject of new elevators being added to the existing elevator bridge at the Fullerton train station. See if you can figure out what he’s talking about.
Poor Don seems to think this is a brand new elevator bridge at the new parking structure being built on Santa Fe.
Uh, oops.
Confusion is nothing new for Bankhead, but one thing Don knows for sure: when somebody else is fronting the money for a project it doesn’t matter where it is, what it does, or how much it costs.
According to Tracy Woods of the Voice of OC(EA), here, a bit of a dust up is occurring at Fullerton High School over a student constestant who was yanked offstage during something called a “Mr. Fullerton” competition by Assistant Principal, Joe Abell. The kid’s offense? Apparently he told the audience that he hoped he could find Mr. Right, and that he hoped in ten years gay marriage would be legal in California. From the Voice of OC(EA):
According the the district’s statement, “an Assistant Principal removed a male student from the stage during the Mr. Fullerton competition for making what the Assistant Principal believed to be a statement that was off script and not pre-approved.”
It’s good to know that the justification for this errant behavior was that a student had deviated from a script pre-approved by one of our esteemed educrats. We wouldn’t want anybody being able to think on his feet, now would we?
FHSD Superintendant George Giokaris has sent out a letter of apology for the inappropriate behavior of Mr. Abell, given that the kid broke no school rules. That’s great, but the damage has been done. Meanwhile, I congratulate the unnamed kid for standing up for his Constitutional rights.
According to the OC Weekly’s Brandon Ferguson, here, a rock band called “Lit” has made some sort of comeback album and will be joining other groups in a summer tour. Why is this relevant to Fullerton? Because one of the members of this illustrious ensemble is none other than Fullerton’s Slidebar empressario, Jeremy Popoff.
Playing the standards...
Ferguson dispatches Lit with quick aplomb. Apparently the album is called The View From The Bottom which seems pretty darn appropriate.
Now, I admit that being something of an old-timer at 37, I had never even heard of Lit until Jeremy Popoff popped off in connection with the Kelly Thomas murder; and so I defer to Ferguson’s musical opinion. However, if the noise emanating from Popoff’s establishment in violation of the Municipal Code, here, is any indicator, I have to say that I appreciate my former ignorance.
The CSUF Daily Titan ran a piece on Wednesday about the Fullerton Recall, spotlighting the candidacies of Travis Kiger and Jane Rands, running to replace F’ “Dick” Jones and Don Bankhead on the city council.
It’s good coverage for both, and captures the feelings of disgust felt by the tens of thousands of people who signed the Recall petitions because of the complete leadership failure of the Three Hollow Logs.
So reports the LA Times, right here. It seems that the family of Dean Francis Gochenour believes the FPD’s treatment of their family member left a lot to be desired. Gochenour entered the FPD jail alive on the night of April 14, 2011. He left it dead on April 15th. Gochenour is claimed to have committed suicide by strangling himself with his shirt.
"To Swerve and Deflect"
What adds interest to this tale is the fact that FPD arresting officer Vincent Mater apparently smashed his DAR right after Gochenour’s death. Suspicious folk believe he did it to destroy incriminating evidence about his arrest of Gochenour.
In a true man-bites-dog story, Officer Mater is being charged by the DA (finally) on charges of destruction of evidence. This is a misdemeanor charge, but you really have to wonder if there isn’t more lurking beneath the surface of this story.
Apparently the much-anticipated Joe Felz Water Study is in, and it says that the illegal 10% water tax is…drum roll, please…illegal. But get this: rather than an honest study, the consultants were clearly told to gin up as much plausible reason to keep as much of the 10% as they could. The result? It’s only 6.7%. Yay!
The only problem is that to reach 6.7%, the consultant cooked up the idea that the Water Fund owed the City rent on land where water reservoirs are located! According to Ad Hoc Water Committee member Greg Sebourn, the total annual rent was figured at $1,374,000 – well-over half of the existing tax.
Of course this scam raises all sorts of new issues, as scams generally do. Such as: the reservoir in Hillcrest Park supports a play field on its deck. Does the City rent this back from the Water Fund? Bet not! The reservoir up at the top of Euclid is situated in a cactus patch patrolled by goats. What’s the rental or development value of a nature park? I dunno, but it’s not much. Has the Water Fund been paying for maintenance on these properties that should have been the responsibility of the General Fund? Bet so.
Then of course there’s the issue of whether the waterworks itself paid for fee title to any of these properties in the first place, a way back when. I wonder if the consultant even bothered to check. Bet not.
And there’s the embarrassing fact that there is no arm’s length relationship between the people that impose the rent and the people that pay it. The City Council can demand any amount of rent they want – then agree to pay it. Why not? The proceeds go to pay their own pensions! Now, that’s not very good, is it?
In any case, the public may find it a bit confusing and unseemly that at the eleventh hour the bureaucrats and their hand-picked consultant are burning the near-midnight oil to drum up ways to charge as much for water as they can that they can keep siphoning money into the General Fund.
Will you please shut up.
Will the city Council buy into this load? Well, of course they will. The vote will be 4-1, and it will be up to the citizens and voters to rectify the scam at the ballot box.
Our job is to continue to expose the fraud for what it is.
Yesterday, the OC Register did a story about the Fullerton jail house death of Dean Francis Gochenour, and the role played by Vincent Mater, who smashed his DAR against a steel door in order to destroy the evidence it contained.
Well, it happened like this...
Our Acting Chief, Dan Hughes, was unusually chatty.
For instance, he shares with trusted police scribe Lou Ponsi the fact that an internal investigation was concluded by June 20, 2011, that discipline was recommended by Hughes, himself, and then Mater quit on August 2: I made recommendations for discipline and in that process, he resigned,” Hughes said.
So let us ponder a few things. Mater destroys his DAR in mid April, and disciplinary action is started over two months later? And what is this disciplinary “process?” Hard to say; it may have included firing the creep, but if so the process is designed to permit the perp to quit first. And that’s a shame because in the case of Mater we already know he was considered by the DA to be a Brady Cop, (i.e. unfit for court testimony due to unfamiliarity with the truth). We also know that he was complicit in some way in the wrongful incarceration of Emanuel Martinez.
Whatever this so-called discipline process entailed (including, no doubt, union exacted rights for appeal hearings, ad nauseam), Mater decided his best option was to walk away, perhaps to try his luck as a cop somewhere else. So Mater quietly went his merry way on August 2, 2011 – curiously, just as the Kelly Thomas murder protests were starting in earnest.
And now, for the $64,000 question: what was going on between the FPD and the DAs office between August 2 2011 and March 13, 2012? Seven and a half months had passed since Mater’s departure; eleven months had passed since the original crime. It would appear to the outsider that nothing was going to happen at all.
And then somebody changed their mind. I wonder why.
Well, somebody has to do Bankhead’s job since he has adamantly refused to do it himself – for almost 25 years.
The impeding cold streak was an omen of things to come.
Today, Jane Rands, former State Assembly candidate under the Green Party banner, has filed papers to replace council Precambrian holdover, Don Bankhead.
Jane appears to be somebody who is smart and believes in accountability, and would make an immeasurably better city council person than Bankhead – who has been targeted for Recall because of his dismal leadership failure.
FFFF looks forward to sharing more information about Jane and her platform in the coming days.
The Fullerton FPD Culture of Corruption just got a new inductee into its Hall of Shame today, as reported by the OC Register’s Sean Emery, here.
It seems that FPD employee April Baughman, 52, is cooling her heels in the County jail, alleged to have swiped cash from the FPD property room for – get this – two freakin’ years!
The money quote comes from our friend “Acting” Chief Dan Hughes who is quoted as saying:
“When there are violations of public trust or actions which result in the reduction of confidence in the police department, disciplinary action will be taken swiftly and decisively.”
Uh, yeah, Dan, sure. Whatever you say. At least we didn’t have to read such inane bullshit as spoken by the otiose Sgt. Goodrich, although he probably wrote it.
Too bad swift and decisive disciplinary action wasn’t taken against the thugs who killed Kelley Thomas until ten weeks after he was murdered.
Just gimme a minute, here.
This latest humiliation begs two questions. One, how could there have been no accounting of property room inventory over this period without the collusion of at least one other miscreant; and two, how much will the Culture of Corruption created by Pat McKinley and tolerated by sleepwalking councilmembers Don Bankhead and Dick Jones end up costing us?
And naturally we are left to ponder the previous assertion of Acting Chief Hughes: anyone who believes there is a Culture of corruption in the FPD is either lying or misinformed.
Newsflash, Chief: we are not lying and we are not misinformed.
The Voice of OC(EA) is reporting here that Fullerton mayor Sharon Quirk-Silva intends to issue an apology to the Thomas family on behalf of the people of Fullerton; and apparently she also wants name a small part of Fullerton after Kelly Thomas, the homeless, schizophrenic man beaten to death by members of the Fullerton police department last July.
What’s the apology for? According to the article, it’s not entirely clear if it’s for the deliberate smear campaign against Thomas to help make the cops look justified in their actions, or for the actual killing itself.
If it’s the former, I guess the apology would focus on the FPD/City totally mischaracterizing as a “fight” the horrible beat down that took place on Thomas; for telling the public that cops had suffered broken bones; for insinuating that Kelly was amped up on drugs and had stolen property on his person.
Of course all that nonsense was pitched by FPD spokesdonut Andrew Goodrich who never thought it necessary to correct any misinformation he had peddled in those first days after the crime, which makes it deliberate, obviously. If this will be the gist of it, then the apology will be nothing more than a repudiation of Goodriches’ sad performance trying to defend the indefensible actions of his union brethren.
Personally, I would be happier with an apology for the murder itself, along with a personal apology from Quirk-Silva to the citizens of Fullerton for helping permit a Culture of Corruption in the FPD during her seven-plus years in office. I guess this ins’t too likely.
An apology may make Q-S feel better, but sincere or not, I think it falls under the heading of too little, too late; still, better late than never, I suppose.
Oh, by the way, Ms. Quirk-Silva is letting the City Attorney edit the “apology” and that’s not good sign.
As to the issue of placing and naming a bench after KT, I think that’s not helpful. But I relish the idea of watching Pat McPension vote to recognize the homeless man who was beaten to death by thugs he personally hired and vouched for.
