…but somebody’s got to do it.
Rincon
Mejia
Major
Hampton
Ramos
Wolfe
Cicinelli
Mater
Baughman
Sellers
Tong
Nguyen
Craig
Blatney
Coffman
Kirk
Basham
Goodrich
Wren
McKinley
Siliceo
And that’s not all. Do I really have to go on?
Dear Madam Mayor & Council Members,
We cannot pretend that Fullerton is serious about reform when those involved in the murder of Kelly Thomas, the illegal arrest and imprisonment of Veth Mam, and the many other documented cases of police misconduct, are still employed by FPD. We contend that you as our representatives at city hall, now being fully aware of the extent of misconduct by certain officers, that it is your duty above all else to protect the citizens of Fullerton, including those that may now feel targeted because of their public involvement in seeking justice for Kelly Thomas. There will be members of the community who will not comply to the orders of Officer Kenton Hampton, Sgt. Kevin Craig and Cpl. James Blatney, as they feel that these officers do not hold any moral authority over them. This reality puts all residents and peace officers in danger, and makes any contact by these men with the general public unwise. The adoption of the attached resolution by you, and the eventually firing of any officer who cannot live up to the ideals of a post Kelly Thomas Fullerton Police Department, will not only benefit all residents of Fullerton, but it shall restore public faith in the department itself. In doing so you will stimulate public trust to the benefit to those other officers who have always conducted themselves professionally. Professional officers with good intentions deserve to work in an environment which is free of the stigma that the continued employment of these accomplices in a taped public execution places on the entire department.
Only by publically setting standards for peace officers which embody excellence in public service and respect for all Fullerton citizens, and by demanding the termination of all those who represent the worst of FPD’s past, can we move forward with confidently that reform and change has resulted from the tragic murder of Fullerton resident Kelly Thomas on July 5th, 2011. The city attorney, while perhaps well intentioned, has an established propensity to filter his advise through the fear that one of these subpar officers may litigate on grounds of wrongful termination. We advise this council to also consider what may result if any of the officers in question, who have now returned to active duty, are again involved the death or injury of one of our citizens. Prudence dictates that they must be removed before they are given another opportunity to harm the public and burden the city with additional million dollar settlements.
Civility and healing will come to Fullerton when our leaders are responsive to the public and we are not required to pry every hint of justice that this case has brought forth over the last 14 month from the clinched fists of a stubborn leadership at city hall, the DA’s office or FPD. Today we present you with yet another opportunity to partner with us in seeking justice. We urge you to take advantage of this opportunity.
Respectfully submitted by
Stephan Baxter, Fullerton CA
Here is a clip from Rick Reiff’s program featuring our own admin, and the sorry sack of guano known as Larry Bennett. He’s the clown who blew a hundred grand defending the Three Bald Tires from a much deserved recall.
Observe that Bennett is not only a bad loser he is still a liar, which seems to come so naturally. He is still dodging the easiest question of all: if Tony Bushala wanted to control the City Council to further his own mythical development schemes, how much easier would it have been to simply donate to the Three Dead Batteries’ campaigns? The answer of course is a lot. A lot cheaper too.
Did you enjoy how Bennett glossed over the illegal water tax? He still likes it!
Bennett is also still going by the title Planning Commissioner. I wonder how much longer he’ll keep that job.
For almost a year now rumors have been swirling around the role of Fullerton’s Slidebar in the death of the mentally ill homeless man, Kelly Thomas, last July. Specifically, did a Slidebar employee at the behest of his or her boss, owner Jeremy Popoff, make a phony call to the cops to give them a pretext to roust Thomas.
Despite all of his protestations of innocence and donations of canned food to the homeless, Popoff’s story never quite rang true.
A couple days ago the other shoe finally dropped: a lawsuit for wrongful termination by a former employee named Michael Reeves that goes into elaborate detail about what happened on the night of July 5, 2011, and the cover up that followed.
The guy claims the fateful and false call to the FPD that triggered the events leading to the murder of Thomas was made by Slidebar manager Jeanette DiMarco at the behest of owner Jeremy Popoff.
Later, when he wouldn’t play ball, Reeves claims he was demoted, then fired. The guy is suing for $4,000,000, a tidy sum, to be sure.
Well, there you have it. Is any part of this tale true? I don’t know. But I do know that the other, even more sinister part of the story is still looming on the horizon like a nasty weather front; and that’s the disturbing possibility that the bar was in cahoots with one or more of the police before hand, complicit in a criminal conspiracy to deprive Kelly Thomas of his Constitutional rights and even his physical well-being.
We now know that the DA has decided to look the other way in his haste to kiss and make up with the Fullerton cops, but the possibility that the attack on Thomas was per-arranged does indeed explain the antagonistic behavior of Wolfe and Ramos, and perhaps even the seemingly inexplicable violence of Cicinelli.
All this is now bound to come out in the civil proceedings against the City by Ron Thomas and Garo Mardirossian. The latter may be pressured to cut a deal to avoid embarrassing the City too much in a public trial, but the new council needs a vehicle to get all the facts on the table once and for all. A trial is just the thing.
Libertarian columnist Steve Greenhut wrote a recap on the Fullerton Recall, and put it in the context of people taking their governments back. Steve had lots of good things to say about the Recall and FFFF, and we proudly share his pice.
Sent in by a Friend:
Dear Kelly,
I know that whatever I say here is too little too late, but I must say it. I have to say thank you. I know that what happened that fateful night was nothing you had ever planned to have happen, and that there was nothing you could have done to stop the injustice that occurred to you. But I want you, and your family, friends, and supportive citizens to know that your death was not in vain. You have brought new life to a community by helping us to remember our pure humanity.
I may no longer be religious, but I retain an intense spirituality in which I hold true to many of the things I was taught as a child. One of my most remembered passages from the Bible is as follows: “As you have done it to these, the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me.” Although I always saw this as a positive passage, it reminds me now that there are two sides to every subject. You are in no way any less than any of us, except for in the way that our entrusted officers and government treated you because of who you were in their eyes. And I am so sorry that it took your death for us to realize that we all, as a community, had lost our power and needed to take it back.
Even with what happened tonight in our recall election, I wish that what had happened to you could be taken back a thousand times over. It should never have come to this. Tonight, the City of Fullerton stood up in defense of not just you, but itself, and it should never have taken your death for us to realize how much we needed to make change happen. There were so many more issues involved tonight, which we have known for so long but refused to challenge, and I am sorry that you had to be the catalyst to make change happen.
I am so wholeheartedly ashamed of how we let you down, but I hope that wherever you are, you somehow know that we will continue fighting for you, for our community, and for the rights of all of our citizens. I know that I, among many others, will continue to vigilantly make sure this never happens again to any member of our community, and should any injustice occur, that we will all work together to hold those persons accountable of the crimes they have committed.
All I can do tonight is look up at the sky and thank you, and I hope you that you can forgive us for all that has occurred. We love you, and we love Fullerton, and let this mark a new day in this city’s history and future.
With Love and Appreciation,
Your Town
Holy Smokes those anti-recall guys are dumb. How dumb? On their lame website some idiot just posted the hilariously funny and self-deprecating video made by Tony Bushala to mock his own critics. Apparently who ever uploaded the video never watched it; or they believe their audience is even dumber than they are. Well maybe they are!
Seriously, can anybody now believe that these people are qualified to run anything more complicated than an ant farm, let alone a city of 150,000 people?
Anyway here’s the video again. And thanks to chucklehead Larry Bennett and his dim bulb crew for giving it free air time.
Our “millionaire many times over” admin makes the big time last week with a cover story by Brandon Fergeson in the OC Weekly. Here’s how it starts:
Tony Bushala first met Manuel Ramos more than 20 years ago when Bushala played drums with Teatro Cometa, a theater group that performed bilingual one-act plays in Fullerton in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Ramos, who was about 10, was the son of one of the actresses; his uncle, Bushala’s best friend at the time, directed the troupe. Occasionally, Ramos would sit quietly in the audience and watch rehearsals.
Bushala, now 53 and a millionaire many times over, eventually moved on from drumming to managing his father’s extensive properties in Fullerton and elsewhere, becoming a real-estate developer and a vocal opponent of city government. In 2006, Bushala was riding his bicycle when he bumped into Ramos, who was now a hulking, overweight guy in his mid-30s, dressed in the uniform of the Fullerton Police Department.
Click here to read the rest of this article.