Dick Jones Archives - Page 9 of 49 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

May 13, 2012May 13, 2012A Step in the Right Direction

Time For Real Justice. At Long Last.

If you’ve watched the now infamous video of six overfed Fullerton cops beating the life out of Kelly Thomas and then standing around joking as he gasped for his last breaths in the street, a few feet away, you will have probably felt some pretty raw feelings. Disgust, anger, fear, pity, and sorrow are what we have all experienced.

Upon calmer reflection we can use the video to start piecing together what really happened and what motivated our “officers.” The behavior of Joe Wolfe stands out as the most egregious and makes me wonder how in the world he escaped charges by the District Attorney. Many have already stated the obvious: that DA Tony Rackaukas’ supposition that Wolfe could not know what was happening right in front of him, a mere 15 feet away is patently ridiculous. But even if we accept the unlikely plausibility of this convenient surmise, one unalterable fact remains: Joe Wolfe assaulted Kelly Thomas. We have all watched Wolfe emerge into the video frame when Kelly raises his arms, palms outward in a submissive gesture. At this point it would have still been possible for the bloated, oafish cops to de-escalate this situation. But instead Joe Wolfe for some as yet disclosed reason attacked Kelly with his baton, and Manuel Ramos joined in the fun. The murder had begun. And Kelly Thomas, accused of nothing, cited for nothing, guilty of nothing was entering his last ten minutes of his life.

I don’t know about you Friends, but the fact that Officer Joe Wolfe is not only walking free, but actually still getting a Fullerton paycheck makes me nauseous. The fact that my tax dollars are paying this thug’s salary makes me feel even sicker, and somewhat accountable, especially if I don’t do something about it. I’m sure I’m not alone.

Hell, if anyone were caught beating an animal in such manner as the way those goons treated a human being, they would be in prison.

So what do we do? Provide helpful suggestion in the comments thread.

May 13, 2012May 13, 2012About Us

Greenhut Shoots. Greenhut Scores!

by Joe Sipowicz66 Comments

Greenjeans — Intelligent. And handsome, too.

There’s always lots of talk in Orange County about freedom-loving him, or freedom-loving her, when the repuglicans start trumpeting some mediocre authoritarian hack or other for political office.

But then there’s the real deal – former OC Register writer and now occasional columnist, Steve Greenhut. Enjoy Steve’s opinion piece on the Kelly Thomas killing and the Fullerton Recall, here.

Greenhut is hitting on all cylinders. He gets it: there’s serial police abuse, secrecy and subsequent cover-ups by the politicians; there’s Redevelopment abuse, cronyism, and unaccountability; there’s an illegal tax on our water, 15 years-old, that has misdirected over $27,000,000 to pay for perks and pensions of the politicians and bureaucrats in City Hall.

The best part of Steve’s broadside is this part where he goes after the pusillanimous Register Editorial Board that has hypocritically succumbed to pressure applied by Dick Ackerman, Inc.:

Unfortunately, the Register Editorial Board didn’t fully support this heart-felt political revolt, as it argued, “The citizens who voted [the three councilmen] in and now are disgruntled should vote them out during a regular election cycle.” The Register had no such qualms about backing the recall in 2003 of Gov. Gray Davis, for similar lack-of-leadership reasons.

And finally Greenhut sums up with:

The release of the video reinforces the wisdom of the recall. A recent news article explained that “legal experts caution that the footage doesn’t tell the entire story,” but we don’t need experts to tell us the truth, now obvious to anyone who can access YouTube. And we don’t need experts to tell Fullerton voters what to do about three councilmen who acted in a craven and unconscionable way.

Oh, yes. We’ll let “the justice system unfold,” in the clumsy phraseology of our feckless Mayor, Sharon Quirk. In the meantime we’ll apply our our God-given commonsense to the facts that we are permitted to see by our political masters. And then we’ll recall the the bums.

May 11, 2012May 11, 2012Chronic Failure

Chicken Colonel Dresses Down

by admin77 Comments

According to a source our old buddy F. “Dick” Jones told friends he couldn’t make the League of Women Voters candidate forum because he was going to be away on vacation. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that he didn’t show up last night, and today a sharp-eyed member of Kelly’s Army snapped this flattering image of ol’ Doc HeeHaw in the City Hall parking lot.

May 11, 2012May 11, 2012Dick Jones

Recall Election Candidates Forum

by The Fullerton Harpoon60 Comments

Here is the League of Women Voter’s Recall candidates forum held last night. It was held in three shifts, one for each city council seat being contested. To his credit, Sleepy Don Bankhead actually showed up to try to explain his 25 year record of failure. The two other Recall targets, Pat McKinley and Doc Jones flipped the LWV The Bird by not even bothering to show up to defend their misrule.

May 11, 2012May 11, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

“Let The Wheels of Justice Turn” Sayeth Pat PcPension

by English Major101 Comments

Here’s an article from the tanking OC Register about the Kelly Thomas murder case, that includes a delicious quote from Mr. She Bear himself, the egregious former Fullerton Police Chief, Pat McKinley, who nonchalantly admitted he hired all the brutal thugs involved in the remorseless killing of the schizophrenic homeless man. “Let the wheels of justice turn!” says Pat.

The Wheels of Justice. Anybody who has reviewed the checkered career and sayings of McKinley, or the activities of the gang of thugs, pickpockets, perverts, con men, petty thieves, perjurers, and casual liars that he loosed upon Fullerton, may well question whether McKinley has any concept of justice at all.

O Patience! preaches McKinley, now a city councilman. Surely all the evidence is not in! The pathetic plea for more time to clear his thuggish hirelings is telling, as was his previous wink-wink comment about how good his goons’ lawyers are. But for McKinley time is the proverbial double-edged sword. For even as he admonishes us to wait out a protracted legal process that is designed in almost every way to avoid prosecuting criminal cops, his own political time is quickly running out.

Oh yes, it’s hard to avoid the gratuitous sharing of the irrelevant tidbit that McKinley is on vacation. Is this a sly reference to departed, disabled former Chief Mike Sellers who went on vacation in the days following Kelly Thomas’s murder? Naw, because that would be clever and insightful. Rather, we are left to wonder if, with a mere four weeks until the recall election, McKinley has all but given up fighting for his job; or maybe he is so confident that the somnolent folks of Fullerton will turn a blind eye to his own perverse incompetence, that he can afford to vacation – after all, nobody has ever cared what he did, or didn’t do before.

May 10, 2012May 10, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Fullerton Stories Gets a Pooper Scoop!

by Mr. Peabody193 Comments

I just came across this post I ran last August. It’s all about how some chucklehead named Davis Barber posted a story on his local blog about Richard Fritschie – who popped up almost on cue to spin a yarn that exonerated the cops in the beating death of Kelly Thomas. After that we have heard nothing more from Mr. Fritschie. I wonder why not. I also still wonder, as did “Mark S.” how this “witness” was put in contact with Barber in the first place, real convenient, like.

For some reason I can’t get the smug, rotund countenance of Sergeant Andrew Goodrich out of my mind ever since Mark S. put it there.

– Mr. Peabody

I just received an e-mail from one of our Friends that has to do with a new-found witness to the Kelly Thomas bludgeoning death. I’ll let our correspondent do the talking:

Hey, FFFF, over at the Fullerton Stories website they have a post about some person calling himself Richard Fritschie (image attached) who claims that he saw the Thomas homicide and that justifies the horrible beating and torture Kelly received at the hands of the FPD. Mr. Ritschie claims to be a street person and an itinerant jewelry peddler.

The narrative was both unconvincing and evidently self-serving. He repeats the specious claims by others that if Kelly hadn’t “resisted” he would be alive today, a completely unfounded and irrelevant assertion. He also claims that he has always been nicely treated by FPD. Of course the fortuitous appearance of this character eight weeks after the attack is suspicious in itself.

The most distasteful part of this post is the headline New Witness in Thomas Case Defends Police. I know that this website is dedicated to the usual, hollow happy talk about Fullerton; you know the thing: Chamber of Commerce/City Hall boosterism. It’s proprietor, Davis Barber, recently published a post in which he implied we should be thankful that the City provides us with a forum for public comment. But this latest effort really takes the cake.

After a bit of reflection I began to wonder how and why this Fritschie fellow would even get in touch with Fullerton Stories, or vice versa. Then it hit me: FPD or the DA made the hook-up. That would be par for police spokesman Andrew Goodrich’s course: selective and self-serving leaking of information while simultaneously telling the public that we must be patient and wait for the fair and objective “investigation” by Tony Rackauckas, the guy who has never prosecuted an Orange County cop for excessive force!

Anyway, keep up the good work FFFF! The truth hurts, but the truth will set Fullerton free.

Mark S.

May 10, 2012May 10, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Fullerton Metal Jacket

by The Fullerton Harpoon110 Comments

At the OC Weekly Nick Schou has uncovered an old article about the militarization of the Fullerton Police Department under Pat McKinley. The seminal event of the story takes place in 1997 and describes a military-style invasion of the Latino Maple neighborhood in response to a drive-by shooting along Harbor Boulevard.

Pat-McKinley-Cops-300x206 — Me and my gang are gonna kick your ass. And you're gonna like it.

Since McKinley had cut his fangs on SWAT deployments up in Los Angeles it was just a matter of time before the bald badass brought his methods and manpower from the LAPD to Fullerton. The trouble with militarization, apart from the monetary cost of deployment, is the inevitable occupation mentality, and the concomitant “us versus them” mindset. When you watch the Veth Mam video this comes through loud and clear.

15 years later many of McKinley’s scrofulous chickens have now come home to roost. I have to wonder how many incidents in Fullerton over the years were escalated into confrontations by the cops themselves. And I have to wonder what all of this is going to cost us.

May 9, 2012May 8, 2012Dead heads

Jones, McKinley, Bankhead & Co

by Joe Sipowicz280 Comments

What can you say about an organization that is so corrupt that it not only tolerates, but has seemed to encourage police brutality?

What’s that you say? You say that the people in charge of it are responsible for the actions of those they hire? And who is responsible for putting fine gentlemen like these on the streets of Fullerton with badges, tasers and guns?

Well, how about Pat McKinley – the man who matter-of-factly acknowledged he hired them all?

McKinley's Crew — Mess with me and you'll get a visit from my crew...

Or how about the loud-mouthed buffoon who set loose his goon squad to be “hard, tough, and mean” in order to clean up the mess he made in Downtown Fullerton:

jones-gone-wild12-300x225 — Will you please shut up!?

And then of course there’s the former Fullerton cop who’s been around so long that there were only 46 states when he was born, and whose blind eye has been cast upon the misdeeds of his police department.

bankhead-dinosaur — Jurassic In Every Way

Well, Friends, take your pick there’s plenty of blame to go around. And don’t forget to thank yourself if you were one of the people who voted for any of these three miscreants.

May 9, 2012May 9, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Judge Orders Trial in Kelly Thomas Killing

by admin279 Comments

Manny's Boo boo — The judge was not impressed.

This afternoon in Santa Ana, Superior Court Judge Walter Schwarm declared that sufficient evidence exists to warrant a trial for the two Fullerton cops accused in the death of the mentally ill, homeless man, Kelly Thomas last July. Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli will stand trial for second degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, respectively.

Although many critics have claimed that more serious charges should have been brought against all the officers charged, it should be noted that on-duty cops have never been prosecuted for a capital crime in the County’s history.

May 9, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Gustavo Has Some Fun With Mr. Ramos

by Jan Florys Dog121 Comments

Over at the OC Weekly, Gustavo Arellano is sharing the now familiar image of Fullerton cop, Manuel Ramos, one of the thugs who instigated the beating death of Kelly Thomas, and who is out on $1,000,000 bail. Of course he adds his own twist.

It does make you wonder if the obese Ramos has put in a claim for disability yet. It’s sure to be approved.