Remember that strange episode up at Beechwood School a couple of months ago when parents were called in for a really scary meeting and not really told anything? Some teacher did something. Somewhere. Somehow. FSD Superintendent Mitch Hovey was just double-talking hard.
Now the OC Registeris reporting that the still unnamed teacher’s offense – having “inappropriate” materials on his computer at school – does not rise to the level of a crime. At least that’s what Acting Chief Dan Hughes reported after an FPD investigation was submitted to our hard-working DA (okay, no snickering). Says Hughes:
“The investigation discovered potentially inappropriate photographs and videos on a school computer assigned to the teacher. But I am pleased to report that in this case, there is no evidence to suggest any Beechwood students were victims of a crime.”
Well, that’s good news, although what the guy had on his computer that caused all the hubbub remains shrouded in secrecy.
But according to the article Mr. Teacher isn’t out of the Beechwoods yet, and remains on “administrative” (presumably paid) leave while the Fullerton School District pursues its own investigation.
Jeez, Fullerton must be the public employee investigation capital of the Western World.
Yesterday FFFF shared some Fullerton crime statistics that were really pretty damn shocking. Contrary to what council candidate and now beleaguered councilman Pat McKinley claimed and claims, crime not only did not decrease every year in Fullerton, but in the years 2005-2009, it skyrocketed spectacularly.
He's smiling, but why?
Here’s the ugly truth, derived from FBI crime statistics, probably a more reliable source than Mr. McKinley’s fantasy world of self-serving make-believe.
The statistics don't lie, but Pat McKinley does.
Uh, oh. Now, that’s not very good is it? Ol’ Doc Jones’ Galveston was better run by the Italian Mob and it had open gambling and a red light district!
Actually, it was very well-run...
Of course everyone knows the reason for the spike in crime is the crazy shooting gallery Jones and his colleagues created with all the bars masquerading as restaurants they approved in downtown Fullerton; and don’t forget all the illegal bootleg night clubs they ignored, then actually subsidized.
Chillingly, the trajectory of crime in Fullerton coincides perfectly with the spike in the FPD Culture of Corruption that led to beatings, wrongful arrests, and perjury by our own cops. And nobody in City Hall seems capable of grasping the perverted correlation. The cops were given a free hand to fix the mess the politicians made downtown. Soon the entire department was infected.
Speaking of Doc HeeHaw, here he is taking credit for creating his monster. Pay particular attention as Jones documents the crimes committed and the need to to get hard, and tough, and mean.
Jones got one thing right. He just doesn’t recognize human behavior.
P.S. Will some public-minded citizen please take this crime chart to the Council meeting next week and read it out loud for the benefit of Jones, Bankhead and McKinley?
Last fall anti-recallers wanted folks to believe that everything in Fullerton’s great and it was just a wholesome family town. Of course the facts are that City Councilmembers Bankhead, Jones and McKinley have turned downtown Fullerton into an all night free for all of drugged-up, boozing, fighting, defecating thugs from who knows where. And of course an out-of-control gang of badged thugs was deployed to try to keep the other thugs in line.
All of this is just a long preamble to advertise the fact that another shooting took place in Downtown Fullerton early this morning, in the parking structure in the 100 block of east Wilshire Avenue.
Who benefits from this mayhem besides the liquor peddlers? Ask Bankhead or Jones or McKinley next time you see them.
Ah, late night music in downtown Fullerton. The louder it gets, the more people show up. And at the Slidebar, the party rocks on every night of the week.
Sure, it’s fun if you’re visiting from the 909 on a Thursday night. But to the rest of the public, nonstop amplified outdoor music is known as something else: a Public Nuisance.
Here’s what the Fullerton Municipal Code’s Limitations on Permitted Uses section has to say about music on outdoor patios:
Accessory Outdoor Dining or Patio.
15.30.040.I.7.c.ii. No amplified music or amplified entertainment is permitted outdoors, except recorded background music for dining establishments wherein normal conversation is not impeded; no music or entertainment shall be permitted on a patio past 10:00 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 11:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
So whose job it is to police the downtown bars and night clubs that have patios with outdoor amplified music?
Makes ya feel good. Oops, watchit there, just step over the bodies and the civil rights!
Thus spaketh Lou Ponsi who seems to be doing his level best to avoid real news and even to parrot the nonsense peddled by the anti-recall crowd.
Ponsi seems really impressed with banners stating how much folks love Fullerton. Ponsi doesn’t seem interested that the operation is the brainchild of downtown businesses who have profited off of the City Council’s crazy wild west show; nor in the irony that these essentially anti-recall messages are hung on public property. No, that would take independence and intelligence, traits that Ponsi simply doesn’t possess.
Of course Ponsi echoes the notion that the one and only problem is the minor altercation last summer that left Kelly Thomas’ brains in a Transportation Center gutter, and of course he ignores the reality a phone call made by – a downtown business, that may very well have an I Love Fullerton banner in front of it.
Really? I don't know anything about that stuff. Wow!
Lou must have a short or self-serving memory if he can’t remember:
FPD cop Todd Major – convicted of fraud, 2011.
FPD cop Kelly Mejia – plead guilty to grand larceny, 2011
FPD cop Albert Rincon – accused of a dozen sexual batteries while in uniform causing a rebuke from a federal judge and a $350,000 settlement (so far), but actually “separated” for something else (jeez how bad could that have been), 2006-2011.
FPD cop Vincent Mater – “separated” after destroying evidence in a Fullerton jail suicide, identified as an untrustworthy “Brady cop” and suspected of a roll in the false identification in the Emanuel Martinez case. Charged by the District Attorney,2011.
FPD cop “Sonny” Saliceo who through laziness or malice, permitted or encouraged the mis-identification of Emanuel Martinez who subsequently spent five months in jail.
FPD employee April Baughman who was recently arrested on charges of theft from the FPD property room over a period of two years. 2012.
A lawsuit by Veth Mam against the police department and FPD cop Kenton Hampton for a laundry list of civil rights violations and false prosecution. 2011.
A lawsuit by Andrew Trevor Clarke against FPD cop Cary Tong and half the FPD for a laundry list of civil rights violations. 2012.
A lawsuit by Edward Miguel Quinonez against the FPD and Kenton Hampton for even more civil rights violations. 2011
And let’s not forget the eventual civil and civil rights suits against the balance of the FPD Six (including our old friends Kenton Hampton and Joe Wolfe). 2011.
Then in non-police matters there’s the little problem of the City Council giving away land worth millions for free to campaign contributors; and giving away huge subsidies to the bag man who runs the anti-recall campaign. 1996-2012.
And finally let us recall the biggest scam of all – the perpetuation of the illegal water tax for fifteen long years that went, in part, to pay the salaries and pensions of the very city council that looked the other way year after year. 1996-2012.
Nearly a year ago FFFF started what would turn into a long string of investigations into the FPD Culture of Corruption by telling the tale of a young man who claimed that he was beaten and abused by Fullerton cops during a downtown arrest.
There were plenty of skeptics here, and there was a barrage of personal abuse leveled against the man by anonymous FPD goons. At least there was until we published the results of an internal investigation, here, in which at least part of the victim’s assertions were confirmed.
Well last week another of Pat McKinley’s chickens emerged on the horizon, coming home to roost. Andrew Trevor Clarke filed a federal civil suit against Fullerton PD employees Tong, Contino, Hampton, Bolden, Salazar and Sellers.
Sellers? Good call, but I wonder why Clarke didn’t include former Chief, present councilman Pat McKinley. After all, he will proudly tell us he hired all of ’em.
All I can say is the lawsuits are piling up so fast we’re going to need wings to stay above the legal paperwork. And I wonder how much this one is gonna cost us.
Reflecting on the FPD career of Albert Rincon, the man accused of serially sexually assaulting women in the back of his patrol car, made me think about the creep that hired him, and the standards that were applied to the recruit.
We have seen from the facebook page of “Albey Al” a preening, self-absorbed, utterly shallow weasel. Okay that’s bad enough. What makes Albey Al Rincon’s presence on the Fullerton police force even more revealing is the virtual illiteracy of a grown man who can not spell, let alone write complete or even intelligible sentences. This begs the question of what sort of standards Pat McKinley applied to his recruits. After all, he hired Rincon, just like all the others.
But are there no basic academic qualifications required to be a Fullerton cop? Apparently not.
Narcissism and ignorance are a bad combination, and the complete lack of moral scruples rounds out the McKinley recruit profile. Now give ’em a badge and a gun and let ’em hit the streets of Fullerton! McKinley has yet to disavow Rincon as some sort of “alien;” and why should he? They are kindred spirits.
McKinley set the FPD bar so low that even a morally vacuous, messed up ignoramus like Albert Rincon could slither over it. Despite the pleas from FPD apologists about all the good cops employed by the department, we are justified to question that claim, given the mere presence of Rincon on the force; somebody thought he was not only fit for duty, but that he deserved to stay on duty after all the charges leveled against him.
The really dangerous thing is that the FPD and anti-recall crew don’t want us to talk about Rincon. Or Mater. Or Major, or Mejia, or Hampton, or Thayer, or Tong, or Baughman, or Nguyen, or Solario, or Siliceo, or any of the other police department employees who have given the City a series of black eyes. They want the public to think that a couple cops maybe, just maybe, got a little over-excited one hot night last July, and that Kelly Thomas’ death is a lone example of miscreance being exploited for political purposes.
Well, despite Acting Chief Hughes protestations, there has been and still is a Culture of Corruption in the FPD. The fact is that McKinley’s twisted chickens are finally coming home to roost. The repercussions will be prolonged and painful, emotionally and economically. But after June 5th McKinley will just be an noxious footnote in Fullerton’s history. The clean up will take a while.
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.
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.
For several months we’ve been trying to find out about former FPD cop Albert Rincon: What he looks like and where he resides. Rincon is the pervert who was accused of molesting women in the back seat of his patrol car, who earned the City a rebuke from a federal judge, and who has cost the taxpayers of Fullerton a hefty $350,000 in a civil case settlement.
Watch out. This could be our boy.
A helpful blog reader forwarded a Facebook link to a narcissistic dimwit calling himself Albey Al. The references, and “friends” named Rincon suggest that this could very well be he.
The one on the right. The one on the left looks like FPD material, too.
Check out his facebook page. Could this cretin have passed Chief McPension’s rigid psychological exam? There seems to be almost nothing going on upstairs, so maybe he could have passed it with flying colors!
Of note: Albey Al appears to be living in the area.
Just in case this douchenozzle deletes anything, I’ve archived it here. Decide for yourself. Do you think we have found Albert Rincon?
Remember that strange episode up at Beechwood School a couple of months ago when parents were called in for a really scary meeting and not really told anything? Some teacher did something. Somewhere. Somehow. FSD Superintendent Mitch Hovey was just double-talking hard.
