Let’s say you are in the market for a realtor – one who may be willing to bring a certain, um, shall we say, pugnacious flavor to your real estate negotiations. FFFF may be able to help!
Here’s the real estate promo for one Bryan Bybee, a Fullerton cop who’s looking to make a little extra cash moonlighting in the real estate business:
We’ll close this deal. Or else.
So who is Mr. Bybee, you may ask? We originally introduced the Friends to this gentleman, after he rammed his police vehicle into a guy on a bike. Bybee’s name also figured prominently in a very expensive lawsuit brought by the Ortiz brothers, Luiz and Antonio, against the City. They alleged (and alleged successfully, it seems) that Bybee and a few of his FPD cohorts beat them up for no apparent reason, threw them in the Fullerton lock-up, and charged them with fictitious crimes – charges that were eventually rejected by a jury and dropped by the DA. That fun-filled episode cost us Fullerton taxpayers a tidy $280,000.
Anyhow, like I said, Bryan’s just looking to make some extra dough on the side, so let’s give a brotha’ a break, right? If you’re looking for “boutique” real estate services and someone to bring a special brand of negotiating talent to the table, Bryan may be just be the fella to meet your needs.
Some things, like toenail fungus, never seem to go away. And one of them, apparently, is Jay Cicinelli. He is the disabled, one-eyed Fullerton cop who, on the hot July night in 2011, gently kicked Kelly Thomas in the head with his knee and compassionately smashed his face with a taser. At least that’s how Cicinelli’s lawyer wants you to remember it.
Suddenly I was on the floor looking up at Officer Rubio.
The City fired Cicinelli and his pals Manuel Ramos and Joe Wolfe for violating police department policy. Of course on the witness stand FPD’s genial Corporal Punishment T. Rubio exonerated the behavior Ramos, Wolfe and Cicinelli by contradicting his own department, and thus giving a brain-dead jury ammunition to acquit the three of the criminal charges brought by our useless DA, Tony Rackaukas. Of course Rackaukas had every opportunity to skewer the integrity of Rubio who sure seemed to be committing perjury, but the DA didn’t. The whole episode appeared to be nothing other than a grand plan to obfuscate the reality of what happened to Kelly Thomas.
Anyhow, the actions of Cicinelli and their relation to department policy seem to be key in an appalling effort by Cicinelli to seek reinstatement to the FPD, and to no doubt rake in five years worth of back pay and benefits. Well, this is California and the cop unions have us by the proverbial balls, so Cicinelli’s reinstatement is not only plausible, it is highly possible, proving what little control the people have over their “public safety” employees. Here are the relevant docs. Try to keep your last meal down.
Most government projects have three things in common: they are bad ideas promoted by bureaucrats, they are obscenely expensive, and there is no accountability attached to them.
In Fullerton we have lots of examples over the years that touch all three bases. But if ever one needed a veritable poster child for government fiascoes, the ill-conceived “Downtown Core and Corridors” Specific Plan would be it.
Back in 2010, the City of Fullerton put in an application for a “project” to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Strategic Growth Council” an assemblage of bureaucrats and political appointees selected by the governor to promote sustainability and responsibility in urban (and suburban planning). On the face of it, the idea was to promote development that would be eco-friendly – somehow, someway. Lo and Behold! Fullerton received a $1,000,000 grant to create the Downtown Core and Corridors Specific Plan, a massive overlay zone. In 2013 a committee was appointed to make this look like a community driven enterprise, but as so often happens the committee was led along by the consultants and staff who were being paid, and paid well, out of the grant money. Some members of this committee only went to one meeting, the last one, in May 2014, a meeting consumed by passing out certificates of participation to committee members for all their hard work.
In the meantime, the intent of the creators of the specific plan became crystal clear: opportunity for massive new housing projects along Fullerton’s busiest streets, development that would not even have to undergo the scrutiny facing normal projects so long as the permissive guidelines of the specific plan were met. Naturally, lots of people objected to the continued over-development of Fullerton, and the utter disconnect with what the Strategic Growth Council was ostensibly promoting. Perhaps the most obnoxious thing about the specific plan proposal was the way it was being used, unapproved by any policy maker, to promote other massive apartment projects already in the entitlement process.
And then a funny thing happened. The Downtown Core and Corridors Specific Plan vanished into thin air. Although recommended by the Planning Commission in August of 2014, the plan and its Environmental Impact Report never went to the city council for approval. 2015 passed; and so did 2016 without the plan being approved. Even modifications rumored to have been proposed by the now-departed Planning Director Karen Haluza never materialized for council review or approval.
I’ll drink to that!
Some cynical people believe the plan was postponed in 2014 because of the council election, an election that returned development uber alles councilmembers Greg Sebourn and Bud Chaffee. And they believe that the subsequent attempt to erase the plan from the municipal memory was perpetrated by none other than the hapless city manager, Joe Felz and lobbyist councilperson Jennifer Fitzgerald, (so the story goes) two individuals who had every incentive to shake down potential developers one by one, rather than granting a broad entitlement for new and gargantuan development. Felz had a massive budget deficit to fill, and Fitzgerald had massive lobbying opportunities from potential Pringle and Associate clients.
A chemical bond
What is undeniable is that three long years have passed and no action has been taken to either approve or deny the specific plan. The grant money approved by the State has been a complete waste – a travesty so embarrassing to everybody concerned that no one seems to want to demand an explanation for this fiasco. Neither the city bureaucrats or council, nor the State has any incentive to advertise this disaster, and you can bet there never will be an accounting.
It may have been expensive, but it sure was unnecessary…
Ten weeks ago I took a break documenting the disastrous “elevators to nowhere” story, a history of confusion and ineptitude that had its genesis in Jones, Bankhead and McKinley era. This completely unnecessary $4,000,000 boondoggle was five-and-a-half years old and it was dead in the water.
As of May 10, 2017 work on this project had already been halted for quite some time. Now, two-and-a-half months later, work has still not resumed. It is probably useless to inquire to the City about the facts of this latest delay, given the total lack of transparency surrounding this project throughout its death march. The Public Works Department appears to be incapable of presenting an honest staff report about it, and our elected officials could pretty obviously not care less about the waste or the management problems connected to it.
One thing we may safely assume: the delay – if it is the responsibility of the City, as is highly likely – is going to cost us a lot in extended overhead for the contractor, Woodcliff Corporation; and the cost will be accompanied by the usual complete lack of accountability to the taxpayers of Fullerton.
Remember Fullerton cop chief Patdown Pat “I Hired Them All” McPension and his idiotic, self-published “She Bear” bullshit?
Apparently there is still plenty of political capital to be reaped by unleashing the inner tigress. At least McKinley’s effort was only offensive to those dumb enough to buy his moronic book.
But here is our Assemblyperson Sharon Quirk pitching the same thing on the taxpayer’s dime. Almost anybody who knows about physical training will tell you that 2 hours of martial arts lessons is likely to prove disastrous when attempted against a large, masculine criminal.
But of course the real purpose for this “limited attendance” session, as indicated in the mailer is to get some indoctrination in “women’s issues,” as you get face time with Sharon Quirk Silva.
In the early morning hours of the very same day that six FPD cops harassed, attacked and left Kelly Thomas to die in the gutter, four of their bad apple brethren had a run-in only a few yards away with the Ortiz brothers – Luiz and Antonio – a couple of downtown Fullerton bar patrons.
Here are the names of the four cops: Bryan Bybee, Billy Phu, Emanuel Pulido and Matthew Martinez. Remember the names. According to the complaint Bybee began the July 5, 2011 altercation by attacking Antonio with a baton while his colleagues joined in the fun and also went to work on Luiz. The beat down ended with the usual ride to the Fullerton Jail, lack of medical attention to the beaten Antonio, refusal to pursue an internal investigation following Antonio’s formal complaint, and the eventual filing of criminal charges by our illustrious DA – who never seems to tire of prosecuting citizens based on fraudulent FPD reports.
Miraculously, Luiz was acquitted 11-1 by an OC jury in 2016, and the DA dropped the charges against Antonio – giving plenty of credence to the allegations made by the brothers in a civil suit against the taxpayers of Fullerton, a suit that was recently settled for the tidy sum of $280,000, only about $1.90 of which will come out of the pocket of Jan Flory, or Jennifer Fitzgerald or Pat “I Hired Them All” McKinley, or any of the other vocal cop apologists who bask in the warmth of Fullerton First membership.
Four more demerit badges for former Chief Danny “Galahad” Hughes’ boy scout sash, even as he rakes in a $20K per month pension.
Here are the relevant documents. Read ’em and weep.
One of the more startling examples of stupid waste at Fullerton City Hall has been the exorbitant expense of Behind the Badge: fifty large ones a year for former bad OC Register “journalists” to publish and disseminate pro-cop propaganda pabulum. It was all phony crap meant to obscure the real news about the FPD: a litany of bad behavior and criminal activity that over the past decade has spanned the breadth of the California Penal Code. Fortunately, thanks to the Friends this ridiculous waste is coming to an end. We wanted to make sure, too, so we requested the good bye letter.
And here is our temporary police chief Dave Hinig, hand-wringing over the loss of what can only be described as no loss at all for the taxpayer:
Is this some sort of sick joke? Value? To whom? Certainly not for the people who were paying out almost $250,000 over the past four years.
And what’s really laughable is all this lachrymose bullshit over a contract that was made in secret, was grossly mismanaged, and that had no actual requirements for performance – even if Joe Felz had had any inclination to oversee what he initiated.
Well, anyway, Behind the Badge is going away although why we have to pay another $8000 for two more months of this unadulterated literary manure is beyond me.
This is the third post in a series by our Friend “Fullerton Engineer” describing the elevator addition project at the Fullerton Depot.
So you think the problem with transportation revenue is that there isn’t enough of it? Let’s see what happens when the State of California doles out grant money to localities, in this instance our very own town of Fullerton.
California transportation projects are very often driven by the availability of money spent in pursuit of a social agenda. Car pools lanes with fantastically expensive fly-over bridges? Check. Highly subsidized transit for upper middle class commuters? Check.
Forget that carpool lanes make everybody’s drive worse and that commuter trains only serve a puny portion of the taxpayers that foot the bill. It’s the gesture that counts, you see, and the more expensive the gesture, the more it counts.
It might be expensive but it sure is useless…
Back in 2010, or so, the good folks whose livelihoods depend on putting the plans of our Sacramento social engineers into effect foresaw a big increase in rail transit through the Fullerton train station. But gee, thought someone, won’t that mean making it harder to get all those new travelers to other side of the tracks? The solution? New elevators, and right next to the old ones. Forget the fact that most of the day the existing elevators were unused, or that most people just climbed the stairs; and forget the fact that a sensible set of stairs already existed under the Harbor Boulevard bridge to do the same thing. New elevators made no sense even if the new ridership tsunami was believable: after all – only two trains can stop in the station at the same time, the same as before.
But of course the real kicker was the availability of money from our friends in Sacramento to effect alterations in stations that accommodate “transit” modalities, and so the City of Fullerton was going to grab while the grabbing was good, and never mind that the idea was nonsense and that nobody needed or wanted it.
On December 20, 2011 our esteemed City Council voted to award a design contract to Hatch Mott MacDonald, an engineering firm to “design” two new elevators right next to the existing ones. The contract amount was $358,390, a remarkable amount given the scope of the task at hand – to replicate the existing bridge in two new, one-stop elevator structures. In case you are wondering, $358,000 equates to the billing of one $100 per hour person working on this project full-time, doing nothing else, for 1.7 years.
And so the City embarked on this ridiculous project. HMM began work in march 2012 after the City had signed a master agreement with the State of California. Someone should have become alarmed the following year when Hatch Mott MacDonald’s design service billings eventually ballooned 28% over budget– almost a hundred thousand dollars.But no one did. It was someone else’s money.
This is the second in a series of posts written by our Friend, Fullerton Engineer.
Anybody who thinks the problem with transportation and “transit” funds is that there aren’t enough of them, either isn’t paying attention or is profiting off of the notion – either as a government bureaucrat, a consultant, a lobbyist, or an engineering construction contractor. The partisan political yappers can be added to the list too.
California government is awash with money. It is also awash with the characters and interests listed above, who all stand to gain from the new Gas Tax that will be levied on everybody else. Sure, everybody benefits, right? And the mantra of “our infrastructure is crumbling?” It sounds dire and maybe it is. But the solution is not new taxes, but effective and accountable use of the resources we already have. Until our governments can demonstrate that they are responsible stewards of what they have, why entrust them with any more?
As was recently noted on this blog, governments are rarely penalized for their misuse of their property, and the same goes for misuse of existing funds; and it would never occur to the transportation lobby to shape up. Why bother, when a helpful Legislature is more than happy to raise taxes and then start handing out salvers of freshly slaughtered pork? The simple fact is that grant funds from a distant government attracts a long line of bureaucratic applicants willing to spend that money in any fashion that meets the bare minimum of requirements from other bureaucrats in Sacramento. This diffusion of authority and ultimately the lack of coherent oversight is at the root of California’s current infrastructure woes. The fact that every dollar sent off to Washington or Sacramento or even collected by OCTA comes back after a big whack has been taken off the top only exacerbates the situation.
And then there is the problem of “transit” projects, a bottomless well of bureaucratic mismanagement, political corruption, and misuse of public funds for pet boondoggle projects that provide minimal, if any benefit to the public, but lots of benefit to the people entrusted with spending the money and those receiving it.
It may have been expensive, but it sure was unnecessary…
Which brings me to case of The People of Fullerton v. the Added Train Station Elevators, a study that will examine the long and painful (and ongoing) history of this completely unnecessary project that is quickly approaching a $5,000,000 price tag. This comedy of errors and overspending was to be paid for with funds from sources apart from Fullerton’s Capital Funds, namely State transportation funds Prop 1B and Prop 118, and of course the completely mismanaged OC Measure M Renewal funds. When somebody else is picking up the check it’s a lot easier to lose sight of priorities and interest in accountability. In this instance the availability of this play money has acted like a disease that has rendered everyone senseless and indifferent – a sort of malaise in which no one seems to care about what they are doing or how much it costs.
Yesterday a strange creature crawled out of the ooze – a fellow named “Roy” (fake name), who claimed to be the jury foreman in the 2013 Kelly Thomas murder trial.
This pathetic SOB sent in a request for a hearing on the John and Ken radio show to set the record straight about the verdict. Why now? Apparently he and his fellow pumpkins on the jury have been subjected to all sorts of mean social media ridicule and threats (he says), even after three years. It didn’t take John and Ken long to get sick of this whiner’s attempt to dodge, deflect and then diminish what the cops did to a skinny, sick, homeless guy.
You know “Roy” is soon to get his ass handed to him when he describes, Lou Ponsi-like, the brutal assault as a “scuffle,”
“Roy” doesn’t recognize Ramos trying to intimidate Kelly, and it doesn’t bother him a bit that Wolfe actually struck the blow that caused Kelly to run – a perfectly natural move for someone who has been threatened and hit with a cop club. Those provocations were really at the heart of the episode: the entire drama was caused, deliberately, by Ramos and Wolfe.
It is particularly nauseating to listen to this moron explain away Cicinelli pulverizing Kelly’s face as a necessary tactic against the struggling homeless man; and then declaring that Kelly died not of facial injury anyhow, but by “chest compression” whatever the Hell this dimwit thinks that means. The fact is that the blood inhaled from Kelly’s severe facial injuries caused asphyxiation at the same time the cops sat on his chest.
And of course this human vegetable ignores the aftermath – the Fullerton cops willfully ignored the unconscious guy who was dying in the gutter – as they got their little scrapes band-aided by paramedics.
File this one under “better to keep your mouth shut asshole, and just go away.”
