Friends For Fullerton's Future
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I discovered this hanging from my door knob this morning, courtesy of the Fullerton Recall team. Yowzer! Look down there at the bottom of the salary side: Thomas Basham – the alleged Watch Commander who watched his boys beat Kelly Thomas to death. And on the pension side get a load of #2: Former City Manager, and anti-recall contributor, Chris Meyer who pulled in $171K in pension last year. He sure has lots of reasons to back the Three Bald Tires.
UPDATE. From KNBC: “Sgt. Jeff Stuart, a Fullerton Police Department spokesman, did not return a call seeking comment.”
Now that’s not very good way to improve communication with the community, now is it?
– Mr. Peabody
Over at the OC Weekly, ace reporter R. Scott Moxley has written a post detailing an incident between Fullerton cop Manny Ramos and a 58 year old disabled guy named Mark Edwin Walker. It appears the gist of the thing is that last June 21, two weeks before he instigated the Kelly Thomas murder, Ramos, without provocation or cause, confronted Walker outside an Albertson’s in Fullerton, threw the man to the ground, stomped on him and tossed him in jail, charged with public intoxication, resisting arrest, or some other such nonsense.
Subsequently a judge threw the case out and Walker lawyered up. Of course this is all Walker’s story and it may be self-serving; but it also sounds a heckuva lot like the Veth Mam case. Who’s a jury going to believe now?
Ca-ching. The Culture of Corruption marches on.
Acting Chief Dan Hughes has been trying real hard lately to peddle the notion that he is in charge of a new and improved Fullerton Police Department, even though when you get right down to it there really wasn’t all that much to fix – just some irritating communication problems.
Although the scribes at the OC Register have apparently bought into this malarky, others who have seen the veritable conga line of crime perpetrated by the boys and girls in FPD blue, are a long way from being convinced. After all, the first step toward recovery is admitting the problem right?
Which is all preliminary to the point of this post.
Our FPD deep cover source informs us that Hughes is pressing to have three of the cops who ganged up on Kelly Thomas, and who stood around as he gasped his last breaths in the gutter, return to active duty. That would be cops Hampton, Blatney, and Craig. Of course he needs the DAs assurance that these goons won’t be prosecuted for anything. Which is why he came out with all that BS about how he and his boys were part of the “prosecution team” and why Tony Rackaukas praised the FPD for all their hard work for the benefit of Lou Ponsi. Looks like that deal’s done. It’s all about damage control now, and surely the City’s highly paid lawyer Michael Gennaco chipped in to help exonerate the three accomplices though his double top-secret report.
We have also been informed that although he is formally being fired, a back room deal is in the works to reward Joe Wolfe, the thug who started the murderous beat down on Kelly Thomas, with a nice, fat disability claim if he goes quietly. Of course we’ve been told that Wolfie re-injured his shoulder in the “tussle”, most likely bashing Kelly’s face with his elbow. That ought to good for a hundred thou’ of our money, give or take. Nice.
The City of Fullerton issued a press release yesterday identifying some job reassignments. Here’s a link to the press release.
How any of this game of musical deck chairs constitutes a real “streamlining” of anything is anybody’s guess, but it sounds good and appears proactive. I remain highly skeptical of people moving into technical jobs like Risk Management just because there may be an opening and a body with which to fill it; likewise the relocation of an Redevelopment “manager” into a completely unrelated area like accounting and payroll to avoid just cutting them and their big salaries and pensions loose.
How someone with a degree in Anthopology becomes an expert in Economic Development is a complete mystery to me.
Former Fullerton Police Chief and current council recall target “Patdown” Pat McKinley once likened cops Manny Ramos and Jat Cicinelli to “aliens,” meaning, presumably, that the only plausible explanation for bad cops on his force must be a visit from extraterrestrial travelers.
Of course the litany of bad cops in the FPD has now gotten so long that you really have to wonder if McPension ever hired any regular human beings at all.
And now some more potential bad PR for the FPD – an e-mail we received about two more cops who ran into difficulties in 2009, and whose problems may have been swept under the proverbial rug:
Privacy: You may publish this, but protect my identity
Subject: bad cops
fpd officer christopher robert wren, date of arrest 01-30-2009, assault of a minor. case # MCH 900309 ..SH 200900572 .. but he took a deal…got probation and k9 officer………still on patrol….
officer gary potts, dui arrest date 07-17-2009. orange county case # 09cm08352… still on patrol and a corporal………
Christopher Wren, of course, was the second cop originally named in the lawsuit against the sex perv Albert “Alby Al” Rincon. His name was dropped later, but he must have some interesting stories to tell about his running buddy, Rincon. “Assault of a minor”? I wonder what that means.
The name Gary Potts is new; DUI? No bueno, if that’s true.
Naturally we’ll be looking into the these cases, particularly that of Mr. Wren to see if there’s any there, there.
Okay, get beyond the hilariously portentous music and the dyed hair, and choose your favorite phrases.
“A few changes…”
“If we can ever get there…”
“Right now we’re a little short…”
“Community based policing…”
I was standing in the lobby of City Hall last week as Chaffee went to the table there to fill out a speaker card, went outside to make a phone call, and then vanished. He just couldn’t get up there to say anything. maybe he finally realized that the jig was up.
After waiting 11 months and saying zip about the Kelly Thomas murder we’re supposed to believe this limp noodle wants to reform anything?
Brandon Ferguson at the Weekly is citing KPCC that cites other media outlets in passing along the news that all six of the Fullerton cops who participated in the beating death of Kelly Thomas last July have been given notices of termination.
This means that Craig, Blatney and Hampton have now joined the list that previously included Ramos, Wolfe and Cicinelli.
Of course official announcements are not forthcoming from the City since we the lowly taxpayers are not to know which cops are fired (if ever) and what for.
Since the sources have been cantilevered out there pretty far, I’ll withhold saying anything else until I can touch base with my source inside the FPD.
In the meantime, reflect on this: after the killing these cops were not disciplined; they were left on the streets by a leaderless department and a chummy city council majority – Jones, Bankhead and McKinley. Wolfe, Blatney, Hampton and Craig have been on paid leave since August, costing us several hundred thousand dollars.
Some folks are now reporting that Jay Cicinelli has been included along with Ramos and Wolfe.
– Joe Sipowicz
A source inside the FPD has just revealed that today Manuel Ramos and Joe Wolfe received termination papers from the FPD. How come? Interestingly, their offense was not provoking and participating in a brutal killing; rather, it was their refusal to talk to the City’s lawyer Michael Gennaco who was hired to do a report on the Kelly Thomas murder.
Hmm. I suppose the Three Tired Turnips will want to promote this as evidence of their hands-on management of the crisis and their dedication to good government. But if the information we have received is true it leaves Patdown Pat McPension and Co. with the awkward problem of Joe Wolfe, whose behavior has now been watched by over 100,000,000 people.
Hopefully it will also give the DA some gumption with regard to charging Wolfe in the killing.
During public comments at last night’s council meeting, at least two members of the public remarked that during the protests of the Kelly Thomas killing last fall, then captain, now Acting Chief Dan Hughes told them to wait until the video came out, and then they would see things differently.
Well, now that these people have seen the video, their reaction is not exactly what Mr. Hughes seemed to be waiting for. And this begs a very important question that goes to the heart of both Hughes’ character and the FPD Culture of Corruption.
First let us suppose and dispose the notion that Hughes’ admonition to the protesters was nothing more than a ploy to stall for time. Coming from a department in turmoil that hadn’t got a clue what to do or how to do it, temporizing may be seen as an understandable, if pathetic strategy.
But now let’s give the situation a little more thought. By his own remarkable admission, Hughes had seen the video 400 times. That’s ridiculous of course, but he obviously watched his boys kill an innocent man lots of times. Dozens? A hundred? Enough times perhaps, that he became inured to the unnecessary and inexcusable brutality. In a mental effort to defend the indefensible and picking apart the video like a defense lawyer in order to come up with plausible explanations that would get the killers off the hook, Hughes may well have lost sight of the murder of a human being played and replayed in front of his very eyes. And that’s bad.
But it might be even worse. It may very well be that in watching the video our Acting Chief saw nothing wrong going on, nothing outside of the policy and training that he espouses. After all, there is a reason that the cops went to work the very next day as if nothing untoward had happened. There is a reason that four of the aiders and abettors still remain on paid leave, a weird limbo in which they continue to be remunerated until the Gennaco report can be used to justify some action or other. It’s as if there is no procedural mechanism in place at all to deal with the sort of cops who stand around as the object of their brutality is dying, untended, a few away.
For those who mistakenly believe that Sharon Quirk and Hughes have ushered in some new period of reform in the FPD I suggest you think again. Apart from some alleged sensitivity training I assert that nothing has changed in the FPD’s culture at all, a culture that recently rewarded a loyal purveyor of disinformation with a promotion.
At tonight’s Fullerton City Council meeting the City Attorney announced that the council had unanimously voted to pay $1,000,000 to Cathy Thomas, the mother of Kelly, who was beaten to death by members of the FPD who bashed in his face, and ribs, tased him, sat on his chest, and then stood around while the homeless man died in the gutter.
A million bucks. It’s hard to begrudge the Thomas family of the settlements that are coming their way in this obscene killing. And yet for those of us who have criticized the obvious Culture of Corruption in the FPD it rankles to contemplate the fact that we are responsible for the bill; and that other enormous payouts are coming our way.
Pat McKinley created this unholy mess as police chief while Don Bankhead and Dick Jones sat on their fat behinds all these years as the department festered under the incompetent and indifferent leadership. We get the bill. And Acting Chief Hughes can only act like nothing is wrong, even as Joe Wolfe, the apparent instigator of the Thomas murder breathes the air of a free man on paid vacation.
First there was the sexual battery cases against Albert Rincon. Those cost $350,000. We now know the Thomas murder will probably cost us at least $3,000,000. And there’s no telling what the other violent and criminal episodes perpetrated by thugs like Kenton Hampton, et. al., will cost.
I also note that once again PatMcPension voted to approve a settlement to make on of his embarrassing problems go away.
Really folks, haven’t you seen enough of this rogue’s gallery? The answer is crystal clear. RECALL.