In California victims have rights, too. Unless the perps are cops, it seems.
The other day the defense team of three of the cops charged in the murder of Kelly Thomas asked for, and got a time extension on their own motion to dismiss. You can read about in the Register, here, if you don’t mind getting a bit nauseous.
It is now 17 months since Thomas was brutally beaten by six Fullerton cops and left in the Fullerton Transportation Center gutter to drown in his own blood as the six goons got their scratches band-aided.
The District Attorney sure doesn’t seem to be in any big hurry, either, which might make a cynical person question his real dedication to prosecuting these malefactors.
As of yesterday, November 13th, Travis Kiger’s lead over Jan Flory had been reduced to 56 votes. According to the ROV there remain about 1500 mail in ballots and provisional ballots left to count.
It’s gonna be close! Will Fullerton move ahead or will it retreat to the bad old days of denial and unaccountability? Will Jan Flory’s Dog become a major player in the OC blogosphere?
It seems like I keep saying this. And it keeps being true.
The Old Guard Establishment that buried us under a mountain of unfunded pension liability, that stole almost $30,000,000 in the guise of a water “fee” and who created a murderous Culture of Corruption that abused us, stole from us, lied to us, and even killed one of us, isn’t going without one last, vaporous, noxious gasp.
Jan Flory disappeared ten years ago, run out of office after a two-term misrule that included overdevelopment, massive corporate subsidies, boondoggles galore, and of course, worst of all, the disastrous 3@50 retroactivepension spike. Now teamed up with the most obnoxious elements of the corrupt, unapologetic cop union, Flory represents the completely discredited Ancient Regime better than anyone.
Well, anybody but Flory’s old chum King Don Bankhead, recalled twice and so desperate, demented and disconnected that he still believes he has something to contribute to Fullerton besides the comical spectacle of falling asleep during meetings.
He’s the one on the right.
There’s somebody called Rick Alvarez running, who like Flory, has been hugely supported by the cops. This cipher is the last wheeze of the Ackerman repuglican tribe, a dying breed to be sure. No one knows anything about this drone, except that he appears to be willing to say anything to anybody. He is also supported by the Old Dems who see in him their main chance of stopping reform.
Then there’s a woman called Kitty Jaramillo who seems to be just what what the doctor ordered – in case you wanted a former city employee making decisions that affect her pals’ pensions. Cynically, she’s been dropped like a hot potato by those Old Dems and the cops who don’t want her siphoning votes from their candidates, and who wouldn’t support two latino-named candidates.
Another entry is Jennifer Fitzgerald who stood up to Dick Ackerman when he started tricking himself out for the cop union. But this sure seems like way too little, way too late: as Friends will recall she was a big opponent of the recall which speaks volumes as far as I’m concerned. Her backing by Ossified GOP clique is equally telling. Her employment is based on lobbying and political hackery – which for Republicans is a sure fire sign that they are for big government.
Are you sufficiently depressed, yet? Don’t be! You can do yourself a favor. You can support conscience and reform.
There is Barry Levinson, a guy who has been on the front line of reform for the past couple of years, and a man who wuold undoubtedly demand accountability in City Hall.
Jane rands has been at the forefront of reform in Fullerton, too, particularly about land use and cop brutality, which has not endeared her to the liberal establishment.
Finally I arrive at Travis Kiger and Bruce Whitaker, the incumbents. These two have accomplished more in four months than their predecessors had done in twenty-five years. They have finally ended the illegal water tax and they have demanded fiscal and practical accountability from the police department. Naturally the public safety unions are outraged and have spent a fortune attacking them. Why? because Kiger and Whitaker work hard for us, and the unions just hate that. They hate it a lot.
Yep. The choices stand in stark contrast to one another. You can go back to the depressing days of unaccountability and irresponsibility; the days when our police department spiraled out of control; the days when downtown Fullerton became a subsidized, open-air booze court; the days when land was given away to favored developers and City Hall looked the other way when it came to environmental impacts on the rest of us.
Apparently Alby Al Ricon was recently sighted at the Brea 24 Hour Fitness, giving Jan Flory a personal tune-up. At least that’s where our undercover Friend says she snapped this image.
I’ll keep this simple. Chevron is a lowlife among corporate miscreants. A dark oilstain on the free market; a corrupted, taxpayer-subsidizedpayoff and extortion specialist with expertise in despoiling the globe and bullying anyone who challenges them. They are responsible for disastrous oils spills and damages to Ecuador, Brazil, Nigeria and elsewhere, resulting in loss of life and mind-boggling environmental devastation. They have also been implicated for human rights abuses in despotic states such as Burma. Even by oil company standards, they kinda suck.
Now, you might say, sure, they’re the bottom-feeders of transnational corporate-oil-trash, and probable warmongers (with a tanker named “The Condoleeza Rice”) but still, what about their property rights? Good question. Let’s look at Ecuador, where Chevron fouled other people’s property so much that they lost an $18 billion judgment in court. You violate others’ property rights, you pay. Unless you’re Chevron. Refusing to pay, they instead filed suit against the indigenous people of Ecuador and their lawyer for racketeering. Pollute, deny, avoid, bully. That’s Chevron’s way of handling your demand for the fair treatment of YOUR property rights.
We respect all property rights. Except yours.
So here’s a company with NO respect for property rights, including ours in the US. In Richmond CA they were recently placed under criminal investigation for intentionally routing pollution around sensors. Pollution that travels into people’s homes and makes them sick. But even psychopaths are guaranteed property rights. Well fine, they can have their property rights. After all, nobody is trying to seize their property and they can keep drilling for oil and gas as long as they want. But their property rights to land zoned for oil and gas drilling do not give them the right to build 700 homes on it and call it a park, any more than I have a right to say … open a public Gin-bar on my porch and call it a rehab center.
Mind if I park my oil rig here? “Park.” Get it?
Speaking of everybody’s favorite cocktail base, guess who among our fine crop of candidates supports Yes on W? None other than purported “liberal” and breastfeeding advocate Jan Flory. Evidently police union support and vapid Facebook posts are insufficient resources to counter her well-deserved shortage of voter appeal. So might as well hit up Chevron.
If Chevron’s plan was really in the public interest, would it be necessary to spend $1.3 million dollars in cash on trying to secure the vote? Some befuddled citizens and politicians are agog with the prospect of the oil-soaked carrots being dangled by the plunderous petroleum-peddling plutocrats. Fullerton teachers are particularly ginned up by the prospect of a “Nature Center” they can plan worthless field trips to, where students can learn all about what caving in to special interests looks like as they try to locate the scant vegetation popping up between the expensive and potentially PCB-laced tract homes. The bribe offered to the Fullerton School District (“free money! Gimme!”), as well as the greed of the non-profit moneygrabbing sector shows special interests only too willing to trade their “green” integrity for a little bit of the other green Chevron bilks from the US taxpayer. The fact is however, that city analyses indicate no major new revenue coming in from this development. The schools get some cash, greatly offset in the long-term by having to serve even more students. Nobody else basically gets a dime.
You like me! You really like me!
Greenwashed Yes on W ads are all over the place – on Youtube, Facebook, email, via phone call – everywhere but in most people’s yards since the average citizen has an instinctive sense not to trust professional grifters. They realize that Measure W is a joke. No real park compared to what is possible, just a few lonely ditches surrounding the concreting of North Orange County’s last open space, an already existing park, and a “Nature Center.” Unneeded houses on contaminated oil-lands. Traffic. Dangerous and toxic air pollution (a Chevron specialty) and infrastructural, water, and education costs to a city that can ill afford them. “But think about the children! Doesn’t anybody care about the children?”
Yes, we care about the damn children. Some of us even have some and would like to leave them a bit of undeveloped nature as a legacy. We’ll be saying no to the oil plutocracy’s local con job. No on W!
It’s funny, in a sick sort of way, but the very types who used to bray the loudest about the need for “social justice” have been virtually silent in Fullerton in the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder at the hands of members of an out-of-control police department.
The graying establishment Democrats had been hiding behind their drawn chintz curtains, curled up in an intellectual fetal position on their plastic slip-covered Naugahyde sofas. It was just too scary and, well, controversial to say anything, let alone actually doanything.
Fortunately, others, such as Stephan Baxter, Marlena Carrillo and Lauren Becker are willing to keep up the pressure.
Here is a link to Becker’s website that reminds us exactly what a Culture of Corruption can do, and try to get away with, when left to its own devices. It also reminds us what we can do to push back against an entrenched system.
The bars stayed open and the bands played on…
Democrats like Jan Flory, and Molly McClanahan and Pam Keller didn’t say a word in the aftermath of the murder. No, they only got outraged when people outside their cozy little circle took the reins of government out of the hands of three incompetent old fools.
These people are a lot more worried about the fate of the bureaucracy than they are about the people of Fullerton. All of them.
I just picked up these missives from the FFFF in-box this morning. First this:
I know who Iwant to work for, and it isn’t you!
Hey, FFFFsters, I just want to point out the obvious. Jan Flory just got fourteen grand, cash, from the corrupt cop union. She also got ten grand from some land developer named Phelps. The rest of her dough came from “retired” individuals, most of them former public employees.
Cops, developers, massively pensioned government workers. Wow. Talk about special interests!
– Sick of BooHoos
Good point, S.o.B. And then this:
I was driving along Chapman a few days ago and saw Pam Keller on the corner of Harbor. She was holding up a sign promoting the candidacy of Rick Alvarez, a Republican! Here’s what I want to know. Why won’t the establishment Dems in this town support a real good candidate like Jane Rands? Why the Hell not? What is wrong with Keller, and Quirk and Flory and their ilk?
Are they so in bed with the FPOA thugs and baboons that they can’t recognize an authentic progressive? I guess that question answers itself.
– ACLU Mom
Good point, Mom. The Old Guard liberals in Fullerton don’t stand for anything, of course, except for the prerogatives conferred upon the department heads in City Hall (see first letter, above). Please address you questions to Keller herself and see if you can get an intelligible answer. Or you could ask this gentleman:
Believe it or not, Acting Chief Dan Hughes, the alleged “reform” chief the Fullerton Police Department needs so desperately seems to the beneficiary of a campaign – to have himself appointed Chief permanently.
Check out this:
So who’s playing games? Is it our amiable Acting Chief who seems to have zero control over his badged and armed goons?
Or perhaps it is the greasy little mole Doug Chaffee who decided to agendize the issue of giving Hughes the job even though the council majority has stated that it wants to do a recruitment to get the best candidate for the job. Nice job politicizing a personnel appointment.
Now I don’t know about you, but I believe the appointment of Hughes to permanently take over the cesspool would be pretty bad. The Old Guard would dearly love the voters of Fullerton to think the Kelly Thomas murder was a weird one-off, something that can never happen again because Rusty Kennedy has taught the poor, unwitting Fullerton cops how to deal with the mentally ill homeless population.
They always cleaned up after me!
Um, not so fast, Mrs. Flory. Please explain the following personnel issues and embarrassing events that have occurred under the rancid regime of which Acting Chief Danny has been a lead player:
1) Erroneous raid on Robin Nordell’s home. No apology for a year.
2) Kelly Mejia steals iPad from Miami TSA checkpoint.
3) Todd Major rips off Explorers to feed pill habit.
4) Miguel Siliceo popped for sending wrong man to jail.
5) Kenton Hampton assaults and arrests and tries to convict innocent Veth Mam.
6) Ditto Frank Nguyen.
7) Cary Tong violates policy in arrest of Trevor Clark; City sued.
8) Albert Rincon sexually assaults as many as a dozen women in his custody; civil suit settled by two victims for $350,000.
9) Vince Mater charged by DA with destruction of evidence after the jailhouse suicide of Dean Gochenour.
10) April Baughman arrested for ripping off the FPD evidence room for a period of years. Where is the accomplice? Who was taking inventory? Such things are not for us to know.
11) City sued again – by Edward Quinonez who alleges he was accosted and falsely arrested by – Kenton Hampton. What a multi-tasker!
12) Phony “horning” tickets handed out by FPOA boss Barry Coffman to intimidate protesters; Hughes is seen sending out instructions.
13) DA charges Manuel Ramos, Joe Wolfe and Jay Cicinelli in the death of Kelly Thomas; Hughes lets them view video, re-write reports, pats all on back, handshakes all around and lets them stay on streets.
14) Danny says he’s watched video 400 times; says it will give public the real story (he is right).
15) Danny says those who perceive a Culture of Corruption are liars or ignorant.
15) Danny returns Craig, Hampton and Blatney to duty.
16) Permit Internal Affairs Sergeant Jason Sheen to bring a bong into the council chamber for demonstration in front of kiddie soccer players.
I don’t know about you, but I have seen as much of Acting Chief Danny as I care to. It’s obvious this man is a congenial glad-hander. But he is inextricably entangled in the Culture of Corruption with absolutely no interest in recognizing past FPD malfeasance, let alone atoning for it.
Just as bad, it is clear from recent events that he has absolutely no control, or no interest in controlling his employees.
