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.

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.

Matt Rowe

Some Democrats who supported Chaffee in 2010 are jumping ship – to independent candidate Matt Rowe. They are claiming that Chaffee is just a mealy-mouthed guy who wants to get elected without saying a damn thing substantive.

Here is a letter from Stephan and Noelle Baxter, and William Zdan sent to our friends at The Fullertonian. It’s a hard-hitting piece, born of the frustration of a politician who is so petrified of saying anything that he says nothing, and evidently stands for nothing.

The choice of Rowe over Doug Chaffee is the proverbial no-brainer. When you check out Chaffee’s supporters you’ll you’ll see the Old Guard Left like Molly McClanahan and Jan Flory who sat on their hands and kept their mouth shut in the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder. Many of his supporters actually oppose the recall and that speaks volumes about what they expect from their boy. He’s even being supported behind the scenes by repuglicans like Dick Ackerman and his sleazy ilk who apparently see in Chaffee their Main Chance.

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.

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.

Those ladies were't like you...

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.

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:

Enjoying a latte at the Downtown Plaza.

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.

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.

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.

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

Joe Wolfe, in happier days...

At about the 14:30 mark of the Kelly Thomas murder video something happens. Suddenly the mood of Manny Ramos changes from one of bored hostility to outright aggression. He has just gone to the back of the patrol car and has had a conversation with Joe Wolfe who has been sifting through Thomas’s scant possessions in his backpack.

When Ramos returns to Kelly he immediately dons the latex gloves that a helpful Wolfe had previously given him (“take these you may need them”) and begins to verbally threaten the homeless man. “See these fists? These fists are about to fuck you up…” For his part Thomas seems to sense the ramped up hostility. When Ramos tries to grab his shoulder Kelly brushes away the cop’s hand and stands. Immediately sensing his peril he puts his hands up and begins slowly backing away. It’s too late.

Suddenly Wolfe appears almost on cue; at the top of the frame he emerges from behind the patrol car, where, a mere 15 feet away he must have been perfectly aware of what was going on. As Kelly continues to back away toward the front of the car, Wolfe lunges at him, swinging his baton; immediately he is joined by Ramos who takes a swing to, too. As Kelly begins to flee rightward in front of the car and out of the frame, we can’t see what happens next; but Ramos has evidently managed to grab or tackle Thomas as Wolfe, who has circled counterclockwise around the back of the car, piles on.

So here’s my question: how can Joe Wolfe be exonerated from any wrongdoing by the DA? Barely fifteen feet from the exchange between Ramos and Kelly, he must have known exactly what was going on; he also knew who he was dealing with;  and he actually struck the first, illegal blow with his stick. So why was Joe Wolfe never charged with a crime?