The Daryl Gates Legacy

Daryl said it would be like this...

Did former Fullerton Police Chief Pat McKinley bring LAPD Chief Daryl Gates’ unique style of policing to Fullerton? This lady (Jean Thaxton), who worked for the LAPD under Gates and alongside his protege, Pat McKinley sure seems to think so. And we know that McKinley admires Gates as his friend and mentor.

Her son was shot in the back by a cop in Downey and she appeared at a Fullerton City Council meeting to support the family of Kelly Thomas – who was beaten to death by six cops of the FPD.

I liked the end bit where this woman admonishes the council to actually provide training for their cops rather than just turning lem loose with badges and guns. I’m sure they get some training; and I’m sure that some of them actually remember some of it. But police departments can’t teach ethics and humanity to a 20 year-old, even if they felt inclined to do so.

Ramos, Cicinelli, Wolfe, Hampton, Mejia, Major, Mater, Tong, Cross, Rincon, etc., etc., ad nauseam. McKinley: “I hired them all.”

62 Replies to “The Daryl Gates Legacy”

  1. After the Kelly Thomas murder, people en masse have been flocking to the podium at these council meetings to voice their grievances. Does it really do any good? Do these people actually listen, or care?

    Better to replace them and start with a new slate!

    RECALL!!!!!

  2. WOW!!! That explains where McKinley gets his ‘us verses them’ mentallity when it comes to policing.
    This lady who worked for Chief Daryll Gates quoted him saying, “everybody’s a potential criminal out there except you and I,” in reference to his training talk to his cop recruits. Nazi thuggery at it’s worse…

  3. Oh no, I’m sure you’re wrong. Mr. Gates must have been a man of very high character.

  4. In Fullerton we can see the toxic fruit of the us versus them mentality after fertilization in the atmosphere of the downtown shooting gallery.

    This entire sad situation can be laid squarely at the doorstep of Bankhead, Jones and especially McKinley who exemplify unaccountable incompetence.

    They tell us that “shit happens.”

    BTW, here’s another way of looking at that 10% water tax: it also went to subsidize the annual cop-deficit of a million bucks plus, in DTF.

  5. Not to mention the training we pay for all the security ( bouncers)…to go to their private jobs, and when the shit hits the fan, they get to call their cop buddies at our expense, to take care of the fights, well well well, a nice little raquet wouldnt you say? GAME OVER!

  6. Sociopathy is not just a mental disorder anymore. Apparently it is another tool in the toolbelt of McKinley’s well-trained soldiers.

  7. Chief Daryl Gates was one of the hugest racist and worst violators of civil rights in the history of the United States, and would be the absolute LAST person that I would EVER speak of in heroic terms, yet this is the choice of character that Pat McKinley seeks to emulate and worship?

    Gates explained in his autobiography Chief: My Life in the LAPD that he neither developed SWAT tactics nor the associated and often distinctive equipment; but that he supported the underlying concept, tried to empower his people to develop it, and generally lent them moral support.[3] Gates originally named the platoon “Special Weapons Assault Team”; however, this name was not generally favored and was rejected by his manager, deputy police chief Ed Davis, as sounding too much like a military organization. Wanting to keep the acronym “SWAT”, Gates changed its expanded form to “special weapons and tactics”.

    While the public image of SWAT first became known through the LAPD, perhaps because of its proximity to the mass media and the size and professionalism of the Department itself, the first SWAT-type operations were conducted north of Los Angeles in the farming community of Delano, California on the border between Kern and Tulare Counties in the San Joaquin Valley. At the time, César Chavez’ United Farm Workers union was staging numerous protests in Delano, both at cold storage facilities and outside non-supportive farm workers’ homes on city streets. The Delano Police Department responded by forming ad-hoc units using special weapons and tactics. Television news stations and print media carried live and delayed reportage of these events across the United States. Personnel from the LAPD, having seen these broadcasts, contacted Delano and inquired about the program. One officer then obtained permission to observe the Delano Police Department’s special weapons and tactics units in action, and afterwards took what he had learned back to Los Angeles where his knowledge was used and expanded on to form the LAPD’s own first SWAT unit.

    1. “One officer then obtained permission to observe the Delano Police Department’s special weapons and tactics units in action, and afterwards took what he had learned back to Los Angeles where his knowledge was used and expanded on to form the LAPD’s own first SWAT unit.”

      Jeez, could that have been McPension?

      1. “SWAT was born from the ashes of the Watts riots. Gates conceived of an assault team that could take out snipers and other suspects in fortified positions without having to shoot up entire neighborhoods crowded with civilians.”

        McKinley was on board from the start. Back then, SWAT was ragtag. A lot of the guys were over 40 and not in the kind of shape one would expect of an elite fighting unit. There was no budget for weapons and equipment, so members were required to bring their own. McKinley had an M-1 carbine he had ordered through the mail. But SWAT members had one thing in common: They knew how to shoot—and shoot well.”

        http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2011/04/policing-revolution.html

    2. So here’s the irony:

      The reprehensible police tactics and mentality of McKinley and Gates that we all deplore were originally created in order to intimidate and shut down a UNION arguing for a living wage for farm workers.

      I thought you guys hated unions? Doesn’t that mean you should love Daryl Gates?

      Or perhaps a bit more nuanced thinking in terms of unions and their role in American political and economic history is required rather than the “Union is bad” soundbite logic?

  8. I remember when Gates claimed a certain kind of choke hold was needed because it worked real good on the African-American anatomy.

    1. from KTLA news article 4/27/10 regarding Gates’ funeral

      “He once told a congressional committee that drug users should be shot. In 1982, when several suspects died after being put in police chokeholds, Gates was quoted as saying some blacks might be more at risk from the tactic because their arteries did not open as quickly as those of “normal people.””

      Geeeez……Do you think McKinley could sound anymore like Gates?

      You would have thought Gates was Jesus Christ by looking at the send-off they gave that guy; I recall being absolutely disgusted. Gates was an asshole with a capital “A”.

      I am so glad he Gates is dead, now on to get rid of McKinley….figurative speaking of course.

    2. I remember that stupid comment coming from an overly fed public servant, Gates. It wouldn’t shock me if it was revealed Gates had two separate anatomy charts; one titled “African-Americans” and “Americans”.

  9. Great logic spewed here. The real culprit is that asshole Sir Robert Peel. He was the fucking copper who started it all.

    1. Yeah, too bad the FPD is beating people to death, beating and arresting people for no reason, then lying about it; stealing from the property room and from Explorers; stealing from TSA checkpoints; destroying evidence, etc.

      No the real asshole is the sociopath McKinley who learned from the best.

      1. Most of all those crimes you mentioned happened under the watch of Cheif Mike Sellers. Who was hired by Shawn Nelson.

        1. Go away troll. We all know your game and we don’t feel like playing it today. Go lick some of your FPD buddies boots somewhere else.

          1. My guess is that this is Goodrich. He used to use the name “the realjohnadams” to show off his book learning.’

      2. “No the real asshole is the sociopath McKinley who learned from the best.”

        McKinley came into the FPD chief position in 1993 straight from the LA riots. Think about that one for a while.

  10. LA had enough CIA dry runs. Thank God this guy is on his way out. Lets just hope his influence goes out with him. I don’t like what I am seeing on the geopolitical horizon and with him gone the sunsets just might be safe to watch again.

  11. Marlena Carrillo, of Fullerton videotapes T-shirts with messages from victims at the 4th Annual Victims’ Rights March and Rally Friday. She was there on behalf of family friend Kelly Thomas, a homeless schizophrenic man who died after a confrontation with police. “I think I’m going to be a wreck,” she said after reading the heart-wrenching messages on the shirts.

    http://www.ocregister.com/news/victims-351322-rally-killed.html?pic=1

    1. Another hard-hitting, award winning piece of investigative journalism from the Shadow. Me thinks this broad has some kind of weird cop fetish.

      1. Not much of a listener are you Chief? If you had listened to the woman that was speaking, you would’ve known that…

        A) this woman’s son was shot in the back with a machine gun by police officers in Downey for not obeying a command.

        B) this woman formerly worked in Internal Affairs with both Chief Daryl Gates and Pat McKinley.

        She was responsible for arranging meetings in the early 70’s with law enforcement agencies throughout the United States with Chief Daryl Gates.

        Apparently McKinley’s miniature messiah, or Daryl Gates, would spread his racist mantra of hatred for anyone that wasn’t in law enforcement or “like one of us”.

        This woman further stated that she harbored a profound fear that this hatred would somehow perpetuate into perpetuity after Chief Gates had passed away.

        Her worst fears were realized when her own son was shot in the back with a machine gun for simply not obeying a command of a police officer.

  12. “Astonishingly, in fact, Gates left Parker Center in the early hours of the rioting to attend a fundraiser in Brentwood aimed at defeating an upcoming police reform ballot measure. Later that year, he resigned.

    Even after Gates left the department, his imprimatur lingered. His successors spectacularly failed to tame the paramilitary culture that had ossified under Gates. The rank and file was in revolt, violent crime remained horribly high, and many within the department still believed that Rodney King deserved what he got and that Daryl Gates didn’t.

    It took an enormous effort to undue that mind-set. The first step was the Christopher Commission, a citizens group appointed by Bradley to examine the structure and operation of the Police Department in the wake of the King beating.

    Under the chairmanship of attorney Warren Christopher, the group documented a pervasive pattern of excessive force by officers and the department’s failure to rein it in. It recommended tough new standards of accountability.

    In 2000, facing a lawsuit that would have been difficult to defend, the city entered into a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice that required sweeping reforms. The decree came in the wake of revelations that officers in the department’s Rampart Division had engaged in a pattern of frame-ups, beatings and shootings by police officers.

    In 2002, Mayor James Hahn hired reformer William J. Bratton as chief, driving a final stake through the heart of the culture Gates had embraced. It took eight years of hard work by Bratton, prodding from reform organizations such as the Advancement Project and the hiring of a diverse new police force to erase Gate’s legacy and give the LAPD back to the people of Los Angeles.

    Whether we keep it depends on how well we remember the dark, stormy days of Daryl Gates.”

    1. Don’t forget that 50% of the LAPD cops left for other departments due to the turmoil. They are all now leading all your local PDs like Fullerton. Gates legacy lives throughout California today in just about every city. Nothing you can do.

      🙂

      1. Just call the FBI or other Federal agency, and have every willing News Van show up. Like always 🙂

      2. Sure there is something we can do. We’re doing it here in Fullerton as you spew your crap. Other cities are watching Fullerton right now. Media attention is getting heavier than ever when it comes to these unjustified police shootings, beatings and trumped up arrests. The nature of this post, in which you have a parent of a police murdered victim coming to another city’s council meeting to point out the former ‘Nazi-ism’ connection between McKinley and Gates. An insider with another nearby police agency infomed me that the FBI is still involved here in Fullerton, talking to various attorneys who have represented police abuse victims in the past and present.
        So yes, even though you seem to take pride in police corruption and there ability to get away with it, we ARE doing something. 🙂

    1. The song’s lyrics reference the allegation that some members of US police forces are members of the Ku Klux Klan organization, whose symbol is the burning cross.

      The BBC News refers to it as railing against “the military–industrial complex, justifying killing for the benefit of, as the song puts it, the chosen whites.

  13. Crap, born and raised in Downey. Went to Warren High School. Downey was once a prime City to live in. Very Sad. Now I have lived in Fullerton for 34yrs. All I can say is So. Cal. Sucks…..Hope someday I can retire and get out of this Nanny State. And I hope the door hits me on the ass, on the way out.

  14. The City and World is just for him, to love and enjoy the real harming of others by him and those that are with him. Science, can be so revealing sometimes. I know many Narcissists.

  15. how brave and selfless this woman is for standing in her deep grief over her son’s senseless shooting death by the police and demanding Gate’s intellectual heir, McKinley, stop his police force’s (and FPD is McKinley’s intellectual heir) brutal and deadly treatment of the good people of fullerton.
    McKinley showed his foolish vanity with his desire to be our very own bedroom city commando. His philosophy of policing was and is to turn a police force into a special operations forces unit that targeted our placid community for brutal treatment.
    and I can’t help it, but while bedroom city commando mckinley terrorized innocents with his special ops known as FPD, he had the unique distinction of serving as the only member of law enforcement on the Fullerton resident’s Rusty Kennedy’s Orange County Human Relations Commission that claims it acts as a “clearinghouse ” for the OC communities complaints of civil rights abuses committed by their respective police forces upon them.
    Oddly, it wasn’t until FFFF came alive, did McKinley’s FPD civil rights abuses upon the community come into public view.

    1. Please dont disgrace the US Special Operators with such a broad brush, to describe McSatan, I know some of them very well. Ron Thomas is one.

      If only there was one person in Fullerton with 1% the Honor of a US Air Force Pararescueman.

      Last decade or so most young male military applicants request field Medical Duties, but there werent that many openings.

      “… on his back an 80-pound rucksack containing a portable operating room.” Responsible for the Security and recovery of
      NASA and its Astronauts at launch and landings “…lugging around a 450-pound piece of iron railroad track called the “rail” between classrooms and sites.”

      SUPERMAN SCHOOL
      Only the strong of body & mind survive the ‘pipeline,’ the world’s toughest school…

      http://www.pararescue.com/unitinfo.aspx?id=490

      Id like to think Fullerton would give him a smile.

      1. special ops tactics and strategies are not needed to maintain civic order in the suburbs.

  16. I can totally understand your outrage and ire at Rusty Kennedy fronting for Pat McKinley’s repeated human rights abuses here in Fullerton for so many years.

    If it wasn’t for people like yourself, the rest of us would have never suspected that such evil was being perpetuated on the good citizens of Fullerton.

    1. if it wasn’t for the efforts of FFFF the legal documents, articles would not have surfaced and the truth about kelly thomas death would have died with him. I thank FFFF for its diligence, its research and revelations to the public that our city’s government has systematically abused us for years

  17. Sounds very similar to Mc Satans Demons
    $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

    “The following are, verbatim, some of the commission’s findings:

    There is a significant number of officers in the LAPD who repetitively use excessive force against the public and persistently ignore the written guidelines of the department regarding force.
    The failure to control these officers is a management issue that is at the heart of the problem. The documents and data that we have analyzed have all been available to the department; indeed, most of this information came from that source. The LAPD’s failure to analyze and act upon these revealing data evidences a significant breakdown in the management and leadership of the Department. The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, lacking investigators or other resources, failed in its duty to monitor the Department in this sensitive use of force area. The Department not only failed to deal with the problem group of officers but it often rewarded them with positive evaluations and promotions…” -Wikipedia
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Commission

  18. Sounds very very similar to McSatan and his Demons

    $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

    “The following are, verbatim, some of the commission’s findings:

    There is a significant number of officers in the LAPD who repetitively use excessive force against the public and persistently ignore the written guidelines of the department regarding force.
    The failure to control these officers is a management issue that is at the heart of the problem. The documents and data that we have analyzed have all been available to the department; indeed, most of this information came from that source. The LAPD’s failure to analyze and act upon these revealing data evidences a significant breakdown in the management and leadership of the Department. The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, lacking investigators or other resources, failed in its duty to monitor the Department in this sensitive use of force area. The Department not only failed to deal with the problem group of officers but it often rewarded them with positive evaluations and promotions…” -Wikipedia
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Commission

  19. Again very similar
    ************************
    Controversial LAPD chief
    “A proud emblem of progress to some, he was a disturbing symbol of stagnation to others. When the city went up in flames over the acquittal of four white officers accused of beating black motorist Rodney King, he was castigated as a leader out of touch with the changing realities of the city, yet to the end he remained righteous about his authority to police it.” -LA Times
    http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/17/local/la-me-daryl-gates17-2010apr17

  20. After leaving the LAPD, Gates was a busy man who, according to the New York Times, “published a well-received, best-selling memoir, Chief: My Life in the L.A.P.D., worked briefly as a radio talk-show host, founded a private investigations firm, made film and television appearances” and more. He was also unapologetic about his department’s failures during the riots: “Clearly that night we should have gone down there and shot a few people,” he said. “In retrospect, that’s exactly what we should have done. We should have blown a few heads off.” Gates died in 2010 at the age of 83.

  21. Thank you to Jean Thaxton for attending our council meeting. The murder of her son Michael Nida will not be swept under the rug.
    Justice for Kelly Thomas
    Justice for Michael Nida

  22. The Daily Titan

    Department focuses on clarity
    By Mark Payne
    Published: April 30, 2012

    “Stuart said the last year has been trying for the Fullerton Police Department, but when you look at their track record versus other agencies, they do a good job.

    “We want people to come down. I’m proud of this department … We are a good department,” Stuart said. “If you look at the number of calls we handle every year and the number of complaints we get in relation to those calls, (they) are minute — they’re infinitesimal.”

    http://www.dailytitan.com/2012/04/department-focuses-on-clarity/
    _____________________________________________________

    I wouldn’t call Kelly Thomas’murder, Dean Gochenour’s in-custody death, or the numerous women sexually abused by FPD cop Rincon infinitesimal.

    Way to spin it Stuart!

  23. In response to comment #38 by Anonymous on April 27, 2012

    One correction….I worked at LAPD Internal Affairs Division as a civilian adjutant in the early ’80’s…not the early ’70’s

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