Doug, Dunn & Domer: Protecting Pilfering Paulette?
Fullerton can be a funny town with funny stories.
Consider if you will a version of Fullerton where Doug (Chaffee), (Acting Chief) Dunn & (City Manager) Domer have come to an agreement.
In exchange for not referring the Mayor’s wife to the District Attorney’s Office and not investigating the true extent of just how many signs Paulette stole, the Chaffees agreed to suspend Paulette’s campaign. They’ve agreed that she’ll stay out of the public eye through the election.
Doug will also skip the next Council meeting and the city will make no public statement on the matter until December. All parties agreed this was the best way to minimize impacting Doug’s campaign for Supervisor.
That wouldn’t be so hard to believe. That level of corruption feels about right for these idiots in the town we call home.
Even we have a hard time with the next part.
Apparently, Doug, Dunn, and Domer agreed to send a city vehicle to collect Paulette’s various sign caches. The collection is substantial and the triple alliance can’t decide if they’ll move the signs to the city yard to be reclaimed by their owners or to destroy them.
Keeping a crime quiet is one thing. Using city resources to cover it up? Well. That’s quite another.
How does your version of Fullerton align with this potential reality?
In any case, this clearly needs to be taken up by someone well outside Doug’s reach. It’s clear that Doug has influence over Fullerton’s management, but he may also control the purse strings of county officials soon. That means we can’t trust that favors haven’t already been exchanged with the District Attorney and Sheriff offices.
Stealing signs may be Petty Theft, but using government resources to cover up a crime is not. We hate to make a federal case over something so insane, but if Doug, Dunn & Domer really are colluding to cover up Paulette’s crime to benefit Doug’s campaign, that’s serious business.
In any case, this much is clear: we’re owed an explanation. Has Paulette and Doug’s property been searched? What about their cars where videos show her putting the stolen property? Did Doug, Dunn & Domer meet? If so, when and where? How long did the meeting last?
So far, the city has said nothing. Not one word. Not one iota of acknowledgement. Nothing from PD. Nor the Mayor. Nor the Council. Not even the City Manager. Not a word has been uttered publicly from anybody.
Even for Fullerton, that’s odd.
The County has been equally as silent. Our DA is too busy campaigning to make sure this is handled in an expeditious and honest fashion.
We think that all this silence means that at least part of this leak. . . hypothetical . . . might be true. Here’s why:
In Fullerton we’re accustomed to our city hiding behind disclosure laws to “protect the city from liability” while managing to only protect bad apples from being thrown in the waste bin. We watched it after the Kelly Thomas murder and we watched it again with the Felz Sappy McTree coverup. We’ve seen it countless times before and since.
Our rotating crop of City Council members, City Managers and staff just default to incompetency, lies and dubious readings of the law out of habit. It’s the natural state at City Hall.
Usually POBAR (the Police Officer’s Bill of Rights) can be blamed for a lot of this when a cop is involved.
Sometimes we’re told nothing for no reason whatsoever (How did that Parks & Rec vehicle end up on it’s roof and who was to blame?).
But this time is different.
Just yesterday a City Council candidate, Paulette Marshall Chaffee, dropped out of the race for the District 5 seat on council because she got caught red handed being a thief.
Her pity-me-party dropout letter is nonsense and we all know she’d be at the candidate forum tonight were it not for the videos we posted here to FFFF.
This time, there’s no scapegoat. There’s no underling for the Chief of Police to blame, there’s no entry level parks employee to take the heat, and there’s no crazy homeless person to label as the problem.
This time, it’s the very rich Mayor’s wife. The Mayor who’s about to become a County Supervisor and control the very large budgets for some very powerful people.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and somebody at City Hall will do the right and honest thing and tell us what’s happened so far and what’s happening.
We’ll have our eyes on the city yard otherwise.
JUST REINFORCED MY DECISION TO VOTE FOR SHAW; I’m ashamed that D. Chaffee is Democrat – he’s a stench.
This information should be given to Shaw to use against Chaffee and the Register newspaper
“It’s clear that Doug has influence over Fullerton’s management,”
CORRECTION: It’s clear that Doug has influence over Fullerton’s MISmanagement,
Also, Douglie Wouglie will never be elected anything again. He can drift off to a comfortable if demented senility as a civilian.
Maybe everyone in town should help them-self to a CHAFFEE FOR SUPERVISOR sign now. APPARENTLY THIS IS NOT A CRIME IN FULLERTON IF YOU ARE RICH AND WHITE!
Let’s see if Dementia Doug reacts when his signs get taken down. These seem to be very shady people.
The owner of the signs needs to officially contact the DA. The FPD (even if it weren’t notoriously corrupt and incompetent) has a conflict of interest investigating the mayor’s wife
I believe that’s already been done. And, yes, you are correct.
I hope tony and all of you watchdog go to war over this thing. Don’t let them get away with this…any of them: CM, PD and Council. This is serious stuff, and if they are doing it here, they are doing it all over the city. This should be brought up by someone at every turn from now on until it’s addressed.
Can a person sue or bring charges in this? There are several laws that allow citizens the ability to act as DA, I wonder if this is one of them?
No, it’s up to the DA.
This is the actual Greg Diamond, which you may be able to tell by the middle-of-the-night time stamp, as well as the facts that I’m not just making shit up, and that I’m stating that this is intended for educational purposes only and to be taken as legal advice, and that I’ll go directly from here to post on Orange Juice.
I really don’t know why the second anon commenter just (or “Just”) above says “no.” As an election law violation, this might well fall under the Private Attorney General Act (“PAGA”) once the DA refuses to prosecute. To the extent that it’s an election law case and not a regular tort case — yes, her own campaign is moot, but her husband’s campaign is not, and he might be dragged in — it would probably be entitled to calendar preference, meaning you could potentially get all of the way through an appeal before the election.
In any event, the owner of the signs can sue for conversion of property , at a minimum, in civil court. And in a suit that is allowed to proceed to discovery, Paulette could be forced the answer questions under oath about why she thought she could do what she did. Of course, that would be “eventually” — but still before the 2020 elections!
There’s one problem with all of this, though: the potential to be countersued for malicious prosecution due to bringing a meritless claim.
You can’t sue someone for taking abandoned property. (Well, you can if you should know whose it is, but in this case the property is obviously *intended to remain* abandoned — and therefore visible for as long as possible, I’m not sure about the status of what happened in the first video — although I’ve asked people who should be able to find out, and haven’t — but the problem with the second video is that IF I correctly remember the law regarding posting political signs in Fullerton (and it’s possible that I don’t) you just flat out can’t legally attach your sign (or wedge your sign into) a bridge overpass like that. If you do it — and the example of illegal posting that I am more confident about involves posting signs on telephone poles — then you’ve technically abandoned your property and anyone can take it down.
I could be wrong about this, and I’m sure not going to do the research for free (or, given who’d have to pay for it, at all — but Sean Paden could probably figure it out.
Here’s the other problem this creates: if you’re seriously wrong in your interpretation of a law that causes you to accuse someone of a crime, especially when (as noted on this site) that person is a lawyer who is supposed to follow the law, your calling them a “thief” is courting a defamation case. Now in this case, she’s a public figure, so the standard that a plaintiff would have to prove for defamation is very high — but it’s not insurmountable. And if one were bringing a PAGA case or a civil tort case, the opposing side would probably have a lot easier time going after the plaintiff for malicious prosecution, if they should have known that a charge was meritless.
Anyway, if Tony (whom I presume is the owner) is really confident in his position about the illegality of Paulette’s actions, he could well be in a position to force her into a deposition over all of this. However, he could also be in a position — if his confidence is misplaced — to owe her a lot of money.
For what it’s worth, I think that her suspending her campaign has little to do with her own campaign and everything to do with her husband’s. My guess is that they’ve done some focus group or something and find out that people don’t like this and that the stain spreads to him. But that can be true even if what she did was legal.
I look forward to the usual spirited discussion, although frankly I’ve said what I wanted to say and I may just not be motivated enough to trade insults with the usual gang. I’ve written this here both because it’s an interesting situation and just a word to the wise, if Tony wants to hear it.
(To Sean Paden: if *you* want to take issue with any of this, especially about PAGA and malicious prosecution, I would be interested in what *you* think. The certain definitive opinions like to flow forth from amateurs, though — that gets to be a drag.)
He writes like he is, no substance but plenty of volume.
Ladies and gentlemen, the world’s worst attorney and the king of meritless claims.
It tickles me that so many people here are afraid to criticize me (especially baselessly, as here) without using their names. What a bunch of precious newborn kittens you are!
I’m appalled that Paulette would do such a thing! She’s an attorney for goodness sake. Some people will do anything to win an election. If she broke the law she should be charged. Can’t believe Doug was unaware.
Dunn is off to a great start
I’m curious as to where you are getting all this inside information? Why don’t you reveal your source? You always say that the police hide behind anonymity, so please practice what you preach? How can we believe you just like you don’t believe the police, and city hall!
We have to remain anonymous. The Chaffee’s unethical and irrational behavior is reason enough to fear that they would attempt to file a suit against honest citizens who speak the truth. It’s time they just pack up their toys and go home. Sheesh.
I’ll take this one.
1) No, it couldn’t be Whitaker because I’ve been on his shitlist ever since I ran against him in the recall race. Bruce is more interested in holding onto grudges than getting to the bottom of things in Fullerton if it means having anything to do with me. Even if that weren’t the case our sources are anonymous because they rightfully fear retaliation or ostracization.
2) The Police work for us and are armed agents of the State. As such they have a moral and ethical obligation to be honest and transparent because they work for the people. Likewise for City Hall, minus being armed. Journalists (and bloggers by extension) work for the truth and are not accountable to you or City Hall. I’m not about to burn sources so Ken Domer or our rotating police chiefs can fire them for stepping outside of the culture of corruption and breaking the wall of secrecy.
I want to get MORE information out of the city and not less. You may take me for an idiot but your argument would require me to be a level of stupid unheard of even in Fullerton. Even if one of our anonymous bloggers wanted to out a source I’d work to veto it with the rest of the Friends.
It was I! Take my job and I will hunt you down.
Fuck you.
This is unacceptable. Please which yourequire language
Huh?
Hey! What part of “Please which yourequire language” do you not understand?
All of it?
OK, that’s fair.
As sad and enraging as this is, these a-holes will continue to get away with hiding the truth and covering up their tracks until there is a literal mob demanding accountability. Using a city vehicle to gather up evidence of the Mayor’s wife’s cleptomania is, if true, absolutely appalling and the DA needs to get involved. There is no way we can trust the CM and FPD considering who their boss is. We should call John and Ken, this fits right into their wheelhouse…
I reached out to the media yesterday. Several outlets and nobody got back to me. Not even John and Ken. I will keep trying.
I bet the Estate of California Attorney Bar Association will be very interesting in the unethical behavior of attorney Paulette.
All states have a disciplinary organization that closely monitors attorneys. If a complaint is made against an attorney, the state’s organization will investigate the claim and determine whether or not the attorney has violated any ethical rules. If so, the organization will discipline the attorney as appropriate.
This type of behavior is a ethical code violation. 🙂
make me a favor guys, someone please send the evidences such the videos to the State of California Bar Attorney.http://www.calbar.ca.gov/Attorneys/LawyerRegulation.aspx
I just sent all the information to the State Bar of CA via Twitter.
Dont stay quiet Fullerton Residents.
Not trying to be defeatist, and that’s a good idea in theory, but if you think the City of Fullerton goes overboard protecting their own, you’ve definitely never dealt with the State Bar before. I had a case where an attorney falsified a proof of service to take my client’s default and I had proof the attorney did this and the State Bar did nothing. In the beginning of my practice there was a Judge in Long Beach who announced one day in open court that “if my speesh sounds slurred right now iss because I’m drunk!” and nothing happened. Absent proof of co-mingling client funds with your own, the State Bar doesn’t discipline anyone, regardless of what the code of ethics say.
This story doesn’t fit the liberal media’s agenda, that’s why they won’t touch it. If this was a Republican Mayor’s wife stealing campaign signs from the Dems, the media would be making this national news. This is How it is in America. It’s one way only.
I’m hoping the North OC Blogshpere, which has created tidal waves when ya’all wanted to, won’t let this one go. Chaffee’s need to be held accountable. So one needs to start asking questions to Dementia Doug on the campaign trail, at debates and forums…or at public comments at Council meetings. He should be bullied like the left does to anyone who disagrees with them.
You’d just better hope that the media doesn’t probe further into whether what she did was actually a crime. I don’t like the Chaffees, but that doesn’t automatically make what they did a crime.
As to using a city vehicle to collect her signs — again, I honestly don’t know if that’s part of what Code Enforcement does. I think that it’s low-class of them not to remove them by themselves and instead make the city pay the (probably pretty minimal) tab — but once again, their being jerks about this doesn’t make the action a crime.
I’m getting the sense that you all don’t actually care whether or not what they do is a crime before accusing them of committing crimes. That makes you look like idiots. Then again, you’re mostly anonymous, so why should you care if you do?
For the person above who is whimpering about the big bad liberal media here in North OC: as one of the only members of the liberal media up here, my agenda includes going after powerful people who commit crimes — but not accusing them of committing crimes when they what the did isn’t actually criminal. I don’t know why this is confusing to people here.
(P.S. Still looking for a reasonably priced squash court in North OC. Hey Tony, build one!)
I guess we’ll have to wait and see what real lawyers say.
“For the person above who is whimpering about the big bad liberal media here in North OC: as one of the only members of the liberal media up here”
Sorry this must have been an oversight. I didn’t realize you were a part of the news media. Where can I see your news broadcasts, or read your news articles?