Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
You may recall that the notice for Joe Felz’ criminal charges was sent to the “Law Offices of Bob Hickey” in Fullerton. Ok, so Joe hired a DUI defense attorney. That’s smart.
Well, Mr. Robert Hickey seems to be a new reader of our humble blog. Last night he stopped by our Facebook page and left us with a brief critique of a post on the Hillcrest Park stairs. That’s not smart.
Another dissatisfied reader.
Remember David Tovar, the bike rider guy who got rammed from behind by an unmarked Fullerton police vehicle? In case you don’t, here’s an interview from 2012:
Tovar later filed a civil rights suit against the city of Fullerton, claiming that officer Bryan Bybee intentionally used the vehicle as a deadly weapon.
The city predictably responded by denying all claims.
Well, we went spelunking through settlement agreements approved by City Hall and discovered that the taxpayers up coughed up $20,000 to David Tovar for one of our cops chasing, and crashing into him.
Watch as Mayor Bruce Whitaker restores the public’s full speaking time. Following in Jan Flory’s footsteps, Jennifer Fitzgerald puts her disdain for the public on full display. Councilman Silva shows a healthy attitude about hearing from the public and staying up late from time to time: “It’s what we do.”
When lobbyist Fitzgerald began her mayoral term last year, she cut public speaking time to 3 minutes. Of course she gave out-of-town developers all the time in the world.
For a few weeks now, we have been looking back on the fraud, waste and abuse that occurred in Fullerton during our hiatus. And we’ve had a few good laughs, unfortunately at our own expense. But Friends, today things are about to take a more sinister turn. Why? Because the story involves not only misuse of public funds, but also police surveillance of lawful activity, police assault on citizens, and the punitive misuse the criminal justice system by the cops and the district attorney.
This story from 2014 is best told in the colorful language of Mr. Stephen Baxter, and so FFFF gives you his words:
These photos, all captured on Jan 18th 2014, by OC Weekly photographer, Josue Rivas, document the temporary escape of Aj Redkey, aka Anaheim James, one of the most peaceful protesters I know, a member of in-league press, and perhaps my best friend on the planet.
We had organized a protest in reaction to the acquittal of a OC jury of the three Fullerton Police officers charged in the murder of a local homeless man, named Kelly Thomas. AJ had been filming the protest all day, because cops behave better when they know they are being filmed, so when the decision was made to break up our protest and arrest people, those filming were the first targeted by the police. These cops actually tried to run AJ down in their car, AJ leaped the hood Starsky and Hutch style, and Josue captured the rest seconds later.
After monitoring our FB page (this according to the police report) 3 months later AJ was arrested at an Autism event in Pasadena. Six Fullerton cops drove to Pasadena to arrest my peaceful friend. Why? because by him outrunning them he had embarrassed fat, slow, over paid cops with giant egos.
After spending almost $10,000 defending these charges at a jury trial, All charges against AJ were dropped.
The sad fact is that “THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE” Don’t fool yourself.
Also, AJ IS A FUCKING HERO. HE COULD HAVE PLEAD FOR A $500 FINE, INSTEAD HE FOUGHT IT AND FACED 6 MONTHS IN JAIL. HOW MANY OF US WOULD HAVE THE STONES TO DO THAT?
Now ask yourself how many resources and how much of your tax dollars were wasted by Fullerton PD and the DA’s office.
Does any of this shit matter to you? If not, your are the fucking problem.
Sometimes what our City Hall doesn’t say can be almost as illuminating as their press releases.
On Wednesday, November 16 at about 9:00 PM, a Fullerton Parks and Recreation vehicle collided with another car at the intersection of Highland and Chapman. Ouch.
Sure looks like somebody ran a red light, then blammo!
What’s odd about this unfortunate accident is that the City never said a word to the public about the horrible-looking incident. Who was involved? Was anyone badly hurt? Who caused the accident? Why was a Parks and Rec employee driving around late at night? So many questions, and no answers.
What’s the big secret? Maybe there’s a reason for the radio silence.
It makes one wonder if this accident might not be the fault of a government employee, perhaps even driving a city-owned vehicle after hours. If so, look for big damages coming our way.
And another five years later? Sill hilarious!
Here’s a clip of the decrepit jackass the anti-recallers think is bringing dignity and respectability to the Fullerton City Council. This is how Dick Jones handles the public’s business. Enjoy again. And again.
– Joe Sipowicz
File this one under the heading: He Said What?
Fullerton Councilman F. Richard “Dick” Jones really is in a class all by himself when it comes to blog fodder. Enjoy this clip in which the mental rambler Jones transforms body art recipients into “patients.” Pins and needles and daggers??!!
Reposted from Bax Baxter
WE NEED YOUR HELP!
Please support local children who have lost a parent to police violence this holiday season by donating an unwrapped gift to our Young Survivors Network Toy Drive before DECEMBER 15TH. You can help by simply purchasing a new toy, of any value, and dropping it off at the Young Survivors donation box located front and center at Max Bloom Cafe Noir (220 N. Malden in downtown Fullerton 1pm – 10pm M-Sat) Volunteers will wrap the gift for you before it is distributed among the families of these victims.
I know many of these kids personally. They are strong, they are beautiful, and they are hurt. To have lost a parent, in such a violent manner, at the hands of someone wearing a uniform that you have always been told to turn to when you needed help, is uniquely horrifying. Additionally, the family, and the victim, are far too often villainized in the press and by the police in a concerted effort to mitigate any civil action. Regardless of the circumstances which led up to the violence, these children are innocent, and they have been dealt a hand which is incredibly difficult to process. A simple act of kindness on your part this holiday season, will bring them a little joy, and assure them that there are members of their community, who care about them.Please be one of those member of their community.
I thank Kevin at Max Blooms for allowing us to use his establishment for this cause, and I thank all of you who plan to step up.
Merry Fucking Christmas!
By Tony Bushala, Guest Contributor
Way back in 2010 I offered a post attacking Norberto Santana and his relatively new blog Voice of OC. The title was “The Sad Degenerate World of Norberto Santana.” It was a pretty tough post attacking Santana’s objectivity given the fact of his financial backing by the OCEA union and what some of us perceived as slanted reporting. I won’t go into any more detail. You can check out the original post, here.
Well, over six years have passed and I, like many others have come to appreciate the good things Norberto and the Voice of OC have done uncovering the bad behavior of many of our so-called “conservative” leaders in Orange County. The Voice has been particularly effective uncovering the influence peddling going on in Anaheim, but also covering the County level, where the Board of Supervisors have been working us over like we were peons on their plantation. Their Board’s latest little tactic is to limit public comment to just 3 minutes per person, per meeting. Pretty shameful, right?
With an almost complete lack of competent news coverage on local stuff from the mainstream media, it is more important than ever that we recognize and financially support the the Voice of OC.
It’s now been a day since Chief Dan Hughes left us to go work for the Mouse. After all the praise he’s been showered with it’s time somebody said what too many of us are thinking and that’s that if the FPD stinks it stinks like a fish from the top down so we’re gonna take a quick look at the top.
First let us recall the letter to Joe Felz from Benjamin Lira outlining Hughes place in the chain of command corruption.
Dan Hughes didn’t think there was a problem with the FPD because he was a part of the problem and he certainly didn’t see a problem after he took over and made some changes that we can’t fully verify because of records laws and access that only our betters get. Some go as far as to claim he said the video of Kelly Thomas being beaten to death “wasn’t that bad”.
Dan Hughes was so confident in the goodness of his department that he was under the impression that only a vocal minority lost favor with the Police Department after the Thomas beating (Rincon, Mater, Major, Hampton, Nguyen, Mejia, et cetera). A vocal minority.
The actions of the FPD are what spurred the recall. FPD beat a man to death and then the council majority sat on their hands. Remember the recall? It led to three of those City Council Members being removed from office by a factor of 2-1. If only a vocal minority was against the Police than a even smaller minority was in favor of them going on this metric.
Hughes was the head of the Patrol Division at the time of the Kelly Thomas murder and said nothing as Spokesman Andrew Goodrich lied to the people of Fullerton about the boo-boos that FPD sustained in the process of their fucking up a guy, as Ramos promised, who committed the heinous crime of being homeless.
Hughes was on the same police force that the Genacco report said suffered from a Culture of Corruption and he did nothing on record to stop it. If there was a Culture of Corruption he was a part of it for 20+ years before we could prove it existed to enough people to notice. To pretend that he wasn’t a part of the problem is naive.
On his way out the door we learn that the FPD arrested a couple for being victims of a crime based on the word of actual criminals because apparently police work, like looking at the video that exonerates the true victims, was just too hard for this pillar of our community and his reformed department.
We Also learned on Wednesday that Chief Hughes left a parting gift for City Manager Joe Felz. Felz got to get away with an alleged DUI, if nothing else he got at least got away with destruction of city property because we’re told, well nothing. We’re told nothing. The only reason you know anything about this story is because we here at FFFF got ahold of a memo from Danny boy himself. It’s all hush-hush and will remain that way during the closed session at council on Tuesday.
Speaking of secrets.
Did you know that we already have a new Interim Chief? You’d think we residents would be allowed to know who’s running our Police Department. Suckers. You’re allowed to know what they tell you you’re allowed to know and when they tell you if they bother to even tell you. The ink is probably already dry on the contract and we don’t even know if it was legally opened up to candidates. Wanna bet that the Council rubber stamps the new Chief behind closed doors too?
The good thing for Disney and their new VP of Dineyland Security and Emergency Services is that at least he’ll have fewer DUIs to cover up for his bosses now that the House of Blues has left Downtown Disney.
Dear Friends,
Friends For Fullerton’s Future was born on November 6, 2008, and this will be our farewell post. We will be setting the blog a sail for now, into the deepest oceans of the blogosphere. It will remain online as a testament to what we stood for and didn’t stand for, to our principles or lack thereof, and to those principles which were worthy enough for a fight of our time, our knowledge and of our lives.
This farewell post is dedicated to my Friend and Hero Zach Reed who was born October 17, 1992. His mother Stacy and stepfather Dave Miranda loved Zach just as his twin 15 year old sisters Daily and Brooke and his older brother Cody did. Zach was a Troy High School Warrior just like me, but Zach was much braver and courageous than I. Zach was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma (bone cancer) at 18 and fought every day and night for peace and happiness for the last 3 years of his life.
Zach’s doctors tried almost every known manufactured drug after nasty drug, but nothing helped Zach like cannabis did. Cannabis helped Zach eat, sleep, relax, and most importantly relieved his piercing aches and pain. Cannabis pills, rubs, cookies, buds, tinctures, anything that contained THC helped ease Zach’s pain and brought him a little happiness.
About a year ago, I heard about Zach’s need for cannabis through a mutual Friend and contacted him immediately. As a medical marijuana farmer, I was able to grow six plants and ended up with many more flowers than anyone would need in six years. Zach needed help from friends who had extra flowers; help to get get a medicinal flower that came from a plant that grows in back yards or in closets from a seed that comes from a flower from another plant…light, water and care- virtually free and that’s the way it should be!
The last time I saw Zach was after the November election results were certified. We were sitting in my truck eating Taco Bell. Zach turned to me and asked why I looked sad. While explaining to him about the election results, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Tony, you tried your best, you fought hard, maybe it’s time to move on”.
Friends, Zach was right…maybe it is time to move on. Thank you Bloggers, Friends, Contributors, Readers and to all those who have come here at one time or another. Thank you for all your encouragement, time and knowledge that you have given and for learning and understanding things that we never knew or thought about before.
Remember it’s never too late to be smart. Cheers!
Tony “admin” Bushala
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Will we be back? Who knows?
