The metamorphosis to an oxygen breathing life form was slow and painful...
We’ve just traced a string of obnoxious comments to an operation called Delta Partners. What is Delta Partners? It’s a front for the sleazoid repuglican bagman Dave “Dick” Ellis who tried to sell the OC Fair to himself, who hired Dick Ackerman as an illegal lobbyist to grease it, and who was later hired by Ackerman last fall to rip off the Three Dim Bulbs in a useless anti-recall campaign.
What a guy! Here are his comments, a pathetic amalgam of illiteracy and ignorance. Enjoy the wit and wisdom of Dave Ellis, intellectual voice of the anti-recall:
Nice move Bruce. Nothing like convicting them before a jury does. Remember you work for all citizens of Fullerton. Your job is to represent ALL citizens. I want my Council Members to make decisions based on FACTS, not things you make up in your head. You still claim there is a cover up by the PD, yet you’ve done nothing to prove it. Why is that? I’ve heard you say the police reports were doctored, yet have you seen them? Can you prove they were?
Stop running your mouth unless you can back it up with FACTS! I want my Council Members to think before they speak. The problem is you can’t speak without Bushala or Thompson putting words in your mouth.
I’m worth millions, I’ve had a successful medical career, I’ve served my country with honor, I’ve raised a wonderful family, and I to sit hear and listen to these FUCKING IDIOTS.
Whitacre you grandstanding fool. Had the video been released when you requested there would have been no audio. Just a grainy indecipherable mess that proved nothing. They audio was added in preparation for the preliminary hearing. When the DA tells you to refrain from stupid publicity stunts he does so for a reason. Let your Legislative buddies do the grandstanding, they’re much better at it.
When the esteemed council woke up from their nap, the tongue bath resumed.
Holy Smokes those anti-recall guys are dumb. How dumb? On their lame website some idiot just posted the hilariously funny and self-deprecating video made by Tony Bushala to mock his own critics. Apparently who ever uploaded the video never watched it; or they believe their audience is even dumber than they are. Well maybe they are!
Seriously, can anybody now believe that these people are qualified to run anything more complicated than an ant farm, let alone a city of 150,000 people?
Anyway here’s the video again. And thanks to chucklehead Larry Bennett and his dim bulb crew for giving it free air time.
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.
What can you say about an organization that is so corrupt that it not only tolerates, but has seemed to encourage police brutality?
What’s that you say? You say that the people in charge of it are responsible for the actions of those they hire? And who is responsible for putting fine gentlemen like these on the streets of Fullerton with badges, tasers and guns?
Um, okay.
Well, how about Pat McKinley – the man who matter-of-factly acknowledged he hired them all?
Mess with me and you'll get a visit from my crew...
Or how about the loud-mouthed buffoon who set loose his goon squad to be “hard, tough, and mean” in order to clean up the mess he made in Downtown Fullerton:
Will you please shut up!?
And then of course there’s the former Fullerton cop who’s been around so long that there were only 46 states when he was born, and whose blind eye has been cast upon the misdeeds of his police department.
Jurassic In Every Way
Well, Friends, take your pick there’s plenty of blame to go around. And don’t forget to thank yourself if you were one of the people who voted for any of these three miscreants.
Here’s a post from last August that needs to be rerun. For pure fatheadedness and insensitivity you can’t beat Doc HeeHaw.
Of course now the cat is all the way out of the bag and we know this swine was covering up for a gang of thugs in a corrupt, out-of-control police department.
– Joe Sipowicz
Crazy is as crazy does...
In case you missed it, here is our own lovable mayor, Doc HeeHaw explaining his confusion as to what killed Kelly Thomas.
Insensitivity? Stupidity? All around assholishness? Yep that’s our good ol’ boy HeeHaw.
One of the most shocking things to emerge from the Preliminary Trial of Manny Ramos and Jay Cicinelli for the killing of Kelly Thomas are the statements made by Fullerton Fire Department personnel that the cops received attention to their miscellaneous scrapes as Thomas, whose face had just been bashed in, and who was suffocating in his own blood, lay ignored nearby.
For pure callousness, incomprehensible inhumanity, and well, evil, it’s pretty hard to beat this story. The images of minor scratches sustained by the Fullerton cops is comical, especially given the fact that were sustained committing a crime; juxtaposed to the image of Kelly Thomas’s shattered face they present ample evidence about the nature of the beat down delivered to the homeless man.
Manny's badge of honor awaits a band aid.
Hilariously, Manny Ramos was quoted as saying he’d been in “the fight of my life.” Given that he was seventy pounds overweight, notoriously lazy and obviously a coward, this may actually be a true statement. Certainly it will provide a good headline for Lou Ponsi. But Ramos’ injury received a bandaid and off he went. Kelly Thomas is dead. He was dying on the pavement, alone and unattended, as the cops that killed him got first aid.
Here’s a telling article from the Daily Tital that addresses the poor, misunderstood FPD. See, the real problem is just that the public needs to be better educated, and of course there was this little problem of transparency that gosh darn it, is just so much better now.
Despite including a good quote from Ron Thomas, the dad of FPD victim Kelly thomas, the author of the piece, Mark Payne steps in some deep FPD bullshit when he adds this gem:
The department has been under attack by various activist groups for almost a year since the beating of 37-year-old Kelly Thomas on July 5, 2011, which led to his death five days later. His death was allegedly caused by Fullerton police officers.
Wrong on all counts. The department is under legitimate protest for its serial malfeasances and crimes. And Kelly’s death was caused by members of the FPD. Nobody “alleges” that. It’s a fact. And the DA has charged two of the cops with murder and manslaughter. That’s just lazy work, there.
But it gets even better. New FPD spokehole Jeff Stuart is permitted a plaintive, last word:
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.”
More pathetic handwringing and denial from the FPD. If the boy reporter had bothered to find out a little bit more about his subject he may well have asked which part of the following list constitutes “infinitesimal” complaints:
Alber Rincon – Serial molester of in-custody women; $350,000 settlement.
Miguel Siliceo – misidentification and incarceration of wrong man who spent five months in jail.
Cary Tong – accusation of battery and civil rights abuse; broken finger and missing cash.
Kenton Hampton – accusation of assault, battery, civil rights abuse, perjury. Wrong man almost convicted.
Frank Nguyen – accusation of perjury (see above).
Ramos, Wolfe, Hampton, Blatney , Cicinelli – murder, manslaughter, civil rights abuse, etc., etc. A dead man haunts the FPD.
FPD Command – allowed the killers to view the video of the killing and rewrite their reports until everybody got his story straight.
Todd Major – abuse of controlled substance, conviction of fraud. Ripping off Explorers? Really, Todd?
Kelly Mejia – conviction of grand theft at a TSA checkpoint. Crooked and stupid is no way to go throughout life, hon.’
Vincent Mater – charged with destruction of evidence in jail custody death. Hey, we banged that corpses head against the bars!
Andrew Goodrich – dissemination of erroneous information never retracted. Too busy to get it right?
Mike Sellers – protracted medical leave punctuated by a disability claim and massive pensioned retirement. Business as usual. La dolce vita!
April Baughman – charged with two-year’s worth of theft from the FPD property room. Okay, who’s the accomplice?
etc. etc.
Well, who knows. Maybe someday young Mr. Payne will have the opportunity to write the right article about the Culture of Corruption in the FPD and quit spinning puff pieces at the behest of kindly, avuncular police spokesmen. We can only hope.
Poor Larry Bennett. As spokeshole and Chief Liar for the moribund Recall No campaign he is upset that folks are disrespecting his Heroes on the council.
But get this: Larry doesn’t want his water rates reduced! He likes the illegal 10% tax and even wants to keep it because he somehow believes this will keep his grass green.
Of course, it’s funny to watch Bennett admit, sort of, that there is a $2.5 million problem after he challenged water rate payers to find the illegal tax on their bill; and it’s hard to tell if Bennett is just pimping for the Three Flat Tires or if he really believes that the illegal in-lieu fee has something to do with delivering water to his flower beds. However you slice it, this assclown is a first class tool.
And it’s pretty clear he doesn’t like annoying public comments that hold his Three Blithering Boneheads accountable for their miscreance and incompetence.
UPDATE: I just re-read this wonderful post from my good friend Joe Sipowicz that he published last November. Damn. Read it. Savor it.
When you are done ask yourself whether or not, in good conscience, anyone can fail to endorse, help and vote to recall the Three Dim Bulbs.
– Grover Cleveland
There is a good essay in today’s Wall Street Journal by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. about the sort of trouble individuals can get into when they act, or fail to act, to shield and protect the institution they represent. And, conversely, the institutions that invest too much credence in the all too fallible figurehead run the risk of failing to employ objective and rationale controls on the latter. As decades of affiliation pass, the problems becomes more acute. Age becomes the enemy.
Of course the writer is talking about Joe Paterno and the disastrous and disgusting pedophilic events at Penn State University. But he may as well have been talking about Fullerton, and about how, after the Kelly Thomas murder, when the public demanded clear, honest, and forthright leadership, their long-term elected officials gave them silence, obfuscation, falsehood, and comfortable retreat behind legal advice they were all too eager to embrace.
Don Bankhead, Dick Jones, and Pat McKinley signally failed their constituents by placing the protection of City Hall and the FPD ahead of their responsibility to do what they were elected to do: lead. Did they ever even attempt to fathom any particle of the truth? Would they recognize it if they saw it? It hardly matters now.
At first it probably seemed easier to simply ignore the Kelly Thomas killing; a whacked out homeless guy versus Fullerton’s Finest? Strictly no contest. After all there was a fight; bones were broken; the bum was a thief; probably a drug addict; an internal investigation would reveal all. Sure, Chief, take your two-week cruise.
Indifference to the victim and the victim’s family, although demonstrating a fundamental callousness, was the least of their dereliction.
Later as the pressure mounted and the glare of the media spotlight became intense, McKinley and Jones began to utter incompetent and ignorant remarks for consumption by the nation and the world: facial injuries are not life threatening; far worse injuries were survivable; the Coroner cannot determine the cause of death.
As public meetings became rancorous they relied upon the monotonous drone of their attorney to explain to an outraged public why they were weak as kittens and powerless to control any part of their own police department.
And they refused to display any concern about why the FPD brass had permitted the cops to review and re-review the evidence that the public is not permitted to see; why their superiors made them re-write their reports of the killing; and why the culprits were permitted to return to duty as if nothing had happened. They ignored the fact that the police department spokesman had lied about cops’ injuries and had deliberately mischaracterized the killing to the public and to the City Council. They never addressed the fact that the “internal investigation” hadn’t even started.
The police chief, freshly returned from his cruise soon wilted like an old lettuce leaf. His replacement was a 30 year veteran of the same department about which a string of criminal behavior had recently been exposed. Bankhead, Jones and McKinley refused to accept what had become obvious to almost every one else: something was fundamentally wrong in the FPD.
As the weeks passed, Bankhead, Jones, and McKinley seemed to hope that temporizing and protracted investigations by the DA and Coroner would cause the situation to just wither away. It didn’t. The protests for justice got louder. Their answer? Characterize the protesters as a lynch mob.
The most telling gestures of all were the damage control employment of an outside investigator, and the appointment of a hand-picked committee to address homeless problems, hilariously suggesting that the real problem was that the poor cops just weren’t properly educated about how to deal with the homeless. The concept that Kelly Thomas was deliberately killed seems not to have been seriously entertained by Bankhead, Jones, and McKinley. No. The Fullerton Police Department doesn’t do that. Fullerton doesn’t do that. We don’t do that.
When the DA finally brought charges of Murder and Manslaughter against two of the cops Jones expressed elation and McKinley befuddlement as to how two of his boys could stray so far from their training. But it was clear that the damage control script was written to write off the two and then retreat back into their insulated bunker.
And yet, by now the public now knew all about what the Three still refused to acknowledge: the embarrassing string of stories of drug addiction, theft, fraud, brutality, false arrest, perjury, and sexual assault by members of the police force. This serial criminality has been met with a stony silence from Bankhead, Jones and McKinley. Why?
Asleep. Fried chicken. Hey, where'd my halo go?
It’s because if they ever could, they can no longer distinguish right from wrong when it comes to protecting the institution that they have come to completely identify themselves with. Those Fullerton lapel pins that they so proudly wear have become a symbol of inertia, dereliction, and blind dedication to an abstraction of their own creation: their own delusional view of themselves and their City. It is a perfect representation of the bunker mentality.
As with a sick patient, denial and inaction will only cause the illness to get worse. The patient is the City of Fullerton, and in the now-ironic words of Dick Jones, it is having a grand mal seizure; we don’t want to let go of the patient, but we need to get it under control. Damn straight. The patient needs medicine, all right.
The more things change the more they stay the same...
When FPD Acting Chief Dan Hughes was handed the keys to the front door, wishful thinkers proclaimed the dawn of a new day for a department reeling from humiliating self-inflicted wounds.
His supporters claimed that Dan, for some mysterious reason, was going to bring decency and reform to a department whose members had, within the short space of seven months been exposed as thugs, perjurers, thieves, con men, sex perverts, destroyers of evidence, thieves (again and again), etc., etc. Despite a 30-year FPD career and various job titles that closely tied him to this band of miscreants, Dan is Different, his defenders said. Somehow. A veritable Galahad, in fact.
Even when Dan denied a Culture of Corruption in the FPD and said such an idea was disseminated by liars or ignoramuses, his supporters clung to the idea that Dan is Different.
But Dan’s latest decision may provide cause for pause. According to the folks at FullertonStories Hughes has replaced the otiose Andrew Goodrich with yet another union member, Sergeant Jeff Stuart, to be an official department spokeshole and Face of Fullerton. Really? Has Hughes learned nothing from the misinformation peddler, Goodrich. Maybe not. Or maybe he likes the idea of the FPOA getting the first, and often the last shot at misleading the public.
Smiling. So far.
Haven’t we had enough of public information officers whose loyalty to their own tribe is far greater than that to their employers? To me this just looks like more of the same ‘ol same ‘ol: another opportunity to do the right thing has been passed over by Acting Chief Hughes, who is acting more and more like Chief Sellers all the time.
