Mr. Peabody, Author at Friends For Fullerton's Future

November 11, 2016November 13, 2016Bruce Whitaker

Taco Tuesday. No, Wait, That’s Not Right…

Here’s a tidbit from Tuesday’s upcoming Fullerton City Council Closed Session Agenda. The Closed Session is where the council secretes itself away from public scrutiny to discuss lawsuits and personnel and real estate deals.

felzonagenda

#2 deals with the replacement of of our recently departed PoChief, Danny Hughes, who was last seen applying his fingerprints all over a case involving helping out a pal in serious trouble.

#4 deals with the “performance evaluation” of the very person Hughes helped out – his boss, City Manager, Joe Felz, who was seen early Wednesday morning swerving down Glenwood Ave on his rims, after ploughing over a tree in the parkway, unable to negotiate the intersection at Highland Avenue in a, um, er, ahem, competent manner.

I’ve got it on pretty good authority that item 4 was agendized by the City Attorney; but at whose behest? Will the topic of Mr. Felz’s Wild Ride come up? How about the apparent cover up that is now being investigated not only by us, but by numerous mainstream media outlets?

Could there be action taken? If there were we would never know, because this is “personnel matter” not a criminal one – as the very same City Attorney has informed the media.

November 10, 2016November 13, 2016Chronic Failure

The Mouse Comes A-visitin’

by Mr. Peabody16 Comments

Wow what an honor. Today our humble blog received 19 visits from Disney Corporate, the new employers of soon-to-be-minted Vice President of Security and Tom Sawyer Island Bilge Water, ex Fullerton Chief of police, Dan Hughes.

February 24, 2013December 16, 2016Boohooism

A Streetcar Named Desire

by Mr. Peabody101 Comments

Last week the ever helpful Fullerton City Hall scribe Lou Ponsi scribbled a story about how Fullerton needs a transit dedicated line from the CSUF area to the Fullerton “metro center.”

No, I am not kidding. “Senior” Planner Jay Eastman believes Fullerton has a metro center.

A cynic might conclude that the sole purpose of this venture is to more efficiently direct college kids into the open air saloon that downtown Fullerton has become.

Trolley? Bus? Light rail(!)? The world is Jay Eastman’s oyster, just so long as somebody else is picking up the tab. In this case the OCTA is going to pay 90% of the cost of a “study” to determine just what Fullerton needs: $270,000 worth, with us paying the other $30,000.

All of which goes to show that OCTA has an awful lot more money than they know what to do with.

February 9, 2013Patdown Pat McPension

Armed And Dangerous

by Mr. Peabody188 Comments

Bad Cop, Good Cop

Christopher Jordan Dorner is on the loose. Heavily armed and with nothing to lose, this ex-LAPD cop is bent on deploying any means necessary to implement his “manifesto” of revenge on those he deems as dirty cops, and even their families.

So far three people are dead and Torrance cops have shot up two women in an incompetent case of mistaken identity.

While we may ponder the outcome of the current manhunt for this apparently deranged former police officer, it also behooves us to contemplate the means and methods that created and permitted Dorner’s cophood in the first place.

The LAPD is now quick to point out this guy’s history of nutsiness, and yet somehow Dorner was given access to training and weaponry in both the military and in the LAPD that are now being used effectively against civilians and the cops themselves.

How did that happen?

At FFFF we have offered a glimpse of the LAPD mindset in the personages of former Fullerton Police Chief Pat “Patdown” McKinley and his idol, LAPD Chief Darryl Gates. And we have seen an influx of LAPD cops and tactics into Fullerton since McKinley’s arrival in 1993 – current Police Chief Danny Hughes’ formative years, in fact.

Then there was the flurry of claims and allegations against FPD cops for brutality, culminating in the callous and lethal assaults on Veth Mam and Kelly Thomas in 2010 and 2011, caught on video.

It appears that in the police business potential violent instability is seen as less of a problem than a tool to be unleashed on an unruly citizenry.

All of which begs the questions: how hard is it to become an LAPD (or Fullerton) cop, particularly for ex-soldiers, and why in the world aren’t we weeding out the Christopher Dorners before they get a badge and a gun?

January 30, 2013Boohooism

Two Kinds of Deflection

by Mr. Peabody62 Comments

In the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder at the hands of the FPD, two different yet eerily similar tactics emerged for deflecting responsibility away from the cops.

Fullerton’s antique liberal crowd quickly banded together so that society itself could be blamed, not the FPD: the problem was not murderous, corrupt or even incompetent cops. Oh, no. The problem was one of homelessness and the solution was to provide a homeless shelter! Why Kelly would probably even be alive today!

On the other hand, the anonymous cop-protectors keep insisting that the problem lay with poor parenting for Kelly’s death, as if a schizophrenic, 35 year-old man was somehow the responsibility of his parents, and as if that somehow exculpates the six cops who beat him to death and stood around laughing as he died in a pool of his own blood.

Of course both groups relied heavily upon a completely comical whitewash of the FPD Culture of Corruption by paid-for opinion of Michael Gennaco.

Two different cliques, two very similar tactics.

January 26, 2013Boohooism

The Great Plutonium Scare and The Local Media Dust Up

by Mr. Peabody58 Comments

It is no secret that we here at FFFF have little use for the brainless Establishment boosterism that some clown named Davis Barber dishes out at a website called FullertonStories under the rubric of fair, balanced journalism. Of course this man is entitled to ladle out any crappy pabulum he likes and can call it anything he likes, even “journalism.” Who can ever for get the ridiculous lies by Richard Fritschie, happily passed along by Barber in the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder.

However, this story is about a hoax earlier this month, a false tale that somebody was in possession of plutonium at the FPD HQ. Apparently the Homeland Security apparatchiks rode to our rescue and our local leaders, as usual, were given little or no information about what was going on. This was reported in The Fullertonion, here, and here. A news source was Mayor Bruce Whitaker.

At the next council meeting Mr. Barber, apparently offended that he had not been granted an interview, showed up to chide mayor Bruce Whitaker for not returning his frequent entreaties to talk to him. This public importuning resulted in offending the good folks at The Fullertonion who took umbrage at the assertion that they were somehow inferior to FullertonStories as a journalistic endeavor, and who share the whole story, here.

A tempest in a teapot to be sure. But underlying this fracas is the reality that Whitaker didn‘t choose to communicate with Barber, a choice obviously based on some cause.

It may very well be that Whitaker, like FFFF, sees FullertonStories and Mr. Barber just a shill for whatever his pals in the Fullerton City Hall bureaucracy want him to promote. During the past two-years’ revelations of serial crimes committed by the FPD, and an illegal rip-off of almost $30,000,000 in an illegal water tax we’ve heard virtually nothing from Barber that could possibly be construed as reflecting negatively on the egregious behavior of the City Manager, the City Attorney or any employees of Fullerton or their protectors on the City Council.

And when you think about it that’s quite a feat.

Anyway, thumbs up to The Fullertonion whose mission really appears to be promoting an informed public.

December 19, 2012Something Wicked This Way Comes

Have At It

by Mr. Peabody245 Comments

As expected, the new council voted 3-2 to begin “negotiations” with Dan Hughes to become Fullerton’s police chief.

Flory, Chaffee and Fitzgerald took their vote even as questions remain unanswered about Hughes’ role in the aftermath of Kelly Thomas murder, and accusations that Hughes himself was involved in an incident which is now the subject of a lawsuit against the City; and of course ongoing suspicion that Hughes has been an active part of the Culture of Corruption every step of the way.

Now watch ’em give away the store.

Oh, and yeah: you will not be getting a police oversight committee.

December 9, 2012December 9, 2012Big Brother

Why Can’t We Have Cops Like This?

by Mr. Peabody45 Comments

The fine state of Washington recently made the bold move to end the senseless prohibition on marijuana. Not only will citizens who want to enjoy a puff o’ pot in private be spared being processed through the legal system, it also sets the stage for the state to collect up to 500 million dollars annually in taxes.

So if you’re in Washington, it’s now legal for adults 21 or older to consume marijuana in private, and to possess up to an ounce for personal use. And, like alcohol, open consumption in public can result in a citation.

On the Seattle police department’s blog, Jonah Spangenthal-Lee explains how the department views these recent developments:

But the police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a Lord of the Rings marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to.

Hmm, what are the chances for our own men in blue to sport such a sensible attitude? Could it ever happen here in Fullerton?

November 22, 2012November 22, 2012About Us

Thanksgiving Message to Friends

by Mr. Peabody126 Comments

Here is a re-post of a Thanksgiving message from last year. So much has changed and yet much remains to be done. Nobody ever thought the forces of avarice, corruption and moral turpitude would go into their good night quietly.

As we pause today to give thanks for whatever we have to be thankful for, please consider how fortunate we are to live in a nation where freedom of speech actually means something.

This blog has never abused that basic right. We are abusive, rude, enlightening, abrasive, endearing, funny, not funny; we are free with our opinions, but never make things up. And we always remember what Dick Jones, Don Bankhead and Pat McKinley do not: that we derive the right from ourselves, and not from the government that would make us fill out a little blue card to speak to them.

We have been accused of being angry. Hell, yes we’re angry: as our elected representatives cut ribbons and hobnobbed at Chamber of Commerce mixers and rubber stamped every idiocy put in front of them, our city (ours, not theirs) was turned over to a gang of grifters, liars, thugs, pickpockets, perverts and killers.

These same buffoons have turned downtown Fullerton into a urine-soaked, booze addled free-for-all upon which our city council unleashed a band of uniformed goons hardly better than the low-lifes they invited into our city.

They have given their campaign contributors free land and even public streets upon which to erect the overbuilt stuccoed monstrosities that have swallowed up the historic downtown. Are they even ashamed? Hell, no, they are proud of what they have done and apologize for nothing.

Yes, there is anger; yet, anger tempered by hope. Hope that with a clear, sharp message Fullerton can be relieved of the dead hand of an ancient and corrupt regime. That message of hope is being delivered by the Fullerton Recall campaign.

You are all welcome to share that hope. And be assured: the winter of discontent will give way to a new year and spring of accountability and responsibility on the part of Fullerton’s elected representatives.

November 14, 2012A Step in the Right Direction

Kiger’s Lead Shrinks To 56; About 1500 ballots Left to Count

by Mr. Peabody255 Comments

As of yesterday, November 13th, Travis Kiger’s lead over Jan Flory had been reduced to 56 votes. According to the ROV there remain about 1500 mail in ballots and provisional ballots left to count.

It’s gonna be close! Will Fullerton move ahead or will it retreat to the bad old days of denial and unaccountability? Will Jan Flory’s Dog become a major player in the OC blogosphere?

Stay tuned. We should know by the end of the day!