Musical Captains

It is official — Tom Oliveras and Bob Dunn are the new Captains of the Fullerton Police Department.

They replace Danny Hughes favorites John Siko and Scott Rudisil, who, pension spike completed, decided to retire.  Some in the department question the timing, openly wondering if new Chief Dave Hendricks helped to accelerate their departure.  Don’t be surprised if they land new jobs at The Mouse.  Dan Hughes pulled strings to get his buddy, Lt. Mike Chocek, a new job a Disneyland.  Chocek abruptly quit in 2017 for his new position at Disneyland.

Oliveras has been with the Fullerton PD since 1992, and has kept a low profile all these years.  That’s probably a good thing.

Bob Dunn is the fascinating choice, as he left the Anaheim Police Department as a Lieutenant, and was hired just days ago by the Fullerton Police Department as a Captain.

Why is this fascinating, you ask?  Because FFFF’s biggest fan, Lt. Andrew Goodrich, was rumored to want the empty Captain seat.  After completing a Master’s Degree in recent months from the prestigious Capella University, we’re told Goodrich viewed himself as the heir apparent for the Captain seat.  That is, until he was blindsided by the hiring of Dunn.

Oh well, Andrew Goodrich is more than welcome to leave Fullerton if he so chooses.

Your diploma is in the mail. No refunds.

Goons, Goblins, the Alt Right, and Antifa Oh My!

The CSUF Republicans have invited controversial conservative pundit Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on campus Halloween evening, creating quite a bit of anxiety for CSU educrats, liberal activists and local police.

Why? Here’s what happened when Yiannopoulos tried to speak at UC Berkley earlier this year:

That’s a lot of potential chaos for Fullerton, and local agencies seem to be planning for the worst case scenario. Nearby Acacia Elementary School has announced that it will be sending kids home early that day. Some CSUF students have said they are afraid to go to school. The Fullerton Police Department is working with “local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies” to plan security for the event.

Perhaps stoking the flames, student and faculty groups have denounced the event and called for the school to prevent Yiannopoulos from speaking. These efforts seem to embolden Yiannopoulos’ followers, driving media attention leading up to the event and reinforcing his assertion that conservatives’ right to free speech on campus is being threatened.

Anyway, here’s hoping that Fullerton residents won’t have to rely on the FPD’s finesse in tactfully de-escalating a Halloween riot.

An Empty Shell of a Man

Last week California was showered with editorials criticizing state Democrats for their underhanded retroactive gimping of the recall process to protect state senator Josh Newman.

It’s lonely at the top. Also at the bottom.

Here are a few of them:

The Democrats’ cynical move to protect one of their own – Los Angeles Times

Democrats push a phony election ‘fix’ – San Francisco Chronicle

Reject legislation to stymie recall elections – Los Angeles Daily News

Democrats Embrace Banana-Republic Tactics – American Spectator

Democrats playing dirty to save Newman from recall – OC Register

In at least one interview Newman himself has supported the effort to delay his own recall, although he avoided directly voting for it. Newman’s abutment of this electoral abuse of power illustrates his rapid degeneration from virginal statesman to shrugging beneficiary of political treachery. If any of the public’s trust in Newman remained after his vote for the regressive gas tax, it’s all but gone now.

On the bright side, recall organizers have vowed to mount constitutional challenges that will attempt to restore California voters’ right to recall government officials.

Coming Up For Air

In FFFF’s early days, this blog noted how the Fullerton Observer and its “editor” Sharon Kennedy would bend over backwards to avoid printing anything that might embarrass City officialdom. In the years after that blog post, the Observer remained true to form. It continually went to bat for the bureaucrats in increasingly shameful ways, even when it violated the tenets of the Yellowing Observer’s own professed liberalism. The culmination, perhaps, was the Observer’s series of misdirections and avoidances in the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder in 2011.

It’s dark in here.

But wait. One of our Friends just noticed that the front page of the latest Observer includes an unexpected headline. The article seems to acknowledge the recent claims of corruption in city hall as asserted by the OC DA investigator Abraham Santos.

The piece discusses the facts of the claims against Dan Hughes and Joe Felz without the insertion of Kennedy’s usual dismissive editorial remarks. How could this happen? Is Kennedy turning over a new leaf?

No. This is the work of the Observer’s new co-editor, Jesse La Tour. How he managed to slip this honest piece of work past Kennedy, we may never know.

Kangaroo Court Transcript Reveals Felzian Development Scheme

Remember that quasi-judicial nuisance hearing against the Grand Inn back in April? The one where former police chief Danny Hughes went under oath and accidentally told us that Joe Felz was drunk when he crashed his car and got a ride home from the Fullerton PD?

After some wrangling down at city hall, FFFF finally got its hands on the entire hearing transcript, which you can view here.

It got ugly real fast.

The transcript reveals that former city manager Joe Felz did meet with developer Urban West to discuss purchasing, assembling and rezoning the four lots on Euclid and Orangethorpe to build high-density apartments, which included a large lot owned by Renick Cadillac. Unfortunately for Felz and Co., one of the lots was owned by an unwilling participant, the Grand Inn.

Coincidentally (or not), these development meetings occurred just prior to a long, expensive effort by the Fullerton Police to document the Grand Inn as a public nuisance in order to shut it down. Was the sudden crackdown on the Grand Inn related to the Felz/Renick/Urban West development deal? Of course Felz denied the accusation under oath, much like he denies being drunk when he crashed into a poor sapling on Highland. But to the reasonable observer, it stinks like hell. In Fullerton, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Your honor, I do not recall…

If you still haven’t connected the dots yet, consider the PD’s year-long effort to attribute nearby crimes to the Grand Inn in the context of the police department’s complete disregard for the large volume of calls stemming from the actual public nuisance that is the Slidebar.

In true Fullerton fashion, Mr. Felz could not get through the hearing without invoking his right to not incriminate himself.

Back to the development scheme – which would not be complete without the insertion of our favorite lobbyist/councilperson. In the testimony we learn that Jennifer Fitzgerald had met with Renick and Felz at least once in the early stages of this fiasco. We’ll never know the depth of her involvement with the developer, or whether she was wearing her lobbyist hat or her elected official hat at the time. But we can assume she was aware of the value of her vote, should a lucrative zone change come before the council in the near future.

It was just a meeting.

Either way, Renick and Urban West seem to have given up on the deal, since Renick is now rebuilding its showrooms. But the city is stuck pursuing it’s selective enforcement action against the Grand Inn (or are they?). More taxpayer money goes down the drain while nothing is accomplished.

Proud Leaders in DUI Enforcement

The Fullerton PD marketing apparatus is still trying to convince the public that some sort of equitable enforcement of DUI exists. Check out today’s promulgation:

This is the very same police department that attempted to cover up a DUI collision committed by its own city manager just a few months ago. Now that we know former police chief Dan Hughes was committing criminal obstruction of justice (according to the OCDA investigator assigned to the case), this propaganda seems even more ridiculous.

One more thing to note: Temporary police chief Hinig is gone, and so Fullerton police are being led by Dan Hughes’ own hand-picked captains Siko and Rudisil. While Hughes’ legacy of corruption and obstruction may become the subject of interest in the ongoing federal probes into the OCDA, it is silly to think that our police department’s age of shame ended with Hughes’ departure.

Newman Recall?

That didn’t take long. Radio host and former San Diego City Councilman Carl Demaio is starting a recall effort against Fullerton’s own state Senator Josh Newman. Here is Carl on the John and Ken show yesterday discussing Newman’s participation in the massive $5.2 billion California tax hike.

John and Ken reckon that Fullerton is a great place to kick off a rage-fueled recall effort. History says they’re right. It will be fun to see if Newman can be held accountable for his massive error.

Fullerton Flashback: A Beer with the Boys

A Lit roadie recently shared this image on social media and an observant friend passed it along. Can FFFF readers identify any of these distinguished gentlemen?

Here’s a hint. The photo contains at least one budding lobbyist, a Fullerton police union president, a planning commissioner and a soon-to-be bar owner/nuisance generator.