Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Which is a lot more than we can say for Kelly Thomas.
August 10th, 2011. A day of bathos at the Fullerton Police Department: just five weeks after the murder of Kelly Thomas at the hands of his cops, Police Chief Michael Sellers, having perused his benefits package, packs it in. Sort of.
A shitstorm is blowing up and our old friend FPD PIO Andrew Goodrich wants to get a perspective on “hats.”
The real blood on the Transportation Center pavement hadn’t dried yet on July 7th. Here is FPD PIO Andrew Goodrich communicating with his soon-to-be vacationing boss, Mike Sellers.
Of course Goodrich is not interested in public information. He’s interested in perception and propaganda. “In-custody injury ” must be some sort of PIO code for “bludgeoned to death.”
File under better late than never. Teri Sforza of the Register has advertised Fullerton city government’s dirty little secret. Well, I guess it was really a big secret. Not any more.
A little MSM attention will help get the word out: F. Richard Jones and Don Bankhead have been ripping us off for 15 year by adding 10% to our water bills to pay for their perks and pensions. A $27,000,000 rip-off. Now that’s not very nice, is it?
It is now August 4th, 2011 – about a month since six of now-MIA Chief Mike Sellers’ cops participated in the brutal beating death of a homeless man – and in the middle of a full-bore campaign of obfuscation by his underlings.
Here is Sellers scoping out his contract and his “executive” benefits a few days before his doctor told him he was really, really “sick.” He is looking forward to “wrapping things up.” And how.
And then an inquiry into the IRS to get “squared away.”
Here’s an e-mail we just got from a Friendly reader:
I just got done reading how the Fullerton Police Department tried to harass a law-abiding citizen by pursuing a phony prosecution against his brother. This behavior is absolutely despicable. And I noted that the police employees have been trying to use their fraudulent case by posting comments on-line.
The idea that that one of the police employees leaked what they assumed would be harmful information about a political adversary that turned out to be phony is also indicative of a department that is absolutely steeped in corruption. This is not the first time. They tried this with State Assemblyman Chris Norby and they will try it again. No one with an ethical fiber in his body is in charge of the Fullerton Police Department.
Something is really rotten in our City and we need to flush the toilet. Now.
It is time the voters and citizens of Fullerton reclaimed their city from the crooked police and the entrenched special interests in City Hall that are using the senile and incompetent civil authority to promote their own interests. The police have declared war on the citizens of Fullerton. Okay, war it is.
God bless the Recall, and God help Fullerton.
J. Stanley
Friends, over the past couple of months you may have noticed anonymous comments on some of our posts referring to “George” and “Jorge” and some sort of hit-and-run issue. Those comments referred to my brother George and came from inside the FPD. I let them go. Then. But not now.
This is a cautionary tale about a Culture of Corruption in the FPD that encourages the harassment of law abiding citizens. Getting a ticket from Barry Coffman for “excessive horning” is bad enough. Getting prosecuted for a non-existing “crime” is intolerable. Unfortunately this sort of thing has become business as usual with the FPD. It appears to be not only tolerated, but encouraged. And that’s what happens when the civilian authority abdicates its responsibility to oversee the cops.
Here’s the story.
Back on the morning of February 28, 2011 my brother George was driving east down Walnut Avenue, and turned right into the driveway of our office building parking lot. A car had parked quite close to the entry of the driveway, and as he turned in he heard a distinctive sound. After parking he noticed that the front bumper of the car was lying in the street.
He was pretty sure he hadn’t hit the car in any way, and there was no other damage to that car, or to his own vehicle; and he noticed that the bumper had been jerry-rigged at some point to stay on with sheet metal screws. He believed his right front tire just hit the thing as it lay in the roadway.
George kept watch on the car, and later in the afternoon a woman came to pick it up. He explained the situation and told Mrs. Bumper that he didn’t think he was responsible, but that he would help put the bumper back on with secure connections to the chassis the next day. She was grateful and drove off.
The next day her husband showed up and demanded that George buy him a new bumper. George suggested he go away and take his bumper with him.
Mr. Bumper filed a police report and soon George was interrogated by a couple of FPD cops. He told his story for the third time. The next thing he knew he was being charged by the District Attorney with Hit and Run, Unsafe Turn and Illegal Tampering With A Vehicle!
Story recap: No hit. No run. No unsafe turn. No tampering. No evidence. No witness. No nothing. Yet our esteemed DA, following the advice of FPD, had decided to prosecute my brother.
Of course George had to hire a lawyer who made six different court appearances on this idiotic “case.” Finally the DA blinked and offered George the DNA “spit and acquit” deal he makes with campaign-contributing food poisoners. George said no. With a trial date looming the DA’s office just dropped the whole thing on September 20th.
Too bad, in a way. I really looked forward to seeing those FPD clowns on the stand to explain and defend their evidence. Now the public will never see the facts behind what can only be described as a malicious attempt to intimidate and harass me through my brother.
Well, guess what, boys? It didn’t work.
How much police, DA and court time and money was completely wasted in this effort to try to push around a citizen and taxpayer? Who knows? Five different DA employees had their spoons in this soup, as well as judges, bailiffs, court scribes, etc.
But I know one thing. There is an entrenched Culture of Corruption in the Fullerton Police Department that runs pretty deep, and it needs to end soon!
The date is July 19, 2011 and Fullerton Chief of Police Mike Sellers has just returned from his cruise and is still on vacation. FPD murder victim Kelly Thomas has been off life support for one week. Clouds are gathering, alright.
“Chief” seems interested in sharing his knowledge of some newfangled strategy called “predictive policing,” which, presumably, would not predict crimes perpetrated by the cops themselves. His correspondent, Dennis Kies, then Interim Police Chief of Costa Mesa, is suitably unimpressed.
Some folks may remember Kies from his days as police chief in La Habra, a tenure punctuated by the over-reaction cop shooting of 25 year-old Korean-American artist Michael Cho on the final day of 2007.
Then discussion of a new job at Seal Beach comes up, and apparently Kies name had popped up. “Chief” shares the bennies package.
I don’t know what a “medical retiree clause” is, but it probably has something to do with Chief’s Disease. Ironic that in less than a month Sellers himself would be rollerskating out of Fullerton with a bad case of it.
Brandon Ferguson of the OC Weekly is suggesting that downtown Fullerton bar owner Jeremy Popoff appears to be talking out of both sides of his mouth considering his recent voicemail left at the Weekly, and assertions made subsequently on-line.
On Facebook, Mr. Pop denies dodging requests to talk to the Weekly about his establishment’s role in the Kelly Thomas murder. And he seems to be accusing Ferguson of somehow twisting the words of his voice message.
You can be the judge since Ferguson has thoughtfully posted a link to the audio and shares a screenshot of the facebook page.
True, enough, the actual word of the voice mail message are non-specific – but the topic is clear enough – Kelly Thomas – and Popoff clearly says the stories are “not true.” Since the only issue involving his establishment and the murder are the questions of who made the call to the cops, and why, we know exactly what he is talking about.
The only thing I can think of is that perhaps Slidebro is getting nervous about his denial that the call to FPD on the night of 7 /5/11 did in fact come from the Slidebar. But as Mr. Jeremy acknowledges himself, the preliminary hearing is only six weeks off and all sorts of things may start coming to light.
Here’s a couple of interesting e-mails from the final day of July, 2011, between Acting City Manager Joe Felz and soon to be MIA Police Chief Sellers.
On the surface it seems that Acting City Manager Joe Felz is unhappy with Lou Ponsi for writing “Very Old” news. But maybe he is really upset that the public gets to hear (again) that the cops who killed Kelly Thomas had been out on the streets for over three weeks like nothing had happened; or that maybe Sharon Quirk looks like she is actually in charge. Sellers seems to be concerned with the latter, and he can already see the writing on the wall.
“Hopefully the remaining three council members don’t feel left out” is code for: “Make sure the Three Dead Tree Sumps get lined up, fast!”
“Lou is Not a bad guy from what I understand,” means that Sylvia Palmer and Andrew Goodrich have previously informed Felz that Ponsi is a reliable regurgitator of their crap.
By the way, is anybody else appalled by the weird punctuation and capitalization deployed by these $200,000+ per year bureaucrats?
It is July 22, 2011 and now-MIA Chief Sellers gets an e-mail from City Hall’s version of Andrew Goodrich, city publicist, Syliva Palmer.
She’s subsequently fled the the scene of the crime, and won’t have to answer embarrassing questions about this correspondence – like her insinuation that Councilman Bruce Whitaker leaked inside information to FFFF in a post. Apparently the otiose Palmer was too lazy to actually read the post, and too stupid to follow the link to The Fullertonian – the ones who actually caught Goodrich in the broken bones lie.
But so what if Whitaker had actually had a hand in disseminating the truth? The outright lie about Fullerton cops suffering broken bones was propagated by Goodrich, clearly with the blessing of Sellers and Plamer, and now we may safely assume, Palmer’s boss City Manager, Joe Felz. Perhaps with the blessing of the Three Dead Tree Stumps, too. That would certainly fit the truth-challenged profile of Pat McKinley.
Note also that Palmer laments the fact that the media didn’t talk to other reliable councilmen who, presumably were only too happy to toe the party line.
