At the OC Weekly Nick Schou has uncovered an old article about the militarization of the Fullerton Police Department under Pat McKinley. The seminal event of the story takes place in 1997 and describes a military-style invasion of the Latino Maple neighborhood in response to a drive-by shooting along Harbor Boulevard.
Me and my gang are gonna kick your ass. And you're gonna like it.
Since McKinley had cut his fangs on SWAT deployments up in Los Angeles it was just a matter of time before the bald badass brought his methods and manpower from the LAPD to Fullerton. The trouble with militarization, apart from the monetary cost of deployment, is the inevitable occupation mentality, and the concomitant “us versus them” mindset. When you watch the Veth Mam video this comes through loud and clear.
15 years later many of McKinley’s scrofulous chickens have now come home to roost. I have to wonder how many incidents in Fullerton over the years were escalated into confrontations by the cops themselves. And I have to wonder what all of this is going to cost us.
Over at the OC Weekly, Gustavo Arellano is sharing the now familiar image of Fullerton cop, Manuel Ramos, one of the thugs who instigated the beating death of Kelly Thomas, and who is out on $1,000,000 bail. Of course he adds his own twist.
It does make you wonder if the obese Ramos has put in a claim for disability yet. It’s sure to be approved.
At about the 14:30 mark of the Kelly Thomas murder video something happens. Suddenly the mood of Manny Ramos changes from one of bored hostility to outright aggression. He has just gone to the back of the patrol car and has had a conversation with Joe Wolfe who has been sifting through Thomas’s scant possessions in his backpack.
When Ramos returns to Kelly he immediately dons the latex gloves that a helpful Wolfe had previously given him (“take these you may need them”) and begins to verbally threaten the homeless man. “See these fists? These fists are about to fuck you up…” For his part Thomas seems to sense the ramped up hostility. When Ramos tries to grab his shoulder Kelly brushes away the cop’s hand and stands. Immediately sensing his peril he puts his hands up and begins slowly backing away. It’s too late.
Suddenly Wolfe appears almost on cue; at the top of the frame he emerges from behind the patrol car, where, a mere 15 feet away he must have been perfectly aware of what was going on. As Kelly continues to back away toward the front of the car, Wolfe lunges at him, swinging his baton; immediately he is joined by Ramos who takes a swing to, too. As Kelly begins to flee rightward in front of the car and out of the frame, we can’t see what happens next; but Ramos has evidently managed to grab or tackle Thomas as Wolfe, who has circled counterclockwise around the back of the car, piles on.
So here’s my question: how can Joe Wolfe be exonerated from any wrongdoing by the DA? Barely fifteen feet from the exchange between Ramos and Kelly, he must have known exactly what was going on; he also knew who he was dealing with; and he actually struck the first, illegal blow with his stick. So why was Joe Wolfe never charged with a crime?
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.
Ever since the FPD announcement that the oleaginous Andrew Goodrich was being replaced as PIO with a guy named Jeff Stuart, I’d been wondering why I seemed to remember that name.
Then it hit me. Back in March FFFF ran a post about some dude named Ernest Benefiel who apparently tried to commit suicide with booze and pills, and whose reveries were disrupted by an all-out assault by the Fullerton SWAT team; an assault that ended with Benefiel going to jail for years and years – while his conviction was overturned not once, but twice.
Goodrich 2.0
And who is listed on page 5 of the civil law suit as one of Pat McKinley’s gun-happy SWAT team members who turned a paramedic call into a neighborhood shoot-out? Jeff Stuart.
According to The OC Register, here, the outside “independent” investigative company hired by the City to look into the actions of the cops that beat Kelly Thomas to death last July has delivered its report on the incident. Unfortunately, nobody gets to see the report authored by Mr. Michael Gennaco except Acting Chief Dan Hughes – because it relates to police personnel matters. And, as everybody knows, those matters are shrouded in a veil of impenetrable secrecy. Just the way the police unions like it.
So we are left to guess at the contents of the report and left to guess whether or not our elected officials will be able to see it. Speaking of guesses, my guess would be no, except for Pat McKinley, of course, who seems to get special privileges when it comes to sticking his nose into personnel matters regarding the dubious characters he hired as former Police Chief.
The issues here are particularly interesting given the fact of the impending trial of Mssrs. Cicinelli and Ramos for manslaughter and murder, respectively. Negative findings could have an impact on that case. If, as many anticipate, Mr. Gennaco tends to whitewash the case we can expect a comparatively speedy release of the report with some exculpitory headlines by Lou Ponsi. Gennaco’s undernourished first report was more interesting for what it left out than for what it said,
Also lurking in the back of the room is the potentially costly civil trial and possible Civil Rights charges by the Feds. So if the report indicates that the cops acted way outside policy and procedure look for a protracted release of minimal information, or no release at all.
That would be former Redevelopment Director and big Fullerton pension recipient Gary Chalupsky.
Some may remember Chalupsky for his long string of embarrassing boondoggles and Redevelopment expenditures of questionable legality – like building the Muckenthaler amphitheater which is not even in a Redevelopment project area.
Just type in “Redevelopment” in our search box and knock yourself out. From the Knowlwood fiasco and North Platform smash up to The City Lights debacle and the humiliating Poisoned Park disaster, Chalupsky was there every inept, unaccountable step of the way. For well over ten years. Plenty of time to get vested in CalPERS.
Gary Chalupsky was the guy who proved beyond all doubt that Fullerton was very much for sale. Ever wonder where the 100 East section of Whiting Avenue went? Ask Chalupsky.
Others may also remember this upstanding individual for his phony “retirement” and immediate double-dip that was countenanced by an incompetent council who seemed to think Chalupsky knew what he was doing.
Redevelopment is now thankfully dead. But it feathered a lot of nests along the way.
A fence sitting, cardboard candidate? On June 5th you get to decide.
Perusing the latest yellowing Fullerton Observer I noticed how various candidates responded to the question “How Would You have Handled The Kelly Thomas Situation?”
First the Three Bald Tires, poster boys for utter leadership failure, were given the chance to reflect on their actions, or lack of same. They offered up the same old “we were told by our lawyer not to say anything” tripe. On his way out the saloon doors Doc Hee Haw managed to serve up this beaut: “I regret that some have acted to circumvent the constitutional laws of justice,” as if to reassure himself that the whole gol’dern commotion was the fault of some “lynch-type mob” and had nothing to do with his own incompetence and fat mouth.
The candidates were all pretty uniform in their responses with the glaring exception of Doug Chaffee, who spooned out this idiotic pabulum:
“I am a strong advocate of community oriented policing. In a community oriented policing system, police officers partner with neighborhoods to build trust and positive community relationships. The system generates mutual respect between residents and police. Being pro-active, the focus is on preventing crime, as opposed to merely reacting to it, and results in a safer City.”
What?
Not a single word about Kelly Thomas or his family, the brutal way in which he was killed, the conspiracy of silence in the aftermath, the disinformation peddled by Goodrich, the cops who were returned to duty, the disappearing police chief, the sick police chief, the pensioned-off police chief, or the charges of murder and manslaughter brought against the two cops by the DA. No explanation from Doug that Kelly was not committing a crime, and that the only criminals on the scene were members of the Fullerton Police Department.
Some have asked where Chaffee has been for these past nine months. I know. He’s been hiding from his own pale shadow.
It is apparent to me that this man is an empty suit, a coward and a damned fool. On the council he would be hardly better than McKinley himself. The last thing Fullerton needs is another superannuated do-nothing, say-nothing, stand-for-nothing yellow observer in office.
Ah, dear me. I was just waiting for a last gasp from the old, die-hard liberals in Fullerton to oppose the political colonic flush Fullerton needs so badly; they didn’t disappoint. Check out this lame ad placed in the Fullerton Observer:
Predictable. We’ve already dispensed with the “recalls are for malfeasance” nonsense, here. Ironically, some might argue that cultivating a corrupt and murderous police force, colluding to keep an illegal tax, and giving away public property to campaign donors all rise to the level of “malfeasance,” but I’ll just let that pass.
What’s interesting in this list of names is that the average age is somewhere between 70 and 70 million, and that would take us back well into the Mesozoic Era.
A large meteorite was on the way...
These are the worthies who believe in City Hall heart and soul, no matter what idiocy emanates from it. These people sit on committees and even serve on the council itself whenever the repuglicans can’t stop them. They share a common love for government bureaucracies and processes, and more than anything else they believe in hollow platitudes and meaningless abstractions.
And where were these honorable men and women after a helpless, homeless man was murdered by their own police department? Nowhere near the protests, you can be sure of that. It just wouldn’t look good.
