Category: Chronic Failure

Posted onBehind Closed Doors

County Supervisor Wants To Take Budget Axe to Human Relations Commission

by 115 Comments on County Supervisor Wants To Take Budget Axe to Human Relations Commission
Just do it.

What is the Orange County Human Relations Commission? It is a County Commission whose mission seems to be get everybody to just get along. Calming the roiling waters of bigotry and racial insensitivity is one goal, seemingly a good one, until you start to realize that this operation has no way of demonstrating that is actually doing anything productive, and tracks a mere handful of incidents annually.

The taxpayers of Orange County currently give something called the Human Relations Council $300,000 a year to provide staffing for the Orange County Human Relations Commission. Confusing? Not to Rusty Kennedy the Executive Director. He pulls in his pension as a former County employee and gets paid all over again by us to do his good deeds via the office of the Council.

4th District Supervisor Shawn Nelson has seen and heard enough and wants to cut that down to $100,000 – just enough to cover some sort of police/community reconciliation program. Nelson seems particularly perturbed that in the wake of the Kelly Thomas killing Rusty Kennedy was MIA. I’m not surprised by Kennedy’s absence. FFFF posted about that, here, and here.

Of course when it came time to host a big collaborative boohoo session, er, I mean Task Force on Homelessness, Rusty was Johnny-on-the-spot, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Kelly Thomas’s main problem was not that he was homeless, but that he was the victim of a real hate crime. But Kennedy needs the cops to shill for his continued County-supplied budget, and it really wouldn’t look good if he started accusing the cops of hate crimes. Those letters of support would sure dry up in a hurry.

Anyhow, Kennedy’s contract is on the County Board of Supervisor’s agenda for next Tuesday morning and you can be sure all the squishy feel-gooders and race hustlers will be out in force – the very same church and synagogue pulpit preachers who were utterly mute after Kelly Thomas was murdered.

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

SlideBro Denies Complicity in Fake Phone Call. Again.

by 234 Comments on SlideBro Denies Complicity in Fake Phone Call. Again.

According to CBS local news, Jeremy Popoff, proprietor the the Slidebar Rock ‘N Roll Kitchen, categorically denies being involved in a phony call that described Kelly Thomas as breaking into or trying to open car doors.

However if you read the article, you will notice that there is no assertion from Popoff’s lawyer that no call was made from the Slidebar. And that’s interesting because in a report earlier toady the Slidebar lawyer, Eric Durbin, is quoted saying this:

Dubin said Reeves was not within earshot of the Slidebar employee who called police that night…

Meaning that there was some sort of phone call made by a Slidebar employee to the cops that night. Hmm.
In any case we are meant to be reassured that by his lawyer that Popoff is “heartbroken.”

According to Popoff he cares deeply for the local homeless population.

The Slidebar attorney is right about one thing: everything will come out at trial. But not the trial he is thinking of.

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Quirk Endorsed by PORAC

by 108 Comments on Quirk Endorsed by PORAC

What is PORAC? The Peace Officers Research Associaion of California is a statewide cop lobby whose contributions go to provide legal aid and comfort to cops, good and bad. We learned about this “research association” last winter as it made a $19,000 contribution to the anti-recall campaign, a failed effort to protect the political hides of the three cop union puppets on the Fullerton City Council. PORAC is also paying the legal bills for the two Fullerton cops, Manny Ramos and Jay Cicinelli, who have been charged with the killing of the mentally ill homeless man, Kelly Thomas.

Now PORAC has a new project: promoting the dubious political fortunes of Sharon Quirk-Silva. Check out the list of supporters on her website.

Now that’s a fine collection of educrats, far left leaning politicos that have helped tank California, and of course, unions that greased their skids. But really, Sharon, PORAC? Can you really be that clueless? Or is it just desperation?

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Posted onA Step in the Right Direction

Slidebar Slides Into Litigation

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Hmm.

For almost a year now rumors have been swirling around the role of Fullerton’s Slidebar in the death of the mentally ill homeless man, Kelly Thomas, last July. Specifically, did a Slidebar employee at the behest of his or her boss, owner Jeremy Popoff, make a phony call to the cops to give them a pretext to roust Thomas.

Staring into an uncertain future...

Despite all of his protestations of innocence and donations of canned food to the homeless, Popoff’s story never quite rang true.

A couple days ago the other shoe finally dropped: a lawsuit for wrongful termination by a former employee named Michael Reeves that goes into elaborate detail about what happened on the night of July 5, 2011, and the cover up that followed.

The guy claims the fateful and false call to the FPD that triggered the events leading to the murder of Thomas  was made by Slidebar manager Jeanette DiMarco at the behest of owner Jeremy Popoff.

Later, when he wouldn’t play ball, Reeves claims he was demoted, then fired. The guy is suing for $4,000,000, a tidy sum, to be sure.

 

Read the complaint

Well, there you have it. Is any part of this tale true? I don’t know. But I do know that the other, even more sinister part of the story is still looming on the horizon like a nasty weather front; and that’s the disturbing possibility that the bar was in cahoots with one or more of the police before hand, complicit in a criminal conspiracy to deprive Kelly Thomas of his Constitutional rights and even his physical well-being.

We now know that the DA has decided to look the other way in his haste to kiss and make up with the Fullerton cops, but the possibility that the attack on Thomas was per-arranged does indeed explain the antagonistic behavior of Wolfe and Ramos, and perhaps even the seemingly inexplicable violence of Cicinelli.

All this is now bound to come out in the civil proceedings against the City by Ron Thomas and Garo Mardirossian. The latter may be pressured to cut a deal to avoid embarrassing the City too much in a public trial, but the new council needs a vehicle to get all the facts on the table once and for all. A trial is just the thing.

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Posted onChronic Failure

Don Bankhead Enters Exclusive Club

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Chris Nguyen, who runs a blog called OC Political, says recently recalled Fullerton City Councilman Don Bankhead has just been initiated into a very exclusive club. According to Nguyen’s research (and I can’t vouch for that) only two men in American history have ever been recalled twice from the same job.

The first is some guy named James W. Holley who was mayor of Portsmouth, Virginia from 1984-1987 and again from 2008-2010. Each stint was punctuated by a recall. And now, with trumpets blaring and drums rolling, enters the august personage of Donald T. Bankhead, Fullerton City Council 1988-1994 and 1994-2012.

The asteroid was getting ominously close to Earth...

And of course I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that if Nguyen is accurate, then Bankhead is the only office holder in the 162 year history of California to be recalled twice from the same office. And that’s a damn impressive accomplishment.

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Here’s an E-mail To The City Manager Accusing Cops of Drinking At Lunch

by 90 Comments on Here’s an E-mail To The City Manager Accusing Cops of Drinking At Lunch

A Friend forwarded this e-mail purportedly sent to Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz. Personally, I don’t mind having a beer or four for lunch before returning to the gun store, but I don’t wear a badge.

To: citymanager@ci.fullerton.ca

Subject: Misconduct on oct 18th

Mr Felz,


Please look into allegations that officers of the Fullerton police attended a training class on Oct. 18th, Tuesday and during their lunch break drank beers at Roscoe’s in Fullerton before returning to training.

Officers drank beer in front of LT Crum and his Sgt’s and none of them took any action for this obvious policy violation..

I apologize for the anonymous email, but I’m afraid of retaliation.

Bottoms up!

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Posted onChronic Failure

ONE MORE TIME: McKinley Says “Council People Don’t Lead”

by 219 Comments on ONE MORE TIME: McKinley Says “Council People Don’t Lead”
Uh, just give me a sec' over here...

The day before the election seems like a real good time to replay this sparkling jewel of a video; the one in which Patdown Pat McKinley admits his own failure to lead. It’s got to be real hard for any anti-recall stooges to suck up this one!! When you vote remember this McKinley proclamation: “Council people don’t lead.” 

Also, enjoy watching Patdown Pat’s sociopathic neck ligaments strain as he utters the damning indictment “failure to lead.”

– Joe Sipowicz

Here’s an illuminating admission by soon-to-be-recalled Councilmember “Patdown” Pat McKinley. The accusation that he has failed to lead fails to resonate with McPension since he denies that he is on the City Council to be a leader. The snippet below was culled from a long interview with the good folks at FullertonStories, here.

Well, Friends, there you have it. And you have a great example of why it’s almost always a bad idea to elect former staff members into political office.

And out of his own mouth McKinley admits and proclaims his own dismal failure to lead.

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Posted on"Dick" Ackerman

Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down…

by 239 Comments on Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down…

I discovered this hanging from my door knob this morning, courtesy of the Fullerton Recall team. Yowzer! Look down there at the bottom of the salary side: Thomas Basham – the alleged Watch Commander who watched his boys beat Kelly Thomas to death. And on the pension side get a load of #2: Former City Manager, and anti-recall contributor, Chris Meyer who pulled in $171K in pension last year. He sure has lots of reasons to back the Three Bald Tires.

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

More Bad News For Fullerton Taxpayers; Another Lawsuit Against FPD and Manny Ramos

by 109 Comments on More Bad News For Fullerton Taxpayers; Another Lawsuit Against FPD and Manny Ramos
The bloated Ramos. Hard to tell where the cop ends and the night begins.

 

UPDATE. From KNBC: “Sgt. Jeff Stuart, a Fullerton Police Department spokesman, did not return a call seeking comment.”

Now that’s not  very good way to improve communication with the community, now is it?

– Mr. Peabody

Over at the OC Weekly, ace reporter R. Scott Moxley has written a post detailing an incident between Fullerton cop Manny Ramos and a 58 year old disabled guy named Mark Edwin Walker. It appears the gist of the thing is that last June 21, two weeks before he instigated the Kelly Thomas murder, Ramos, without provocation or cause, confronted Walker outside an Albertson’s in Fullerton, threw the man to the ground, stomped on him  and tossed him in jail, charged with public intoxication, resisting arrest, or some other such nonsense.

Subsequently a judge threw the case out and Walker lawyered up. Of course this is all Walker’s story and it may be self-serving; but it also sounds a heckuva lot like the Veth Mam case. Who’s a jury going to believe now?

Ca-ching. The Culture of Corruption marches on.

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