Category: Dead heads

Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Rackauckas Speaks! “Everything Is Open”

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Yesterday KFIs John and Ken had an opportunity to interview our District Attorney, Tony Rackauckas on the subject of the Kelly Thomas death investigation. Normally I wouldn’t hold out any hope at all for a lucid explanation of what was going on from T-Rack. After all I’m one of the people who refer to Rackauckas as our “Do Nothing DA” for his historically lackadaisical approach to wrong-doers who also happen to be elected officials and cops.

Rackauckas actually did pretty well, for him. The keynote was his claim that “everything is open.” Again, normally I would take that to mean: everything is open – including, and most likely, no findings and the cops skate, as usual. This is different. Although T-Rack claimed he saw no evidence that there was a deliberate intent to kill, he also said that the video is “core evidence” which strongly suggests that he may actually do something.

Now this may be no more than lawyer speak but I am guardedly optimistic, especially since Rackaukas admitted that his investigators have not spoken to any of The Fullerton Six who have refused to speak to them. He also indicated that it wasn’t absolutely necessary to talk to them given the core evidence. Hmm. It seemed to me that the DA was tossing out backhanded signals that some of the cops may want to sing if they want to avoid a long state prison stay for second degree murder. Of course maybe I’m reading too much into this.

On the down side Rackauckas refused to take blame for appointing and not removing Stan Berry,  a good friend of Fullerton Police Chief Sellers to the investigation. This looks bad to everybody in the free world, except Rackauckas. And he said nothing about the possibility of cops cooking up their reports in concert.

 

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

FPD PERJURY!

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Rules for us and rules for them...

A while back we shared the “Go Home Or Go To Jail” video featuring Fullerton Police Department’s downtown wrecking crew assaulting and falsely arresting a bystander who had the temerity to document FPD violence. This happened last fall.

Nobody seemed to know the story about what happened to the man in question. Until now.

Here is a youtube clip featuring KFI’s Bill Carrol and attorney David Borsari who says he represents the guy in question. Please listen to the full interview.

There are two key points here: cooking up a completely implausible story in a police report, and then repeating it to a jury. Of course the video itself shows that the description of events by FPD officers was ludicrous.

This is stoopid, although apparently par for FPD’s course. Creating false reports and making up stories told to a jury has got to be a crime even for a cop, right? Isn’t that what they call perjury? So can we assume our intrepid DA, Tony Rackauckas and his law ‘n order crew are hard at work building a case against everyone associated with this disgrace? Hmm. And of course I have to wonder what the civil suit is going to cost us taxpayers.

And don’t forget that we are asked to wait for an investigation of the Kelly Thomas killing, the official reports about which were orchestrated by some of the same thugs who fabricated the story above, a tale contradicted by the facts and rejected by the jury.

Jeez, is this story of corruption ever going to end?

Yes. With a recall.

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Posted onDead heads

Irony Meter Needle Jumps Into Red

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Over at the big protest in front of the Fullerton Police Department, an arresting sight caught my eye. It was a banner hanging on the rail over the sunken court at department HQ.

Does this apply to the homeless?

And speaking of arresting, perhaps it should have read “Fullerton Police Alert: if approached by FPD assume a fetal position and hold your breath. Otherwise you will be targeted for resisting.”

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Posted onAbout Us

Joe Felz In Wonderland?

by 67 Comments on Joe Felz In Wonderland?
This won't turn out well...

A quick trip to Fullerton Stories reveals a statement by Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz that claims the City never made any “settlement offer” to the family of killer cops victim Kelly Thomas, who was brutally bludgeoned to death by six members of Felz’s police department on July 5th.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

This is just about the shabbiest deception the City has tried yet; verbal hairsplitting to try to dodge the fact that your scumbag lawyer Bruce Praet presented “unofficial” proposals (oh, no not a “settlement,” that can only be authorized by the Council) to the family of the victim. Well, goddam, that’s a distinction without a difference! Felz, shame on you for running this turd up the flagpole, and shame on some stooge named Davis Barber at Fullerton Stories for accepting and propagating this ludicrous trash as pertinent to anything. Maybe now Felz thinks no one will we be inclined to ask who was responsible for authorizing Praet to contact the family in the first place. Was it you, Joe? Or did you even know about it?

Probably the worst part is the not-so-subtle insinuation that Ron Thomas, Kelly’s dad has been intentionally misleading the public.

Soon there will be nothing but a grotesque smile...

Up until now I was willing to give Felz the benefit of the doubt – that he was just some poor former museum director dufus in waaaaaay over his head. Now it would appear that he was either completely out of the loop (bad) or, complicit in a nasty plot to discredit the Thomas family (worse) and protect the assess of some crooked cops.

He needs to go, too. Now.

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

SORDID SEXUAL ASSAULTS IN THE BACKSEAT OF FPD PATROL CAR?

by 86 Comments on SORDID SEXUAL ASSAULTS IN THE BACKSEAT OF FPD PATROL CAR?

For some folks sexual fondling in the backseat of a car may evoke happy memories of teenage hormonal overload and good clean fun. But when you’re handcuffed by a police officer on trumped up charges only to be sexually groped by that cop, things take on a much more sinister character.

Night time is the right time...

Like sexual battery and federal civil rights violations, just for starters.

Here are the stories of two women who claim that Fullerton cop Albert Rincon, aided and abetted by Officer Christopher Wren essentially kidnapped them and sexually assaulted them in 2008 while they were in custody – in the backseat of Rincon’s patrol car, to be precise. Rather than rehash the story, I’ll let you read the complaint filed in federal court. Checkout pages 5 through 12 of 35 for the sordid details.

Three long years later the case is winding its way through the court system toward a November 2011 trial. The case found its way to the federal courtroom of Andrew Guilford, who knows all about pervy cops – having presided over the Michael Carona corruption trial. Check out the Joint Conference Scheduling Report:

Note #1: the City of Fullerton offered the victims $7,500 to settle; and the alleged victims assert that the City knew of Rincon’s prior history of sexual misconduct! I wonder what that history was.

Note #2: The DA never prosecuted the alleged victims for any crimes related to their arrests. Is Rincon a Brady cop?

Note #3: the City’s lawyer, Bruce Praet is the same charming individual who allegedly offered FPD beating-death victim Kelly Thomas’ dad a cash settlement before threatening to drag his mentally ill son’s name through the mud; and that before “all the facts were known,” an admonition the cops seem to think only applies to us citizens and taxpayers – not themselves.

Fullerton, this is your out of control police department; it is enabled and protected by  majority of your city council. What the Hell are you going to do about it?

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Posted onDead heads

FAIL To The Chief

by 60 Comments on FAIL To The Chief
We have nothing to hide. Now it's off to the Caribbean...

We received the following correspondence from a long-time Friend.

The controversy surrounding the recent beating death of Kelly Thomas, a local mentally ill homeless man at the hands of the Fullerton Police has been marked by the absence of Chief Michael Sellers. The FPD has instead relied on its regular spokesman Sgt. Andrew Goodrich for information about the case. This might be thought an appropriate channel of communication if this were anything like standard police work. It is not.  Six sworn peace officers beat a man to near death (he died days later) in the parking lot of the Fullerton Transportation Center, and no explanation has been offered other than that the man offered physical resistance and that a thorough investigation will follow.

The brutality of the beating has left many in this city asking how it was that six trained police officers could not subdue a single unarmed man without killing him. Chief Sellers, who is reportedly vacationing, neither returned to Fullerton to appear before the press and public or even offered a written statement about the tragedy. His complete absence does nothing to assure the people of Fullerton that there is responsible leadership being exercised over the officers in his department.

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Pringle’s Cash Cow Stops Giving Milk

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When the money ran out did Der Pringle?

Thanks to Friend Tony Serra for providing a link to a Sac Bee story about Anaheim’s former Mayor-for-Hire Kurt Pringle quitting the California High Speed Rail Board.

Could it be true? Sure looks like it. According to the story he wants Governor Brown to be able to appoint someone who represents his point of view. I wonder what that point of view might be. Ethics? Brown, who as Attorney General took note of Pringle’s conflicts of interest over many years may have asked him to go.

So Der Rat is jumping off Das Sinkingboot; timely, too, now that all the revelations of incompetence, waste, misinformation, and decreased funding are dragging the HSR to a well-deserved grave.

The funniest thing in the piece is the glowing valediction to Pringle from fellow HSR barnacle, Tom Umberg, who in the past has proved there is no moral morass too low for a politician to sink into, and who recently penned a pro-HSR op-ed piece in the Register that was so incompetent I’m not going to link to it to save Umberg any more embarrassment.

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

CONSUMER WARNING: It’s The New West

by 19 Comments on CONSUMER WARNING: It’s The New West

For all you folks out there that are thinking about dining and drinking, or drinking, or even art walking in downtown Fullerton, think twice before you venture into the battle zone. A few years back, your esteemed Mayor, Dr. Dick Jones, declared the downtown “unsafe,” and called it the “Wild West;” he said that “there are people down there that don’t look like me,” and called them “last week’s prison felons.” Here is Jones in all his befuddled glory:

So what did the city do? It looks like they spent one and a half million dollars  per year to employ a collection of goons to work the downtown beat who, with exception of a uniform, may be hard to distinguish from the folks they go after – last week’s prison felons.

The original problem, created by Jones & Co. persists. And now I invite you to consider whether the remedy isn’t worse than the disease.

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Posted onChronic Failure

Go Home or Go To Jail

by 124 Comments on Go Home or Go To Jail

Awhile back Grover Cleveland posted on how the Fullerton City Council’s creation of a mess downtown led to the rise of an FPD goon squad to quell the crime wave. The only problem was that the FPD goon squad added to the crime wave. Here’s a reminder. An innocent bystander is beat up and arrested. Later he is tried for assaulting a cop to which Fullerton cops Kenton Hampton and Framk Nguyen swear in a court of law. Only problem is it didn’t happen, but that didn’t stop the FPD and the DA from trying to put an innocent man in prison.

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