The history of Redevelopment failures should weigh heavily in the upcoming recall campaign. The disasters and boondoggles are many, but none so painful, perhaps, than the Poisoned Park. This is a saga of utter incompetence with zero accountability; in other words, business as usual for our illustrious City Councilmen Bankhead and Jones. McPension gets off this hook because he wasn’t part of this calamity, although you could bet your bottom dollar he would have gone along with it, too.
This post was originally published 27 months ago. The public is still fenced off from the contamination.
– Joe Sipowicz
It was supposed to be a park. That’s how they pitched it over at City Hall. The only problem was that nobody asked for a park. And nobody outside City Hall wanted a park. Commonsense could have predicted the future of a park.
We are referring, of course, to the Union Pacific Park on West Truslow Avenue, the sad history of which has been well documented on these pages; and one of many in a conga line of Redevelopment disasters perpetrated by Terry Galvin and Gary Chalupsky of the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency- in this case aided and abetted by Susan Hunt the lady dragon of the Community Services Department, and former City Manager Jim Armstrong, mastermind of a million Fullerton failures. We have also stressed the fact that so far nobody has been held accountable for this miserable failure and waste of millions of tax dollars. No one.
Last Tuesday, during the public comments portion of the City Council Show, a longtime resident who lives on Truslow Avenue, across from The Great Disaster spoke about the problems the City had created when they decided to bestow a park upon unwilling residents. Below we share the video of the residents statement, as well as the response by City Manager Chris Myers. The video is a bit long, but well worth the watch. Borrachos, meth-heads, gang members. Who else did the City think was going to frequent this park?
In the end Myers admits that the park is being shut down – toilets closed, tables removed, fences going up, etc. You can decide for yourselves if can detect any contrition in his voice for the complete and unarguable waste of the millions spent on acquiring, designing, and building this park THAT IS ONLY FIVE YEARS OLD.
Now the city wants to create a “reuse committee,” ostensibly to figure out how to clean up the mess they created.
Here’s a free bit of advice from FFFF: SELL THE PROPERTY ASAP! And let’s not forget a complete investigation into this entire disaster with accountability for the people who created this mess. Perhaps the three councilperson who don’t have their fingerprints all over this debacle, Quirk, Keller, and Nelson, will be willing to demand accountability.
I’m starting to get a little annoyed about a system that coddles public employees, especially those who are supposed to be providing “public” safety, yet who seem to creating more public danger than safety, especially when budget time rolls around.
Let’s take our current police chief, Michael Sellers, who is on some sort of indefinite sick leave. Is he really sick? His doctor says so and like our idiot mayor, I am willing to believe he somehow got hold of a medical degree and a license to be a doctor.
So what’s ailing Sellers? Initial reports said high blood pressure and stress. Hell, I give my cat medicine for its high blood pressure, so that’s a load of bullshit right there. Stress?!! Jeez, some tax payers rightfully conclude that workplace stress is one of the reasons people like Sellers are paid huge salaries of almost $20,000 a month.
Maybe Sellers is just sick all of a sudden about being held accountable for something he was supposed to be in charge of.
And now that Sellers has disappeared to the friendly beach-side confines of San Clemente, he still pulls down that fabulous salary for doing nothing! At this point some cynical folks might assert that Sellers wasn’t doing anything anyway, so what’s the difference? Hard to argue against that. But Sellers has a boss – City Manager Joe Felz; and Joe Felz has five bosses – the city council. So who the Hell has been in charge of the Fullerton police the past two years? Nobody, apparently. It’s true that Pat McPension left Sellers a culture of corruption, but still, Sellers must have known what was going on.
Will he be back? The Three Mummified Miscreants don’t seem to think so, but their lawyer has told them they can’t talk about it.
They even put a little chocolate mint on my pillow!
Here’s a really fun post I did about 20 months ago making sure people knew that it wasn’t just a spendthrift Democrat who blew over a grand at a fancy hotel at a useless League of Cities meeting. Turns out the RINOs Bankhead and Jones did, too. The way they see it, it’s their money, not yours.
– The Desert Rat
Okay, like I said the other day, I’m a fair guy. Fullerton Mayor Don Bankhead attended that fall of 2008 League of Cities Meeting in Long Beach right along side Pam Keller. Like Keller, Bankhead also put in for a double occupancy room for three nights. Here’s the smoking gun.
Over $1100 for a swank hotel room barely 25 miles from Bankhead’s house. And this during the vast economic melt-down of late 2008. Bad judgment? Sure, to you or me. But not to a guy who has likely spent twenty years going to these schmoozefests on our dime.
Sayonara, baby!
A juicy side-irony is the fact that this is the same piece o’ manpower that Doc Jones seems to think is the right guy to lead Fullerton through tough economic times. Which pretty much tells you all you need to know about the dimwit Jones. Hell, Jones was at the no-tell hotel, too!
Well, anyway, Don Bankhead, like Pam Keller, is up for re-election this year, if in fact he decides to run, which of course he will. So you can bet the desert acreage that both of them are going to be targets because of their willingness – no, eagerness – to waste, public money.
So Pat McKinley, as the former 16 year Fullerton Police Chief who hired Ramos, Cicinelli, Wolfe, Hampton, Craig and Blatney, you have finally spoken out. The man who disregarded public safety and the FPD’s own requirements for hiring police officers, you say you are sickened about what has happened.
Not nearly as sickened as we the public are with you, sir.
Still waiting for the authorities to tell him what to do...
You say you cannot understand how the goons you hired could have gone so far astray from their police training. Why not? They were all trained so well by you! All police officers knew by your own past actions that the rules of the FPD did not have to be followed faithfully. You hired an unfit one-eyed police officer named Jay Cicinelli, just because your friend at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Captain Hillman, recommended him. This was after the LAPD officially stated that he was unfit for any police duty, period.
Really? You ignored FPD minimum standards for becoming a police officer and now we are supposed to believe you are just sickened and heartbroken to find out that some of your handpicked thugs have actually not followed proper Fullerton police procedure. What a shock that must be to you, sir! When the you clearly demonstrated to your entire department that rules are made to be broken, what else can you expect?
You are surprised and shocked. You expect anybody to believe that?
Now you proclaim to the press that you really wanted to speak out before but the city attorney advised against it. What were you afraid of? What were you hiding from?
Council members Whitaker and Quirk-Silva spoke out early and often. It seems that at the same time you, the former big brave police chief was cowering behind the city council dais, a petite female council member and a newly elected council member had the guts and integrity to let their voices be heard.
On CNN August 10th, Mr. McKinley, you responded to a direct question (after a 3 or 4 second pause) that you had not seen the city video. A few minutes later you stated the following:
“I am going to guess now that there are only two that are deeply involved and the investigation will show that 4 will have no culpability.”
The combination of the pause before you answered that very simple yes or no question, plus the fact that only someone who saw that video could come to the conclusion of how many officers would probably be charged, leads me to seriously doubt your denial of seeing that video. It simply does not add up. Common sense and logic tells me that you have not been very forthcoming with the public.
And you still believe in your heart of hearts that you should not be recalled. Are you kidding me?
Obey me and you won't get hurt. Well, scratch that. You're gonna get hurt anyway...
The systemic pattern of abuse that defines the Fullerton Police Department is well-established. But the allegations detailed in this newly emerging case might give even hardened FFFF readers pause. There seems to be no end to accounts of thuggish, sadistic Fullerton cops getting their sick jollies by brutalizing innocent citizens.
Fullerton College student and Fullerton resident Christopher Spicer Janku, 23 at the time, was with 4 friends around 1:30 AM on the night of August 17, 2008 when the car one of them was driving was pulled over for purportedly running a stop sign on Wilshire Avenue, in Downtown Fullerton. Chris tells his story:
All rookie looking officers who were looking for fun, I’ve never heard so much rude language from any cop. They arrested me on false charges of being drunk in public, (even though they wouldn’t give me a sobriety test even after I asked them to give me one because they knew I wasn’t intoxicated). I was sitting on the curb with my hands behind my back, a cop came over to put hand cuffs on me, he told me to put my hands behind my back, but they already were. Before I could even say “officer my hands are already crossed behind my back” the officer grabbed my neck and slammed my face into the curb while yelling out “stop resisting!” Another officer grabbed me by the legs and dragged me by the knees, shredding my knee caps.
There were five officers at the scene. The gangleader and arresting office was one Officer Perry Thayer. Janku goes on to describe his torture at the hands of this dedicated public servant:
Another officer then TOOK HIS BOOT and slammed it on my head, pinning it between the curb and used it as leverage to squeeze pressure on my head. I HONESTLY THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE, I WAS SCREAMING PLEASE STOP I’M NOT RESISTING, I THOUGHT MY HEAD WAS GOING TO CAVE IN. I still have migraines to this day. another cop came over and dropped kneed me in the back. Everybody watching was in awe, THEY KEPT YELLING OUT “PLEASE STOP, HE’S NOT RESISTING!”
He (Thayer) was the one who slammed me face first into a curb and then put my head in the gutter face first with his boot on my head. He purposely put my face into a gutter full of disgusting dirty gutter water to the point where I was almost choking on it, and pushed down on my head to the point where my head almost caved it and I was screaming for my life. If you look at my mug shot, there is nothing but dirty, muddy gutter water and blood all over my face.
Next, our helpful Bobbies – Officer Thayer and his partner Officer Anthony Diaz – took Janku on a joyride from hell. Chris explains:
They put me in the squad car without seatbelting me in and went on a joy ride while blaring satanic heavy metal music in my ear until my eardrums almost exploded. Around 6-7 times they would hit the gas and then slam on the brakes, so that I was forced to keep cracking my face on the cage.
FFFF readers will recall that although clearly unconstitutional, this is a common FPD procedure, informally known as a “screen test.” Spicer remembers seeing the car pass the Police station, and asked the cops where they were taking him. Their response: “Shut the F up.” After the brake-checks:
I came to the department and automatically filed a complaint about the brutality. They put me in a jail cell bleeding from my head down to my feet and bruised and battered WITHOUT EVEN GIVING ME MEDICAL AID.
Janku was unable to figure out what exactly had set Thayer off. Maybe when he asked Thayer to not thumb through the photos on his cell phone? Or perhaps this cretinous goon needs no excuse to assault, batter, and violate the civil rights of the taxpayers who pay his ample salary? Janku’s friend was arrested as well, for simply asking for his ID back from the cops who had taken and failed to return it.
As for the police brutality complaint? A complete and total stonewall. The detective in charge deliberately misinterpreted the clear audio recording of Janku’s friends yelling “he’s not resisting!” and asked him “why were you resisting?” He also had the temerity to ask Janku why he had blood and mud all over his face.
After checking regularly for months and getting no response, Janku was told recently that he had better contact an attorney. Of course, this is after the statute of limitations had run out and a lawsuit is impossible. What is Janku left with, besides the bruises and migraines? Just the awful memories:
I’ve been afraid to go outside my house ever since, I have nightmares and panic attacks from the injustice.
Janku adds that he is unwilling to go to downtown Fullerton since the incident, and one of his friends there that evening is so terrified he refuses to set foot in Fullerton, period. Way to help out our local economy, coppers!
#66 Perry Thayer
Unlike the marginally more fortunate Veth Mam and Edward Quinonez, Janku is unable to sue the City and make them pay for their abuses. And Officer Thayer? Why, he went on to win the coveted Turkey Bowl police football championship along with his buds – the noted false arrest/perjury specialists Kenton Hampton and Frank Nguyen, of Veth Mam lawsuit fame.
Just another night of death-metal mayhem, beating, torture, false arrest, and random abuse of the public by Fullerton’s Finest. No pattern to see here, folks. Move along, now. No need for that department-wide Department of Justice investigation of police brutality and misconduct. Keep moving.
By the way, who are you and whom do you represent?
Last April I wrote this look back at what sure seemed like monkey business on the part of FPD spokesorifice Andrew Goodrich. Knowing what we know now about the lawless way that FPD operates when so inclined, the idea that they leaked potentially embarrasing information about someone they considered a political enemy is in no way surprising.
Many have wondered how Goodrich, after having failed to tell a single truth at any juncture of the Kelly Thomas murder epsiode, kept his job. The obvious answer is that the City Council, the City Manager, and the Acting Chief think he is doing a good job.
It could also be that because the estimable Goodrich is an officer in the police union they don’t have the guts to take this valuable piece of manpower and put him back on the street.
– Joe Sipowicz
The other day, our Travis Kiger engaged in a comical e-mail exchange with Fullerton PD’s $130,000 per year spokesperson, Sergeant Andrew Goodrich. Here it is:
Note that according to Goodrich, FPD policy is that the police log book may be perused at the station – but not copied. When unexpectedly queried as to how the Voice of OC(EA) managed to get a copy of a domestic dispute entry involving Assemblyman Chris Norby last September, the good Sergeant noted that it was due to the “constant” requests they had from the media. Hmm. Well, that makes so little sense that we may as well backtrack to review what happened. Something ain’t quite kosher. In fact a smell is emanating from this pile of Goodrich road apples.
Last fall, 72nd Assemblyman Chris Norby seems to have gotten into an argument with his wife. Some sort of delivery person, adventitiously arriving at the front door of Casa Norby, called the cops, who arrived, took a statement, and left. The date of the incident was September 2nd.
The Voice of OC(EA) finally got around to posting about the issue, here, on September 27 – almost four weeks after the fact.The Register followed up with a story a couple of days later. Other than that, general media silence. Wow, Andy, what a feeding frenzy!
Now that we know Goodrich’s excuse for violating FPD policy is nonsense, we are entitled to ask why Goodrich was so cavalier about passing out copies of the log – against policy; and further, we ought to ask how and why the Norby episode came to light at all.
Note that the report posted by the Voice of OC(EA) was time stamped September 20, seven days before it was published. This means that they either sat on the story for seven days, or they received the document several days after it was printed. Hmm. And remember, according to Goodrich, the log is regularly purged.
Although it is possible that the Voice took a week to getting around to publishing its story, is it at all likely that an intrepid Voice reporter came across an FPD log entry in the course of his typical day’s toil? Or is it a whole Hell of a lot more likely that an employee of the Fullerton Police Department, growing tired of waiting for some lucky journalist to discover what would surely be an embarrassment for Norby, leaked it to a pro-union news source?
Mr. Goodrich could help clear this up by sharing his records of media requests for this information, and explain the date on the printout.
Of course it is possible that some other party reading the log came across the item, recognized Norby’s address, and passed it on to the Voice; but that would be supported by pretty long odds.
In any case, there certainly is an object lesson here for all of us, Friends. Privacy seems to be selectively practiced by the Fullerton Police Department. And mostly it is not practiced to protect the public – but them.
Frequent commenter, blessusall stopped by yesterday to share a thought about the formal “apology” on today’s City Council Agenda. As you all know the apology was from the City to the Nordell family because last year a bunch of heavily armed FPD cops broke into their house by mistake in some sort of botched drug raid.
blessusall opined about the irony of this insincere apology (got only by dodged persistence by the Nordells) vis-a-vis all the other FPD misbehaving’ going on lately and suggested the City might:
Who else, indeed. These pages are strewn with the miscreance, mayhem, and murder perpetrated by Pat McKinley’s hirees and trainees. At this point even the most die-hard cop apologist must be wondering about the stuff that hasn’t even emerged yet, and how much all this crap is going to cost the taxpayers of Fullerton.
Apology? Hell, yes! And why not demand that apology tonight!
Item 2 of the Consent Calendar should upset your applecart. The item is for the City to receive grant funding to solve cold cases. Sounds good, right? Here is the bitter sweet pill the Council will shove down our throats tomorrow.
The grant will fund 2-3 part-time reserve officers to look into these cases. According to Police Spokes-hole Andy Goodbar, normal reserves aren’t getting paid and haven’t for more than a year due to lack of funds. This grant will allow 2-3 reserves to earn $22 per hour. “Not on my dime, so it’s ok” you might say. No, these aren’t your typical reserves. These will be RETIRED POLICE OFFICERS with their big FAT pensions earning an extra $22 per hour to solve cases they couldn’t solve when they were on duty. (Maybe after Bankhead and McKinley get recalled, they can go back to work as reserves). Remember, these same retired cops are already making 90% of their last year’s salary. Now they want another $22 an hour to finish what they couldn’t do before. I think they should do it without any additional pay.
Item 4 will take long-time City Attorney consultants Jones-Mayer off the police misconduct and civil rights cases. At $200 per hour, I bet we get exactly what we pay for with Lewis Brisois Bisgaard and Smith defending the City’s use of force policy and criminal actions of several police officers while on-duty.
And whatever the esquires at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard and Smith can’t figure out, I’m sure the cats at Carpenter Rothans and Dumont can. Item 5 is an agreement with the firm for more legal services. Good Lord we must be subsidizing half the firms in Orange County ! These legal hounds will cost us $175 an hour. I guess they’ll have to make it up in volume.
Item 6 will bring us closer to Vegas! This is the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for a Fullerton to Las Vegas train line. If we make it cheap and easy for college students to hop a train to Vegas, do they take our Vegas-style problems (and money) with them? High-Speed Rail to San Francisco was a stupid idea. This isn’t quite as stupid though there appears to be a lot of details yet to be discussed.
Item 7 seeks to place adult businesses closer to churches. The municipal code says in short that adult businesses cannot be permitted within 750 feet of a church. Staff would like to strike “churches” from the current law. The code also says these businesses must be 750 feet away from school, parks, playgrounds, day care facilities, etc. Those who attend churches also know that many have their own day care and schools with play grounds. The Planning Commission took up this issue last week and voted to leave the law alone.
Item 8 is an official apology and acknowledgment by the Police Department for raiding the wrong house. You might recall when the FPD burst through the back door of a reverend’s home during a drug raid on the wrong house. Nice one FPD! You can add that to the growing list for the F’dPD.
Item 9 is the Lemon Park/Maple Center improvements. After looking at the scope of improvements, I cannot imagine how spending $3-million on these two facilities will improve the community. There is also some creative bookkeeping going on- somebody call Levinson.
Item 10 will allow St. Mary’s to borrow the baseball field next door for their annual carnival. Their usual location behind the Community Center is under construction.
Item 11 will open up one of the St. Jude parking structures for people using the Brea Dam Recreation area. It also calls for massive improvements in the area. Parking will cost $1 for the first half-hour and a maximum of $5 per day. The report says that it costs about $96,000 to operate and maintain the new structure and the revenue will go into a special account. Parking in this area will include the structure on the east side of St. Jude (behind hospital), the Tennis Center , Fullerton Community Nursery School , and the YMCA.
From the “John and Ken” webpage at the KFI website (photo caption by me):
FULLERTON RECALL!
See no evil, hear no evil, speak evil...
Recall Councilman Pat McKinley, Mayor Pro Tem Don Bankhead, and Mayor ‘Dick’ Jones! These three idiot city council officials need to be held accountable for letting the Fullerton Police Department become a cesspool of corruption, full of rogue cops who murdered Kelly Thomas.
Give them the political death penalty and remove them from office!
Location:Fullerton along Highland Ave., between Amerige and Commonwealth
We will be there Wednesday, October 5 from 3-7 PM with recall petitions for you to sign!
Show up, sign a petition and stay for the show! Only Fullerton registered voters can sign the petition, but everyone is welcome to come.
Fullerton residents wishing to sign the petition or gather signatures can learn more at www.fullertonrecall.com.
Click HERE to watch Pat McKinley defend the policemen on CNN!
