It’s funny, in a sick sort of way, but the very types who used to bray the loudest about the need for “social justice” have been virtually silent in Fullerton in the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder at the hands of members of an out-of-control police department.
The graying establishment Democrats had been hiding behind their drawn chintz curtains, curled up in an intellectual fetal position on their plastic slip-covered Naugahyde sofas. It was just too scary and, well, controversial to say anything, let alone actually doanything.
Fortunately, others, such as Stephan Baxter, Marlena Carrillo and Lauren Becker are willing to keep up the pressure.
Here is a link to Becker’s website that reminds us exactly what a Culture of Corruption can do, and try to get away with, when left to its own devices. It also reminds us what we can do to push back against an entrenched system.
The bars stayed open and the bands played on…
Democrats like Jan Flory, and Molly McClanahan and Pam Keller didn’t say a word in the aftermath of the murder. No, they only got outraged when people outside their cozy little circle took the reins of government out of the hands of three incompetent old fools.
These people are a lot more worried about the fate of the bureaucracy than they are about the people of Fullerton. All of them.
I just picked up these missives from the FFFF in-box this morning. First this:
I know who Iwant to work for, and it isn’t you!
Hey, FFFFsters, I just want to point out the obvious. Jan Flory just got fourteen grand, cash, from the corrupt cop union. She also got ten grand from some land developer named Phelps. The rest of her dough came from “retired” individuals, most of them former public employees.
Cops, developers, massively pensioned government workers. Wow. Talk about special interests!
– Sick of BooHoos
Good point, S.o.B. And then this:
I was driving along Chapman a few days ago and saw Pam Keller on the corner of Harbor. She was holding up a sign promoting the candidacy of Rick Alvarez, a Republican! Here’s what I want to know. Why won’t the establishment Dems in this town support a real good candidate like Jane Rands? Why the Hell not? What is wrong with Keller, and Quirk and Flory and their ilk?
Are they so in bed with the FPOA thugs and baboons that they can’t recognize an authentic progressive? I guess that question answers itself.
– ACLU Mom
Good point, Mom. The Old Guard liberals in Fullerton don’t stand for anything, of course, except for the prerogatives conferred upon the department heads in City Hall (see first letter, above). Please address you questions to Keller herself and see if you can get an intelligible answer. Or you could ask this gentleman:
Seeing Jan Flory in action I have come to recognize a bitter, humorless shrew who happens to be a cheerleader for the department heads in City Hall and the worse their actions, the less accountability she requires.
Is she also losing her marbles? I don’t know. But I do know she wrote this weird entry on Facebook in which, among other things, admits that she employed “undocumented” domestics:
You’re going to love this one.
Last night I picked up a cryptic email message from O.Co. Register reporter, Tony Saavedra, asking me to call him today. We talked about 10:30 this morning. Apparently Tony had received a copy of a letter from an anonymous “concerned court employee” that had been sent to Shawn Nelson, our esteemed county supervisor. Tony said that Shawn had turned the letter over the District Attorney for investigation. WHAT! Tony wanted to know if I had been contacted by the D.A. WHAT!
My next 2 questions were: 1. Am I going to be arrested for something? That would be a bummer for the campaign, and 2. What was the letter about?
As described to me by Tony, the anonymous letter described an encounter that the writer had with me mid-August when I appeared in North Court with a 19-year-old friend of mine, Jackie, to deal with a traffic citation Jackie received the month before. Jackie was cited for an illegal left hand turn and driving without a license. The letter accused me of asking the court for some kind of special favor for Jackie. (I’m still trying to get a copy of the letter.)
Let’s back up. Jackie is one of the “Dream” kids. She was brought to this country by her undocumented parents when she was 8 and has lived here since then. Because Jackie has no documents herself, she (like hundreds of thousands) cannot get a driver’s license. I’ve known Jackie for 10 years, and she is a good girl who has done everything asked of her. She earned a 3.9 GPA in high school and has just finished her first year at Fullerton College with a 3.7 GPA. She volunteered as a poll worker for the June election. She has applied to work as a cadet for the City of Anaheim, but cannot get a job because she has no papers.
Once upon a time, Jackie’s parents worked in my home cleaning my house, and I developed a friendship with Jackie. Although her parents haven’t worked for me for a while, Jackie and I keep in touch. She was terrified of going to court by herself because she didn’t know if she might be arrested by ICE officials and deported. I offered to go to court with her to help out if I could.
When Jackie’s matter was called, I stood up with Jackie and notified the court that I was an attorney appearing to vouch for Jackie’s character and ask the court to cut Jackie a break if it had any discretion at all in the matter. The judge heard me out, and asked if Jackie was driving without a license. Jackie admitted that she was, and pled guilty to both counts. Jackie and I went downstairs where she had to pay nearly $600 for the fine.
This is what gets me. Based on the facts set forth above,
1. Why would Nelson (an attorney himself) turn such a letter over to the D.A. for investigation?
2. How did Tony Saavedra get the letter conveniently “leaked” to him?
3. Does this have anything to do with my being the frontrunner in the city council election? YA THINK! And more important,
4. Does this have anything to do with Shawn’s tight relationship with Tony Bushala who has been attacking me on his blog for the past 4 years.
Mr. Nelson, you owe me an explanation.
Apparently the progeny of these illegal aliens recently got a citation including driving without a license. What the girl’s GPA or employment status has to do with the ticket is anybody’s guess. It sounds like Flory did what the anonymous letter claims: asked the court for a favor.
Apparently Flory has got her corset in a twist; in her warped worldview she is the “frontrunner” and Shawn Nelson turned over an anonymous letter to the DA to derail her frontrunnership. I don’t know about any of that, but I do know that her obsessive paranoia about Tony Bushala doesn’t seem to fit the profile of a frontrunner – or even a completely balanced person.
I’m not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure Flory didn’t break any laws. However that letter should be turned over to the California Bar Association to let them decide if that was appropriate behavior.
Believe it or not, Acting Chief Dan Hughes, the alleged “reform” chief the Fullerton Police Department needs so desperately seems to the beneficiary of a campaign – to have himself appointed Chief permanently.
Check out this:
So who’s playing games? Is it our amiable Acting Chief who seems to have zero control over his badged and armed goons?
Or perhaps it is the greasy little mole Doug Chaffee who decided to agendize the issue of giving Hughes the job even though the council majority has stated that it wants to do a recruitment to get the best candidate for the job. Nice job politicizing a personnel appointment.
Now I don’t know about you, but I believe the appointment of Hughes to permanently take over the cesspool would be pretty bad. The Old Guard would dearly love the voters of Fullerton to think the Kelly Thomas murder was a weird one-off, something that can never happen again because Rusty Kennedy has taught the poor, unwitting Fullerton cops how to deal with the mentally ill homeless population.
They always cleaned up after me!
Um, not so fast, Mrs. Flory. Please explain the following personnel issues and embarrassing events that have occurred under the rancid regime of which Acting Chief Danny has been a lead player:
1) Erroneous raid on Robin Nordell’s home. No apology for a year.
2) Kelly Mejia steals iPad from Miami TSA checkpoint.
3) Todd Major rips off Explorers to feed pill habit.
4) Miguel Siliceo popped for sending wrong man to jail.
5) Kenton Hampton assaults and arrests and tries to convict innocent Veth Mam.
6) Ditto Frank Nguyen.
7) Cary Tong violates policy in arrest of Trevor Clark; City sued.
8) Albert Rincon sexually assaults as many as a dozen women in his custody; civil suit settled by two victims for $350,000.
9) Vince Mater charged by DA with destruction of evidence after the jailhouse suicide of Dean Gochenour.
10) April Baughman arrested for ripping off the FPD evidence room for a period of years. Where is the accomplice? Who was taking inventory? Such things are not for us to know.
11) City sued again – by Edward Quinonez who alleges he was accosted and falsely arrested by – Kenton Hampton. What a multi-tasker!
12) Phony “horning” tickets handed out by FPOA boss Barry Coffman to intimidate protesters; Hughes is seen sending out instructions.
13) DA charges Manuel Ramos, Joe Wolfe and Jay Cicinelli in the death of Kelly Thomas; Hughes lets them view video, re-write reports, pats all on back, handshakes all around and lets them stay on streets.
14) Danny says he’s watched video 400 times; says it will give public the real story (he is right).
15) Danny says those who perceive a Culture of Corruption are liars or ignorant.
15) Danny returns Craig, Hampton and Blatney to duty.
16) Permit Internal Affairs Sergeant Jason Sheen to bring a bong into the council chamber for demonstration in front of kiddie soccer players.
I don’t know about you, but I have seen as much of Acting Chief Danny as I care to. It’s obvious this man is a congenial glad-hander. But he is inextricably entangled in the Culture of Corruption with absolutely no interest in recognizing past FPD malfeasance, let alone atoning for it.
Just as bad, it is clear from recent events that he has absolutely no control, or no interest in controlling his employees.
Just the other day Fullerton City Council candidate Jan Flory was heard to remark about needed reform: protecting the poor, underpaid and overworked city staff that used to bring her all those important projects when she was “on council” right after the last ice age.
Well here’s a staff-driven project that her beloved staff dumped on her and which she happily voted for: The Poisoned Park.
Don’t go there…
We did a whole series on this fiasco that you can read about here and here. In a nutshell, the City bought contaminated property from the Union Pacific Railroad on West Truslow for a community park. Forget the basic fact that nobody in the neighborhood wanted a park, let alone a gang hang out; the land was there and a private party wanted to buy it.
Fullerton’s stellar bureaucracy led by Susan Hunt (Parks Director), Bob Hodson (City Engineer), Jaim Armstrong (City Manager), Gary Chalupsky (Redevelopment Director), and Paul Dudley (Planning) just couldn’t get in the way of a pending deal fast enough. The City steeped in and bought the land for over a million bucks, then they built their park. More millions spent. All approved by Jan Flory.
And then disaster. It transpires that there was a toxic flume under the site. A fence was set up around the offending park and it remains closed to this day, over ten years after it was purchased, falling into decay. Nobody had ever bothered to to a proper environmental assessment and make the sale contingent upon its results.
The Poisoned Park may well be the exemplar of an incompetent collection of boobs from whom no accountability was ever demanded and from whom none was ever delivered.
But to Jan Flory’s “lights” these are the “heart of the City.” Hmm.
It sure as hell isn’t you. Or any other taxpayer or citizen. Nope. Here she is holding forth on who really matters to her. Her idea of ‘reform” is to place the interests of the City’s workers ahead of yours.
In an era of bloated salaries and, crippling pension burdens on the taxpayer and their great-great grandkids Jan Flory cares first and foremost about the plight of unionized government workers!
Did we put words in this dinosaur’s mouth? Nope. She did it all by herself.
Sometimes you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Like the case in Philly where a local businessman may be sued by the Redevelopment Agency for cleaning up trash and beautifying a piece of blighted Agency-owned property that they willfully refused to clean up. So ths guy spends 20 big ones of his own dough since the City blatantly ignored its own mess, and is now looking at a potential lawsuit – a lawsuit some asshole city bureaucrat says is based on “principle.” Principle. Now that’s a scream.
What’s really funny is that if the city had done the work it would have cost twenty times as much and taken ten times longer.
Of course apologists of Fullerton’s former Redevelopment Agency (you know who they are) would be quick to point out is that this sort incompetence and arrogance never happened in Fullerton; Fullerton Redevelopment folks were just so darned…well… you know.
But consider this: Fullerton has had a long and inglorious Redevelopment history that includes building, then demolishing concrete trestles along Harbor, giving away a public sidewalk to a politically connected apaign contributor, subsidizing dozens of boondoggles, supporting architectural design Nazi-ism, stealing an old lady’s property to give to a car dealer, and nasty little sales tax kick backs from Redevelopment funds – all done to promote more tax revenue to pay for pensions, League of City junkets, and all those inevitable step pay increases for the gang.
A final thought: even though Redevelopment is supposedly dead in California you can bet the farm (if they don’t steal it for High Speed Rail) that the lobbyists are busy at work in Sacramento trying to revive it, and that local mall fry politicians and local political wannabes are real eager for it to come back.
Here is a fun image I just harvested from the Orange Juice blog, apparently the creation of local liberal activist Stephan Baxter who has gotten it into his noggin that Fullerton politicians should be held accountable for their actions (or to be more precise, their inaction) in the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder at the hands of members of the FPD. Funny the ideas some folks have.
Even more disturbing to some, Baxter doesn’t seem to care that the object of his scorn happens to be an old Democrat war horse named Jan Flory. who really loves the FPD.
Since I do not want to be accused of being sexist I shall refrain from a literary reference to Macbeth. I would note however that there is not enough brainpower in this picture to light a match.
Two observations. First “Kitty” Jaramillo seems to think it is “time for a change.” She never seemed to think it was time for a change when the FPD was beating people to death, so that tells you all you need to know about her, even if you didn’t know she was a well-pensioned former City employee.
I ain’t a swallerin’ that!
Somebody better tell Mrs. Flory to quit wearing those rayon muu muu things and those cheap plastic beads. They scream out 1973. Which is probably when she bought them. Meeeeow. Hiss!!!!
P.S. Friends, for an added treat enjoy this picture of FPOA boss and serial prevaricator (or hoplessly incompetent) Andrew Goodrich proclaiming the Jaramillo buffet safe for FPOA consumption.
“Several guest sustained broken bones rushing for the cold taquitos.”
