Category: MSM Falls on Face

Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Back Room Deals at the FPD; Hughes Wants Blatney, Craig and Hampton Back on Our Streets

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What we have here is failure to communicate...

Acting Chief Dan Hughes has been trying real hard lately to peddle the notion that he is in charge of a new and improved Fullerton Police Department, even though when you get right down to it there really wasn’t all that much to fix – just some irritating communication problems.

Although the scribes at the OC Register have apparently bought into this malarky, others who have seen the veritable conga line of crime perpetrated by the boys and girls in FPD blue, are a long way from being convinced. After all, the first step toward recovery is admitting the problem right?

Which is all preliminary to the point of this post.

Our FPD deep cover source informs us that Hughes is pressing to have three of the cops who ganged up on Kelly Thomas, and who stood around as he gasped his last breaths in the gutter, return to active duty. That would be cops Hampton, Blatney, and Craig. Of course he needs the DAs assurance that these goons won’t be prosecuted for anything. Which is why he came out with all that BS about how he and his boys were part of the “prosecution team” and why Tony Rackaukas praised the FPD for all their hard work for the benefit of Lou Ponsi. Looks like that deal’s done. It’s all about damage control now, and surely the City’s highly paid lawyer Michael Gennaco chipped in to help exonerate the three accomplices though his double top-secret report.

We have also been informed that although he is formally being fired, a back room deal is in the works to reward Joe Wolfe, the thug who started the murderous beat down on Kelly Thomas, with a nice, fat disability claim if he goes quietly. Of course we’ve been told that Wolfie re-injured his shoulder in the “tussle”, most likely bashing Kelly’s face with his elbow. That ought to good for a hundred thou’ of our money, give or take. Nice.

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

This Post Is Not About Jay Cicinelli

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Nope. It’s a reminder of how a one-eyed cop was hired by the City of Fullerton to patrol our streets with badge, gun, taser and who knows what else.

Here ya go sonny...

It is now pretty common knowledge that Jay Cicinelli was put on a disability pension by Bernard Parks, Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department following a horrific shooting of the six-week rookie cop. Smart move. Among other injuries, Cicinelli lost his left eye.

But Cicinelli’s dream of being a policeman was not to end so quickly. For he had an ally in the figure of Mike Hillman, a gung-ho cop’s cop – the type whose worldview divides people into two groups: cops and everybody else;  and Hillman was determined to put the one-eyed cop back on the streets somewhere – anywhere.

Hillman’s thoughts turned to little Fullerton, California where his one-time boss in the LAPD, Pat McKinley, had been appointed police chief. And what followed was a decision so incompetent and self-serving that it eclipses all of McKinley’s other disastrous personnel decisions – and that’s saying a helluva lot.

Should be considered armed and dangerous...

McKinley hired Cicinelli, gave him a badge, fire arms, and the keys to a patrol car, a decision so reckless and with such blatant disregard for the safety of the public and his own policemen, that he should have been immediately fired.

But he wasn’t, of course, and nobody else seemed to care. And Cicinelli remained on the force, a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. And when it finally did, the result was a dead man and a series of huge civil payouts to the man’s family. The first payout was for $1,000,000. More are coming.

Meanwhile, the miscreant who hired Cicinelli and all the other thugs, goons. thieves, con men, pickpockets, kidnappers, perjurers, destroyers of evidence, and sex offenders is sitting on our city council, voting on the settlements his employees caused, that will have to be paid by us.

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Register’s David Whiting Up To Old Tricks

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Smarmy and self-righteous only tells part of the story. Sycophatic, craven, and lazy tells the rest.

Whoring for the inept, sclerotic Establishment, that is.

Last fall Whiting was defending the cops that murdered Kelly Thomas and attacking the lynch-type mobs calling for justice.

Most recently he wrote a tribute to “both sides” that was nothing more than a wet love letter to the Three Bald Tires, defending their compassion and objecting to the use of the phrase “kingmaker” in reference to Tony “Bashula.” Brandon Ferguson of the OC Weekly writes about Whiting’s pabulum, here.

(Note: I refuse to link to the Register)

I find the then-and-now quotations remarkably self-serving. Maybe the Three Hollow Logs said something to Whiting in private, because I don’t remember those “before” statements at all. Whatever. What I do remember with crystal clarity these “before” comments:

Dr. HeeHaw (on local TV news): “…I’ve seen far worse injuries that were survivable. I don’t know what killed that man”

Patdown Pat McKinley: (on CNN): “I’ve had my eyes bloused a few times…facial injuries look terrible but they are not life threatening…they heal…”

Just to show you where Whiting’s true sympathies lay, here is Ferguson quoting Whiting’s cuddly description of killer cop Joe Wolfe:

Instead of referring to Officer Joe Wolfe as one of Kelly Thomas’s attackers, which the video clearly shows he is–he was first to strike Thomas with his baton–Whiting clumsily described him as “an uncharged officer and partner of one of those charged.”

Anybody who has ever owned a dog knows they have some nasty habits, including sniffing each other’s rear ends and ingesting their own vomit. But you have to give them credit for loyalty.

 

 

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Posted onAbout Us

Greenhut Shoots. Greenhut Scores!

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Intelligent. And handsome, too.

There’s always lots of talk in Orange County about freedom-loving him, or freedom-loving her, when the repuglicans start trumpeting some mediocre authoritarian hack or other for political office.

But then there’s the real deal – former OC Register writer and now occasional columnist, Steve Greenhut. Enjoy Steve’s opinion piece on the Kelly Thomas killing and the Fullerton Recall, here.

Greenhut is hitting on all cylinders. He gets it: there’s serial police abuse, secrecy and subsequent cover-ups by the politicians; there’s Redevelopment abuse, cronyism, and unaccountability; there’s an illegal tax on our water, 15 years-old, that has misdirected over $27,000,000 to pay for perks and pensions of the politicians and bureaucrats in City Hall.

The best part of Steve’s broadside is this part where he goes after the pusillanimous Register Editorial Board that has hypocritically succumbed to pressure applied by Dick Ackerman, Inc.:

Unfortunately, the Register Editorial Board didn’t fully support this heart-felt political revolt, as it argued, “The citizens who voted [the three councilmen] in and now are disgruntled should vote them out during a regular election cycle.” The Register had no such qualms about backing the recall in 2003 of Gov. Gray Davis, for similar lack-of-leadership reasons.

And finally Greenhut sums up with:

The release of the video reinforces the wisdom of the recall. A recent news article explained that “legal experts caution that the footage doesn’t tell the entire story,” but we don’t need experts to tell us the truth, now obvious to anyone who can access YouTube. And we don’t need experts to tell Fullerton voters what to do about three councilmen who acted in a craven and unconscionable way.

Oh, yes. We’ll let “the justice system unfold,” in the clumsy phraseology of our feckless Mayor, Sharon Quirk. In the meantime we’ll apply our our God-given commonsense to the facts that we are permitted to see by our political masters. And then we’ll recall the the bums.

 

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Posted on"Dick" Ackerman

“Let The Wheels of Justice Turn” Sayeth Pat PcPension

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Those ladies were't like you...

Here’s an article from the tanking OC Register about the Kelly Thomas murder case, that includes a delicious quote from Mr. She Bear himself, the egregious former Fullerton Police Chief, Pat McKinley, who nonchalantly admitted he hired all the brutal thugs involved in the remorseless killing of the schizophrenic homeless man. “Let the wheels of justice turn!” says Pat.

The Wheels of Justice. Anybody who has reviewed the checkered career and sayings of McKinley, or the activities of the gang of thugs, pickpockets, perverts, con men, petty thieves, perjurers, and casual liars that he loosed upon Fullerton, may well question whether McKinley has any concept of justice at all.

O Patience! preaches McKinley, now a city councilman. Surely all the evidence is not in! The pathetic plea for more time to clear his thuggish hirelings is telling, as was his previous wink-wink comment about how good his goons’ lawyers are. But for McKinley time is the proverbial double-edged sword. For even as he admonishes us to wait out a protracted legal process that is designed in almost every way to avoid prosecuting criminal cops, his own political time is quickly running out.

Oh yes, it’s hard to avoid the gratuitous sharing of the irrelevant tidbit that McKinley is on vacation. Is this a sly reference to departed, disabled former Chief Mike Sellers who went on vacation in the days following Kelly Thomas’s murder? Naw, because that would be clever and insightful. Rather, we are left to wonder if, with a mere four weeks until the recall election, McKinley has all but given up fighting for his job; or maybe he is so confident that the somnolent folks of Fullerton will turn a blind eye to his own perverse incompetence, that he can afford to vacation – after all, nobody has ever cared what he did, or didn’t do before.

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Posted on"Dick" Ackerman

Banners expressing love for Fullerton draw praise…

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Makes ya feel good. Oops, watchit there, just step over the bodies and the civil rights!

Thus spaketh Lou Ponsi who seems to be doing his level best to avoid real news and even to parrot the nonsense peddled by the anti-recall crowd.

Ponsi seems really impressed with banners stating how much folks love Fullerton. Ponsi doesn’t seem interested that the operation is the brainchild of downtown businesses who have profited off of the City Council’s crazy wild west show; nor in the irony that these essentially anti-recall messages are hung on public property. No, that would take independence and intelligence, traits that Ponsi simply doesn’t possess.

Of course Ponsi echoes the notion that the one and only problem is the minor altercation last summer that left Kelly Thomas’ brains in a Transportation Center gutter, and of course he ignores the reality a phone call made by – a downtown business, that may very well have an I Love Fullerton banner in front of it.

Really? I don't know anything about that stuff. Wow!

Lou must have a short or self-serving memory if he can’t remember:

FPD cop Todd Major – convicted of fraud, 2011.

FPD cop Kelly Mejia – plead guilty to grand larceny, 2011

FPD cop Albert Rincon – accused of a dozen sexual batteries while in uniform causing a rebuke from a federal judge and a $350,000 settlement (so far), but actually “separated” for something else (jeez how bad could that have been), 2006-2011.

FPD cop Vincent Mater – “separated” after destroying evidence in a Fullerton jail suicide, identified as an untrustworthy “Brady cop” and suspected of a roll in the false identification in the Emanuel Martinez case. Charged by the District Attorney,2011.

FPD cop “Sonny” Saliceo who through laziness or malice, permitted or encouraged the mis-identification of Emanuel Martinez who subsequently spent five months in jail.

FPD employee April Baughman who was recently arrested on charges of theft from the FPD property room over a period of two years. 2012.

A lawsuit by Veth Mam against the police department and FPD cop Kenton Hampton for a laundry list of civil rights violations and false prosecution. 2011.

A lawsuit by Andrew Trevor Clarke against FPD cop Cary Tong and half the FPD for a laundry list of civil rights violations. 2012.

A lawsuit by Edward Miguel Quinonez against the FPD and Kenton Hampton for even more civil rights violations. 2011

And let’s not forget the eventual civil and civil rights suits against the balance of the FPD Six (including our old friends Kenton Hampton and Joe Wolfe). 2011.

Then in non-police matters there’s the little problem of the City Council giving away land worth millions for free to campaign contributors; and giving away huge subsidies to the bag man who runs the anti-recall campaign. 1996-2012.

And finally let us recall the biggest scam of all – the perpetuation of the illegal water tax for fifteen long years that went, in part, to pay the salaries and pensions of the very city council that looked the other way year after year. 1996-2012.

Hey, Lou? Any of this ring a bell? What a punk.

 

 

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

She Bear About to Turn Violent?

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Frustrated that the slow working of his mind could not process the new data, McKinley was about to flail about violently.

Here‘s an article in the Register about Fullerton Councilman Bruce Whitaker asking his fellow councilmembers to vote on whether to see the video of the Kelly Thomas killing at the hands of the FPD. He seems to be suffering from the delusion that Fullerton elected leaders should be intelligently informed.

It’s an interesting article for two reasons. First is the reaction of councilman Pat McKinley, former FPD Chief, and architect of the Culture of Corruption in the force. You would expect him to be opposed to letting anybody see the actions of goons he hired personally and let loose on the streets of Fullerton. But what’s that you say, Pat?:

Councilman Pat McKinley, Fullerton’s former police chief, said he is “violently opposed” to the release of the video.

“I think it’s completely off-base,” McKinley said. “It’s absolutely unprecedented, and it would be wrong to view that before the trial.”

Violently opposed? Now that doesn’t sound like a balanced man, does it? His reaction to a perfectly reasonable request says much about McPension the man. Is he about to go off the deep end?

Mcpension may not want the video released, but I assure you it has nothing to do with any trial, and everything to do with a recall election.

The other thing that struck me as odd is the City Attorney’s alleged request to the DA for permission to view the video and the imbecilic comments ascribed to DA spokesholetress Susan Kang Schroeder, who seems to be just making shit up. The council could watch this video as a closed session personnel issue and nobody else would have to see it. Also, the FPD is bound to have made copies so why ask the DA for permission at all – except to get that “no” answer you want? Acting Chief Hughes, who is neither investigating nor trying anybody, claims to have viewed the video 400 times! I’m starting to suspect everybody  has seen this video – except some of the council and of course, the public.

And as a final thought, is there anybody in Fullerton who believed the serial prevaricator Pat McKinley when, after an awkward pause on CNN, he denied seeing the video himself?

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

It’s All About Image

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UPDATE:

Sorry guys, I forgot to add this gem from the article:

In the weeks after the July incident, more trouble surfaced: an officer facing charges for stealing an iPad at a Miami airport; another facing termination after reports of sexual misconduct; police raiding the wrong house in search for a probationer.

This sentence sure makes it look like Ponsi is finally starting to lay the facts on the table, until you realize that we broke the Mejia story in June, before, the Thomas murder (Ponsi swiped that from FFFF without attribution); the raid on the wrong house occurred in 2010; Rincon’s debauchery started years and years ago and included the complicity of the entire department. And of course there is no mention at all of incidents that must have involved higher ups, like the Gochenour suicide and the beating, false arrest and phony prosecution of Veth Mam. 

– Joe Sipowicz

When you’ve had some practice, it’s amazing how much you can write without saying anything. In fact, between the first sentence and the last, people adept at it can cram all sorts of empty stuff into their essays. The conclusion is always the same. Reading such drivel is like eating a bag of marshmallows.

Here is our old friend Lou Ponsi of the Register doing his usual gig. The story is all about Fullerton’s image in the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder by members of the Fullerton Police Department. To his credit Ponsi finally describes the DA’s version of the actions of Ramos and Cicinelli: a “rain of blows.” Everything else is fluffery designed to avoid the critical main crux of Fullerton’s present problems: that out of control rogue cops have been permitted to prey upon the citizens of and visitors to Fullerton, and the Kelly Thomas episode was not an isolated case at all.

Ponsi’s story includes the obligatory interview with a Chamber of Commerce booster-type – Davis Barber (who also pretends to be a real reporter, yet tips his hand rather badly) and some business owners defending the honor of Fullerton. Oh, and of course there’s the de riguer academic “expert,” who arrives upon the scene to compliment the City for bringing in Michael Gennaco.

As usual you can avoid getting the sort of responses you don’t want by asking all the wrong questions.

Did Ponsi ask Acting Chief Dan Hughes to explain the actions of Rincon, Mater, Power, Mejia, Tong, Hampton, Cross, Goodrich, et al? Has he yet asked anybody to explain the call that came in the night of July 5th; or why the cops involved were permitted to watch the video and coached to re-write their reports?  Did he ask those interviewed if they knew about the serial transgressions of all these cops?

Bet not.

The strategy of the FPD and its apologistas now seems to be to make FPDs problems mostly about image and lack of communication with the public. The Kelly Thomas thing? Oh, yeah, mostly about two aliens who didn’t know how to deal with the mentally ill homeless.

Come on in and take the tour. Glad to see ya. Big hugs. Air kiss!

 

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