The Bullshit of “Anticipated Litigation”

nothing to see here more along

California’s Brown Act specifically enumerates when public agencies can meet in secret (Closed Session, they call it) away from the prying eyes of the nuisancy public that pays for the whole show. One of these exempt categories is “litigation,” in which secrecy is deemed to be okie-dokie. The problem is that government agencies, when given an inch will invariably take a mile.

But when you fail to specifically constrain the arm of government, they will invariably flex those muscles. And so it is that “litigation” has come to include anticipated litigation which, of course, could cover just about anything, anywhere, at any time. And that label seems to give the City of Fullerton reason to believe it can omit the names of anticipated litigants. The anticipated litigants must, necessarily remain in the dark about what the government is about to do to them, while the government, for its part, gets a jump on its adversary. Of course this isn’t right, but what do rights have to do with the City of Fullerton government?

Let’s first take a look at the City’s Closed Session agenda for September 17:

Opacity from a “transparent” government…

Notice the final two items have been draped in the magical shroud of “anticipated litigation.” We may wonder what the Big Mystery is. Rumors are circulating that at least one of the the items in question is the City’s desire to sue humble little us, Friends for Fullerton’s Future, and that the council has voted to do so. Could that really be true? FFFF, of course, would be the last to know. But the City Attorney made no mention of such doings while “reporting out,” from the Closed Session. If they’re true, what are we to make of the rumors?

Roosevelt Palmer Esq., Seeking Five Sisters…

The City has already sent a couple of laughable nastigrams in our direction, both of which were duly ignored, so litigation is plausible, but only if the City initiates it. This means that it is the City instigating, not reacting to likely litigation, and begs the question of why this issue would not be a matter for public discourse. And it also suggests that it is the city manager and his bumbling lawyers who will have advocated this harassment to cover up their own corruption they didn’t want exposed.

Well, I’m sure that covering up its clownish behavior is the last thing the esteemed council, upright city manager and brilliant city lawyers would ever do, so it seems pretty certain everything will be made clear. One way or another.

 

OC District Attorney Spitzer Goes Limp for Perv Cop

In case you haven’t heard by now, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office which is led by Todd Spitzer, filed a peeping charge against Fullerton Police Officer Jose Paez for filming up the skirt of a 16 year old student.

Let that sink in for a moment. A 16 year old, who Paez was on campus to protect, was his victim under color of authority.

According to the case information the violation date was 11/03/2017 and according to the FPD press release it was found by accident while investigating something else.

Paez Case Detail

Based on the Body Worn Camera audit conducted by FPD we know that Paez also attempted to film up a teacher’s skirt on 08/29/2017 which shows a pattern of behavior.

He also had underage sex videos and photos on a phone in his possession. Apparently chain of custody at FPD, regarding Child Pornography, is so lax that they don’t know who has it on what devices or where it’s stored.

To further complicate the issue, Paez was allowed to schedule deletion of his own Body Worn Camera videos.

Taking into account the potential charges such as peeping on teachers and underage students and possession of child pornography on his phone it seems unprofessional that Fullerton PD wouldn’t contract this case out to another department or agency. This ins’t a case of policy violations to be investigated by Internal Affairs but rather it is one of potential criminal conduct against children under color of authority. The community and students at FJUHSD deserved an objective outside source to look into these issues.

This is something they did not get because Fullerton put their perv officer first and the wall of silence stood still. Not a single officer came forward about Paez. Not a single council member. Not a single school board member. An officer was allowed to prey on our children in his capacity of School Resource Officer and the protected status of the police was more important than public notification.

Thanks to the DA only levying a single charge dating to almost two years ago this smells more like another case of FPD being caught with their pants down than actual due diligence. The priority doesn’t seem to be in protecting our city and our city’s children despite all of the attaboys Chief Dunn gave himself in his Press Release on the issue.

What stopped Paez from sharing nude photos of your daughters with his friends and co-workers? What’s to stop his replacement from doing the same?

Nothing and that’s how FPD likes it so shut up and go back to sleep. They’ll make this go away like so many other cases of criminality by their own in blue and then have the audacity to ask for a raise which council will give them.

This is the upside-down world we live in where justice consists of a press release followed by a likely plea deal where a pervert with a pattern of behavior of preying on women and children while under the color of authority will be allowed to walk with barely a slap on the wrist.

Spitzer is continuing the efforts of his predecessor who refused to file charges against Fullerton Officer Rincon despite groping women in his patrol car during traffic stops. A pattern that consisted of letting off Fullerton Officer Christopher Chiu who forced a naked women to stand for him so he could shine his light up her crotch and then ask for her number.

Sexual predation seems to be A-OK behind the Blue Wall of Silence supported by the brass at FPD, City Hall and the DA’s Office.

We all knew, based on the Jailhouse Snitch program, that there was seemingly nothing the Orange County District Attorney’s Office wouldn’t do to protect bad cops but now that includes downplaying sexual crimes against a School Resource Officer. All to protect a pervert in blue.

When did FPD send the case to the DA? How long did they sit on the Paez problem? Was he fired or was he allowed to quit? Chief Dunn won’t tell you. Did FPD or the DA even ask for potential victims to come forward or were they too worried about the bad press they’d get by possibly uncovering a #PaezMeToo problem they ignored for at least a year?

Meet DA Todd Spitzer, same as DA Tony Rackauckas – a hero for self-proclaimed heroes and nobody else.

Fullerton School Board Ignored Issue of Campus Police Pervert

Paez Barista

For those of you paying attention to the story of Perv Cop Paez, I’ll direct your attention to some correspondence with the Fullerton Joint Union High School Board of Trustees from back in December 2018 when rumors of this story first came to light.

This is an email a friend of ours sent to each member of the school board:

FUHSD re Paez

Hi,

I just heard a rumor that a school officer working with Fullerton police, officer Paez, had naked photos of at least one student on his phone. If the student is underage I understand a name not being released but how many victims are there and do I need to be worried about my children?

Should parents be concerned about their child being victimized?

Is this true and if so is the school district covering this up?

I would hope that you learned something about honesty after Lindgren molested students at Nicholas. Please let me know if these allegations have merit and that Fullerton isn’t in the habit of covering up sexual predators.

Thanks.

Concerned Parent

Only one member even bothered to respond and that was the following paltry message:

Thank you for the information, I will bring this up with our Superintendent tonight. 

Thanks,

Andy Montoya

So there you have it folks. A Fullerton Police Officer, in his capacity of School Resource Officer, was allowed to roam campus unchecked, film up the skirts of teachers and students, delete his own Body Camera videos with no oversight and allegedly store child pornography on his (department issued?) phone and you the public get to know nothing.

The Fullerton High School Board of Trustees won’t even bother to respond to you if you’re concerned about such things as predatory officers abusing their power to peep on your daughters.

To this day the school board has remained mum, the police chief put out a press release extolling his own virtues and you can bet our useless council will pat the department on the back for the bare minimum that was accomplished here.

How many students were victims of Fullerton PD while on campus? How many have a #PaezMeToo story to tell? Are your kids safe from predators while on campus? You don’t have a right to know according to the Fullerton Joint Union High School Board and Fullerton Police Department.

FUHSD School Board

Breaking News: Fullerton Threatens Local Blog – Again

The city is threatening to sue us… again.

Let’s have a look at the newest letter from the city (PDF HERE) before getting into why this is happening:

Dear Ms. Aviles:

VIA CERTIFIED MAIL RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED

As legal counsel for the City of Fullerton, I write, pursuant to California Government Code section 6204 et seq., to notify you, as legal counsel to the owner(s) and/or operator(s) of the Friends for Fullerton’s Future (FFFF) blog, that the City of Fullerton has reasonable grounds to believe that owner(s) and/or operator(s) of the FFFF blog are in unlawful possession of records belonging to the City of Fullerton. The records were taken and used by FFFF blog owner(s) and/or operator(s) without the City’s authorization and fall within the definition of “record” under California Government Code Section 6204(a)(2), as well as the definition of “public records” under California Government Code § 6252(e), and are described as follows:

Any and all records obtained from the City of Fullerton’s Dropbox account (https://cityoffullerton.com/outbox) that were not directly provided by the City to Joshua Ferguson or any of FFFF’s agents or associates through an emailed link, including, but not limited to, records contained in a folder named “prl 919 – Josh Ferguson.”

Therefore, pursuant to Govemmentt Code section 6204, within twenty (20) calendar days of receiving this notice, the owner(s) and/or operator(s) of the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog are hereby directed to either:

  1. (1)  Return the above-referenced records to the City of Fullerton, as previously requested; or
  2. (2)  Respond in writing and declare why the above-referenced records do not belong to the City of Fullerton. Ifthe owner(s) and/or operator(s) of the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog do not deliver the above-described records, or do not respond adequately to this notice and its demand within the required time, we will immediately thereafter petition the Superior Court of Orange County for an order requiring the return of these records.

We further note that the FFFF blog has posted many of the confidential City documents after receipt of our office’s June 13, 2019 cease-and-desist email. (A copy of that email is enclosed herein). Many, if not all, of the confidential City records posted to the FFFF blog are explicitly exempted from disclosure under the California Public Records Act, would not have been provided to Mr. Ferguson or FFFF agents or associates in response to a Public Records Act request, and could only have been obtained without the City’s express authorization. Such records posted to the FFFF blog are confidential and exempt from disclosure pursuant to the following authorities:

  • “Preliminary drafts, notes, or interagency or intra-agency memoranda that are not retained by the public agency in the ordinary course of business, if the public interest in withholding those records clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure.” Cal. Gov’t Code § 6254(a);
  • “Records pertaining to pending litigation to which the public agency is a party, or to claims made pursuant to Division 3.6 (commencing with Section 810), until the pending litigation or claim has been finally adjudicated or otherwise settled.” Cal. Gov’t Code § 6254(b);
  • “Personnel, medical, or similar files, the disclosure of which would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Cal. Gov’t Code § 6254(c);
  • Law enforcement investigative records. Cal. Gov’t Code § 6254(f); and
  • “Records, the disclosure of which is exempted or prohibited pursuant to federal or state law, including, but not limited to, provisions of the Evidence Code relating to privilege.” Cal. Gov’t Code § 6254(k), which includes the following privileges:

o Attorney-client privileged records. Cal. Evid. Code 950 et seq.; Roberts v. City of Palmdale, 5 Cal. 4th 363 (1993);

o Attorney work product. Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 2018.010 et seq.;
o Peace officer personnel records. Cal. Penal Code § 832.7 et seq.; and o Confidential closed session information. Cal. Gov’t Code § 54963.

FFFF’s unauthorized access and misuse of the City’s clearly privileged and exempted documents constitute a violation of California Penal Code section 502, which grants civil remedies (including compensatory damages, attorney’s fees and potential punitive damages) to any persons or entities injured by any violations thereof. See Cal. Pen. Code § 502(c), (e).

As such, unless FFFF complies with the demands set forth in the City’s June 13, 2019 cease and desist letter within 24 hours, the City will have no choice but to pursue all criminal and civil remedies available to it under the law.

Bruce A. Lindsay

Fullerton Cease and Desist 2 Page 01 Fullerton Cease and Desist 2 Page 02

What is this all about?

For those in the cheap seats we at Friends For Fullerton’s Future broke news story after new story by publishing documents that the city didn’t want disclosed and tying those documents to local events and items of public interest. Those stories include, but are not limited to:

The city settling with a police officer to sidestep disclosure laws regarding police misconduct.

The results of a Body Worn Camera audit for a School Resource Police Officer who had, what appears to be, child pornography on his (or perhaps department issued) cell phone.

An insurance payout for an accident that destroyed a city vehicle.

Likely fraud by city employees costing over $50,000 worth of waste/theft.

Possible Accounting fraud within the city budget used to hide salary costs.

A city council member specifically targeting one businesses.

Massive Police Overtime abuse that went on for 6 years.

Evidence that the city is lying and violating the California Public Records Act.

And more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and more and more.

In short, they’re mad that we’re doing what journalists are supposed to do daily. We’re using information to piece together stories in order to inform the public.

These latest threats are meant to serve as a chilling effect to silence people who would dare impugn the character of Fullerton with facts the city wants obscured. I’m hesitant to head to city hall or go to council meetings lately knowing that the city is targeting me personally for the use of free speech on this news site / blog. And that’s really the point of these types of threats – to silence dissenters.

How will we respond to this latest salvo by the city? I reckon we’ll confer with our legal counsel and act accordingly.

Suicide by Cop vs. Murder by Cop

17yo Shot on Freeway

For some people the release of video showing  the “justified” July 5th shooting of a female teenager by a Fullerton policeman is cause for celebration. Well, we can store that information in the Sad Troll folder and move on. Really, though, one must linger over the sad state of affairs when the FPD has to broadly publicize the fact that their man didn’t kill anybody illegally, with malice or by incompetence.

What a difference eight years make, right? For on July 5th, 2011, and in the months following, the FPD made every effort to hide, lie about, obfuscate, deflect, and misdirect information in the wake of their illegitimate killing of the homeless man, Kelly Thomas.

Has the FPD opened a new chapter in its relationship with the public that supports it?

Maybe. I don’t know, but I doubt it.

When there is exculpatory evidence, it seems, the police are only too happy to release information; thus, within one week of the recent event, the dead teenage girl’s demise was the subject of an FPD press video, complete with  slow motion footage showing what happened. And yet when police actions are reckless, incompetent, or even criminal, the PR apparatus retreats into the bunker and cannot say a word.

We’re gonna kick your ass…

This is the twisted legacy of former Chief Pat “I Hired Them All” McKinley and the goon squad he imported from the LAPD.

What we have here is failure to communicate…

As we saw with McKinley’s second successor, Chief Danny “Galahad” Hughes, when something bad goes down the department has taken the position that the best medicine is not overdue reform, clean-up and real accountability, but a stiff dose of community relations and departmental tours. This, even as Hughes himself participated in the most dubious undertakings.

We aren’t very nice, but we sure are expensive…

Maybe someday police departments like FPD will come to realize that covering up for bad police work is itself bad police work; that the public that pays for their salaries, benefits and early “retirement” ought to be served instead of abused; and maybe, just maybe, people in California will start getting honest answers and timely, truthful information instead of phony or non-existent “internal” investigations, shifting stories, and outright deception from the police.

 

Fullerton Observer Fails at Local Journalism

I’m glad to see that Woodward and Bernstein over at the Fullerton Observer have decided to deviate from their usual city council puffery in order to run a twopart summary of the Mueller Report. Lord knows not enough people are covering THAT story in the media. It sure shows the local journalist chops at work in the local media to… rehash what the entire global media establishment won’t shut up about.

Observer Mueller

Normally I wouldn’t take time out of my day to poke fun at the Observer but I need to point something out for the sake of clarity. If you search for the Observer on Google or go to their About Us page they ask for money from people in order to… wait for it:

Protect local journalism –”

I’m pretty sure this website has broken more local news in Fullerton in the last few weeks alone than the Observer has in a decade and we got hit with an ethically and legally dubious Cease and Desist letter from the “City Prosecutor” for our efforts.

When we were being threatened by City Hall where was the Observer? They’ve been silent on the whole issue because of course they have been. They likely won’t report on anything critical of the city we’ve published without us identifying our sources but no source info is needed for that Cease and Desist letter and yet still radio silence.

Sadly, as has been the case for far too long, if the Observer isn’t crying about the liberal cause-de-jour they’re spending their column space blowing smoke up the skirts of city bureaucrats and avoiding any issue that might shed light on how things actually function in our local government. It may be a bad look to call one’s staff “journalists” if you function more as a local government PR firm.

Maybe after the city follows up on their anti-First Amendment threats against this blog, and one of our contributors, the Observer will have raised enough money to “protect local journalism” in order to actually write about the issue. But don’t hold your breath.

Maybe the Story is Down Here

Did City Employees Steal Over $50K of Equipment?

CNG Fullerton

Another day, another story of alleged theft/fraud of city property here in the city of Fullerton finally coming to light.

In late January 2017, Julia James contacted me about some questionable purchases charged to Facility Superintendent Bob St. Paul’s City-issued procurement card.  I asked Tim Campbell to review the purchases for calendar year 2016.  His review revealed several purchases charged to the CNG Fund that did not appear to be CNG-related.  Based on the preliminary findings, I asked Tim to examine Bob’s P-card purchases for 2014 and 2015 as well. Over the three years, Bob used his P-card to charge the CNG fund slightly less than $12,000 for several dozen purchases. Many of these purchases had no clear relation to CNG operations; for example, there were multiple purchases for clothing, flashlights, tools, and canopies, some of which appeared to be for personal use.  Most of the purchases were initiated by Public Works Analyst Trung Phan, the CNG operation’s manager.”

This time around it looks like the protocols and oversight in the city were so lax that over the course of years employees were able to use their city issued purchasing cards to buy over $50,000 worth of stuff that was of no use to the city.

“It took the audit team about a week to complete the additional review and inventory.  When the team finished, the value of questionable purchases increased to at least $50,000.”

Former employees Bob St. Paul and Trung Phan allegedly worked together to charge items to the CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) station on Basque and Commonwealth and when the city tipped them off that they were under investigation – it appears they returned as much as possible in the dead of night and so no real investigation was done and no prosecution was possible.

‘While playing the archived video, we found several instances of Trung arriving at night, briefly stopping at the CNG station, and then unloading items from the back of his personal truck and taking items into the storage area.Bob was also observed returning an item very early in the morning.The incidents took place after Dennis and I counseled Bob and Trung regarding the P-card purchases, but before they were placed on leave.”

That video evidence was actually found out purely by accident which would be comical if it wasn’t so sad.

On top of purchasing things of no use to the city and absconding with them, only to return them in the dead of night, Trung also allegedly manipulated his payroll to get unjustified overtime.

“The research revealed that Trung charged overtime several times a month, claiming he had to come in after hours to reset the station’s equipment. This contradicted with indications by Fastech’s maintenance technician, that the equipment rarely failed.”

That nobody in the city up the food chain knew the efficiency or status of the CNG station and what the vendor even did, as evidenced by an employee able to fake overtime for unneeded work, is another damning indictment on city hall.

The culmination of all of this was yet more settlement agreements coming out of corruption or malfeasance on the part of government employees and not a word to the people of Fullerton. It’s just $50,000+ of your money that was wasted so why tell you anything?

What all was purchased? How much money was wasted? How long did all of this go on and was anybody else involved? The world will never find out. Why? Because:

CNG Investigation Halted

“We halted the internal investigation when the employees made the decision to resign.  As such, I am not anticipating a final report.”

That’s right. The city decided they didn’t want to know the full extent of the issue once they were able to settle with the employees in question and successfully sweep this issue, like so many others, under the rug.

We here at Friends for Fullerton’s Future had inquired about this issue when we were first alerted to it and the response at the time from the city was as follows:

“Regarding #2 of your request, the records you have listed are exempt from disclosure pursuant to Government Code section 6254(b), (c), (f) and (k); Government Code section 54963, Evidence Code Section 950 et seq., Code of Civil Procedure section 2018.010, and Government Code section 6255 (personnel, law enforcement investigative files, Brown Act, litigation, attorney-client privilege and attorney work product).”

So much for an open and transparent government. Once again we were all left in the dark while simultaneously being forced to pay for the useless purchases, admin leave and billable hours required to settle this nonsense.

Speaking of the settlements, the one with Trung, likely the same or similar with that of St. Paul, has the boilerplate Paid Leave (vacation) nonsense and other such niceties. The best part though, as usual, is as follows:

“Employer agrees not to defame, disparage or demean Employee for anything he did or may have done in the course and scope of his relationship with Employer.”

Lord help the next employer these two end up working for in the future which in the case of Phan is the CA Department of Transportation. I guess the city helped him to fail upwards.

Phan LinkedIn

You can read the settlement agreement with Phan Trung [HERE].

The report about the entire incident is as follows:

CNG Report 01CNG Report 02CNG Report 03

What Happened to School Resource Officer Jose Paez

Paez

Something untoward may have been happening at Fullerton High School and the entire community appears to have been once again kept in the dark.  Your children may have had their privacy invaded & may be the victims of somebody they were told to trust.

We’ve received what looks like part of a Body Worn Camera audit and it shows some very questionable information.

Paez BWC Audit

Highlights are as follows (emphasis added):

  • Father reporting his 13 year old daughter having inappropriate relationship with 16 yr old boy. Paez takes photos of text messages from father’s phone with an iPhone.

  • Returned to a home, asked teenage boy and girl if he could get their mother’s phone number. He wrote it on an envelope he was holding with name “***”.

  • Texting on freeway while driving to CHOC with a suicidal teenage girl in backseat.

  • With an iPhone he takes 13 photographs of text messages between 422 victim and suspect from victim’s phone using an iPhone. Unsure if his own or PDs.

  • While investigating Snapchat Hacking report, he takes picture with iPhone of victim girl’s phone screen that has text messages and what appears to the girl in the shower. Girl is 17 years old. At 8m 30s he asks the girl to take screenshots of the conversation (presumably the one he had just photographed) and send it to his work email so he can add it to the case. Why did he take photos with phone?

  • Talking with an 18 year old woman – about some sort of sex crime involving her ex-boyfriend . He tells her there was mention of a sex video. She said it was deleted. He asked to see her phone to confirm the video was not there. She tells him she has “inappropriate” pictures of herself on her camera roll. He takes her phone and scrolls through the pictures. He spends 4 minutes 20 seconds scrolling through her phone.

  • Talking to teenage boy about oral sex video on his phone. Stops recording before interview is over. Next video is 2 hours later with boy’s mother in the room.

  • Talking to girl who took videos and pictures of herself and her boyfriend having sex. Paez pulled the video from his own iPhone to show her. (Not sure if work phone)

  • Takes picture of a teenage boy he is interviewing at a school. Appears Paez adds a caption to the image and sends it to multiple recipients.

  • Takes photos of juveniles phone text messages. Unk if work phone or personal.

  • (17-68541) Paez investigating one juvi with another juvi’s nude pictures on phone. On this case he called CSI to take photos of the images he discovered on the phone.

  • Interviewed a female teacher wearing a skirt. Had his BWC on his belt. Of the 200+ videos I watched of his, this was the only time I’ve seen footage with BWC on belt. Had pretty clear view, under the table they were sitting at, of her knees to hips. Fortunately, nothing “candid” was captured on his BWC. I checked audit trail and discovered he watched the video only once about a month later. Interestingly, the video that preceeded this one was deleted. The deletion occurred because the category was changed, by Paez, from “Arrest” to “Radio Calls”, which changed the deletion schedule from August 29, 2019 to March 04, 2018. Attached is the audit trail for the deleted video.

Make of all of that what you will but quite a bit of it seems like questionable behavior at best.

It is interesting that Officer Paez was able to delete files from the system by changing categories. It would be enlightening to know how often this happens at FPD. That there seems to have been no oversight on this process up this point is problematic to say the least.

Fullerton Officer Jose Paez may or may not be with the Fullerton Police Department anymore, we’ve seen no confirmation either way, but we do know that he was a School Resource Officer (SRO) at Fullerton High School.

This is confirmed though an March 2, 2017 article in the Fullerton Union High School Tribe Tribune.

Paez Tribe Article

We also know that this status as an SRO is no longer current based on FPD’s website about the School Resource Officer program.

FPD SROs 2019

I understand the premise of innocent until proven guilty, but unfortunately, Fullerton PD does not — as they parade names and faces on social media to brag about their arrests while they themselves hide behind the Police Officers Bill of Rights and other such laws. I’d love to give officers the benefit of the doubt but they, through their unions, fight tooth and nail to stop disclosure of criminal acts amongst their brothers and sisters in blue, and enough is enough.

It’s possible that Officer Paez did nothing wrong and I’ll leave that up to the readers to demand answers from City Hall, Fullerton High School and FPD. It seems inappropriate at best to be using a Body Worn Camera to potentially video record under a teacher’s skirt, under a table, or taking screenshots and photos of underage nudity on a phone that might not even be department-issued.

It should be remembered that just a few days ago I showed Christopher Wren was terminated, partially, for having a nude photo of himself on a department-issued phone. Now square that with the above. I’ll share more as I know it and hopefully somebody can demand and get answers as to what is going on over at FPD and City Hall.

A Fullerton Staffing Question

Hero Pay

The Fullerton Firefighters are pushing a narrative that they’re understaffed and underpaid on social media, so let’s talk about it.

We constantly hear about how underfunded, unpaid, underappreciated, undereverything our Police and Fire Depts are from the “Hero Deserve” crowd and the opposite side likes to point to pay rates, pension spiking, double dipping, medical presumptive, lies about early death, OT abuse, CalPERS costs and other fiscal rebuttals.

But what we almost never talk about is how we actually implement service and if we do things in a smart, fiscally sound or even common sense way in our departments. Our City Council won’t touch these issues because they’re petrified of the unions spending campaign money against them or they’re colluding with the unions in order to get those sweet, sweet endorsements.

Since council won’t discuss these things openly I figured we can do it ourselves before dropping numerous records requests.

Therefore for the sake of starting discussions I’ll drop two topics;

  1. If our fire engines, with a crew of 4, have a max of 2 Paramedics on board and 85% (per their statements) of their calls are medical then what do the other 2+ crew members do during the majority of these calls? Are they glorified Uber just taxiing the paramedics around? What do they do at the hospital? How much time do these non-paramedics spend doing crowd control and the like?
  2. Every time I see a police stop or call where the police department is at a scene I see multiple vehicles on scene. To the casual observer it seems that there are multiple units at every stop seen. I understand the premise of needing or wanting backup but why not drive around in pairs so you have backup with you at all times instead of needing to wait for it and waste the resources (gas, etc) on another vehicle?

Does anybody have stats on these things? How many calls for FFD are actually medical? How many calls does each crew actually respond to and what do they do on scene? How much OT is accumulated for passive activities?

How many calls does FPD respond to and how many of those calls require backup? How much backup typically responds? What’s the response time for this backup? How is this different for traffic stops versus calls for service?

I think as the city prepares for budget meetings with so much of our budget going towards salaries and pensions these numbers should be discussed and be as transparent as possible. If we need to pay people more to retain them we need to make sure we’re getting the most bang for our buck and the best, most logical and fiscally sound, service possible.

Anybody want to dive into these questions?

Elevators to Nowhere – The Death March Isn’t Over

It may have been expensive, but it sure was unnecessary…

Two years ago FFFF ran a series of posts based on the observations of “Fullerton Engineer” about the ludicrous elevators addition to the existing bridge at the Depot. Nobody wanted this project except for city staff and only because the dime was somebody else’s. And so a strange bureaucratic odyssey began with fits and starts of activity to waste $4,000,000 of transit money doled out by distant agencies. Then in 2017 the monster was shocked back to life with an infusion of $600,000 of Fullerton’s own cash. Ouch. Let’s let our Friend, Fullerton Engineer take it from here:

It appears as if the depot elevator project is grinding to a conclusion: the elevator foundations and steel are finally done and the traction elevators are almost complete. Are congratulations in order? Not quite, although I suspect there will be a victory celebration and ribbon cutting and back-pats all around when the City Council takes its first expensive elevator ride.

A construction sequence that should have taken perhaps seven months has dragged on for two years. That’s right – two years. No one in charge seems to have offered any explanation, probably because no one in authority has ever asked for any. As I noted in the spring of 2017, the request for more money was shrouded in double talk and obscurantism. Somebody was hiding something.

Over the past two years as I have driven by the site it was more likely that I saw no one working as when I did. So what were all those people who were being paid, and well paid, to oversee this fiasco doing? Who knows? Have delay claim change orders ever been processed? Have they been rejected? Is a lawsuit coming or is it just going to end in a feeding frenzy on a complicit public agency? PRA requests may shed light on this disaster, if in fact they are not ignored by the city’s lawyer.

Don Hoppe, our former City Engineer has disappeared into a well-pensioned retirement. His replacement, a professionally unqualified bureaucrat will take no heat for this embarrassment. It’s no-fault government  where the taxpayer foots the bill.

— The Fullerton Engineer