Here’s everyone’s favorite Fullerton council yokel F. “Dick” Jones robbing folks who are forced to listen of three minutes of their lives – precious time they’ll never get back. True there are none of the usual vertiginous rants about make-believe central Asian countries, Hitler, syphilis, or Galveston’s Red Light District; but I challenge you to follow a single thread woven into this rhetorical demolition derby.
I especially liked the irony of the Angry Big Gummint swerve there in the middle of the speech from this biggest of all Big Gummint boobs. Being afraid of change? Was that supposed to be some kind of joke?
And he doesn’t know the difference between a storm drain and a sewer? Really?
We now know Dr. Heehaw won’t pay twelve bucks for a car wash; and of course we already know this jackass is utterly clueless about why over17,500 of his fellow Fullerton voters signed up to recall him.
Reporting on the submission of signatures by Fullerton’s Recall proponents, OC Register employee Lou Ponsi demonstrates that despite numerous opportunities to actually start acting like a real reporter, he just hasn’t got it in him. Nope. Nada.
Almost inconceivably Ponsi is still regurgitating the same Andrew Goodrich garbage peddled in mid-July 2011:
“Thomas was suspected of burglarizing cars in the Fullerton Transportation Center on July 5 when approached by officers. A physical confrontation ensued, and Thomas died five days later.”
Suspected of burglarizing cars? Really? Say Lou, do you even understand that there has been no evidence of car burglaries?
A physical confrontation ensued? Damn, that’s got to be the understatement of the year! And there’s some sort of antiseptic connection between the massive bludgeoning by the cops and Kelly’s death.
Is Ponsi still acting like Goodrich’s water boy to curry favor with the FPD? Is he really that incurious about what happened on the night of July 5th, 2011? Does he believe his job is to post community events schedules and let it go at that?
Who knows? But I know one thing: if this assclown ever removes his head from his nether orifice it will be a modern-day miracle.
Vern Nelson, the editor of the Orange Juice Blog, and staunch defender of the OC Fairgrounds against a swindle set up by Toad-in-Residence (and, not surprisingly, Anti-recall campaign manager) Dave Ellis, will be delivering a challenge to the DA’s whitewash of Dick Ackerman’s role as an illegal lobbyist in the slimy attempt to sell off the Fair to a group of insiders composed of Fair Board members themselves.
The dirty deal took place in the summer of ’09 when Ackerman started making calls to legislators on behalf of enabling legislation (that he only admits he “helped write”) even though he, himself had been out of office for less than a year – in direct violation of State law. Predictably, our honorable DA gave Ackerman a clean bill of health in the fall of 2010; but Lo and Behold!, in early 2011 Norberto Santana of the Voice of OC uncovered Ackerman’s actual billing records! You know, those embarrassing records the DA didn’t bother to look for. These records indicate illegal calls to legislators – which is exactly what Ackerman apparently told DA investigators he didn’t do. Uh, oh! Dick’s in a wringer!
When Santana published his discoveries, DA spoksholetress Susan Kang was quick with the smarmy defense: we reached the conclusion we did based on the evidence we had.
Wow. It’s amazing what you can’t find when you don’t look!
Well, Nelson is now calling Ms. Kang’s bluff and challenging on our do-nothing DA to do his job by re-opening the Ackerman case.
A year has passed, but the Statute of Limitations hasn’t.
After discovering that Fullerton was not biting on their “Bushala Buying Fullerton” fairy tale, the Anti-Recall committee moved on to their pathetic and even hysterical Plan B: maybe Fullerton will believe that both Tony and Chris Thompson were hooked up several times by the Fullerton PD, hauled and away and placed under investigation by the Orange County DA?
Since this story can be factually disproven, they might want to consider going back to their buying Fullerton strategy.
This week, Larry Bennett attached his name to this mailer which can be seen (here) and additionally attached it as a file to an email blast which can be seen (here).
This monolithic mailer must have cost a bundle to send out. Along with a giant pair of handcuffs and the header of “Busted”, it includes three more postage paid opportunities for voters to tell Bankhead, Jones and McKinley what horrific leaders they have actually been.
The Fullerton Recall has had an uninterrupted and remarkably cooperative relationship with now Interim Chief Dan Hughes and the Fullerton PD with regard to our signature gathering activities at retail locations. It is informally understood between our campaign and the FPD that they WILL NOT arrest our people for signature gathering activities. But in California it is legally incumbent upon any police officer to assist any citizen in executing a citizen’s arrest if the accuser claims to witness a crime.
The bottom line is that signature gathering in front of multi-tenant retail centers s is protected by the First Amendment and legal precedent.
But a number of times, supermarket managers upset by the unwillingness of the Fullerton PD to agree that a crime is occurring, have chosen to file a citizens arrest. The process takes 3 minutes. The police take your name, fill out some paperwork describing the citizen’s accusation, issue a “release” to the signature gatherer and submit a copy of the accusation to the DA to review. Chief Hughes has confirmed that in every case, the DA has quickly and formally disregarded the accusations for lack of evidence.
There are NO pending cases against Tony, myself or any of our signature gatherers. Note that we continue to gather signatures during the “arrests” and after the police leave.
Most notable with all of this continues to be the absolute unwillingness of the anti-recall campaign to address or debate the real issues of the recall:
An absence of management over out-of-control Fullerton cops.
The theft of $27 million of taxpayer’s money with an illegal franchise tax.
The planned doubling of our exorbitant water rates.
A multi-million dollar annual city budget deficit.
Bankhead and Jones’ effort to secretly and retroactively spike the pensions of their buddies who run city hall.
Putting every Fullerton voter $1,700 in debt with a $124 million unfunded city employee pension liability.
Absconding with $10 million per year of revenue for schools and public safety through an illegal and massive expansion of the corporate welfare known as Redevelopment.
Which is a lot more than we can say for Kelly Thomas.
August 10th, 2011. A day of bathos at the Fullerton Police Department: just five weeks after the murder of Kelly Thomas at the hands of his cops, Police Chief Michael Sellers, having perused his benefits package, packs it in. Sort of.
A shitstorm is blowing up and our old friend FPD PIO Andrew Goodrich wants to get a perspective on “hats.”
Back in September, a AAA tow truck driver made a YouTube video accusing Fullerton police officers of running a coordinated effort to harass and cite any tow truck attempting to help stranded AAA members within city limits.
That video was removed shortly after it was posted. According to the original publisher, it was deleted from YouTube after the truck driver’s boss received threats from city employees.
Four months later, it appears that driver has had enough. Here’s a new video where he accuses the City of Fullerton and its police force of using Fullerton’s new truck route ordinance to cite AAA tow trucks attempting to respond to customer calls for service.
The assumption is that there are a few tow operators who operate with the FPDs’s blessing (thanks to generous donations towards a few jurassic city council members’ campaign funds and a revenue sharing contract with the FPD) and thus are able to miraculously avoid getting cited for driving their tow trucks on the very same roads.
So next time your wife or daughter is stranded by the side of the road for an hour waiting for one of the few AAA operators left willing to run the FPD gauntlet, make sure you ask the driver what it’s like trying to help motorists in the city of Fullerton.
File under better late than never. Teri Sforza of the Register has advertised Fullerton city government’s dirty little secret. Well, I guess it was really a big secret. Not any more.
A little MSM attention will help get the word out: F. Richard Jones and Don Bankhead have been ripping us off for 15 year by adding 10% to our water bills to pay for their perks and pensions. A $27,000,000 rip-off. Now that’s not very nice, is it?
Friends, over the past couple of months you may have noticed anonymous comments on some of our posts referring to “George” and “Jorge” and some sort of hit-and-run issue. Those comments referred to my brother George and came from inside the FPD. I let them go. Then. But not now.
This is a cautionary tale about a Culture of Corruption in the FPD that encourages the harassment of law abiding citizens. Getting a ticket from Barry Coffman for “excessive horning” is bad enough. Getting prosecuted for a non-existing “crime” is intolerable. Unfortunately this sort of thing has become business as usual with the FPD. It appears to be not only tolerated, but encouraged. And that’s what happens when the civilian authority abdicates its responsibility to oversee the cops.
Here’s the story.
Back on the morning of February 28, 2011 my brother George was driving east down Walnut Avenue, and turned right into the driveway of our office building parking lot. A car had parked quite close to the entry of the driveway, and as he turned in he heard a distinctive sound. After parking he noticed that the front bumper of the car was lying in the street.
He was pretty sure he hadn’t hit the car in any way, and there was no other damage to that car, or to his own vehicle; and he noticed that the bumper had been jerry-rigged at some point to stay on with sheet metal screws. He believed his right front tire just hit the thing as it lay in the roadway.
George kept watch on the car, and later in the afternoon a woman came to pick it up. He explained the situation and told Mrs. Bumper that he didn’t think he was responsible, but that he would help put the bumper back on with secure connections to the chassis the next day. She was grateful and drove off.
The next day her husband showed up and demanded that George buy him a new bumper. George suggested he go away and take his bumper with him.
Mr. Bumper filed a police report and soon George was interrogated by a couple of FPD cops. He told his story for the third time. The next thing he knew he was being charged by the District Attorney with Hit and Run, Unsafe Turn and Illegal Tampering With A Vehicle!
Story recap: No hit. No run. No unsafe turn. No tampering. No evidence. No witness. No nothing. Yet our esteemed DA, following the advice of FPD, had decided to prosecute my brother.
Of course George had to hire a lawyer who made six different court appearances on this idiotic “case.” Finally the DA blinked and offered George the DNA “spit and acquit” deal he makes with campaign-contributing food poisoners. George said no. With a trial date looming the DA’s office just dropped the whole thing on September 20th.
Too bad, in a way. I really looked forward to seeing those FPD clowns on the stand to explain and defend their evidence. Now the public will never see the facts behind what can only be described as a malicious attempt to intimidate and harass me through my brother.
Well, guess what, boys? It didn’t work.
How much police, DA and court time and money was completely wasted in this effort to try to push around a citizen and taxpayer? Who knows? Five different DA employees had their spoons in this soup, as well as judges, bailiffs, court scribes, etc.
But I know one thing. There is an entrenched Culture of Corruption in the Fullerton Police Department that runs pretty deep, and it needs to end soon!
The date is July 19, 2011 and Fullerton Chief of Police Mike Sellers has just returned from his cruise and is still on vacation. FPD murder victim Kelly Thomas has been off life support for one week. Clouds are gathering, alright.
“Chief” seems interested in sharing his knowledge of some newfangled strategy called “predictive policing,” which, presumably, would not predict crimes perpetrated by the cops themselves. His correspondent, Dennis Kies, then Interim Police Chief of Costa Mesa, is suitably unimpressed.
Then discussion of a new job at Seal Beach comes up, and apparently Kies name had popped up. “Chief” shares the bennies package.
I don’t know what a “medical retiree clause” is, but it probably has something to do with Chief’s Disease. Ironic that in less than a month Sellers himself would be rollerskating out of Fullerton with a bad case of it.
Brandon Ferguson of the OC Weeklyis suggesting that downtown Fullerton bar owner Jeremy Popoff appears to be talking out of both sides of his mouth considering his recent voicemail left at the Weekly, and assertions made subsequently on-line.
On Facebook, Mr. Pop denies dodging requests to talk to the Weekly about his establishment’s role in the Kelly Thomas murder. And he seems to be accusing Ferguson of somehow twisting the words of his voice message.
You can be the judge since Ferguson has thoughtfully posted a link to the audio and shares a screenshot of the facebook page.
True, enough, the actual word of the voice mail message are non-specific – but the topic is clear enough – Kelly Thomas – and Popoff clearly says the stories are “not true.” Since the only issue involving his establishment and the murder are the questions of who made the call to the cops, and why, we know exactly what he is talking about.
The only thing I can think of is that perhaps Slidebro is getting nervous about his denial that the call to FPD on the night of 7 /5/11 did in fact come from the Slidebar. But as Mr. Jeremy acknowledges himself, the preliminary hearing is only six weeks off and all sorts of things may start coming to light.
