FFFF had a chance to sit down with councilmember Bruce Whitaker to let him explain how the police department and city management deliberately withheld critical information and misled elected decision makers in the immediate aftermath of the Kelly Thomas death.
As you listen, be sure to reflect on the atmosphere of fear and distrust that permeated Fullerton in the weeks immediately following the murder; remember that we were told to remain calm and patient, and that we were to trust our leaders who supposedly had access to all the information that we did not.
Later we found out that our leaders knew nothing, and the city let accused killers roam free with badges and guns while we were kept in the dark.
Thanks to the knuckleheads for advertising the Recall! Saturday was a record breaking day for signature gathering. I say it’s time for another fundraiser!
And thanks to the help of one of our intrepid Friends, the clip below shows you some highlights from the last fundraiser. Watch the big money developers silently scuttle by; listen to the slow-motion simpleminded mental unwinding by Jan Flory; and hear from two of the dinosaurs, themselves. F. “Dick” Jones gets deeply Scriptural but really shallow when it comes to facts. Don Bankhead is as confused and/or untruthful as ever – the illegal 10% water tax is still being collected. Enjoy.
Say what you like about Don Bankhead, but you have admit the old coot is a treasure trove of Recall campaign material. Here is King Bankhead objecting to having his image and words captured for posterity by Sherri, a Recall campaign stalwart. I guess if I were as dim as the King, I wouldn’t want anybody recording what I said, either.
Two great lines.
First: “I’m a private person when I’m not working or on duty.” On duty?! He still thinks he’s a cop, which explains where his first misplaced loyalties are. Of course his “duty” is to represent all of Fullerton, even the victims of criminal behavior by the police, not just the public safety unions who support his political campaigns.
Then: I still have public…private rights to live by.” What the hell is that supposed to mean? Bankhead’s sudden shyness never stopped this oaf from approving City spy cameras set up to take our pictures without asking our consent. More nonsense from Mr. Scrambled Eggs for Brains.
And finally, why is Bankhead parked in a handicapped spot? We know all about his fake “disability” scam, but really, his sense of entitlement, even fraudulently come by, is remarkable.
For years and years the City of Fullerton has been adding ten percent to the cost you and I pay for our water and re-directing this money to Fullerton’s General Fund; the fund that pays for City Councilmen Jones’ and Bankhead’s pay and perks, and that also pays for Fullerton’s pensions, including the mammoth pension pulled in by Councilmember and former Police Chief Pat McKinley.
Forget for a moment the fact that California’s Constitution prohibits governments from charging more for services than they really cost, and consider Proposition 218, passed by the voters in 1996. It says that the government can’t dress up taxes and call them fees. It requires justification of such charges and public transparency. Justification and transparency, two commodities in real short supply in Fullerton.
The 10% “in-lieu fee” that the City has been adding (and hiding) in your water bill total is, and always was a fraud, and illegal.
Who wants to put lipstick on the pig?
Coincidentally, our asinine councilmember, F “Dick” Jones was first elected in 1996. And that means for every year of his rude, loud-mouthed tenure on the Fullerton City Council he has been approving this rip-off. Of course his sleepy pal Don Bankhead was trudging right along side him every crooked mile of the way.
They ain't very smart, but they sure is slow...
Since the gross rater revenue runs into the tens of millions every year, the 10% rip off has sure piled up. I estimate the total to be somewhere between $25,000,000 and $30,000,000 since 1997 alone. That’s a lot of dough, and I really have to wonder, will Jones, Bankhead and now McKinley offer the water ratepayers of Fullerton a refund of this misdirected money?
Ramos and Cicinelli, the two men charged in the murder of Kelly Thomas, got three months of paid vacation. Now they’re on unpaid leave, but they still have not been fired.
What about officers Hampton, Wolfe, Blatney and Craig who were accomplices in the brutal beating? Nope. Still employed. Still getting paid.
And the FPD management who allowed the six officers to collude on their reports? We still don’t know who’s responsible for that mess. But nobody was fired.
Chief Sellers, who went on vacation, returned only to hide under his desk, and then foraged up a doctors note to dodge his responsiblies while Fullerton suffered? Not fired.
How about Jones and Meyer, the city attorneys who have worked so hard to conceal the department’s criminal activity from the public eye for all those years? They’re still here. And they’re probably making more than ever.
And the City Manager, who’s supposed to be responsible for all city employees and their actions? Not fired. But he did try to give himself a raise.
And finally, the three councilmembers who’ve been overseeing this mess for 56 collective years, who did nothing but insult the murder victim and defend the police department responsible for his death? They’re still here, and they’re still deflecting responsibility for the actions of the city they’re supposed to be running.
Five months have passed and not a single soul has lost their job for their involvement in a murder under color of authority. That’s a pretty stark contrast to those of us in the real world, where people are often fired for showing up to work late or taking a nap on the clock.
But not in Fullerton. This year we have witnessed a demonstration of a power structure so perverse that it can insulate itself from the most heinous of crimes with almost no remorse or repercussions.
Well, here’s the information provided by Andrew Goodrich & Co. about some dude who needs to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Antoine Dennell
Everybody’s supposed to be scared. At least this loser did his time.
Too bad Pat KcKinley’s boys never bothered to alert the women of Fullerton that a serial molester of women, Albert Rincon was prowling the streets of Fullerton preying upon precisely those women McKinley would characterize as not credible. See, Rincon was one of Fullerton’e Finest. Really.
And he was actually put back on the streets after a little sensitivity training.
Politicians are forever saying asinine things and then denying they said them. Small time politicians like our own mutton head Don Bankhead have been getting away with this sort of thing for years. Televised council meetings have helped expose the intra-noggin confusion that exists in minds like Bankhead’s, but youtube has really been invaluable.
A while back we ran a post that highlighted Bruce Whitaker rightfully taking Bankhead to task for sharing his opinion that Fullerton would be ghost town without Redevelopment. No, no said Bankhead, testy-like. He really said “downtown Fullerton.” Forget that neither would be a ghost town without Redevelopment – that’s just Big Gummint Bankhead passing along all the lies he’s swallowed over the years, and of course his own campaign literature year after dreary year – taking credit for “revitalizing” DTF over and over and over and over and over again.
Here’s what Bankhead really said, verbatim, an insult to the hundreds of businesses in DTF and in the rest of the city that never took a nickel of Bankhead’s largess:
I strongly urge each and every Friend of Freedom in Fullerton to take with them a copy the most recent OC Weekly to the next Fullerton City Council meeting, on December 6th.
Why? To read!
A speaker should begin reading aloud and into the record Marisa Gerber’s excellent exposition of the Fullerton Police Department’s Culture of Corruption. Pick up where your predecessor left off when his three minutes are up and the mike gets shut off. Keep going until you have made the Three Blind Brontosauruses and their Rotarian claque listen to the whole damned article.
At the end I would challenge any sane, honest person not to acknowledge the undeniable evidence that Pat McKinley’s police force degenerated into a sinkhole of corruption; and that that Bankhead and Jones are guilty of letting it happen as they abandoned their sworn responsibility to the citizens of Fullerton.
It’s very clear. They sold us out to their pals in the police union. Let’s be sure to remind them why they are being recalled!
Here’s a little message we got at FFFF Central Ops today. This seems to be the talking point of law enforcement trolls in the Kelly Thomas matter. Blame dear old Dad for neglect, and now for wanting to cash in. This writer actually tries (without success) to redeem his/her ignorance and appalling spelling and grammar by admitting that the cops who murdered Kelly should be punished (well Hell, that’s mighty big of ya).
Name: Email: Privacy: You may publish this, but protect my identity
Subject: mr thomas’s alterior motives
so kelly thomas’s father threw kelly out of the house, put him on the street, and put him in an arm bar to force him onto a psych unit. hiis son was starving and homeless for years, but now all of a sudden mr thomas cares about him? he just wants millions out of this..yes the officiers should go to jail but mr thomas put his son out there in those volatiile condiitons simply because hiis son did not want to take his meds…if mr thomas cared about kelly’s wellbeing so much he would not put him on the streets you would think that that would be more dangerous for someone’s health than being off a drug
Of course we have been all over this ground before and if you believe that Kelly’s parents had the legal or practical ability to restrain their boy and force him to take medication you are a damned fool. In any case this simple, inescapable, unavoidable truth remains: if Ramos, Wolfe, Cicinelli, Blatney and Klein had not killed him, Kelly Thomas would be be alive today.
As far as a big payout is concerned, I’m wondering if advertising Ron Thomas’ greed is going to be the tact taken by the Three Recalled RINOs and their misbegotten backers, in an attempt to deflect criticism for their own dismal failures, before and after the murder.
So far the Three Tree Trunks have adamantly refused to even admit that there is a Culture of Corruption that runs through the police department – a culture created by McKinley’s incompetence (or worse) and nurtured by Jones and Bankhead’s sleepy and grumpy indifference. So why not cast about for a somebody else to blame?
Friends, it’s that time of year when the Fullerton City Council selects one of its number to be the voice and face of Fullerton to the community, and beyond.
Some folks say the title of Mayor is really only just a name for another voting member of the council; the person who just manages (or mismanages, as the case may be) the meetings, and signs documents approved by a council majority.
Ah resemble that remark, bah golly!
But consider this: how might the world, the nation, the State and the County have perceived Fullerton, if, as the Kelly Thomas police murder saga unfolded, Fullerton’s mayor had been other than the cantankerous southern-fried buffoon who, by all appearances treated the whole event as an annoying inconvenience on his way to a ribbon-cutting.
Doomed to succeed?
Which brings us to the December 6th vote. Last year Pat McKinley weaseled out on supporting Sharon Quirk-Silva for the number two spot, as he, at the behest of the repuglican establishment, joined Bankhead and Jones in keeping the Democrat Quirk-Silva out of the rotation.
What happens when age overtakes IQ.
Well, as they say, that was then. Under normal circumstances the Ed Royce/Dick Ackerman crowd would love to cut her out again. But this year is different all right, and the Slush Fund Gang can’t afford to alienate any more voters, especially a significant liberal-leaning crowd who may very well relish yet another reason to sign a petition, and then vote to recall the Three Blind Brontosaurii.
The fact that many of these folks also qualified a referendum on the Coyote Hills development issue will cause The Three Silent Sloths’ handlers cause to pause: when the Recall signatures qualify the Fullerton lefties will have two swings to reverse the Chevron entitlements approved by Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley.
Heh heh, I'm pretty savvy. If you don't count that Ackerwoman campaign.
Ackerman isn’t stupid (although he has recently made some horrendous underestimations of the electorate). The anti-recall campaign has made a deliberate attempt to woo Fullerton’s liberal/schools/feel-good cadre by attacking a real conservative, FSD Trustee Chris Thompson. Well, okay, maybe Ackerman isn’t smart at all: Thompson out-polled every other candidate in every Fullerton ballot in 2010, so let’s see how that works out for The Dickster.
Still, wait and observe how Quirk-Silva is quietly selected as Mayor by the same bastards that refused her the Mayor Pro Tem job just a year ago.We may even hear lame explanations about last year’s vote
How would that be for cynicism of the lowest kind?
All alone.
Upon further consideration, I believe this post should address the solitary figure of Bruce Whitaker, a principled conservative who is worth ten armies of Jonses, Bankheads, and McPensions. By virtue of his intelligence, stability, and ethics, Whitaker should be the next Mayor Pro Tem, and Mayor in 2013. If that happens I’ll unscrew my right arm and throw it across the room. The Three Silent Slugs will never let that happen. And one more great reason to Recall them.
