Setting The Bar Low – Page 78 – Friends For Fullerton's Future

July 26, 2011August 21, 2011Setting The Bar Low

A Case of Mistaken Identity? Yeah, Right.

This image was included in a story at Fullerton Stories here and purports to be a 2009 police booking photo of recent Fullerton homicide victim Kelly Thomas that was, presumably, provided by the ever helpful FPD spokehole Andrew Goodrich. Well, this is certainly a scary looking dude: pretty buff and mangy, and sufficiently angry-looking to scare the good folks of Fullerton right back into complacency about the homicide of a mentally-ill homeless man.

The only trouble is that it isn’t Kelly Thomas at all. His parents say this isn’t their son. But we don’t need their expert opinion. Apart from a large nose that is completely different from every other picture of Thomas, Kelly’s hair was flaming red, a simple fact illustrated in every other picture of him in the Fullerton Stories piece.

So what gives? Is this just a cheapjack trick by Goodrich & Co. to degrade the victim by presenting Kelly Thomas as a surly, muscular threat to Fullerton’s delicate residents? If so, the Fullerton Police Department has actually hit a new low, and given recent events that’s pretty goddam hard for them to do. But it’s just when you think you’ve hit the FPD basement you find out there are even lower levels.

I will await a comical explanation from the Good Sergeant Goodrich, but of course I won’t be holding my breath.

July 25, 2011July 27, 2011Dick Jones

Mayor Jones Speaks!

by admin19 Comments

This weekend one of our Friends caught up with Mayor Dick Jones as he was exiting the library gala. This fellow was one of the folks protesting the police beating of Kelly Thomas a few hundred feet away. Apparently the protesters wanted the Chief, or anybody in authority, really, to make a public statement on the issue.

And so our mayor offered us this elegant excuse for the city’s stonewalling, before shuffling off to his vehicle: “You don’t start talkin’ about things if you’re trying to get the answer.”

July 20, 2011July 27, 2011Dead heads

FAIL To The Chief

by Joe Sipowicz60 Comments

chief-sellers-300x240 — We have nothing to hide. Now it's off to the Caribbean...

We received the following correspondence from a long-time Friend.

The controversy surrounding the recent beating death of Kelly Thomas, a local mentally ill homeless man at the hands of the Fullerton Police has been marked by the absence of Chief Michael Sellers. The FPD has instead relied on its regular spokesman Sgt. Andrew Goodrich for information about the case. This might be thought an appropriate channel of communication if this were anything like standard police work. It is not. Six sworn peace officers beat a man to near death (he died days later) in the parking lot of the Fullerton Transportation Center, and no explanation has been offered other than that the man offered physical resistance and that a thorough investigation will follow.

The brutality of the beating has left many in this city asking how it was that six trained police officers could not subdue a single unarmed man without killing him. Chief Sellers, who is reportedly vacationing, neither returned to Fullerton to appear before the press and public or even offered a written statement about the tragedy. His complete absence does nothing to assure the people of Fullerton that there is responsible leadership being exercised over the officers in his department.

July 19, 2011July 20, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Pringle’s Cash Cow Stops Giving Milk

by Grover Cleveland4 Comments

PringlePud — When the money ran out did Der Pringle?

Thanks to Friend Tony Serra for providing a link to a Sac Bee story about Anaheim’s former Mayor-for-Hire Kurt Pringle quitting the California High Speed Rail Board.

Could it be true? Sure looks like it. According to the story he wants Governor Brown to be able to appoint someone who represents his point of view. I wonder what that point of view might be. Ethics? Brown, who as Attorney General took note of Pringle’s conflicts of interest over many years may have asked him to go.

So Der Rat is jumping off Das Sinkingboot; timely, too, now that all the revelations of incompetence, waste, misinformation, and decreased funding are dragging the HSR to a well-deserved grave.

The funniest thing in the piece is the glowing valediction to Pringle from fellow HSR barnacle, Tom Umberg, who in the past has proved there is no moral morass too low for a politician to sink into, and who recently penned a pro-HSR op-ed piece in the Register that was so incompetent I’m not going to link to it to save Umberg any more embarrassment.

July 18, 2011July 27, 2011Behind Closed Doors

CONSUMER WARNING: It’s The New West

by The Desert Rat19 Comments

For all you folks out there that are thinking about dining and drinking, or drinking, or even art walking in downtown Fullerton, think twice before you venture into the battle zone. A few years back, your esteemed Mayor, Dr. Dick Jones, declared the downtown “unsafe,” and called it the “Wild West;” he said that “there are people down there that don’t look like me,” and called them “last week’s prison felons.” Here is Jones in all his befuddled glory:

So what did the city do? It looks like they spent one and a half million dollars per year to employ a collection of goons to work the downtown beat who, with exception of a uniform, may be hard to distinguish from the folks they go after – last week’s prison felons.

The original problem, created by Jones & Co. persists. And now I invite you to consider whether the remedy isn’t worse than the disease.

July 12, 2011May 10, 2012Chronic Failure

Go Home or Go To Jail

by admin124 Comments

Awhile back Grover Cleveland posted on how the Fullerton City Council’s creation of a mess downtown led to the rise of an FPD goon squad to quell the crime wave. The only problem was that the FPD goon squad added to the crime wave. Here’s a reminder. An innocent bystander is beat up and arrested. Later he is tried for assaulting a cop to which Fullerton cops Kenton Hampton and Framk Nguyen swear in a court of law. Only problem is it didn’t happen, but that didn’t stop the FPD and the DA from trying to put an innocent man in prison.

July 10, 2011July 11, 2011Behind Closed Doors

The Latest County Melt Down

by Mr. Peabody23 Comments

Campbell — OC's Boss Tweed steps in it. Again.

Okay, Friends this one is a bit convoluted so stick with me.

The latest State budget deal takes about $50 million away from Orange County. How come? Best I can figure it out is this: after the bankruptcy of 1995 the County sold recovery bonds and the State sequestered about $50,000,000 annually to pay off the bond holders from part of the Vehicle License Fee that was distributed to the County. Later when the VLF was swapped out for property tax income the payoff to bondholders still came from the VLF. When OC refinanced it’s debt in 2006 it started taking the VLF money directly from the State even though no other county got any of it.

Confused? In 2006 County Supervisor Bill Campbell said he wasn’t, but he failed to do anything about the money hanging out there according to Voice of OC (EA)’s Norberto Santana, here. It seems he didn’t want to address the issue and hoped everybody would forget about it. That lame strategy worked for about 5 years. Now the State is laying claim to the dough.

The worst malefactor here is County CEO Tom Mauk who has yet another catastrophe to lay claim to. Following swiftly on the heels of the disastrous Human Resource Department audit in which Mauk was busted giving his cronies huge raises and promotions, this latest calamity may prove to be the final nail in Mauk’s coffin.

Will three supervisors finally perform self cranial-rectal extraction and get rid of this bozo? They aren’t very bright but sooner or later…

Stay tuned.

July 6, 2011July 6, 2011Boohooism

“Joel Swintowski”: Who is He? What Is He Promoting?

by Mr. Peabody22 Comments

The other day FFFF received this rather odd comment on the blog:

“Thanks for risking your lives so that my family and I can enjoy OURS!”
– Joel Swintowski

There were links to a website here that sported an official-looking letter from Fullerton’s police officer’s union president, Barry Coffman asking for money. There was the quote from Mr. Swintowski, clearly implying that he supports the Fullerton police union.

I got to wondering who this Joel Swintowski person might be. I never heard of him. So last night I contacted our FFFF investigative team of people-finders and guess what they came up with? There’s no such registered voter in Fullerton or in all of Orange County with any such name.

But, as they say on TV infomercials: Wait! There’s more! I also found a host of identical websites for police unions across California with the same quote from this “Joel Swintowski” guy. Clearly this operation is a money gathering scheme organized by some entity and then sold to police unions throughout the state like this one in Menlo Park, probably with a hefty cut taken from proceeds collected from unsuspecting suckers.

Now back to Fullerton. Coffman says it’s a “donation” that he’s begging. The request for money states: “Your contribution to us today will help provide outreach and strengthen relations by and between the FPOA and several local worthy groups and charities.”

Now we know the FPOA spends tens of thousands of dollars trying to get right-thinking people elected to the Fullerton City Council. And by right-thinking, I mean “public safety” union stooges who will raise their pensions and lower their retirement age. Do any of these “contributions” find their way into political activity? Could be. They are not tax deductible – the kind of deduction you get making a contribution directly to a real charity, eliminating the pistol-packin’ middleman.

So who might some of these “worthy” recipients be? Any guesses?

Could they include the campaigns of the same two guys, Bankhead and McKinley, who are getting prepared to raise your water rates 91% so they can use a portion of that money to support their own plush $McMillion retirement plans?

Maybe it’s time for an IRS audit of this solicitation for alms. Maybe the State AG needs to be called in, again. You know, just to make sure it’s legit.

And in the meantime maybe it’s time for FPOA to find a real Fullerton resident for its self-promotional testimonials.

July 5, 2011July 6, 2011Setting The Bar Low

A Major Problem in Fullerton

by Mr. Peabody19 Comments

Today The OC Register (see Jim, we know how to do it right) did a story on former Fullerton policeman Todd Majors who was busted for credit card fraud and is doing easy time taking out trash at Theo Lacy and going home every night.

Of course we already reported about Majors, here. Kimberly Edds of The Register actually did do some investigation to discover that Major allegedly has an addiction to pills and was hired by the Fullerton Police Department even though he had a drunk driving bust. Supposedly his drug addiction caused him to lurch into a life of crime.

Writes Edds: While internal affairs continued its investigation, Fullerton police asked themselves whether they missed any signs about Major or how they could have done to prevent a good cop from becoming a criminal.

Well, I sure hope they figure that out real soon.

Edds’ story concluded with the obligatory police cry for sympathy for one of their own – as some sort of pathetic victim.

July 5, 2011July 5, 2011Fullerton City Council

Fullerton’s Fireworks Ban: More Harm Than Good?

by Travis27 Comments

The booming and crackling of widespread civil disobedience on the 4th of July is difficult to ignore. Today we received this observation from a law-abiding but frustrated citizen who says it’s only fair to either enforce the ban or eliminate it altogether.

Fireworks-Idiot — Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

Hello Friends for Fullerton’s Future,

I am concerned about the amount of illegal 4th of July fireworks that lit up the sky in my neighborhood last night.

I understand the ban of safe and sane fireworks in our city for the benefit and protection of dangers posed to the Fullerton hillsides and open space, we explain this to our children as the reason we cannot light fireworks in front of our own home. My problem is that in response to this ban, we now have illegal fireworks launched above our home all night with seemingly no enforcement of the no fireworks law. This is more dangerous than the safe fireworks sold as fundraisers for local groups in a booth and depletes my credibility as a parent explaining to my children with tears in their eyes why we are following the rules when is seems no one around us is doing the same.

I think is it time for Fullerton to review this no fireworks policy, maybe there are regions of the city that can have legal fireworks, like mine a 1950’s single story home neighborhood near Brookhurst and Orangethorpe where there is not a hillside in site. If the illegal fireworks will be going off over head any way then let my family have the fun of at home fireworks too.

Our family purchased a home in Fullerton just over four years ago; we moved in right before the 4th of July, purchased our fireworks at a booth on Orangethorpe, which as it turns out was Buena Park. On the evening of the 4th, we were all set on the front lawn with our chairs, bucket of water for safety and fireworks, we lit the first one and a Fullerton police car immediately pulled up to tell us that we were breaking the law and could not light fireworks in Fullerton. Now, four years later it’s like I’m living at Disneyland with fireworks fling overhead and M-80’s rocking my windows, not a police car in site.

I am looking for a better enforced ban on fireworks in Fullerton or a change to this policy in the future. That way I can look my kids in the eye and tell them the truth, we are not allowed to light fireworks in Fullerton.