The Crime Beat Archives - Page 23 of 46 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

July 15, 2012July 15, 2012Behind Closed Doors

It’s Broken. Fix It.

And let’s start with someone named Dana Fox who supposedly is an attorney for the City of Fullerton – a holdover from the Old Regime of Incompetence and Denial.

Here is a story by the never helpful Lou Ponsi of the OC Register that includes an interview with said Mr. Fox. It’s all about the the lawsuit filed by Ron Thomas against the City of Fullerton for the murder of his son by the Fullerton cops July 5th, 2011.

First Fox pops off about the irrelevance of previous bad behavior by some of Fullerton’s Finest:

Responding to the lawsuit Thomas filed last week, alleging officers’ misconduct in multiple incidents apart from the July 5, 2011 incident involving his son, attorney Dana Fox said many of the allegations deal with “extemporaneous” and “irrelevant” matters.

“All of those other matters have nothing to do with the events of July 5, 2011, and are irrelevant to determine if there is liability, and if so, if there are reasonable compensatory damages that Mr. Thomas is entitled to recover,” Fox said.

I think the history of malfeasance and cover-ups is very much germane to the Culture of Corruption that permeated the FPD. Of course I’m not a lawyer. But Garo Mardirossian is. I do know one thing: I want the history of FPD abuses addressed, admitted to, and corrected, and through a court proceeding, if necessary.

Later on Fox dangles the tasty carrot of an easy settlement:

“As the city and Cathy Thomas were able to do, which is put aside their differences … the city is more than willing to sit down with Mr. Thomas and his attorney,” Fox said. “Otherwise, it will be a lengthy case.”

Differences? Hell, we all saw the video. Who in the hell gave this assclown permission to speak to the media on behalf of the City. Bankhead, Jones, and McPension have been fired by the people of Fullerton. Who is giving this bozo direction in dealing with Ron Thomas, or any other of the long line of plaintiffs against the Fullerton Police Department? Again, I only want a settlement after a court trial, in public, details the facts of the Kelly Thomas murder on top of those the DA will not touch.

Finally, I would like to know who gave Lawyer Fox permission to open his yap to the media in the first place. Was it Old Regime City Manager Joe Felz? Was it Old Regime City Attorney Richard Jones? Was it Mayor Sharon Quirk? Whoever it was, one thing should be made abundantly clear – nobody speaks for the City of Fullerton except the city council; this means no more happy press releases issued by staff, no more government self-promotion, and no more obfuscation meant to protect city employees and meant to sweep embarrassments under the rug.

And let’s hope the new council gets on with the business of clearing out the holdovers from the corrupt, stupid, incompetent, and negligent council majority that preceded them.

July 11, 2012July 11, 2012A Step in the Right Direction

Tonight: Citizen Committee Seeks Civilian Oversight of Fullerton Police Department

by admin239 Comments

Citizen Committee Seeks Civilian Oversight of Fullerton Police Department in the Wake of Beating Death of Kelly Thomas, Reports of Abuse by Officers, Recent and Impending Lawsuits against FPD.

by Alex Stoffer

The Police Oversight Proposal Committee (POPC) will host a public presentation on methods of police oversight (tonight) Wednesday, July 11, 2012 from 6:30 to 8:00 pm at the Fullerton Public Library Conference Center. The public are invited to attend. There is no admission charge.

Citizen Oversight committees are composed of community members who review complaints, look into claims of misconduct and harassment, and investigate instances of excessive force.

Read the rest of this article…

July 11, 2012July 15, 2012Behind Closed Doors

County Public Works Director Fired

by The Fullerton Shadow27 Comments

The fallout from the Carlos Bustamante sexual assault case has now begun in earnest.

According to the Voice of OC(EA), here, the County has fired some high level guy named Jess Carbajal, the Director of Public Works, and Bustamante’s immediate boss. Mr. Carbajal’s offense appears to be that when the first anonymous complaint against Bustamante was received in March, 2011, he directed the Public Works HR crew to investigate. Too bad they worked for Bustamante! Naturally the conflict of interest resulted in no investigation at all. Bad, boy, Jess.

Of course Carbajal, who now has lawyered up, has already fingered County CEO Tom Mauk and then Board Chairman Bill Cambell as being well aware of the original complaint.

It seems to be common knowledge that Bill Campbell was Bustamante’s political mentor and promotor; and that the gross, serial perv held a series of unrelated jobs and possessed no discernible professional skills as he ascended the high-paying County bureaucratic ladder. Somebody was looking out for this miscreant and it seems to be generally accepted that these people were Mauk and Campbell.

At this Carbajal just looks like a ineffectual patsy with no moral scruples, but he probably has a lot to say. Why it took so long to dump him is an interesting question all by itself.

July 9, 2012July 9, 2012A Step in the Right Direction

NEW: L.A. Sheriffs set the standard for dealing with the homeless

by admin237 Comments

Cal Watchdog Editor’s note: This is the second part of a three-part series on how the homeless and mentally ill are treated in California. Part One was about the Kelly Thomas beating and death.

By Tori Richards

Welcome to 450 Bauchet St., a 10-acre compound in the heart of downtown Los Angeles that is the world’s biggest jail. Known as Twin Towers, it has a population greater than many small towns, with 3,911 inmates, 900 staff, and even its own hospital. But it also has another distinction: the world’s largest mental institution.

Housed in one wing and encompassing four floors, the mental health ward tends to approximately 1,200 inmates with psychiatric problems. Several hundred more of the most severe cases are located in the hospital.

California is now a state where the police — not doctors or counselors — are the front lines to millions of mentally ill who have no other recourse than to end up in the jails.

“Sheriff Baca has frequently commented that the mentally ill belong in a mental institution,” said Capt. Mike Parker. “In law enforcement we deal with things because other aspects of society have failed. You have a system not addressing the need. “In the end, law enforcement is the last stop. We’re not looking for that responsibility; it was given to us.”

A breakdown in the system has led to a large population of the mentally ill who turn to crime or simply wander the streets homeless, a recipe for disaster.

Just look at the case of Kelly Thomas, a 37-year-old schizophrenic homeless man who belonged in a mental care facility rather than on the streets.

Click here to read more.

July 9, 2012July 9, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Dysfunction @ County Reaches Rock Bottom

by The Fullerton Shadow39 Comments

Although FFFF hasn’t been reporting much on County activities it’s pretty hard to overlook the latest management crisis in the County Hall of Administration, in which top managers appear to have hushed up a multitude of sex crimes and workplace harassment perpetrated by a creep named Carlos Bustamante. Bustamante is a Santa Ana city councilman, and until last fall, a high level bureaucrat in the OC Public Works Department. Mr. Peabody touched upon the mess, here.

Bustamante was arrested last week by the DA, fifteen months after an anonymous letter was received by the County. Apparently that complaint was actually given to an underling of Bustamante to investigate! It remains unclear who made that call, but his boss, the Director of Public Works is taking the hit for the team – so far.

Meanwhile a second complaint in August 2011, spurred the CEO, Tom Mauk to hire an outside lawyer to investigate Bustamante’s activities. The consequent detailed report, completed in September 2011, supposedly detailed some pretty greasy stuff. For some reason the Supervisors were not shown the report – except for Chairman Bill Campbell, who now amazingly claims he refused to read it, supervising apparently not being one of the requirements of a Supervisor. The report remained under lock and key as Bustamante was permitted to quit and given 3 month’s salary to (get this) – prevent him from suing the County! Blackmail? Who knows?

Finally, the report came to the surface after the County’s Internal Auditor, pursuing his own investigation (and after months of stonewalling by Mauk and his HR Director, Carl Crown) was permitted the IA to see it. At that point the jig was up and the Board was notified of the damning report. They immediately referred the matter to the DA for an investigation which culminated in a dozen felonies and four misdemeanors.

Remarkably, in the intervening months between March 2012 and now, Mauk has been permitted to keep his job despite the inescapable facts of incompetence, cronyism, withholding information from the Board, and of course, paying Bustamante $45,000 to go away without a ruckus. Sure sounds like a cover up, doesn’t it?

Evidently the Board, or a majority of it at least, likes this kind of thing and thinks it’s just fine. Bill Campbell has publicly said so, claiming the Mauk was just trying to protect the County by covering up Bustamante’s behavior. Of course that begs another question: why did anybody put the County at risk by employing this scum-sack in the first place? For that you may direct your question right back to Bill Campbell, who has been Carlos Bustamante’s political patron over the years, and who, no doubt, presided, along with Mauk, over Bustamante’s weird and inexplicable assent to the top of County government.

A “closed session” was held by the Board on Friday to discuss what to do. Apparently doing nothing remains the Board’s path of least resistance as they have postponed taking about the matter ’til July 24th. They had better hurry up. The DA has said that he’s not done investigating and will now focus his attention on personnel with the Hall of Administration itself.

July 7, 2012Behind Closed Doors

The Waistband

by Mr. Peabody130 Comments

Something has been bothering me, and I have a question: What is a waistband?

I don’t really know. It sounds like something that held up those stretchy green rayon pants old grandad wore.

I do know that it is the handiest thing imaginable for cops who, for whatever reason, have just plugged somebody. How many times have we read in post-shooting news articles that Mr. Sinister was “reaching for his waistband” when Officer Galahad, fearing for his own life, felt compelled to shoot him four or five times? Apparently a “waistband” is the place that bad guys stick their pistols, or knives, boomerangs, or whatever; or that’s the plausible place he they would stick ’em if they had ’em in the first place.

And how many times has the DA, investigating the shootings, given a pass to Officer Galahad or one of his brethren, due to the claim, often unsubstantiated, that Mr. Sinister was “reaching for his waistband?”

Of course it’s a little embarrassing when it turns out that Mr. Sinister was completely unarmed. Then you would think that the “reaching for waistband” defense would come up a little short. After all why would a bad guy reach for a weapon that wasn’t there?

But no! It seems that for a successful Reaching For The Waistband defense, a policeperson merely needs to chant the mantra and that establishes the defense. After all, how was Officer Galahad to know that Mr. Sinister was merely trying to pull his pants up?

July 5, 2012July 5, 2012Downtown Fullerton

NEW: Kelly Thomas killing aftermath: Reforming how cops deal with the homeless

by admin174 Comments

Editor’s (Cal Watchdog) note: Today marks a year since Kelly Thomas, an unarmed homeless man, was severely beaten by Fullerton police. He died five days later. This is the first of a three-part series.

By Tori Richards

An outside investigation into whether police officers violated policy leading up to the beating death of homeless man Kelly Thomas will be completed shortly. If consistent with preliminary findings, the investigation will lambast the Fullerton Police Department for a series of blunders.

A CalWatchDog.com investigation has found that, not only have the officers’ actions violated the city’s police policy manual, they are in sharp contrast to another police agency that encounters the homeless at a rate hundreds of percentage points higher, but without a record of violence.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — a model agency in its dealings with the homeless — has more than 2,000 encounters a month and runs a groundbreaking program that seeks to aid that sector, rather than incarcerate them.

“The International Association of Chiefs of Police gave its highest award to the LASD in 1996 because we partnered law enforcement with mental health and social workers to work together and identify people living on the streets and provide opportunities to them,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Parker.

That was 16 years ago and LASD is still going strong. Numerous police agencies have followed their lead and initiated their own polices, including Fullerton.

But on July 5, 2011, none of that seemed to matter when Thomas had a fatal run-in with six police officers at a Fullerton bus depot. The 37-year-old man was a schizophrenic who preferred living on the streets to a structured life indoors where he took his medicine. Read more here.

June 25, 2012June 25, 2012A Step in the Right Direction

Tanned, Rested, Ready. Bill Hunt For Fullerton Police Chief?

by Mr. Peabody441 Comments

Dear Friends, we received the following e-mail today:

The Fullerton Police Department needs a housecleaning; a big broom that will reach all the way back into the filthy corners that haven’t been cleaned for years. There are hairballs and dust bunnies back in there dating to Patdown Pat McPension’s first years on the job.

Except for those inside the department and the cowardly do-nothing types like Sharon Quirk who would have us believe that she and Dan Hughes are cleaning up the spills on Aisle One, nobody believes the department is capable of reforming itself. We need an objective outsider to do the job. Somebody who has experience as a municipal police chief, but who isn’t afraid to take on the establishment.

That person is Bill Hunt.

As a lieutenant in the OC Sheriff’s Department he was the Police Chief of San Clemente. He took on the corrupt Sheriff, Mike Carona when nobody else had the guts to. In doing so he earned the enmity of all the other crooked repuglicans in Orange County. It cost him his job.

Let’s get Fullerton back on track. Let’s get a strong, effective, honorable reformer running our police department!

June 19, 2012June 19, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Pam Keller Speaks! Apologizes For Not Stopping Our Bad Behavior.

by The Fullerton Shadow196 Comments

Keller in the Hat2 — Don’t let the silly hat fool you. There’s nothing underneath.

Yes, ever sanctimonious, ever self-righteous, Fullerton’s Queen Collaboratrix, Pam Keller issued a statement at the June 5th Swan Song of the the Three Bald Tires in which she really outdid herself.

I like the part where Pam declares herself up for a good sidewalk protest. We know all about that. She doesn’t mind screaming at people when her own self-interest is involved. Did Keller even show up at a sidewalk protest in front of the police station to protest the bludgeoning death of an innocent man at the hands of the FPD? Of course not. When there’s nothing in it for her it’s a lynch type mob.

But really, suggesting that Kelly Thomas was even remotely a factor for divisiveness in Fullerton is stupid even for a dope like Keller. No Pam, any divisiveness you perceive in Fullerton was caused by rogue, murderous cops and a sclerotic, incompetent regime bent on covering it up; a regime that ripped off its citizenry to pay for it’s own exorbitant salaries and benefits; a regime that handed out free land worth millions to campaign (and Fullerton Collaborative) contributors.

But in reality Keller is as wrong as she can be. We now know that the community is, and was not divided. The people of Fullerton demonstrated solidarity spectacularly on June 5th 2012, the very day Keller delivered herself of her idiotic diatribe. Two thirds of the voters delivered a very different sort of message, a message of unity, hope and reform.

The Recall of Jones, Bankhead and McPension succeeded in every precinct in Fullerton, rich and poor, Anglo, Latino, and Asian-American.

Say goodnight Pam, your party’s over.

June 13, 2012December 12, 2016Dead heads

In SlideBro’s Own Words

by Joe Sipowicz452 Comments

Yesterday the world was treated to the moving words of love and respect that Slidebar Rock ‘N Roll Kitchen proprietor Jeremy Popoff had for Kelly Thomas, the homeless man who was beat to death by members of the Fullerton Police Department last July.

Poor Jeremy! It must indeed have been heartbreaking for him to lose somebody he had known for years. Especially since he now acknowledges that the call that summoned police to the scene was instigated by a call from his establishment.

(Horrible screeching sound as needle is dragged across the LP)

Here are a few choice quotations from a Fullerton Stories article dated July 23rd 2011 about the Kelly Thomas affair featuring some trenchant observations by Mr. Popoff himself:

“I feel guilty having ever had any contempt for this guy, but if you had asked me about him a month ago, I’d have nothing good to say about him,” Popoff said. “I don’t want to say that it was justified, what happened. But man, Kelly scared people. We …. were always having to kick him out of our bathrooms or tell him to leave customers alone. Then he would yell at us.”

“He had long matted hair and a matted beard that stuck to his body,” Popoff said. “I wish there was something I could do or could have done a long time ago. My manager was in tears when she called me that night. She was really shaken up by it. “

Popoff said that the police have been good to the homeless in the area near his bar. “The cops have been really lenient with him and other homeless. He was allowed to get away with a lot more because he was homeless. The cops gave him a lot of breaks.”

“We’ve given him lots of stuff,” Popoff added. “[He was] not allowed to be here anymore because Kelly did not respect our customers.”

Back to Popoff: “The last thing I want is to be anti-PD or anti-Kelly. We live here, I’m a father. We support the PD and the residents and the community. Literally, most of my staff was very scared and intimidated by him. They were reluctant to ask him to move along,” says Popoff. “Two or three days before [the arrest] he was bumming cigarettes and the manager said to him ‘Kelly you can’t’ do that here, you gotta move on.’ And Kelly screamed back at him ‘don’t call me by my first name!’”