We get lots of mail. Here’s a tasty tidbit of misplaced anger at our efforts here at FFFF.
Subject: Promoting Civil Unrest
Tony Bushala
Your CNN Interview says it all! Personal Accountability is a must and it does not fall only upon our City Officials. It also applies to YOU and your staff. To go on national news, distort facts, and fill in the blanks on what you perceive to be the truth promotes an atmosphere of distrust and civil unrest. What you call your mission contradicts your own actions. Your predictions, along with many, is perhaps a self fulfilling prophecy
Those officers who may have gone out of line will be held accountable. If you were a police officer (which would be impossible) and working in Fullerton that night, you would be on Administrative Leave now after being prematurely accused – meaning without ALL facts known. Councilman McKinnley was correct when he said that it would not be possible for six officers to use force all at the same time. The truth will most certainly come out.
Those previous incidents involving police misconduct have been dealt with and those officers were held accountable.
You promote the video tap of the Fullerton Incident to be shown to the public, yet you admit that showing such incidents have the potential to create civil unrest. If that is the case, you advocate a good riot for the sake of irresponsible transparency for the citizens of Fullerton?
For the sake of all of your followers lets look at your agenda, which is for the most part, promoting TERRORISM – Accomplishing your mission “Accountability” through “Fear” – potential civil unrest.
I would be more that willing to debate you on this issue. I challenge you to respond and I will be happy to verbally engage with you.
Jim
Well, “Jim” I accept your challenge to “verbally engage with you.” Please call up CNN and make the arrangements. I am so there.
We all know there’s laws for us and there’s laws for cops. The sort of stuff Fullerton Police Department members have been busted doing lately, or accused of in court proceedings would land you or me in jail. For a long time. It’s hilarious to listen to the FPD apologists bemoan the “lynch-type mob” of protesters that want answers before the official cover-up, er, investigation is over, thus denying our fine officers “due process.”
The latest example of the double standard that exists is the revelation that the Kelly Thomas killers were permitted to view (and review, and review again, one surmises) the taxpayer-owned video that shows the killing. This is just fine and dandy according to interim Chief Kevin Hamilton because it helps our boys in blue refresh their memory as they cook up and orchestrate plausible accounts of what they did. But it is not okay for for the public to see the video because it might color the recollections of eye-witnesses!
The same crapola is going on with the request to hire one Michael Gennaco to come into Fullerton and have a look around. Forget the fact that this is going to end up costing the taxpayers the better part of $100K. The real issue is why the City is embarking in this direction when the so-called investigations by the FPD, the DA, and the FBI are ongoing!
We are not permitted to seek answers while these alleged investigations are ongoing, and yet the Three Blind Mice (hopefully Whitaker and Quirk-Silva are smart enough to vote no) are willing to instigate yet another “investigation” at the same time.
It seems very clear to me that the Gennaco hiring, and the attempt to make it appear as both an emergency and some sort of reform action is nothing but a PR gimmick to make the City look like it is finally doing something proactive in the wake of the Kelly Thomas homicide. Of course it’s nothing but a cheap trick to try to stem the tide of public relations disasters that have befallen Fullerton since the image of Kelly’s battered face and crushed neck went globally viral.
We may not always have agreed with the liberal activism of Fullerton’s Ralph Kennedy, but there’s no doubt that the engineer-turned-civil-rights-activist was the real deal – a committed believer in social justice who was willing to take unpopular stands on behalf of the causes for which he advocated.
In its obituary of him in 1998, the Los Angeles Times wrote: “He was one of those rare people who saw things as they should be. He wasn’t willing to sit in his comfort while others in the world were suffering. He always felt like he needed to dig in and do something to bring about justice, to take action, to risk his own comfort in order to make things better.”
But Kennedy’s two children – Sharon Kennedy, who is publisher of the Fullerton Observer, which Ralph and his wife, Natalie, founded in the 1970s; and Rusty Kennedy, head of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, which claims to advocate for concepts similar to those advocated by the elder Kennedys – are frauds. Their actions (or inaction, really) following the brutal slaying of Kelly Thomas by Fullerton police thugs shows how they have become lapdogs for the political establishment, which is the very opposite of the behavior displayed by their Dad. Unfortunately, modern liberals usually defend government power and abuse — they don’t stand up for the poor and downtrodden any more.
The Observer has run various news stories about the Thomas killing at the hands of cops, but the stories read like articles hatched in the Fullerton PD’s press department. There is no sense of outrage and an unconscionable reliance on official explanations and official sources. (It’s as if Ralph Kennedy, known as a crusader against housing discrimination, took at face value the official government explanations of why black folks were treated as second-class citizens in the old days. “Don’t worry, folks, Gov. George Wallace and his able team of government officials will get to the bottom of it!”) The Observer, promoting the lame efforts of Rusty and his commission, runs a story that declares: “The Orange County Human Relations Commission is responding to community requests for help in the tragic beating death of Kelly Thomas. On behalf of the Commission, Rusty Kennedy endorsed the idea of an outside, independent investigation of police practices and procedures in the case and more broadly across the department. He gave City Manager Joe Felz an evaluation of Michael Gennaco for the LA County Office of Independent Review. The Commission has worked with Gennaco in hate crime cases and most recently in setting up an OIR in Orange County, which is now staffed by Stephen Connelly, one of Gennaco’s proteges.”
The Observer and Kennedy should be denouncing this brutal attack as a hate crime and staging sit-ins and other demonstrations. Instead, they are joining the official whitewash and telling us to trust these not-so-outside investigations. Connelly has not produced a single serious investigation since he became the head of the supposedly independent commission that operates basically at the behest of the Sheriff. You might as well ask Dick Jones to produce an outside investigation.
Fortunately, this blog is filling in the role that lapdog players such as the Fullerton Observer play. Fortunately, Orange County residents are starting to learn that the Human Relations Commission is a way for limousine liberals to live large on other people’s money while pretending to stand up for the principles that true liberals such as Ralph Kennedy actually stood up for.
Since he was promoted on an interim basis last year I have believed that former museum director Joe Felz was in way over his head. His role in handling the Kelly Thomas homicide has been fuzzy, at best. He seems to have been prepared to let his underling, Chief Sellers make the decisions (or choose not to make any decisions at all) and let police union boss Andrew Goodrich be the official voice of Fullerton – passing half-truths, irrelevancies, or outright lies.
My guess is that Felz abdicated the authority given him by the City Council and handed it over to Pat McKinley.
The only thing I’ve heard from Felz was a lame-ass attempt to play word games by saying no settlement offer was made to Ron Thomas, father of the victim. Of course that was such a sniveling lie that it alone should have earned Felz a half-hour stay in Jay Cicinelli’s basement Taser room.
Here’s an observation made by one of our commenters “Do you know”:
One person the citizen’s of Fullerton are letting fall under the radar is City Manager Joe Felz. The mayor and city council of Fullerton are largely part-time figure heads. The real power in the day to day operations of any small city is in the hands of its city manager. The city manager is also the boss of the chief of police. The chief of police does not even have the power to terminate an employee. The chief can suspend, or place officer’s on administrative leave, but they can only recommend termination. The city manager is the only one with the power to permanently remove an officer from their employment.
Chief Sellers initial inaction in this case is every bit the fault of Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz, as there is no way he did not know what is going on. Chief’s of police throughout California are on the phone with their city manager’s several times a day over one issue or another. City manager’s get their daily marching orders from regional heads of the California League of Cities. Since Chief Sellers did not take action in the early stages of this case, City Manager Joe Felz is every bit as culpable as Chief Sellers. Possibly more.
I’m inclined to agree. We are always told what a nice guy Joe Felz is. Maybe so. But it looks like he’s turned over the keys of the City of Fullerton to a rogue police department.
The folks over at PBS SoCal were kind enough to let us post this “Inside OC” special on the Kelly Thomas story in its entirety. It contains interviews with Ron Thomas, Bruce Whitaker, Chris Thompson and a couple of milquetoast experts on homelessness and mental illness.
Most notable, however, is the Q&A with District Attorney Tony Rackauckaus. His persistent insistence that witnesses (and the rest of the public) not be able to view any videos before they testify is reduced to a mere “preference,” but only after he is confronted with the likelihood that police officers watched the recording as they coordinated their own reports on the incident.
The case for keeping that tape away from the public seems to diminish every time one of these goofs steps in front of a camera.
Brand spanking new interim Police Chief Kevin Hamilton got his name in the paper today, but not in a good way. In an LA Times story Hamilton admits that the goon squad that killed Kelly Thomas on the night of July 5th watched the subsequently top-secret video as they cooked up their “official” reports. Rather than decry this methodology that permitted the killers to get their story straight, Hamilton claims the exercise helped them “refresh” their memories. Of course the Inspector General of the LAPD completely disagrees with this tactic.
The tenor of the tenure was established on Day One
Hey, say what?!
Have we not been told for weeks now by people like former police chief/current councilman Pat McKinley as well as our Do Nothing DA Tony Rackauckas that the video cannot be released because it might “taint” the memories of potential witnesses?
So let’s see if I’ve got this straight: video refreshes cop memory; video taints witness memory. Got it?
Hamilton, who admits to having watched the video, also characterizes the incident as a significant “struggle.” Hmm. Well, that’s an improvement on “tussle,” but it makes you wonder what kind of damage it would have taken to cause the new Chief to utter the words: “lethal gang ass kicking.”
And so it appears as if our newly minted chief’s first contact with the media was a load of horse manure.
For you out-of-towners, come to the intersection of Highland Ave and Commonwealth. Exit 91 Freeway at Harbor Blvd. go north two miles and turn left at Commonwealth Ave. Go two blocks west. See you there!
I just heard from a reliable source that Fullerton Police Chief Mike Sellers has put in for a minimum 30 day medical leave for some undisclosed malady.
Yikes! Is this going to be a stress-related gig? Can it be preliminary to a pension tax-grab? Is it driven by the dismal McPension interview on CNN?
I don’t know, but when I do I’ll let the Friends know all about it.
If you want to get a glimpse of abject stoogery from an employee of a company that another employee has comically referred to as “one of the better news organizations,” take a gander at this drivel from some jackass named David Whiting that was posted yesterday. He’s “reporting” on the mob mentality of those protesting the brutal bludgeoning death of Kelly Thomas at the hands of the Fullerton Police Department. We have noted the bland acceptance of this crime by the Register that has used such gassy descriptions of the lethal attack as “scuffle,” “tussle” and this priceless gem: “the struggle continued until Thomas lost consciousness” (or maybe he just got bored and fell asleep).
First, from the Reg, a scary headline: “Mob Rule Rises After Thomas Death” This is so damned stupid I’ll treat it for what it is – brainless pro-police propaganda. Just like this typical unsubstantiated and utterly irrelevant assertion by Whiting: Sure, there are bad cops. But the vast majority serve with honor and courage.
Reading Whiting’s steaming pile of inaccuracies really makes you wonder whether this clown is actually in the pay of FPD. Let’s hold our collective noses and examine some of it.
Whiting takes exception to those of us who criticize our MIA Chief. According to Whiting, Sellers has been a regular Chatty Cathy, actually having his name mentioned in a two or three press releases issued by Goodrich. Of course we know he hasn’t said anything at all.
Whiting cites a July 11th statement by FPD spokeshole (and cop union official) Andrew Goodrich: a mush-mouth statement (he conveniently ignores all the lies and leaks peddled by this sphincter) indicating the department’s pro-active, hands-0n approach. Alluding to FPD’s immediate attention to this matter, he says the statement was made the day after the Thomas was taken off artificial life support by his dad. But Dave, Thomas was effectively killed on July 5th, six days before this alleged statement; and by July 11th Chief Mike Sellers had long since departed on his two-week vacation (another embarrassing fact omitted by Whiting).
Whiting notes with disdain the “allegations” that the DA’s investigator on the case, Stan Berry, is close personal pals with Sellers, but apparently failed to even make an effort to find out if the “allegations” were true. They must be. The DA didn’t deny it when directly asked.
Once again we are admonished that reasonableness requires that we patiently wait for the investigation to run its course, even though (here’s another inconvenient fact ignored by Whiting) the cops involved refuse to cooperate with the DA.
Protesters are chastised for using intemperate language!
But some of the placards were disturbing. “Who do you call when cops murder?” “Murderers go to jail, murders with badges go on vacation;” “FPD employs murderers.”
Last I checked, “murder” is a word used in a verdict from a jury in a court of law.
Smug bastard, isn’t he? Somehow when we see the picture of a helpless guy whose head has been bashed in by six well-armed, well-fed cops with obvious malice we arrive at the inescapable conclusion that a murder took place. Silly us.
Here’s Whiting’s crescendo of crap:
There are videos in which eyewitnesses state that Thomas died at the bus depot. That didn’t happen. There are statements that officers beat Thomas with a flashlight. The attorney for the officers denies that happened.
Huh? Nobody disputes Kelly was effectively killed at the bus depot – even if taken alive, but brain-dead to UCI, later. Of course the bus riding witnesses didn’t know if he was technically dead or alive. This is just the dirtiest and cheapest chickenshit hair-splitting trick I’ve seen yet from the Police Gang. If Whiting got up off his lazy ass and went to see the bloodstained concrete at the Fullerton bus depot he might not be so fucking glib.
And note also that Whiting is giving credence to statements from the cops’ lawyer. The same cops who refuse to talk to the DA? Did the cop’s lawyer helpfully suggest that a Taser butt might just look like a flashlight to the uninitiated? Wanna place a bet?
It is the duty of the investigators – regardless if they are D.A., FBI or Fullerton’s own – to find out what did happen.
Yes, of course it is their duty. It is also FPD’s duty to serve and protect the public, including Kelly Thomas, rather than bash his brains out in the gutter.
Until then, efforts spent speculating and accusing might be better directed at ensuring that law enforcement is adequately trained to deal with the mentally ill.
Ah, the old misdirection! If only the poor police had better training! No, you useless hack, the issue isn’t ignorance about how to deal with the mentally ill. The issue is that six Fullerton cops Tasered and bludgeoned a helpless human being to death.
You would think even a dim-witted Register employee would get that.
Thus speaketh the knee-jerk supporters of cops, and of course the cops themselves, as they comment here, promoting the temporizing and stalling tactics that have worked so well in the past, and that give the Fullerton Six and the Three Blind Mice confidence that soon the whole Kelly Thomas bludgeoning murder by the police will just blow over.
Yet it occurred to me yesterday after contemplating the words of our erstwhile Do Nothing DA, Tony Rackauckas, that these same proponents of an idiotic two-six month time frame for toxicology and microscopic tests (microscopic tests!), etc., haven’t addressed the rather salient fact that their bad boys in blue refuse to talk to DA investigators, and that with respect to interviewing the closest witnesses to the murder, the investigation will probably never be complete. Now that seems pretty damn hypocritical to me.
