The Culture of Corruption – Page 39 – Friends For Fullerton's Future

July 5, 2012July 5, 2012Downtown Fullerton

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

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.

July 3, 2012July 2, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Who is Jennifer Cowen-Fitzgerald, and Why Doesn’t She Like FFFF?

by admin112 Comments

It looks like the repuglican phalanx has already started to dredge Laguna Lake for candidates to run in November to hopefully reclaim the Fullerton City Council for themselves, and maybe even rewrite the history of the Recall. Well, good luck with that.

It seems that one of their own kind, Jennifer Cowan-Fitzgerald has been making inquiries to important local elected officials about the possibility of a Cowan-Fitzgerald city council campaign. Who is this person? A lot more about that later. In the meantime, enjoy this snapshot of Ms. Cowan-Fitgerald’s front yard – just to show where this woman’s sympathies lay.

No Recall? Now that’s not very good, is it?

Apparently Ms. Cowan-Fitzgerald is not a fan of mine, or of our humble blog. Well, gosh. Was it something we said?

Suffice to say, I will do anything and everything I can to make sure we have no more of these unaccountable, irresponsible, mealy-mouthed RINOs foisted on us by Ed Royce and the dwindling repuglican crowd.

Yep. Bank on it.

July 1, 2012July 1, 2012A Step in the Right Direction

The Three Empty Pez Dispensers

by Joe Sipowicz41 Comments

pedz woz — Looking for brains, courage, a heart.

You know, Larry Bennett really could have just left it alone. After dodging a final, humiliating meeting to certify the recall election that drove them out of office, at least one of the Three Bald Tires finally deigned to show up at Fullerton City Hall tomorrow morning to do the deed. It could have been done quietly with as little fanfare as possible. Actually only one of them even needed to show up.

But no.

Bennett seems to think the Three Dead Batteries need a sendoff appropriate to all the wonderful things these men have done for Fullerton. Friday he notified supporters of the Three Tree Stumps that there was to be a special council meeting, and that he hoped everybody would show up to let them know what terrific public servants they have been.

Bennett has likely spent the week-end making phone calls to drum up some folks willing to say kind thing about the Three Pea-less Pods. No doubt some will show up. And others are likely to show up now, too. People who recognize the disastrous misrule of these three characters:

Don Bankhead: dumb-bell, and self-annointed king of Fullerton, whose somnolent councilmanic career was punctuated with one Redevelopment boondoggle and union give away after another.

JonesMouthOpenFor Business — Crazy? Check. Rude? Check. Gone? Check.

Dick Jones, the southern fried lunatic and loud-mouthed bully who never came to understand that the authority to give orders doesn’t confer wisdom – or even relevance.

Pat-McKinley-Cops-300x206 — To all appearances it looked a lot like a street gang.

Pat McKinley: protector and apologist for the undeniable Culture of Corruption in the Fullerton Police Department that he himself had created. Those ladies weren’t like you. Aliens. Don’t rush to judgement.

Well, good bye and good riddance.

bennettturtle — The sun had been warm and life was good. But all that changed.

And please take Larry Bennett with you. The tide is rising.

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 18, 2012June 18, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

The Dilapitated Dinosaurs Want Their Money Back

by Jan Florys Dog50 Comments

Ackerslime2 — Heh heh. The hardest part of the game is gonna be keeping the score down. Heh heh.

If you think about it, anti-recall managers Bennett, Ackerman and Ellis really screwed the pooch (and I don’t use that phrase lightly).

The Three Bald Ties put their reputations in the hands of Amateur Hour.

The metamorphosis into an oxygen breathing creature was slow and painful…

Remember the stupid rescission cards fiasco? The embarrassing website that just reproduced damning posts from FFFF and nonsense from Fullerton’s delusional gerontocracy?

And the of course there was the idiotic Stop Bushala campaign, ultimately doomed to fail since the name Bushala did not appear on the ballot.

Stupid door hangers, stupid mail piece, stupid signs. Remember that awful video they touted as “hard hitting”?

These assclowns found the Recall team waiting for them with knives drawn around every corner as they kept pitching thousands of dollars into old school repuglican moneypits like Jim Bieber and Adam Probolsky.

And they lost by thirty points.

True, the Three Dead Batteries put almost none of their own money into this disaster, perhaps showing the greatest wisdom of which they were capable. But even so, somebody should be asking for his money back.

June 16, 2012June 16, 2012About Us

Larry Bennett’s Last Gasp

by The Fullerton Harpoon249 Comments

Here is a clip from Rick Reiff’s program featuring our own admin, and the sorry sack of guano known as Larry Bennett. He’s the clown who blew a hundred grand defending the Three Bald Tires from a much deserved recall.

Observe that Bennett is not only a bad loser he is still a liar, which seems to come so naturally. He is still dodging the easiest question of all: if Tony Bushala wanted to control the City Council to further his own mythical development schemes, how much easier would it have been to simply donate to the Three Dead Batteries’ campaigns? The answer of course is a lot. A lot cheaper too.

Did you enjoy how Bennett glossed over the illegal water tax? He still likes it!

Bennett is also still going by the title Planning Commissioner. I wonder how much longer he’ll keep that job.

June 15, 2012June 15, 2012Behind Closed Doors

County Supervisor Wants To Take Budget Axe to Human Relations Commission

by Joe Sipowicz115 Comments

What is the Orange County Human Relations Commission? It is a County Commission whose mission seems to be get everybody to just get along. Calming the roiling waters of bigotry and racial insensitivity is one goal, seemingly a good one, until you start to realize that this operation has no way of demonstrating that is actually doing anything productive, and tracks a mere handful of incidents annually.

The taxpayers of Orange County currently give something called the Human Relations Council $300,000 a year to provide staffing for the Orange County Human Relations Commission. Confusing? Not to Rusty Kennedy the Executive Director. He pulls in his pension as a former County employee and gets paid all over again by us to do his good deeds via the office of the Council.

4th District Supervisor Shawn Nelson has seen and heard enough and wants to cut that down to $100,000 – just enough to cover some sort of police/community reconciliation program. Nelson seems particularly perturbed that in the wake of the Kelly Thomas killing Rusty Kennedy was MIA. I’m not surprised by Kennedy’s absence. FFFF posted about that, here, and here.

Of course when it came time to host a big collaborative boohoo session, er, I mean Task Force on Homelessness, Rusty was Johnny-on-the-spot, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Kelly Thomas’s main problem was not that he was homeless, but that he was the victim of a real hate crime. But Kennedy needs the cops to shill for his continued County-supplied budget, and it really wouldn’t look good if he started accusing the cops of hate crimes. Those letters of support would sure dry up in a hurry.

Anyhow, Kennedy’s contract is on the County Board of Supervisor’s agenda for next Tuesday morning and you can be sure all the squishy feel-gooders and race hustlers will be out in force – the very same church and synagogue pulpit preachers who were utterly mute after Kelly Thomas was murdered.

June 15, 2012Dead heads

Fun Comments: 3 Good Men?

by Mr. Peabody38 Comments

Yesterday we received this pearl of a comment from Mr. or Ms. Anonymous:

“These paranoid pot smoking hippies put 3 good men outta a job just because they said they wanted to wait until an investigation was complete before commenting on the death of Kelly.

Now these smelly hippies are turning there paranoia on the sidebar which had nothing to do with anything. when will the madness stop?”

You know, I think this person meant to say “Three Bald Tires.” You see, there was simply no tread left. The steel was showing through what was left of the rubber. They were worse than worthless: they were dangerous.

But now they are in a better place – protecting against erosion along a bend in the Santa Ana River. And even though we are all just smelly hippies, we are all in a better place, too.

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!’”