When you have a crappy product it’s pretty hard to sell. Think Yugo.
No, thanks.
But really? Won’t anybody help the gerontocracy cling to power in Fullerton? Apparently, almost no one will. It could be that contributors to the cause in the fall were underwhelmed by the bang they got for the bucks they handed over to Tricky Dick Ackerman and The Human Salamander, Dave Ellis.
The metamorphosis into an oxygen breathing creature was slow and painful.
Yep, Protect Fullerton-Recall No filed their 460 on Monday for 1/1/12 through 3/17/12. The results? Somewhat less than impressive.
$4,224.00 raised
$9,765.70 spent
$3,841.69 left over
Most of the funds were from early in January – before they sent that last pathetic mailer advertising the recall. The only recent donation was $2,000 from some presumably ancient lady named Mary Ransom.
Holy Smokes! Dave Ellis really took them for a ride. $2,500 to Delta Partners. $500/mo to host that crappy website.
Makes ya feel good. Oops, watchit there, just step over the bodies and the civil rights!
Thus spaketh Lou Ponsi who seems to be doing his level best to avoid real news and even to parrot the nonsense peddled by the anti-recall crowd.
Ponsi seems really impressed with banners stating how much folks love Fullerton. Ponsi doesn’t seem interested that the operation is the brainchild of downtown businesses who have profited off of the City Council’s crazy wild west show; nor in the irony that these essentially anti-recall messages are hung on public property. No, that would take independence and intelligence, traits that Ponsi simply doesn’t possess.
Of course Ponsi echoes the notion that the one and only problem is the minor altercation last summer that left Kelly Thomas’ brains in a Transportation Center gutter, and of course he ignores the reality a phone call made by – a downtown business, that may very well have an I Love Fullerton banner in front of it.
Really? I don't know anything about that stuff. Wow!
Lou must have a short or self-serving memory if he can’t remember:
FPD cop Todd Major – convicted of fraud, 2011.
FPD cop Kelly Mejia – plead guilty to grand larceny, 2011
FPD cop Albert Rincon – accused of a dozen sexual batteries while in uniform causing a rebuke from a federal judge and a $350,000 settlement (so far), but actually “separated” for something else (jeez how bad could that have been), 2006-2011.
FPD cop Vincent Mater – “separated” after destroying evidence in a Fullerton jail suicide, identified as an untrustworthy “Brady cop” and suspected of a roll in the false identification in the Emanuel Martinez case. Charged by the District Attorney,2011.
FPD cop “Sonny” Saliceo who through laziness or malice, permitted or encouraged the mis-identification of Emanuel Martinez who subsequently spent five months in jail.
FPD employee April Baughman who was recently arrested on charges of theft from the FPD property room over a period of two years. 2012.
A lawsuit by Veth Mam against the police department and FPD cop Kenton Hampton for a laundry list of civil rights violations and false prosecution. 2011.
A lawsuit by Andrew Trevor Clarke against FPD cop Cary Tong and half the FPD for a laundry list of civil rights violations. 2012.
A lawsuit by Edward Miguel Quinonez against the FPD and Kenton Hampton for even more civil rights violations. 2011
And let’s not forget the eventual civil and civil rights suits against the balance of the FPD Six (including our old friends Kenton Hampton and Joe Wolfe). 2011.
Then in non-police matters there’s the little problem of the City Council giving away land worth millions for free to campaign contributors; and giving away huge subsidies to the bag man who runs the anti-recall campaign. 1996-2012.
And finally let us recall the biggest scam of all – the perpetuation of the illegal water tax for fifteen long years that went, in part, to pay the salaries and pensions of the very city council that looked the other way year after year. 1996-2012.
Nearly a year ago FFFF started what would turn into a long string of investigations into the FPD Culture of Corruption by telling the tale of a young man who claimed that he was beaten and abused by Fullerton cops during a downtown arrest.
There were plenty of skeptics here, and there was a barrage of personal abuse leveled against the man by anonymous FPD goons. At least there was until we published the results of an internal investigation, here, in which at least part of the victim’s assertions were confirmed.
Well last week another of Pat McKinley’s chickens emerged on the horizon, coming home to roost. Andrew Trevor Clarke filed a federal civil suit against Fullerton PD employees Tong, Contino, Hampton, Bolden, Salazar and Sellers.
Sellers? Good call, but I wonder why Clarke didn’t include former Chief, present councilman Pat McKinley. After all, he will proudly tell us he hired all of ’em.
All I can say is the lawsuits are piling up so fast we’re going to need wings to stay above the legal paperwork. And I wonder how much this one is gonna cost us.
Teri Sforza of the OC Register has done another piece on Fullerton’s fraudulent 10% water tax and the equally fraudulent study commissioned by the City Council to justify keeping as much of the tax as they can. Naturally the consultant ginned up some phony rent value for City owned property that water reservoirs sit on! In fact the bogus rent topped $1.3 million, a figure so absurd that even Mayor Sharon Quirk took offense. It’s a good thing Ms. Quirk is running for the State Assembly or she might not be so concerned about the wear ratepayers getting ripped off in an illegal scam. Whatever. At least she finally seems to have somebody who knows what’s going on advising her.
Reflecting on the FPD career of Albert Rincon, the man accused of serially sexually assaulting women in the back of his patrol car, made me think about the creep that hired him, and the standards that were applied to the recruit.
We have seen from the facebook page of “Albey Al” a preening, self-absorbed, utterly shallow weasel. Okay that’s bad enough. What makes Albey Al Rincon’s presence on the Fullerton police force even more revealing is the virtual illiteracy of a grown man who can not spell, let alone write complete or even intelligible sentences. This begs the question of what sort of standards Pat McKinley applied to his recruits. After all, he hired Rincon, just like all the others.
But are there no basic academic qualifications required to be a Fullerton cop? Apparently not.
Narcissism and ignorance are a bad combination, and the complete lack of moral scruples rounds out the McKinley recruit profile. Now give ’em a badge and a gun and let ’em hit the streets of Fullerton! McKinley has yet to disavow Rincon as some sort of “alien;” and why should he? They are kindred spirits.
McKinley set the FPD bar so low that even a morally vacuous, messed up ignoramus like Albert Rincon could slither over it. Despite the pleas from FPD apologists about all the good cops employed by the department, we are justified to question that claim, given the mere presence of Rincon on the force; somebody thought he was not only fit for duty, but that he deserved to stay on duty after all the charges leveled against him.
The really dangerous thing is that the FPD and anti-recall crew don’t want us to talk about Rincon. Or Mater. Or Major, or Mejia, or Hampton, or Thayer, or Tong, or Baughman, or Nguyen, or Solario, or Siliceo, or any of the other police department employees who have given the City a series of black eyes. They want the public to think that a couple cops maybe, just maybe, got a little over-excited one hot night last July, and that Kelly Thomas’ death is a lone example of miscreance being exploited for political purposes.
Well, despite Acting Chief Hughes protestations, there has been and still is a Culture of Corruption in the FPD. The fact is that McKinley’s twisted chickens are finally coming home to roost. The repercussions will be prolonged and painful, emotionally and economically. But after June 5th McKinley will just be an noxious footnote in Fullerton’s history. The clean up will take a while.
So reports the LA Times, right here. It seems that the family of Dean Francis Gochenour believes the FPD’s treatment of their family member left a lot to be desired. Gochenour entered the FPD jail alive on the night of April 14, 2011. He left it dead on April 15th. Gochenour is claimed to have committed suicide by strangling himself with his shirt.
"To Swerve and Deflect"
What adds interest to this tale is the fact that FPD arresting officer Vincent Mater apparently smashed his DAR right after Gochenour’s death. Suspicious folk believe he did it to destroy incriminating evidence about his arrest of Gochenour.
In a true man-bites-dog story, Officer Mater is being charged by the DA (finally) on charges of destruction of evidence. This is a misdemeanor charge, but you really have to wonder if there isn’t more lurking beneath the surface of this story.
Apparently the much-anticipated Joe Felz Water Study is in, and it says that the illegal 10% water tax is…drum roll, please…illegal. But get this: rather than an honest study, the consultants were clearly told to gin up as much plausible reason to keep as much of the 10% as they could. The result? It’s only 6.7%. Yay!
The only problem is that to reach 6.7%, the consultant cooked up the idea that the Water Fund owed the City rent on land where water reservoirs are located! According to Ad Hoc Water Committee member Greg Sebourn, the total annual rent was figured at $1,374,000 – well-over half of the existing tax.
Of course this scam raises all sorts of new issues, as scams generally do. Such as: the reservoir in Hillcrest Park supports a play field on its deck. Does the City rent this back from the Water Fund? Bet not! The reservoir up at the top of Euclid is situated in a cactus patch patrolled by goats. What’s the rental or development value of a nature park? I dunno, but it’s not much. Has the Water Fund been paying for maintenance on these properties that should have been the responsibility of the General Fund? Bet so.
Then of course there’s the issue of whether the waterworks itself paid for fee title to any of these properties in the first place, a way back when. I wonder if the consultant even bothered to check. Bet not.
And there’s the embarrassing fact that there is no arm’s length relationship between the people that impose the rent and the people that pay it. The City Council can demand any amount of rent they want – then agree to pay it. Why not? The proceeds go to pay their own pensions! Now, that’s not very good, is it?
In any case, the public may find it a bit confusing and unseemly that at the eleventh hour the bureaucrats and their hand-picked consultant are burning the near-midnight oil to drum up ways to charge as much for water as they can that they can keep siphoning money into the General Fund.
Will you please shut up.
Will the city Council buy into this load? Well, of course they will. The vote will be 4-1, and it will be up to the citizens and voters to rectify the scam at the ballot box.
Our job is to continue to expose the fraud for what it is.
Here is City Councilman Don Bankhead, who wants to propose changes to the recommended City position on High Speed Rail. For a while he seems to think he knows what he’s talking about.
Oops. Now we’ll never know what Bankhead thought was necessary to delete before his screen went dark.
FORMER FULLERTON POLICE OFFICER CHARGED WITH DESTROYING EVIDENCE FOR BREAKING AUDIO-RECORDER AFTER INMATE’S SUICIDE
FULLERTON – A former Fullerton Police Department (FPD) officer has been charged with destroying evidence for crushing his audio-recorder after an inmate committed suicide in jail following a driving under the influence (DUI) arrest by the defendant. Vincent Thomas Mater, 41, is charged with one misdemeanor count of destruction of evidence and one misdemeanor count of vandalism. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of one year and six months in jail. Mater is scheduled to be arraigned March 26, 2012, at the North Justice Center in Fullerton. The Department is to be determined.
At the time of the crime, Mater was a police officer with FPD.
At approximately 9:45 p.m. on April 14, 2011, Mater is accused of conducting a DUI investigation after making a traffic stop of a vehicle being driven without its lights on in the dark. The defendant was in uniform and driving a marked FPD patrol car. Mater is accused arresting the driver, Dean Gochenour, upon determining that Gochenour was under the influence of alcohol.
Mater is accused of transporting Gochenour in in his patrol car to the Fullerton City Jail (FCJ) and turning him over to FPD jailers to be booked upon arrival. Throughout the duration of his contact with Gochenour, Mater is accused of wearing an FPD-issued Digital Audio Recording device (DAR), which was activated and would have audio-recorded any statements made by Mater or Gochenour.
At approximately 11:30 p.m., inmate Gochenour committed suicide by hanging himself in a cell at FCJ. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office (OCDA) was subsequently contacted to conduct the custodial death investigation.
In the hours after Mater learned of Gochenour’s death, the defendant is accused of destroying his DAR by crushing it and removing the mother board and circuit board. The audio captured on Mater’s DAR of the defendant’s interaction with Gochenour could not be recovered as a result of the damage. The defendant is accused of destroying evidence that would have been relevant to the OCDA’s custodial death investigation.
FPD investigated the case against Mater regarding the destruction of evidence and submitted it to the OCDA for criminal prosecution.
To read the OCDA’s full report on the custodial death of Gochenour, visit www.OrangeCountyDA.com and select “OCDA Report Custodial Death Investigation – Inmate Dean Gochenour” from the Investigation Letters tab under the Media Center. The report was issued today, March 13, 2012.
Deputy District Attorney Brock Zimmon of the Special Prosecutions Unit is prosecuting this case.
The DA’s letter describes the details of the event.
For several months we’ve been trying to find out about former FPD cop Albert Rincon: What he looks like and where he resides. Rincon is the pervert who was accused of molesting women in the back seat of his patrol car, who earned the City a rebuke from a federal judge, and who has cost the taxpayers of Fullerton a hefty $350,000 in a civil case settlement.
Watch out. This could be our boy.
A helpful blog reader forwarded a Facebook link to a narcissistic dimwit calling himself Albey Al. The references, and “friends” named Rincon suggest that this could very well be he.
The one on the right. The one on the left looks like FPD material, too.
Check out his facebook page. Could this cretin have passed Chief McPension’s rigid psychological exam? There seems to be almost nothing going on upstairs, so maybe he could have passed it with flying colors!
Of note: Albey Al appears to be living in the area.
Just in case this douchenozzle deletes anything, I’ve archived it here. Decide for yourself. Do you think we have found Albert Rincon?
