Union Goons Archives - Page 32 of 47 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

December 15, 2011December 15, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Breaking News: Kelly’s Mom Sues Rackauckas

According to our Friend Scott Moxley over at the OC Weekly, the mother of Kelly Thomas, Cathy Thomas has sued our illustrious District Attorney, Tony Rackauckas. It seems she wants to gain access to materials collected by the DA about the murder of her son by officers of the Fullerton Police Department.

Naturally, the DA said no, forcing Ms. Thomas to sue.

It sure would be nice for someone outside of law enforcement to takle a look at just how the DA came up with the dubious theory that only two cops were implicated in criminal activity; that Officer Joe Wolfe had no idea what was going on just 15 feet from where he was standing; or why he exculpated Hampton and Blatney who not only made made no effort to stop Cicinelli’s tasering and beatdown on Kelly, but seemed to have piled on; his take on the role of Sergeant Craig who seems to have coordinated mop-up operations while the dying man was waiting for hospital transportation; his reasoning behind not charging superiors in a blatant criminal conspiracy to cover up the misdeeds of the McKinley Six.

Well, good luck, Cathy.

December 11, 2011Dead heads

When Sherri Met Bankhead; Close Encounters of The Jurassic Kind

by The Fullerton Harpoon196 Comments

Say what you like about Don Bankhead, but you have admit the old coot is a treasure trove of Recall campaign material. Here is King Bankhead objecting to having his image and words captured for posterity by Sherri, a Recall campaign stalwart. I guess if I were as dim as the King, I wouldn’t want anybody recording what I said, either.

Two great lines.

First: “I’m a private person when I’m not working or on duty.” On duty?! He still thinks he’s a cop, which explains where his first misplaced loyalties are. Of course his “duty” is to represent all of Fullerton, even the victims of criminal behavior by the police, not just the public safety unions who support his political campaigns.

Then: I still have public…private rights to live by.” What the hell is that supposed to mean? Bankhead’s sudden shyness never stopped this oaf from approving City spy cameras set up to take our pictures without asking our consent. More nonsense from Mr. Scrambled Eggs for Brains.

And finally, why is Bankhead parked in a handicapped spot? We know all about his fake “disability” scam, but really, his sense of entitlement, even fraudulently come by, is remarkable.

December 9, 2011December 9, 2011Behind Closed Doors

WHERE’S OUR MONEY?

by Mr. Peabody76 Comments

For years and years the City of Fullerton has been adding ten percent to the cost you and I pay for our water and re-directing this money to Fullerton’s General Fund; the fund that pays for City Councilmen Jones’ and Bankhead’s pay and perks, and that also pays for Fullerton’s pensions, including the mammoth pension pulled in by Councilmember and former Police Chief Pat McKinley.

Forget for a moment the fact that California’s Constitution prohibits governments from charging more for services than they really cost, and consider Proposition 218, passed by the voters in 1996. It says that the government can’t dress up taxes and call them fees. It requires justification of such charges and public transparency. Justification and transparency, two commodities in real short supply in Fullerton.

The 10% “in-lieu fee” that the City has been adding (and hiding) in your water bill total is, and always was a fraud, and illegal.

Don n' Dick — Who wants to put lipstick on the pig?

Coincidentally, our asinine councilmember, F “Dick” Jones was first elected in 1996. And that means for every year of his rude, loud-mouthed tenure on the Fullerton City Council he has been approving this rip-off. Of course his sleepy pal Don Bankhead was trudging right along side him every crooked mile of the way.

Since the gross rater revenue runs into the tens of millions every year, the 10% rip off has sure piled up. I estimate the total to be somewhere between $25,000,000 and $30,000,000 since 1997 alone. That’s a lot of dough, and I really have to wonder, will Jones, Bankhead and now McKinley offer the water ratepayers of Fullerton a refund of this misdirected money?

Why not?

December 8, 2011Dead heads

FPD Alerts Public On Sex Offender

by The Fullerton Harpoon277 Comments

Well, here’s the information provided by Andrew Goodrich & Co. about some dude who needs to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Everybody’s supposed to be scared. At least this loser did his time.

Too bad Pat KcKinley’s boys never bothered to alert the women of Fullerton that a serial molester of women, Albert Rincon was prowling the streets of Fullerton preying upon precisely those women McKinley would characterize as not credible. See, Rincon was one of Fullerton’e Finest. Really.

And he was actually put back on the streets after a little sensitivity training.

December 5, 2011"Dick" Ackerman

A Peaceful Family Town

by Mr. Peabody78 Comments

JonesMouthOpenFor Business — Oooh, they's bad, bad men!

The anti-recall chuckleheads are trying to scare their few dozen elderly supporters with the notion that the Recall is some sort of scary thing that will upset the applecart in good, ol’ Stepford.

The shameful fact is that Don Bankhead and Dick Jones turned downtown Fullerton into a boozy free-for-all with fights, rapes, and killings; and Pat McKinley sent in his goon squad of misfits, thugs, perjurers and killers to keep order in Jones’ “New West.”

Here’s the latest black-eye for Fullerton, a cabbie stabbed twice at Amerige and Harbor.

When are the folks of Fullerton going to wake up to the mayhem wreaked on their peaceful family town by Mssrs. Bankhead, Jones and McKinley?

Real soon, I reckon.

November 30, 2011November 30, 2011Dick Jones

The Man Who Scuffled With Police; The Man Who Scuffled With The truth

by Joe Sipowicz247 Comments

Let us flash back to the early stages of the FPD’s attempted coverup of the Kelly Thomas killing. Here’s the FPD’s version of the story, as passed along from Sergeant Andrew Goodrich via the uncurious OC Register.

This story came out the day after the beating, even before Kelly was taken off life support, and the dissimulation was already well underway. Months would pass before the DA’s revelation that an innocent man had been beaten to death under color of authority.

And speaking of color I have helpfully highlighted in bold red statements and assertions from Andrew Goodrich that were flat-out lies.

Man who scuffled with police still in critical condition

The 37-year-old man, believed to be a transient, is suspected of auto burglary, police said.

By SEAN EMERY / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

FULLERTON – A man suspected of trying to burglarized cars remains hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after police say he fought with officers trying to search him.

Authorities say Kelly Thomas, 37, injured several officers who tried to detain him Tuesday night, while family members allege that police used excessive force in taking him into custody.

About 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, officers went to investigate reports of a man trying to burglarize cars in a parking lot next to the bus deport in the 100 block of South Pomona Avenue, Fullerton police Sgt. Andrew Goodrich said.

Officers spotted a shirtless man with a beard, shorts and a backpack who they suspected of being involved in the attempted burglaries, Goodrich said.

The man began to fight officers as they tried to search him, Goodrich said.

“We don’t know why he was so combative and resistant to the officers, but it took upwards of five to six officers to subdue him,” Goodrich said.

During the scuffle, Thomas suffered head and neck injuries and was taken to a hospital, where he was listed in critical condition, Goodrich said.

Two officers suffered moderate injuries during the fight, including broken bones. They were treated at a hospital and released.

It was unclear if the officers used non-lethal weapons to subdue Thomas.

“According to his family, he has a history of mental illness,” Goodrich said, adding that he is a transient in Fullerton and surrounding cities.

Ron Thomas, Kelly Thomas’ father, said his son was homeless by choice and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

“When (police) rolled up, he was by a vehicle. They wanted to search his backpack, and he turned on them,” Ron Thomas said.

Thomas contended that his son’s injuries were the result of an “extreme use of force” by officers, who he believes “slammed” his son’s head and face into the ground. Based on his son’s injuries, Ron Thomas believes officers “took his legs out from under him while pushing him downward.”

“They have all the training, they have the weapons, they have the Tasers, and he is 160 pounds, barehanded,” Thomas said.

Thomas is on life-support, his father said, with doctors telling the family that he likely suffered brain damage.

“I can understand why a father would say that, but we are going to do a thorough investigation,” Goodrich said of Thomas’ comments. “Some of our officers also went to the hospital due to injuries they suffered. Sometimes when we take people into custody who don’t want to go into custody, we have to use force. It is never the preferred way of doing things.”

Goodrich said police are conducting a criminal investigation into the attempted burglaries, as well as an internal investigation into the officers’ actions.

“It’s always unfortunate when someone is injured, and we do what we can to minimize injuries whenever possible,” Goodrich said.

So did Goodrich ever suffer any consequences for all this unadulterated bullshit? Of course not, for this is Fullerton government where there is no accountability for malfeasance, and nobody in officialdom finds it objectionable that the official City spokesman has not even a passing familiarity with the truth. Of course it could be argued that Goodrich was just a useful idiot in the service of a cover up of an event about which he was largely misinformed by his fellow union members or their (and his superiors)

Either way the whole thing stinks. And any way you slice it looks like a cover up.

November 22, 2011November 22, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Suicide in Fullerton Jail Should Raise Questions

by Joe Sipowicz232 Comments

Last spring Dean Francis Gochenour, 52, was arrested in Fullerton for suspicion of drunk driving and was taken to the Fullerton jail. He never left. Not alive, anyway.

In the early morning hours of April 15, 2011 Gochenour was discovered in a holding cell, dead. Death by apparent “hanging” was passed out by the cops to the media, although what he was hanging from and by what means wasn’t elaborated. Here’s the brief news clip.

Almost immediately, however, stories began to emanate from the basement of the police HQ to the effect that Gochenour had been demeaned and taunted by the arresting officer; that he had been admonished by the cop to kill himself; that the cop’s behavior had been witnessed and or overheard by a jail employee and reported to his bosses; that a superior had confronted the officer in question, whereupon the latter tried to smash his DAR to destroy evidence; but that said evidence was retrieved.

McKinley — He was not like you Rotarians. I mean he was not a credible witness. And now he's dead. I guess we could do another one of those "in-house" investigations we excel at.

It would not be entirely out of character for a Fullerton cop to urge an arrestee to commit suicide, given what we’ve seen of the thuggish behavior of our police lately. Is that what happened? Exactly how Gochenour died is not clear. In April it seemed a lot less suspicious than it does now, especially since FPD spokesmen have been shown to play fast and loose with the truth.

All of which begs the questions: who was the cop involved and what is his current employment status? In Fullerton, such things are shrouded behind a nearly impenetrable curtain.

We will try to pull it back and find out.

November 20, 2011November 20, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Cicinelli LAPD Pension Safe; Too Bad Fullerton Wasn’t Safe From Cicinelli

by The Fullerton Shadow118 Comments

The guy who pounded Kelly Thomas’ face to bloody jelly (right after he got done torturing him with multiple Taser shocks) won’t lose his disability pension from the LAPD. In fact, the board that oversees such things won’t even review the case. Marisa Gerber relates the story in the OC Weekly, here.

What case is that? It stems from Cicinelli’s getting all shot to hell a few weeks out of the chute back in the mid-90’s. Among other injuries, one of his eyes was shot out. At the time, the pension board granted him a lifetime disability, but of course that decision didn’t contemplate Cicinelli going back to work as a one-eyed cop, which he did in Fullerton a little while later. And apparently nobody from Fullerton bothered to inform anybody in LA of Cicinelli’s new employment status.

So Cicinelli was making $40K a year from LAPD and made about $90K from Fullerton on that hot, sultry night of July 5th, 2011. Equitable? You decide.

Speaking of getting two pensions, I now roll around to the main point of this post. Which is Pat McKinley, the double barreled pension grabber who, as chief of the Fullerton Police Department hired Cicinelli and deployed the one-eyed cop on the streets of Fullerton. It was a favor for an old LAPD crony. In so doing, he placed Cicinelli, the public, and the taxpaying citizenry at dire risk.

He also hired the rest of the FPD gallery of rogues that has made the news lately: the druggies, pickpockets, perjurers, thugs, sex offenders and killers.

McKinley still insists he is proud of all these people (except for “the two!”) and has nothing to apologize for.

See, in Pat’s weird world mistakes are never admitted, responsibility for failure is never taken, and of course, accountability is utterly absent. McKinley won’t acknowledge what everybody else already knows: during his tenure as the head of the Fullerton Police Department his leadership failure created an obvious Culture of Corruption that culminated with the death of Kelly Thomas and the subsequent attempt to hush it up.

Well, I guess since McKinley won’t man up to his own failures, we’re going to have to do it for him

November 18, 2011November 18, 2011Bruce Whitaker

Pat McPension Gets Leash Yanked

by The Desert Rat125 Comments

McPensiononshortleash — Releasing his inner She Bear may be problematic.

Yesterday, on another thread folks were asking about the upcoming vote for next year’s mayor. I’ll be doing a post on that, real soon. In the meantime enjoy this post by the Desert Rat that was originally published on December 13, 2010. It includes some valuable video in which you may watch the Three Deaf Dinosaurs in action.

– Joe Sipowicz

Well, that didn’t take long. Mr. Pat McPension, he of the $215,000 a year pension (yes, you read that right), exercised his second vote in office denying the Mayor Pro Tem job (if you believe in things like fair rotation) to Sharon Quirk-Silva. SQS’s problem is that she is a Democrat, and hence, in some people’s eyes, the embodiment of all evil.

Now why would Pat McPension stick it to a woman who actually endorsed him in his recent election bid? Well, if you don’t know that answer you haven’t been paying attention to Fullerton politics for the past 30 years.

Check out McPension’s opening statement for clues. Then watch the painful yank on his choke chain.

Aha! Lois Godfrey. Queen Bee of the Raymond Hills Repuglican Women, an organization dedicated to promoting RINO candidates just like Pat McPension. In fact her husband was the worst one of the bunch. These idiots actually think Doc Jones is a real conservative!

Now Lois and her electric blue-haired gaggle have been backing these zeroes since the 1980s when their patron saints were Dick Ackerman, Buck Catlin, and the hideous gargoyle, Linda LeQuire.

And of course let us not forget the role of Little Corporal, Ed Royce, for whom no candidate is too old or stupid to be foist upon Fullerton for his own purposes.

So McPension owes his dubious political accomplishment to these worthy repuglicans; and at the first opportunity they must have made it very clear to their new boy what was expected of him from those who got him elected.

Just for the Hell of it I added Sharon Quirk-Silva’s pretty dignified admonition to her colleagues after the vote. While I don’t agree with a lot of her politics, I will note for the benefit of the brain dead repuglicans whom I know read this blog:

Quirk voted against the illegal Redevelopment expansion. She voted against the worthless Richman housing project. She voted against the idiotic Transportation Center Master Boondoggle. Your repuglican heroes voted for all three!

So go stick that in your blue wigs and smoke it!

November 16, 2011November 16, 2011"Dick" Ackerman

“Dick” Ackerman Moral Weathervane of the Anti-recall Team. Part 3.

by Joe Sipowicz128 Comments

tricky dick — Heh, heh. When nobody was looking the collection plate went missing.

When you are a moral vacuum like Dick Ackerman, you really don’t stand for much of anything except your own well-being. Public service? Hell, no! It’s all about personal service. Everything else is just platitudes and bull shit.

An indication of Mr. Ackerman’s future career path was clearly established with the creation of a fake charity by his wife that was simply a mechanism to get state legislators (one of whom was Mr. Ackerman) alone on Maui with lobbyists for big corporate interests who actually paid for the whole junket. Ackerman is hilariously quoted as saying how beneficial these get togethers were, as if being lobbied in Sacramento (instead of Hawaii by the same cast of characters) was somehow just so much more darned inefficient. FFFF posted all about the utterly phony Pacific Policy Research Foundation, here.

AcknFlack4-430x500 — I don't even know how I got into the room...

That was just the start of Mr. Ackerman exploiting Mrs. Ackerman for family gain. And it wasn’t enough that The Dickster got the missus on the Metropolitan Water Board where she naturally supported huge water rate increases (true, that bar was already set really, really low).

In the summer of 2009, while The Dick was illegally lobbying the State Legislature in the sordid the OC Fair Swindle, his protege, 72nd District Assemblyman Mike Duvall was caught bragging of nasty sexual accomplishments with a lobbyist; maybe the idea of nasty accomplishments with lobbyists ignited a fire in Dick’s political loins. By the end of September his wife, Linda Ackerwoman was running to replace the disgraced Duvall!

Now people endowed with a normal dose of shame would have simply receded into the background after the man they promoted was busted for moral turpitude. But the Ackermans are not so endowed. Dick’s immediate impulse was to promote the candidacy of the wife, a woman who had, apparently, never even held a job except as a “consultant” raiding her husband’s campaign accounts.

Well, okay. Lot’s of unqualified dimwits run for the Legislature. The real problem was that the Ackermans didn’t even live in the district. The Ackermans live in a top-secret gated community in Irvine! The State Constitution says you have to live in a district a year, but what the Hell, the State Constitution is for losers!

So Dick and Linda cooked up a fake address in the rumpus room of a Fullerton stooge. Well, technically they were carpetbaggers; but since nobody really believed they spent a night living in Fullerton a better word applies: fraud.

Bankhead2 — You mean they never really lived here. I guess I slept through that. Again.

As expected, Mrs. Ackerwoman got the endorsements of the Three Deteriorating Dinosaurs, all the statewide Redevelopment money, and the big corporate interest lobbyists. They ran one of the slimiest campaign anybody could remember. It hardly mattered. The Ackermans still lost to Chris Norby by a whopping 20 points in the Republican Primary. Within a few weeks they had reregistered to vote in the leafy precincts where their Irvine mini-McMansion is located. How’s that for a big F-you, Fullerton?

The point of the story is simple: there is no basement so low that Dick Ackerman & Co. won’t crawl into it in order to pull a string or make a buck. And if you don’t recognize Dick as the moral barometer of the anti-recall campaign, you don’t know Dick.