It’s been a year since the election of 2010. But let’s take a moment to reflect upon those who were endorsed by the public safety unions in Fullerton:
Right. Bankhead, McKinley and Roland Chi. What a crew!
Bankhead, the brain shift-slip octogenarian; McKinkley, the bad cop who littered the Fullerton Police Department with thugs, goons, pickpockets, pill-popping con men, sexual predators, perjurers, and of course murderers; and Roland Chi, the food poisoner from Garden Grove who only escaped prosecution by handing over his DNA to the DA.
Like the unionistas themselves, huge pension recipients Bankhead and McKinley could be safely counted on to curry favor with labor; and oh, they tried so hard after the brazen Kelly Thomas murder at the hands of six Fullerton cops to protect their campaign benefactors. Roland Chi was just a contemptible scofflaw who never should have come out from behind the rancid squid display in the first place.
And all three were safe bets to impose the annual and illegal 10% tax on your water, a tax that goes to pay their own pensions!
Seems as if the mass exodus of LAPD cops gave McKinley the opportunity to take his pick of his former colleagues and put them on the streets of Fullerton.
Fullerton: a veritable jobs program for ex-LAPD cops. And it’s interesting to connect the dots in this Bilblical succession of miscreants: Armstrong hires McKinley; McKinly hires Cicinelli; the cop who never should have been on the street bashes in Kelly Thomas’ face like a piñata.
We’ve written about the control freak Armstrong before, perched as he was, atop an incompetent pyramid of his own construction. When Shakespeare said, “the evil that men do lives after them” he said a mouthful.
Just give me a few more minutes and I'll come up with something even dumber...
Thus spake newly minted Fullerton police chief in an LA Times article, here, thoughtfully provided by a frequent commenter Jane H.
Pat McKinley was referring to the Rodney King beating at the hands of his colleagues in the LAPD that turned out to be the catalyst for the most destructive riots in American history.
Here’s the money quote from the egregious McKinley:
“Hey, we’ve got to do some training, we have to provide appropriate tools for officers on the streets and we need to go on.”
Uh, yeah, Pat. Good deduction. Let’s “go on.”
Speaking of training, McKinley style, flash forward to the fall of 2010 when McKinley-hire Kenton Hampton knocks the phone camera out of Veth Mam’s hands before throwing him to the pavement like a rag doll and dropping his 250 lbs of bulk on the helpless Mam. That’ll teach him to document the activities of McKinley’s downtown goon squad.
Then flash forward again to the sultry night of July 5th, 2011 when six McKinley hires (including Hampton, again) beat the mentally ill transient, Kelly Thomas, to death. In the aftermath of the killing we now know that digital and film records of the event were purloined by FPD cops at the scene.
If you ask me, what McKinley really learned from the Rodney King case, and what he meant by “training” was to make sure that witnesses who recorded the event were properly shaken down, intimidated and relieved of any incriminating visual evidence.
Oops! Too late. McKinley’s crew never dreamed that THEIR own camera would testify against them.
We have already documented dime store psychologist Pat McKinley’s pompous blather about how it was necessary to use nunchucks on pro-life protesters because of their super-human resistance to pain.
And for McKinley, pain is the name of the game. When you want to try out a new toy from your chamber of horrors, well, hell, you’re going to need justification. So why not cook up some psychological mumbo-jumbo?
Someone with a little bit of real psychological training might suspect that Pat McKinley has an unhealthy obsession with the application of pain. Judging by the actions of cops he hand-picked to patrol the streets of downtown Fullerton, I think it’s fair to say that sometime between 1993 and 2009 the problem spread like contagion in McKinley’s police department. Was it his game plan, or was he just not paying attention. The signals he was sending his boys was clear enough.
We have seen the videos and read the accounts. Then there’s this:
Just in case you ever to decide to scrape the moss off that Kevlar dome and decide to do some real thinking.
When the cop YOU hired handcuffs and gropes women in the backseat of his patrol car YOU are responsible. When numerous complaints are brushed aside by the FPD, YOU are responsible. When hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars are paid out in damages to the victims, YOU are responsible.
So why not haul your sorry ass off the Fulleron City Council dais ASAP and make way for someone willing to be accountable for their actions, rather than blame everybody else. Hell, just make way for somebody with a miligram of integrity and humanity.
And be sure to take those other two wizened sphincters with you.
Here’s a riddle: Which OC Police Department met with a citizen who, after leaving police HQ, plowed into three parked cars?
Well, if you liked to bet and didn’t mind a scant payoff, you’d almost immediately say the Fullerton Police Department, of course.
It seems as if one Robert Ghanadian, was at the FPD station on Wednesday afternoon, meeting with a cop in the traffic division about some prior accident. While the details of this encounter remain something of a mystery, what is perfectly clear is that Mr. Ghanadian was impaired by some kind of intoxication when he sideswiped three vehicles on the south side of Commonwealth Avenue, one of which belongs to Ron Thomas, the father of FPD murder victim Kelly Thomas. An eye-witness claims Ghanadian came from the police station.
Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
What makes this story particularly ironic is the way one FPD apologist earlier in the day defended the illegal arrest of innocent citizens on unsubstantiated charges of public intoxication based on possible risk to the City. Did the FPD let an impaired Ghanadian get behind the wheel of his SUV and motor off ignoring risk to the public? If so, he didn’t get far.
Maybe it was a pro-FPOA decal that did the trick. Who knows? But one thing I do know is that we are all lucky Ghanadian didn’t kill anybody.
Obey me and you won't get hurt. Well, scratch that. You're gonna get hurt anyway...
The systemic pattern of abuse that defines the Fullerton Police Department is well-established. But the allegations detailed in this newly emerging case might give even hardened FFFF readers pause. There seems to be no end to accounts of thuggish, sadistic Fullerton cops getting their sick jollies by brutalizing innocent citizens.
Fullerton College student and Fullerton resident Christopher Spicer Janku, 23 at the time, was with 4 friends around 1:30 AM on the night of August 17, 2008 when the car one of them was driving was pulled over for purportedly running a stop sign on Wilshire Avenue, in Downtown Fullerton. Chris tells his story:
All rookie looking officers who were looking for fun, I’ve never heard so much rude language from any cop. They arrested me on false charges of being drunk in public, (even though they wouldn’t give me a sobriety test even after I asked them to give me one because they knew I wasn’t intoxicated). I was sitting on the curb with my hands behind my back, a cop came over to put hand cuffs on me, he told me to put my hands behind my back, but they already were. Before I could even say “officer my hands are already crossed behind my back” the officer grabbed my neck and slammed my face into the curb while yelling out “stop resisting!” Another officer grabbed me by the legs and dragged me by the knees, shredding my knee caps.
There were five officers at the scene. The gangleader and arresting office was one Officer Perry Thayer. Janku goes on to describe his torture at the hands of this dedicated public servant:
Another officer then TOOK HIS BOOT and slammed it on my head, pinning it between the curb and used it as leverage to squeeze pressure on my head. I HONESTLY THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE, I WAS SCREAMING PLEASE STOP I’M NOT RESISTING, I THOUGHT MY HEAD WAS GOING TO CAVE IN. I still have migraines to this day. another cop came over and dropped kneed me in the back. Everybody watching was in awe, THEY KEPT YELLING OUT “PLEASE STOP, HE’S NOT RESISTING!”
He (Thayer) was the one who slammed me face first into a curb and then put my head in the gutter face first with his boot on my head. He purposely put my face into a gutter full of disgusting dirty gutter water to the point where I was almost choking on it, and pushed down on my head to the point where my head almost caved it and I was screaming for my life. If you look at my mug shot, there is nothing but dirty, muddy gutter water and blood all over my face.
Next, our helpful Bobbies – Officer Thayer and his partner Officer Anthony Diaz – took Janku on a joyride from hell. Chris explains:
They put me in the squad car without seatbelting me in and went on a joy ride while blaring satanic heavy metal music in my ear until my eardrums almost exploded. Around 6-7 times they would hit the gas and then slam on the brakes, so that I was forced to keep cracking my face on the cage.
FFFF readers will recall that although clearly unconstitutional, this is a common FPD procedure, informally known as a “screen test.” Spicer remembers seeing the car pass the Police station, and asked the cops where they were taking him. Their response: “Shut the F up.” After the brake-checks:
I came to the department and automatically filed a complaint about the brutality. They put me in a jail cell bleeding from my head down to my feet and bruised and battered WITHOUT EVEN GIVING ME MEDICAL AID.
Janku was unable to figure out what exactly had set Thayer off. Maybe when he asked Thayer to not thumb through the photos on his cell phone? Or perhaps this cretinous goon needs no excuse to assault, batter, and violate the civil rights of the taxpayers who pay his ample salary? Janku’s friend was arrested as well, for simply asking for his ID back from the cops who had taken and failed to return it.
As for the police brutality complaint? A complete and total stonewall. The detective in charge deliberately misinterpreted the clear audio recording of Janku’s friends yelling “he’s not resisting!” and asked him “why were you resisting?” He also had the temerity to ask Janku why he had blood and mud all over his face.
After checking regularly for months and getting no response, Janku was told recently that he had better contact an attorney. Of course, this is after the statute of limitations had run out and a lawsuit is impossible. What is Janku left with, besides the bruises and migraines? Just the awful memories:
I’ve been afraid to go outside my house ever since, I have nightmares and panic attacks from the injustice.
Janku adds that he is unwilling to go to downtown Fullerton since the incident, and one of his friends there that evening is so terrified he refuses to set foot in Fullerton, period. Way to help out our local economy, coppers!
#66 Perry Thayer
Unlike the marginally more fortunate Veth Mam and Edward Quinonez, Janku is unable to sue the City and make them pay for their abuses. And Officer Thayer? Why, he went on to win the coveted Turkey Bowl police football championship along with his buds – the noted false arrest/perjury specialists Kenton Hampton and Frank Nguyen, of Veth Mam lawsuit fame.
Just another night of death-metal mayhem, beating, torture, false arrest, and random abuse of the public by Fullerton’s Finest. No pattern to see here, folks. Move along, now. No need for that department-wide Department of Justice investigation of police brutality and misconduct. Keep moving.
I stand by my record. And no, you 91 voters don't get to take your votes back.
For a while it was just us, the good folks at FFFF, who decried the Fullerton Police Department Culture of Corruption created by ex-Chief Pat McKinley, and fostered by council somnambulists Don Bankhead and Dick Jones.
Tracy Woods at The Voice of OC is reporting here, that the City’s outside investigator, Michael Gennaco, has revealed that his investigation will uncover more nasty revelations. Cue ominous background music in a minor key:
Asked if more disclosures are coming, he replied, “Oh, yeah. There’s more. There always is.”
Given the likelihood that Mr. Gennaco is trying to break it to us gently, I’d say things look grim for FPD defenders and its cover-up artists, and of course things look even worse for us taxpayers who will ultimately have to foot the bill for former Chief McKinley’s out of control goon squad.
Here’s a message we received not long ago that is from someone who claims to have been a juror in the trial of the guy who blasted five holes into LAPD rookie Jay Cicinelli back in 1997. It has the ring of truth to it.
I was on the jury that convicted the man who shot Jay Cicinelli. It was unbelieveable watching a man, who by all rights should have been dead after being shot 5 times with a 45 at point blank range, losing an eye in the process, get on the stand and testify! The prosecuting attorney even showed us the police star he had been wearing on his chest that had a big dent where one of the bullets had struck it. I felt so bad for Jay then, in this 20s and being injured so badly just as he was beginning his career as a police officer. I have often wondered what he ended up doing with his life. I was shocked and very sad to find out that he was one of the officers involved in this beating! It’s hard for me to imagine how someone, who has been through something as horrific as Jay has, could be an effective police officer. How could you see criminals every day and not think about the one that tried to kill you? I’m not trying to make excuses for what has been done to Kelly Thomas, just giving my opinion about why I think Jay Cicinelli should have gone into a different profession.
The lapses in judgment became chronic...
Opinion duly noted, and I don’t think there’s many people who would disagree with you, except, maybe former FPD Chief Pat McKinley, who hired Cicinelli as a favor to an old LAPD crony. McKinley now wonders aloud to the media how Cicinelli “could have strayed so far from his training.” Of course that’s just self-serving clap-trap.
By the way, who are you and whom do you represent?
Last April I wrote this look back at what sure seemed like monkey business on the part of FPD spokesorifice Andrew Goodrich. Knowing what we know now about the lawless way that FPD operates when so inclined, the idea that they leaked potentially embarrasing information about someone they considered a political enemy is in no way surprising.
Many have wondered how Goodrich, after having failed to tell a single truth at any juncture of the Kelly Thomas murder epsiode, kept his job. The obvious answer is that the City Council, the City Manager, and the Acting Chief think he is doing a good job.
It could also be that because the estimable Goodrich is an officer in the police union they don’t have the guts to take this valuable piece of manpower and put him back on the street.
– Joe Sipowicz
The other day, our Travis Kiger engaged in a comical e-mail exchange with Fullerton PD’s $130,000 per year spokesperson, Sergeant Andrew Goodrich. Here it is:
Note that according to Goodrich, FPD policy is that the police log book may be perused at the station – but not copied. When unexpectedly queried as to how the Voice of OC(EA) managed to get a copy of a domestic dispute entry involving Assemblyman Chris Norby last September, the good Sergeant noted that it was due to the “constant” requests they had from the media. Hmm. Well, that makes so little sense that we may as well backtrack to review what happened. Something ain’t quite kosher. In fact a smell is emanating from this pile of Goodrich road apples.
Last fall, 72nd Assemblyman Chris Norby seems to have gotten into an argument with his wife. Some sort of delivery person, adventitiously arriving at the front door of Casa Norby, called the cops, who arrived, took a statement, and left. The date of the incident was September 2nd.
The Voice of OC(EA) finally got around to posting about the issue, here, on September 27 – almost four weeks after the fact.The Register followed up with a story a couple of days later. Other than that, general media silence. Wow, Andy, what a feeding frenzy!
Now that we know Goodrich’s excuse for violating FPD policy is nonsense, we are entitled to ask why Goodrich was so cavalier about passing out copies of the log – against policy; and further, we ought to ask how and why the Norby episode came to light at all.
Note that the report posted by the Voice of OC(EA) was time stamped September 20, seven days before it was published. This means that they either sat on the story for seven days, or they received the document several days after it was printed. Hmm. And remember, according to Goodrich, the log is regularly purged.
Although it is possible that the Voice took a week to getting around to publishing its story, is it at all likely that an intrepid Voice reporter came across an FPD log entry in the course of his typical day’s toil? Or is it a whole Hell of a lot more likely that an employee of the Fullerton Police Department, growing tired of waiting for some lucky journalist to discover what would surely be an embarrassment for Norby, leaked it to a pro-union news source?
Mr. Goodrich could help clear this up by sharing his records of media requests for this information, and explain the date on the printout.
Of course it is possible that some other party reading the log came across the item, recognized Norby’s address, and passed it on to the Voice; but that would be supported by pretty long odds.
In any case, there certainly is an object lesson here for all of us, Friends. Privacy seems to be selectively practiced by the Fullerton Police Department. And mostly it is not practiced to protect the public – but them.
