Sure We’re Mad. But Are We Terrorists? Really?

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.

Just Words

The proudly ignorant discount the value of words. To them, people who use words to convey important ideas are contemptible. Their brainless brayings are pitched as the voice of the common man, the voice of common sense over intellectualism. Think: Don Bankhead, Pat McKinley, and F. Dick Jones.

Others are more savvy. Slightly.

Following in the footsteps of Dr. Josef Goebbels they are well aware that words do convey meaning. Powerful meaning. These mouthpieces are not particularly articulate themselves, but they know what Fullerton’s Three Blind Mice won’t admit. Words convey meaning; propaganda is power.

It is particularly annoying when an institution that represents itself as an independent, Constitutionally protected entity breezily and contentedly goes along with the bullshit a government promulgates to mischaracterize its criminal malfeasance.

And so we come (finally) to the Orange County Register, a pathetic collection of  intellectual flotsam and jetsam, stranded on the beach as the tide of journalistic integrity and competence retreated forever. Composed of sad nitwits like Lou Ponsi, Jim Radcliffe, and David Whiting, this diminishing band of high school newspaper stringers bravely soldiers on, regurgitating the banal nonsense peddled to it by city hall press releases and chamber of commerce newsletters. That’s all they can do, and their paltry livelihoods depend on it.

Ever since the story broke about the homicide of the mentally ill homeless guy, Kelly Thomas, at the hands of the Fullerton PD, the dim bulbs at the Register have fallen all over themselves to pass along a vocabulary intended to diminish the story. First, of course, is the outright stoogery of the tool Whiting. More subtle is the way Ponsi and his ilk have used language to subtly portray as fact the utterly nonsensical.

First it was a “scuffle” and a “tussle;” a veritable pillow fight that went on until Thomas (somehow) “became unconscious.” As the the truth emerged and the hideous images and eyewitness testimony have been revealed, the Defenders of the Faith have decide that well, maybe, just maybe, it was an “altercation” or even, perhaps, an actual “fight.”

A fight. Yes it was a fight. As a Fullerton PD goon’s knee crashed into his windpipe Kelly Thomas fought for air. Then he fought for life itself as six animals beat the life out of him, or stood to the side and watched as it was done to him. Were they laughing as they smashed the Taser handles into Kelly’s face? Register readers will never know.

The animals that murdered Kelly have their own demons they will have to contend with, if, in fact, they are capable of feeling any sense of guilt or remorse at all. But I hope that a particularly low circle of Hell awaits those who, when they had an opportunity to disseminate the truth, decided to join the gang of killers; and did so under the perforated shield of “impartiality.” They are cowards and thieves. They have robbed the public of the truth.

 

Don’t These Clowns Have Any Shame?

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.

There Is An Emergency in Fullerton!

Things never looked better for Fullerton.

Yep, there sure is.

The City Manager has called an emergency meeting of the City Council this morning at 9:00, a mighty odd time to hold a public hearing. The ostensible purpose of this emergency is to hire an outsider to evaluate the condition our FPD condition is in.

It’s pretty obvious that this decision could have waited until the next scheduled meeting. So what’s the emergency? Maybe City Manager Joe Felz and the Gang of Three are trying to look like they are finally, really and truly taking things seriously. And maybe they prefer dealing with Kelly Thomas related humiliations at nine o’clock in the morning to avoid hundreds of angry commenters.

Fail to the Chief...

The really pathetic aspect of the abject failure of leadership in Fullerton and this desperate and transparent effort to defuse a recall is that the real emergency existed on July 5, 2011 and was completely unknown to our oblivious City Council, including the supposed law enforce experts Pat McKinley and Don Bankhead. Or maybe they knew and just didn’t care. After all, McKinley was police chief from 1993-2009 and has admitted he hired all the cops who have made Fullerton famous lately; and Bankhead has been on the city council since 1888. Oops. I mean 1988.

Has it really been that long?

F. Dick Jones has been on the council for 15 years; will he not take responsibility for the state of affairs he created?

Hail no!

What about the ever-compassionate Sharon Quirk? She has been on the council for seven long years. How many police-related monetary settlements has she approved?

Knitting socks as fast as she can...

Well, there you have it. An emergency. But its an emergency created by world-wide attention to the Fullerton Police Department’s culture of corruption, not by the corruption itself.

Well, go ahead and have your emergency meeting, folks. You can run but you can’t hide.

Wait For The Investigation To Be Done!

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.

 

New Witness: Police Confiscated Bystander’s Camera After Kelly Thomas Beating

During Saturday’s protest we met a new witness to the Kelly Thomas police beating. Here is Edward, a CSUF grad and regular bus rider who told us he watched the entire event unfold from the bus platform…

Edward says he saw one bystander taking pictures with a cell phone camera who was then accused of “interfering” with an investigation. She was grabbed by a police officer who forcefully took her cell phone away. He believes that the woman was then taken into custody.

It is illegal for police to confiscate a bystander’s camera without a court order, unless the camera was used in the commission of a crime (hence the trumped up “you’re interfering with my investigation” charge.) Whether or not this person was actually booked, she would have most certainly been intimidated into giving up her property.

The DA hasn’t acknowledged receipt of any recordings other than the one from the city’s surveillance camera. So where did that cell phone go? And what about that other recording from the local real estate agent who was approached by police after the beating?

Anyone who was threatened by the police on the night of Kelly Thomas’ beating is invited to call or email this blog, anonymously if necessary. If you know somebody who was there, you are also invited to share any information that you have with us.

FPD PERJURY!

Rules for us and rules for them...

A while back we shared the “Go Home Or Go To Jail” video featuring Fullerton Police Department’s downtown wrecking crew assaulting and falsely arresting a bystander who had the temerity to document FPD violence. This happened last fall.

Nobody seemed to know the story about what happened to the man in question. Until now.

Here is a youtube clip featuring KFI’s Bill Carrol and attorney David Borsari who says he represents the guy in question. Please listen to the full interview.

There are two key points here: cooking up a completely implausible story in a police report, and then repeating it to a jury. Of course the video itself shows that the description of events by FPD officers was ludicrous.

This is stoopid, although apparently par for FPD’s course. Creating false reports and making up stories told to a jury has got to be a crime even for a cop, right? Isn’t that what they call perjury? So can we assume our intrepid DA, Tony Rackauckas and his law ‘n order crew are hard at work building a case against everyone associated with this disgrace? Hmm. And of course I have to wonder what the civil suit is going to cost us taxpayers.

And don’t forget that we are asked to wait for an investigation of the Kelly Thomas killing, the official reports about which were orchestrated by some of the same thugs who fabricated the story above, a tale contradicted by the facts and rejected by the jury.

Jeez, is this story of corruption ever going to end?

Yes. With a recall.

Irony Meter Needle Jumps Into Red

Over at the big protest in front of the Fullerton Police Department, an arresting sight caught my eye. It was a banner hanging on the rail over the sunken court at department HQ.

Does this apply to the homeless?

And speaking of arresting, perhaps it should have read “Fullerton Police Alert: if approached by FPD assume a fetal position and hold your breath. Otherwise you will be targeted for resisting.”

Fullerton Police Department Dysfunction

Out here on Screech Owl Road I’ve been tuning in on the doings in sleepy little Fullerton that is sleepy no more. It’s hard to miss. You’ve made world-wide news – and not in the way anybody wants to become famous.

Anyway, I got to wondering the other day about the Police Department spokeshole, Sergeant Andrew Goodrich, a bumbling oaf who has made a real hash out of public relations in the aftermath of the Kelly Thomas homicide.

I know who I work for and it isn't you!

For a while I tried to make sense of the weird things he was saying, and obviously leaking to selected individuals, individuals who then exercised no intellectual scrutiny over what they were disseminating.

My friends back in Fullerton informed me that Goodrich is a shot-caller in the Fullerton Police Officers Association (FPOA), the local cop union. These are the boys (and girls) in blue who pour tens of thousands of dollars into Fullerton elections to get the most simple minded pro-cop lackeys they can find into office. Over the years they have succeeded marvelously.

Then all of Goodrich’s bullshit started to make sense: Kelly Thomas ran; he was combative; he had “legal documents” that didn’t belong to him; a photograph of a dirty, muscular, mean-looking guy was released purporting to be a two-year old booking picture of Thomas; two cops suffered “broken bones” in the encounter. All this trash was floated out to the public to discredit the victim and divert attention from the horrific bludgeoning death perpetrated by the police.

Of course, later it was revealed that there were no broken bones (the cops were back on the street); the identity of the man in the picture was challenged; the so-called legal documents in Thomas’s possession was trash Kelly had fished out of a dumpster; reports from people who knew him that Thomas was basically a harmless dude.

So who does Goodrich really work for? Fullerton taxpayers pay his salary, but it is crystal clear that he he is working for his brethren in the FPOA and will do anything he can to obfuscate, obscure, misdirect and mislead you – the very people who pay his lavish $130,000 a year salary plus benefits.

This becomes even more troublesome when you consider that he is one of the leaders of the union that has hired a lawyer to defend the six cops that participated in the Thomas beat down.

Who in God’s name permits a union officer be the official spokesman for a city department? The egregious Chief Mike Sellers, for one. And, naturally, the ex-cops on the city council Pat McKinley and Don Bankhead, as well as the buffoonish Dick Jones, of course – another individual embraced by the cop union.

Well this crap has got to stop. Sellers should be fired of course, and he should take his union spokesman with him when he goes.

Joe Felz In Wonderland?

This won't turn out well...

A quick trip to Fullerton Stories reveals a statement by Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz that claims the City never made any “settlement offer” to the family of killer cops victim Kelly Thomas, who was brutally bludgeoned to death by six members of Felz’s police department on July 5th.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

This is just about the shabbiest deception the City has tried yet; verbal hairsplitting to try to dodge the fact that your scumbag lawyer Bruce Praet presented “unofficial” proposals (oh, no not a “settlement,” that can only be authorized by the Council) to the family of the victim. Well, goddam, that’s a distinction without a difference! Felz, shame on you for running this turd up the flagpole, and shame on some stooge named Davis Barber at Fullerton Stories for accepting and propagating this ludicrous trash as pertinent to anything. Maybe now Felz thinks no one will we be inclined to ask who was responsible for authorizing Praet to contact the family in the first place. Was it you, Joe? Or did you even know about it?

Probably the worst part is the not-so-subtle insinuation that Ron Thomas, Kelly’s dad has been intentionally misleading the public.

Soon there will be nothing but a grotesque smile...

Up until now I was willing to give Felz the benefit of the doubt – that he was just some poor former museum director dufus in waaaaaay over his head. Now it would appear that he was either completely out of the loop (bad) or, complicit in a nasty plot to discredit the Thomas family (worse) and protect the assess of some crooked cops.

He needs to go, too. Now.