‘member when Mayor Jesus Silva and Mayor Pro-Tem Jennifer Fitzgerald looked the other way when the City Attorney’s office, at the behest of City Manager Ken Domer, threatened us with civil and criminal prosecution for telling you about the FPD School Perv?
I ‘member.
Two years ago, I wrote a post for this blog entitled, Woe to the Charitable Donor where I pointed out the embarrassingly poor oversight when it comes to receiving and spending donated money. Literally nothing has changed in the time since then.
Last year, the City purchased 75 K9 Hero stuffed animals — like the one pictured above — for the tidy sum of $618.75.
Follow along below. On the reconciliation report, that purchase is charged to the 95-2501 account. 95 is a Trust Fund, and 2501 is where K-9 donations from the community are deposited.
Again, we have an instance where well-meaning Fullerton non-profits think they’re helping to fund actual police work, actual K-9 food and equipment, actual K-9 veterinary care — when that isn’t the case at all.
A mere four days before those stuffed animals were ordered, actual K-9 veterinary expenses at Yorba Regional Animal Hospital were charged to the General Fund, account 10277-6319. (Note: anything 10xxx is the General Fund)
Without missing a beat, two days later, they spent $700 at Work Dogs International, again using General Fund account 10277-6319.
Why did they charge the General Fund when just days before/after, they had donated K-9 money to burn on stupid stuffed animals?
My detractors will say, so what, it’s a small sum of money, who cares? Tell that to the City employees whose jobs in the Public Works / Landscape Division are about to be eliminated. The City just issued an RFP for Park Maintenance because the City can no longer afford their wages and pensions. Maybe if the incompetence and sense of entitlement at the police department weren’t so bad, we would have cash to spend elsewhere.
Does the City have any policy whatsoever for proper handling of donations? Why is this tolerated?
A Fullerton police officer shot a 17yo female. A girl and minor by all objective standards considering she wasn’t of legal drinking, smoking, firearm purchasing or consenting age amongst other things. She was a teenager despite early reports claiming that she was a 17yo woman.
Woman. Which by definition means an adult female.
You just need to look at the Fullerton Observer’s link on the story to see they ran with the “Woman” bait before changing the headline.
Anything to mitigate the damage and obscure the facts until people complain I guess.
This is where Police Cover-up culture hurts the reputation of police departments. If we take the District Attorney’s report at face value, that a replica Beretta was found “in the vehicle next to the victim”, even though witness statements say she outside of the vehicle, we could be looking at a terrible situation of suicide by cop.
But we don’t know the facts because the officer is legally entitled to not talk to investigators and when the officer does finally get interviewed the investigators will be constrained by what they can ask and how they can ask it thanks to laws putting officers above the rest of us.
I understand that the terrible laws protecting police exist, POBAR specifically, but the idea that an officer can take a life at 7pm on Friday and on the following Tuesday still isn’t been required to give a statement is just asinine. Memories change and fade and if a civilian had been the shooter in this situation there is no way they would have let the suspect walk away and not talk to investigators for 4 days. Police would be threatening walk-outs at the injustice because they’re hypocrites.
The officer might be justified in the actions of Friday night, the officer might not be but the idea that the Department and District Attorney can besmirch the victim with the release of the replica information while hiding everything else behind an “ongoing investigation” stinks to high hell. We don’t know where the shooting took place (inside or outside the vehicle), if the “replica” was next to, near or around the suspect or what led to the Officer’s vehicle colliding with the suspects. We don’t know the officer’s name even. Imagine if somebody shot her on school grounds – do you think 72 hours later we still wouldn’t know the name of the shooter, justified or not? Hell, the little we do know is about the replica and we didn’t know it was a BB gun for days.
It doesn’t help the situation that Fullerton PD doesn’t deserve our trust. There are too many cases of lying cops, cheating cops, cops stealing and cops committing terrible acts being ignored, buried or outright covered up. And all of it is typically hidden behind a Blue Wall of Silence because “the brotherhood” trumps ethics, morality and doing the right thing nearly every time in every situation. Hero and Deserve is the ethos of City Hall and City Council regardless of the situation.
Fullerton PD, until the law required the release of documents, was happy to not tell you that one of their officers was fired for making a female suspect strip so he could shine a flashlight at her crotch and then later asking her on a date.
They were happy to not tell parents what a school resource officer might have been doing with lewd photos of their sons and daughters.
They were happy to hide Officer DUIs and worse.
This department settled with a Lieutenant in a way to specifically avoid disclosure laws.
They’re happy to bury evidence, delete videos and lie to the public. Remember the officer’s “broken bones” that Andrew Goodrich proclaimed after the Kelly Thomas incident? No bones were broken but that statement was never publicly retracted once it was in the wild.
And again, the Officer has yet to talk to investigators now 4 days out from the fatal shooting. Half a week later and the one person personally involved in the events leading up to the intentional killing of a 17yo girl has not even said anything to authorities.
I don’t believe in the Eric Holder idea of never letting a crises go to waste but if anything good comes out of this death than maybe changing POBAR, the Police Officer’s Bill of Rights, can be that change.
POBAR is nothing but a law that obstructs justice, delays investigations and puts the safety of an officer’s job above the truth and facts. It gives officers rights and privileges they would never accept for anybody else under investigation. The police would complain endlessly about being handcuffed by such legislation if it applied to all people equally and thus it needs to land in the dustbin of history next to all other terrible laws which pervert justice.
Justice is supposed to be blind, not blind, deaf, and dumb for one protected class of heroes.
As hinted yesterday, we received an anonymous piece of correspondence with a copy of the separation agreement between “Lieutenant” Kathryn Hamel and the City of Fullerton.
It is quite an interesting read. We aren’t the only outlet to receive this so we’re curious to see what coverage, if any, this receives in the press.
From what we have gathered Officer Hamel had at least two internal affairs investigations into her actions. It is alleged that one of them was for giving false statements.
These internal investigations were dropped as a condition of this settlement specifically to avoid disclosure under the law known as SB1421.
To quote the agreement (bold emphasis added, caps lock in original):
“The City will revise its Notice of Intent to Discipline Hamel to remove allegations relating to dishonesty, deceit, untruthfulness, false or misleading statements, ethics or maliciousness. The Interim Police Chief will place a notice in the file indicating that, pursuant to settlement, all charges against Hamel, including charges relating to dishonesty, deceit, untruthfulness, false or misleading statements, ethics or maliciousness were never resolved or proven because there was no Skelly hearing or opportunity for appeal and, accordingly, are not sustained. The IA investigation, and related materials including the revised Notice of Intent to Discipline, will be sealed and maintained in the Human Resources Department, and only in the Human Resources Department, with a notice reading: “THIS IS A SEALED FILE AND SHOULD NOT BE DISCLOSED OR OTHERWISE PRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE CITY MANAGER, AND ONLY AFTER RECEIVING A WRITTEN OPINION FROM THE CITY ATTORNEY THAT SAID RELEASE OF INFORMATION IS REQUIRED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW.”
“The City asserts, based on a “not sustained” finding of all charges, that any and all records relating to this investigation are not subject to release under Senate Bill 1421. The City further asserts that any challenge to this legal opinion by any entity will be defended by the City – in court if necessary – to the fullest extent.”
Since Jerry Brown made it possible to find out when police lie, sexually assault people and cause great bodily harm through SB1421 the police and local governments in CA have been scrambling to find ways to block it’s implementation or ways to work around it and here we see one of those ways.
We citizens should fully expect that this is going to be the new normal.
Lacking consequences the police will continue closing cases and ending investigations to protect their own. Watch as the councils and mayors of our city and state do nothing for fear of union funded reprisals at the ballot box.
This is what happens when there is no objective civilian oversight and departments are allowed to handle their own investigations into the wrongdoing of their friends, family and co-workers. (more…)
Fullerton’s City Council, on the other hand reminds me of Porch Boy from Deliverance: good at one thing and, well, everything else? Not so much.
Our council’s skill-set is entirely focused on hiding screw-ups – from auto crashes to mismanaged construction progress to a breathtaking budgetary neglect that can only be discussed by lying about it.
At the heart of the matter is a council that is just incompetent, and worse, refuses to hold anybody accountable for their expensive errors. But the one thing that can be relied upon: no one will ever admit mistake.
If you had any doubts on the matter, simply refer yourselves to the silly charade of picking a council replacement. The fix was in from the beginning. There was zero chance anybody but the egregious Jan Flory would be chosen, despite other applicants who had actual ability. Why? Because Flory was already complicit in all of Fullerton’s misadventures that have led to an an FPD Culture of Corruption, an out of control booze riot downtown, a near empty treasury and the worst roads in Orange County; and if anybody was willing to stay the course, lie about a balanced budget, blame the stingy taxpayers for the state of the roads, and prop up clearly useless and grossly overpaid city manager and city attorney it was her.
But the people that have made a mess out of Fullerton are running out of options, especially pension options, when the State pension board decides to lower its actuarial assumptions again. And then the gravy train will run out of gas. And who will be asked to fill ‘er up? That’s right you and me.
Today is the Day.
Today Police records are supposed to become a little more transparent and officers with “sustained” complaints (and a few other issues) get to share with the world their bad deeds by virtue of some Sacramento mandated sunshine disinfectant. With SB1421 to the rescue we might finally get to see what happens behind union closed doors when officers misbehave.
The law changing and becoming effective today, owing to the holiday, convinced some friends to put in a few records requests based on suggestions which we complied and others which were emailed to us after this post dropped.
Thanks to everybody who shared what they knew and pointed us in a few interesting directions. I was copied on the request and it contains over 40 officers both current and former, most of whom we believe to have had sustained findings against them. Because police departments refuse to tell us who has findings against them we had to take quite a few guesses based on the best information we could obtain. That or pay FPD $250+ to maybe compile a list per their Public Information Officer.
Being that we’re volunteers who don’t run ads or try to monetize FFFF we opted against the $250 check to FPD.
With the requests in the virtual mail we should be seeing some interesting things provided that the records aren’t obfuscated, buried and denied. We’ll keep you posted as things come back or don’t.
We’re also always open to suggestions so if we missed anybody let us know the details in the comments or via email. Who did what and where should we look? What officers had sustained findings in other departments? We’ll send requests for those records as well.
Over the years we here at Friends for Fullerton’s Future have written about what feels like countless stories on the culture of corruption. A lot of facts, some rumors and a lot of annoyance as the city, police department and union goons do everything in their power to keep all of us from knowing anything even slightly negative happening behind the badges of our betters.
Well, on January 1st, 2019 California law changes to allow a little bit of information to eek its way past the Blue Wall of Silence. Thanks to the usually ridiculous California legislature and soon to be former Governor Jerry Brown, we’ll be able to learn about some of the actions perpetuated by some of the officers around the state. Here’s the law in question.
You’ll want to read section C and the bits about lies and dishonesty. I previously had it quoted it here but it’s too much legalese to blockquote. Basically if it’s proven that a cop lies or falsifies a report you can get the records of those findings.
This involves some rumors. Proceed accordingly.
A few months ago an unnamed Fullerton Police Officer was allegedly stabbed in Placentia by an unidentified “Hispanic male”. Four agencies swarmed (Placentia PD, Fullerton PD, CSUF State Police & OC Sheriff’s) and a suspect was picked up, had his info blasted on social media and in press releases — only later to be cleared and released.
This is where all four agencies left things and no new information has been publicly presented.
Here are the relevant news stories.
Per CBS (22 Sept):
The Fullerton Police Department, Orange County Sheriffs Department and Cal State Fullerton Police Department, made an extensive search of the area.
Officers detained and later arrested a parolee named James Carrera, a 19-year-old Placentia resident. Carrera was booked on an assault with a deadly weapon charge.
Police did not know if the officer was targeted but they said Carrera was out on parole for weapons violations and possibly knew the officer.
Per OC Register (23 Sept):
The victim was released hours after being treated at a local hospital for non-life-threatening injuries, according to Fullerton Police Lt. Tony Rios. He said the injured officer was at home recovering the day after the attack and is expected to return to duty in the next few days.
“I spoke to him this morning and he seems to be doing well,” said Rios. “He’s a strong young guy and he should be back soon.”
Per KTLA (23 Sept):
Investigators described the attacker as a Latino man in his late-teens or early-20s, of thin build. He had short, black hair and wore a baggie, black T-shirt.
Rumors lately have it that the officer made up the “Hispanic Male” and has been put on admin leave with nary a word or apology by the cites or agencies involved. Apparently now we’re hiring Leopold “Butters” Stotch’s mom at Fullerton PD:
Alas, that might turn out differently because ultimately Mrs. Stotch confessed. Instead we now actually know, thanks to diligent records requests, that the officer in question is one Nathan Roesler.
Detective Barry Coffman, former president of the Fullerton police union, is the latest victim of housecleaning at the Fullerton Police Department.
Two weeks ago management kicked Coffman out of his comfy detective chair and forced him onto patrol duty with the working stiffs. Coffman must have been unhappy because he started calling in with tummy aches. When Coffman saw that his pitiful work stoppage had no effect on management, he gave his two week notice. If I were a betting man, I’d say he stopped coming into work altogether.
For those who don’t remember, Coffman was responsible for defending the indefensible behavior of his union and its members after they murdered Kelly Thomas, repeatedly denying the existence of any corruption inside the FPD despite all of the evidence to the contrary. In addition to handing out ridiculous “excessive horning” tickets during a public protest, Coffman was also responsible for this sad tale where his lazy police work helped land an innocent couple in county jail.
Coffman’s early retirement means he left a few years of weighty pension gains on the table. Farewell and good riddance.