Yep, he said it. In reference to his own union member, Benjamin Lira.
Listen to the Barry Coffman interview on KFI, here. Scroll to the 23:40 mark and enjoy the Fullerton cop union boss try as hard as he can to bad-mouth a dues paying member of the FPOA!
First he says Lira is on the way out, a POBAR violation if uttered by anybody in authority; and of course after the embarrassing question about how come he isn’t defending his union member, and an awkward pause, we learn from Barry that Lira is a real malcontent, a cancer in the presumably healthy body tissue of the FPD. Which is pretty hard to swallow given the evident Culture of Corruption in the department.
Comically, Coffman asks us who are we to believe, his own man, or the upstanding Michael Gennaco Report – a bucket full of pabulum coughed up by a paid hack in order to whitewash the felonious FPD and its command structure.
Say, what’s going on here? A union boss siding with management? Huh?
In response to the tricky question about how come his union didn’t bail out Ramos, Coffman (after another painful pause) exclaims that he and his boys just wanted the justice system to play out, a non-answer if ever there was one. He does admit that when the Thomas murder hit he and his fellow FPOA leaders were completely useless. We do know that they came onto this blog to post vulgar obscenities.
It’s hard not to relish the delicious double standard of the oh-so-ethical Barry C who never said a single word in public about Todd Major, Kelly Mejia, Albert Rincon, Vincent Mater, Kenton Hampton, Frank Nguyen, Cary Tong or any of the other FPOA miscreants whose behavior has been so amply demonstrated on these pages.
In California victims have rights, too. Unless the perps are cops, it seems.
The other day the defense team of three of the cops charged in the murder of Kelly Thomas asked for, and got a time extension on their own motion to dismiss. You can read about in the Register, here, if you don’t mind getting a bit nauseous.
It is now 17 months since Thomas was brutally beaten by six Fullerton cops and left in the Fullerton Transportation Center gutter to drown in his own blood as the six goons got their scratches band-aided.
The District Attorney sure doesn’t seem to be in any big hurry, either, which might make a cynical person question his real dedication to prosecuting these malefactors.
Haven’t heard that name lately? How about her alias, April Leanne Wilson?
She’s the FPD employee who (miraculously, considering the caliber of the detectives who work there) got caught last March stealing from the the evidence room at FPD Central. Here is Ms. Baughman’s court record.
Right now she’s free on bail after having ripped off more than $50K from the till.
To a certain extent you have to cut April some slack. After all, when you look around and see a culture of chaos, corruption, incompetence it must be hard for a person of marginal integrity not to give in to temptation.
According to police spokesholes, Baughman had been at it for quite some time. Which begs the inevitable question, who the Hell was in charge? Either nobody was doing inventories and audits, or the egregious Baughman had one or more accomplices helping her out. Will there be any accountability? Want odds?
Either way it’s another black eye for the department and its “leadership” who would have us believe everything is hunky dory at Commonwealth and Highland.
And before you feel obliged to credit the FPD for nabbing one of their own, consider what would have happened if Baughman were not a civilian employee. Would we ever have heard anything from the Culture of Cover up?
He keeps popping up like a bad penny. It’s Iron Mike Sellers at the Rose Bowl.
That’s right, Fullerton’s former top cop who let Pat McPension’s Neanderthal goons run amok, and who, when the chips were down took 1) a vacation, 2) a tummy ache medical leave, and 3) a disability retirement and massive pension with thanks and well-wishes of the Albert Pujols of City mangers, Joe Felz.
It seems like I keep saying this. And it keeps being true.
The Old Guard Establishment that buried us under a mountain of unfunded pension liability, that stole almost $30,000,000 in the guise of a water “fee” and who created a murderous Culture of Corruption that abused us, stole from us, lied to us, and even killed one of us, isn’t going without one last, vaporous, noxious gasp.
Jan Flory disappeared ten years ago, run out of office after a two-term misrule that included overdevelopment, massive corporate subsidies, boondoggles galore, and of course, worst of all, the disastrous 3@50 retroactivepension spike. Now teamed up with the most obnoxious elements of the corrupt, unapologetic cop union, Flory represents the completely discredited Ancient Regime better than anyone.
Well, anybody but Flory’s old chum King Don Bankhead, recalled twice and so desperate, demented and disconnected that he still believes he has something to contribute to Fullerton besides the comical spectacle of falling asleep during meetings.
He’s the one on the right.
There’s somebody called Rick Alvarez running, who like Flory, has been hugely supported by the cops. This cipher is the last wheeze of the Ackerman repuglican tribe, a dying breed to be sure. No one knows anything about this drone, except that he appears to be willing to say anything to anybody. He is also supported by the Old Dems who see in him their main chance of stopping reform.
Then there’s a woman called Kitty Jaramillo who seems to be just what what the doctor ordered – in case you wanted a former city employee making decisions that affect her pals’ pensions. Cynically, she’s been dropped like a hot potato by those Old Dems and the cops who don’t want her siphoning votes from their candidates, and who wouldn’t support two latino-named candidates.
Another entry is Jennifer Fitzgerald who stood up to Dick Ackerman when he started tricking himself out for the cop union. But this sure seems like way too little, way too late: as Friends will recall she was a big opponent of the recall which speaks volumes as far as I’m concerned. Her backing by Ossified GOP clique is equally telling. Her employment is based on lobbying and political hackery – which for Republicans is a sure fire sign that they are for big government.
Are you sufficiently depressed, yet? Don’t be! You can do yourself a favor. You can support conscience and reform.
There is Barry Levinson, a guy who has been on the front line of reform for the past couple of years, and a man who wuold undoubtedly demand accountability in City Hall.
Jane rands has been at the forefront of reform in Fullerton, too, particularly about land use and cop brutality, which has not endeared her to the liberal establishment.
Finally I arrive at Travis Kiger and Bruce Whitaker, the incumbents. These two have accomplished more in four months than their predecessors had done in twenty-five years. They have finally ended the illegal water tax and they have demanded fiscal and practical accountability from the police department. Naturally the public safety unions are outraged and have spent a fortune attacking them. Why? because Kiger and Whitaker work hard for us, and the unions just hate that. They hate it a lot.
Yep. The choices stand in stark contrast to one another. You can go back to the depressing days of unaccountability and irresponsibility; the days when our police department spiraled out of control; the days when downtown Fullerton became a subsidized, open-air booze court; the days when land was given away to favored developers and City Hall looked the other way when it came to environmental impacts on the rest of us.
We’ve all seen Fullerton cops texting on the job – on motorcyles, in patrol cars, and at Starbucks, when in fact they are supposed to be protecting us from evil, hippy dope-smokers.
But wait a sec! What’s this? Chief Danny texting during a Fullerton Council meeting?!
Well, I guess FPD “Detective” Ron Bair will soon be making another “Brown Act” record request!
I always hate it when the stooge press indicates that a “former cop” was convicted of something when the former cop was an active cop when he did what he did to get convicted.
And so I won’t say “former Fullerton cop Vincent Mater plead guilty…” Rather, I will say dirty Fullerton cop Vincent Mater who clearly had something to hide in the wake of the Dean Gochenour Fullerton jail suicide and who demonstrated as much by destroying his DAR plead guilty to day…
Here’s the text of the DAs press release:
FULLERTON – A former Fullerton Police Department (FPD) officer was convicted and sentenced today for destroying evidence by 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, 42, pleaded guilty to a court offer by the Honorable Frances Munoz to one misdemeanor count of destruction of evidence and one misdemeanor count of vandalism. Mater was sentenced to three years of informal probation and 60 days of community service. The People objected to the sentence, arguing for jail time based on the nature of the crime, destruction of evidence possibly related to an inmate’s death, and the defendant’s violation of his position of trust.
At the time of the crime, Mater was a police officer with FPD. At approximately 9:45 p.m. on April 14, 2011, Mater conducted a DUI investigation after making a traffic stop of a vehicle being driven without its lights on in the dark. Mater was in uniform and driving a marked FPD patrol car. Mater arrested the driver, Dean Gochenour, upon determining that Gochenour was under the influence of alcohol.
Mater transported Gochenour in his patrol car to the Fullerton City Jail (FCJ) and turned him over to FPD jailers to be booked upon arrival. Throughout the duration of his contact with Gochenour, Mater wore 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, Mater destroyed 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. Mater destroyed the 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 March 13, 2012.
Deputy District Attorney Brock Zimmon of the Special Prosecutions Unit prosecuted this case.
I don’t know who “the honorable” Frances Munoz is, but I sure want to end up in her court if I ever get busted doing anything naughty. Probation and sixty days’ community service? Really? You or I would be looking at hard time. Oh, well we’ve always know there were rules and regs for us and a get out of jail card for the cops.
Did something fishy happen to Dean Gochenour before or after he was deposited in the FPD jail? Thanks to Mater we shall probably never know.
Oh, and yeah, Mater’s now a former Fullerton cop, although whether he was fired or permitted to walk away we will never know. That shall remain a mystery, too.
