Watch Your Wallet Archives - Page 51 of 74 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

March 17, 2012March 17, 2012Chronic Failure

How To Turn a Paramedic Call Into a SWAT Nightmare

Guess what, Friends? Last month the City of Fullerton got sued again – stemming from an FPD incident in 2005. We have thoughtfully attached a copy of the complaint, below.

According to the complaint, some dude named Ernest Benefiel took some sleeping pills in a locked bedroom. Naturally, Benefiel fell asleep. His elderly father, concerned, called the paramedics because he thought his son was depressed. So far so good.

Unfortunately the paramedics called the good folks at the Fullerton Police Department who arrived on the scene, and because they learned that Benefiel owned a gun, decided to turn the place into some kind of hostage stand-off situation – even though there was no hostage. Some time elapsed and the cops, perhaps, became bored. To get Benefiel’s attention they deployed a flash grenade outside the guy’s window, followed a dozen shotgun “bean bags” blasts through the same window. Benefiel was hit by one of the rounds and finally woke up from his pill-induced slumber; and, thinking he was under attack from criminals, fired a pistol shot out the window and hit a street sign.The cops then started blasting blindly into the room.

A while later Benfiel finally got his bearings and climbed out the window and surrendered peacefully – even though he had committed no crime.

Now you would think that upon mature reflection the cops’ superiors would have recognized how their out-of-control underlings unnecessarily escalated a pretty harmless situation into a SWAT stand off, and just let the whole thing go. But no! The cops and the DA decided to prosecute Benefiel for firing on a police officer. In fact, they tried him twice, and each time the case was overturned on appeal.

Meantime, Benefiel had spent over five years in jail for the heinous act of simply defending himself. And now the taxpayers of Fullerton are staring at yet another FPD civil suit settlement.

Read the complaint

If you read the complaint you will notice an inescapable fact: according to a police training expert FPD tactics violated procedure on the use of the flash grenade, the shot gun bean bags, and blindly shooting projectiles.

And who was boss of the FPD at the time and supposedly accountable for the actions of his boys? That’s right. Former Chief and current councilman Pat McKinley.

MCKinley3 — Jeez, that was such a long ago...

Fortunately we can help make sure this incompetent clown is not around after June 5th to vote for anymore settlements that would hush up embarrassing revelations about the Culture of Corruption he created while head of the Fullerton Police Department.

March 16, 2012Behind Closed Doors

New Water Tax: 6.7%? Not a Freakin’ Chance!

by Mr. Peabody78 Comments

Apparently the much-anticipated Joe Felz Water Study is in, and it says that the illegal 10% water tax is…drum roll, please…illegal. But get this: rather than an honest study, the consultants were clearly told to gin up as much plausible reason to keep as much of the 10% as they could. The result? It’s only 6.7%. Yay!

The only problem is that to reach 6.7%, the consultant cooked up the idea that the Water Fund owed the City rent on land where water reservoirs are located! According to Ad Hoc Water Committee member Greg Sebourn, the total annual rent was figured at $1,374,000 – well-over half of the existing tax.

Of course this scam raises all sorts of new issues, as scams generally do. Such as: the reservoir in Hillcrest Park supports a play field on its deck. Does the City rent this back from the Water Fund? Bet not! The reservoir up at the top of Euclid is situated in a cactus patch patrolled by goats. What’s the rental or development value of a nature park? I dunno, but it’s not much. Has the Water Fund been paying for maintenance on these properties that should have been the responsibility of the General Fund? Bet so.

Then of course there’s the issue of whether the waterworks itself paid for fee title to any of these properties in the first place, a way back when. I wonder if the consultant even bothered to check. Bet not.

And there’s the embarrassing fact that there is no arm’s length relationship between the people that impose the rent and the people that pay it. The City Council can demand any amount of rent they want – then agree to pay it. Why not? The proceeds go to pay their own pensions! Now, that’s not very good, is it?

In any case, the public may find it a bit confusing and unseemly that at the eleventh hour the bureaucrats and their hand-picked consultant are burning the near-midnight oil to drum up ways to charge as much for water as they can that they can keep siphoning money into the General Fund.

jones-gone-wild1 — Will you please shut up.

Will the city Council buy into this load? Well, of course they will. The vote will be 4-1, and it will be up to the citizens and voters to rectify the scam at the ballot box.

Our job is to continue to expose the fraud for what it is.

March 15, 2012Fullerton City Council

Ballot Challenge: Does Fullerton Really Have $500,000,000 in Pension Debt?

by Travis Kiger90 Comments

The city clerk called me tonight to let me know that someone had come in to protest my sample ballot statement. She says this person took issue with the following claim:

Has Fullerton’s pension debt really risen to half a billion dollars?

Yes. According to the CalPERS pension system’s own analysis in this OCRegister article, the lump-sum payment to close out all of Fullerton’s pension liabilities (debt) right now is somewhere between $456,000,000 and $540,000,000.

It’s hard to blame anyone for doubting this figure, as the number is simply unbelievable. But it’s 100% true. That’s half a billion dollars which must somehow be paid off by my children and yours, all thanks to the unchecked generosity of union-backed councilmen like Don Bankhead and Dick Jones.

March 15, 2012March 15, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

City Council Candidate Jane Rands Identifies Corruption

by admin51 Comments

Kudos to Recall candidate Jane Rands for correctly identifying repuglican bagman and fixer Dick Ackerman as the motive force behind the St. Anton Partners project’s meteoric rise from number six to number one. The Three Bald Tires clearly intend to reward the leader of the anti-recall team with a juicy multi-million dollar subsidy for his client.

Is this a quid pro quo? Of course it is. The Three Dithering Dinosaurs have been handing out freebies to their supporters and campaign contributors for years.

You see, in Fullerton the Culture of Corruption extends beyond the walls of police headquarters.

March 14, 2012March 14, 2012Dead heads

The Cover-Up Club

by Mr. Peabody183 Comments

Yesterday, the OC Register did a story about the Fullerton jail house death of Dean Francis Gochenour, and the role played by Vincent Mater, who smashed his DAR against a steel door in order to destroy the evidence it contained.

Our Acting Chief, Dan Hughes, was unusually chatty.

For instance, he shares with trusted police scribe Lou Ponsi the fact that an internal investigation was concluded by June 20, 2011, that discipline was recommended by Hughes, himself, and then Mater quit on August 2: I made recommendations for discipline and in that process, he resigned,” Hughes said.

So let us ponder a few things. Mater destroys his DAR in mid April, and disciplinary action is started over two months later? And what is this disciplinary “process?” Hard to say; it may have included firing the creep, but if so the process is designed to permit the perp to quit first. And that’s a shame because in the case of Mater we already know he was considered by the DA to be a Brady Cop, (i.e. unfit for court testimony due to unfamiliarity with the truth). We also know that he was complicit in some way in the wrongful incarceration of Emanuel Martinez.

Whatever this so-called discipline process entailed (including, no doubt, union exacted rights for appeal hearings, ad nauseam), Mater decided his best option was to walk away, perhaps to try his luck as a cop somewhere else. So Mater quietly went his merry way on August 2, 2011 – curiously, just as the Kelly Thomas murder protests were starting in earnest.

And now, for the $64,000 question: what was going on between the FPD and the DAs office between August 2 2011 and March 13, 2012? Seven and a half months had passed since Mater’s departure; eleven months had passed since the original crime. It would appear to the outsider that nothing was going to happen at all.

And then somebody changed their mind. I wonder why.

March 12, 2012March 12, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

McPension Struts His Stuff

by Joe Sipowicz24 Comments

In an ideal city our elected officials would know what the hell they were voting on. Alas, in Fullerton, such is not the case. Here is the egregious Pat McKinley last Tuesday demonstrating that he hasn’t got a clue what he is talking about. First he emphatically says there is no Ackerman project. Then, when corrected, he emphatically says he supports the Ackerman project.

McPension is totally clueless, except for one thing: He knows that his pal Dick Ackerman needs an approval of a lousy project with a massive subsidy to keep his oily hide employed. And that’s enough for McKinley.

March 12, 2012March 12, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

“Dick” Jones: We’re All Socialists Now!

by Joe Sipowicz61 Comments

Listen to Ol’ Country Doc Jones babble on last Tuesday about how evahbody’s sub-sa-dized nowadays, so con’sarn it, why not go ahead and give his buddy Dick Ackerman a big ol’ Texas-sized hunk a’ public funds. At about the three minute mark HeeHaw goes on a rant about how “everything in this country has got subsidies.”

Is it really possible that this yokel doesn’t know the difference between the words “transit” and “transient?” Apparently not. And also note the idiocy that Ackerman’s project is good ’cause it’s “mixed use” – it might contain “market rate” apartments. I”ll let that assertion go since it’s not even worth challenging.

We now know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this knucklehead really and truly believes in crony capitalism; that he believes in top down master plans that result in coercion and taxpayer subsidy; and that he believes American life necessarily revolves around gummint subsidy checks – including the millions he’s handing over to the mastermind of the anti-recall campaign – his good ol’ buddy “Dick” Ackerman.

Dick Jones is a socialist!

March 11, 2012March 14, 2012Dead heads

Where Is Albert Rincon?

by The Fullerton Shadow133 Comments

The police unions in California have become so powerful that they have paid for legislation that makes it virtually impossible to find out anything about individual cops, including the ones that shame their badges and violate their oaths.

In Fullerton we have seen how this curtain of secrecy immediately descended when Kelly Thomas, a homeless man, was bludgeoned to death by several members of the police department. Well, okay, some of these goons were eventually brought to the bar of justice, and they get the same rights as the rest of us, even if it takes a veritable act of Congress to get crooked cops charged with a crime.

Of course the difference between them and us is that if they arrest us for something, our pictures can be plastered all over the evening news, and forensic evidence be damned.

So let us now consider the case of Albert Rincon, poster boy for the FPD Culture of Corruption, and the creep you will nevermore hear McKinley, Jones or Bankhead or Lou Ponsi talk about. Over several years, Rincon serially violated department policy by turning off his DAR and then, according to numerous complaints, sexually assaulted women in his patrol car. Rincon was given “pat-down” training as a corrective measure and sent back out on the streets of Fullerton to molest more females.

The City was upbraided by Federal Judge Andrew Guilford, for its years’ long tolerance of Rincon’s behavior as he denied a summary judgment in a civil suit brought by two of Rincon’s victims. The City immediately settled with the two women for a massive $350,000. And here’s where it gets even sicker, if that’s even possible.

Sometime in October, Rincon left the department. But we are not permitted to know the details. And for that matter we know nothing of the separations of the iPad thief, Kelly Mejia, or the Brady Cop, Vincent Mater.

Were these people fired? Were they permitted to quit? Are they still, or can they become cops someplace else? These things we shall never know – unless they continue the behavior cultivated under the corrupt chiefship of Pat McKinley, and get caught again.

But the case of Albert Rincon deserves special attention. We cannot see what this perverted sociapath looks like, nor know where he went, although such behavior by a civilian would certainly have resulted in a conviction and a life-long sex offender tag. That civilian’s name would be in an index the rest of his life; but not Rincon’s.

For all we know Rincon may already be a police officer in some other jurisdiction, fulfilling his life-long dream of being a cop.

Such is the ridiculous shroud of secrecy and special protections the cops’ politicians have erected for their patrons; the shroud protects all cops, good and bad. And that’s the way they want it.

March 5, 2012March 5, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Joe Felz Sighs

by Joe Sipowicz80 Comments

Felz_Joe_2011_sml — Why can't they leave me alone?

Poor, put upon Fullerton City Manger Joe Felz is getting frustrated. And so he sighs to a reporter.

He’s frustrated that people are holding him accountable for his promises. Last year he stalled the Howard Jarvis Tax folks by clamming that the illegal 10% water tax would be addressed by March; well, March is here and it ain’t. In the meantime the City has collected $200,000 per month and continues to hide the tax from the water rate payers.

Here is an article in the Register all about how gosh darn tough it is for Felz to : 1) tell the truth; 2) do the right thing; 3) obey the law.

victoria-falls-zimbabwe-africa — It'll cost you...

The truth is that the illegal tax has nothing to do with with the water rate study; it is a stand alone issue that should have been fixed at least 15 years ago. And the fix is easy. The Water Fund already pays the General Fund for work done other city departments for work done on its behalf. The 10% tax is an outright scam that needs to be killed.

March 1, 2012March 1, 2012Dick Jones

Felz Blows Off the HJTA. Illegal Water Tax Ripoff Continues. Lawsuit Imminent.

by Travis Kiger36 Comments

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association fired off another pithy letter to city manager Joe Felz last week, accusing him of intentionally delaying the termination of the illegal 10% in-lieu water franchise tax while continuing to collect over $100,000 per month from Fullerton residents in violation of the state constitution.

The letter states that Joe Felz verbally admitted to the illegality of the fee and promised action within a certain timeframe. But honesty is not a virtue within city hall, and nine months later Felz and his trusted council majority of Bankhead, Jones and McKinley still allow the city to continue its theft without comment or remorse.

Mr. Bittle closed out his letter with a threat of a class action lawsuit that would seek a refund on behalf of all Fullerton water users. As one of the 135,000 ripped-off residents, I’d say that’s a great idea.