Yesterday we received this pearl of a comment from Mr. or Ms. Anonymous:
“These paranoid pot smoking hippies put 3 good men outta a job just because they said they wanted to wait until an investigation was complete before commenting on the death of Kelly.
Now these smelly hippies are turning there paranoia on the sidebar which had nothing to do with anything. when will the madness stop?”
You know, I think this person meant to say “Three Bald Tires.” You see, there was simply no tread left. The steel was showing through what was left of the rubber. They were worse than worthless: they were dangerous.
But now they are in a better place – protecting against erosion along a bend in the Santa Ana River. And even though we are all just smelly hippies, we are all in a better place, too.
Yesterday the world was treated to the moving words of love and respect that Slidebar Rock ‘N Roll Kitchen proprietor Jeremy Popoff had for Kelly Thomas, the homeless man who was beat to death by members of the Fullerton Police Department last July.
Poor Jeremy! It must indeed have been heartbreaking for him to lose somebody he had known for years. Especially since he now acknowledges that the call that summoned police to the scene was instigated by a call from his establishment.
(Horrible screeching sound as needle is dragged across the LP)
Here are a few choice quotations from a Fullerton Stories article dated July 23rd 2011 about the Kelly Thomas affair featuring some trenchant observations by Mr. Popoff himself:
“I feel guilty having ever had any contempt for this guy, but if you had asked me about him a month ago, I’d have nothing good to say about him,” Popoff said. “I don’t want to say that it was justified, what happened. But man, Kelly scared people. We …. were always having to kick him out of our bathrooms or tell him to leave customers alone. Then he would yell at us.”
“He had long matted hair and a matted beard that stuck to his body,” Popoff said. “I wish there was something I could do or could have done a long time ago. My manager was in tears when she called me that night. She was really shaken up by it. “
Popoff said that the police have been good to the homeless in the area near his bar. “The cops have been really lenient with him and other homeless. He was allowed to get away with a lot more because he was homeless. The cops gave him a lot of breaks.”
“We’ve given him lots of stuff,” Popoff added. “[He was] not allowed to be here anymore because Kelly did not respect our customers.”
Back to Popoff: “The last thing I want is to be anti-PD or anti-Kelly. We live here, I’m a father. We support the PD and the residents and the community. Literally, most of my staff was very scared and intimidated by him. They were reluctant to ask him to move along,” says Popoff. “Two or three days before [the arrest] he was bumming cigarettes and the manager said to him ‘Kelly you can’t’ do that here, you gotta move on.’ And Kelly screamed back at him ‘don’t call me by my first name!’”
According to CBS local news, Jeremy Popoff, proprietor the the Slidebar Rock ‘N Roll Kitchen, categorically denies being involved in a phony call that described Kelly Thomas as breaking into or trying to open car doors.
However if you read the article, you will notice that there is no assertion from Popoff’s lawyer that no call was made from the Slidebar. And that’s interesting because in a report earlier toady the Slidebar lawyer, Eric Durbin, is quoted saying this:
Dubin said Reeves was not within earshot of the Slidebar employee who called police that night…
Meaning that there was some sort of phone call made by a Slidebar employee to the cops that night. Hmm.
In any case we are meant to be reassured that by his lawyer that Popoff is “heartbroken.”
According to Popoff he cares deeply for the local homeless population.
The Slidebar attorney is right about one thing: everything will come out at trial. But not the trial he is thinking of.
What is PORAC? The Peace Officers Research Associaion of California is a statewide cop lobby whose contributions go to provide legal aid and comfort to cops, good and bad. We learned about this “research association” last winter as it made a $19,000 contribution to the anti-recall campaign, a failed effort to protect the political hides of the three cop union puppets on the Fullerton City Council. PORAC is also paying the legal bills for the two Fullerton cops, Manny Ramos and Jay Cicinelli, who have been charged with the killing of the mentally ill homeless man, Kelly Thomas.
Now PORAC has a new project: promoting the dubious political fortunes of Sharon Quirk-Silva. Check out the list of supporters on her website.
Now that’s a fine collection of educrats, far left leaning politicos that have helped tank California, and of course, unions that greased their skids. But really, Sharon, PORAC? Can you really be that clueless? Or is it just desperation?
For almost a year now rumors have been swirling around the role of Fullerton’s Slidebar in the death of the mentally ill homeless man, Kelly Thomas, last July. Specifically, did a Slidebar employee at the behest of his or her boss, owner Jeremy Popoff, make a phony call to the cops to give them a pretext to roust Thomas.
Staring into an uncertain future...
Despite all of his protestations of innocence and donations of canned food to the homeless, Popoff’s story never quite rang true.
A couple days ago the other shoe finally dropped: a lawsuit for wrongful termination by a former employee named Michael Reeves that goes into elaborate detail about what happened on the night of July 5, 2011, and the cover up that followed.
The guy claims the fateful and false call to the FPD that triggered the events leading to the murder of Thomas was made by Slidebar manager Jeanette DiMarco at the behest of owner Jeremy Popoff.
Later, when he wouldn’t play ball, Reeves claims he was demoted, then fired. The guy is suing for $4,000,000, a tidy sum, to be sure.
Well, there you have it. Is any part of this tale true? I don’t know. But I do know that the other, even more sinister part of the story is still looming on the horizon like a nasty weather front; and that’s the disturbing possibility that the bar was in cahoots with one or more of the police before hand, complicit in a criminal conspiracy to deprive Kelly Thomas of his Constitutional rights and even his physical well-being.
We now know that the DA has decided to look the other way in his haste to kiss and make up with the Fullerton cops, but the possibility that the attack on Thomas was per-arranged does indeed explain the antagonistic behavior of Wolfe and Ramos, and perhaps even the seemingly inexplicable violence of Cicinelli.
All this is now bound to come out in the civil proceedings against the City by Ron Thomas and Garo Mardirossian. The latter may be pressured to cut a deal to avoid embarrassing the City too much in a public trial, but the new council needs a vehicle to get all the facts on the table once and for all. A trial is just the thing.
Libertarian columnist Steve Greenhut wrote a recap on the Fullerton Recall, and put it in the context of people taking their governments back. Steve had lots of good things to say about the Recall and FFFF, and we proudly share his pice.
Chris Nguyen, who runs a blog called OC Political, says recently recalled Fullerton City Councilman Don Bankhead has just been initiated into a very exclusive club. According to Nguyen’s research (and I can’t vouch for that) only two men in American history have ever been recalled twice from the same job.
The first is some guy named James W. Holley who was mayor of Portsmouth, Virginia from 1984-1987 and again from 2008-2010. Each stint was punctuated by a recall. And now, with trumpets blaring and drums rolling, enters the august personage of Donald T. Bankhead, Fullerton City Council 1988-1994 and 1994-2012.
The asteroid was getting ominously close to Earth...
And of course I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that if Nguyen is accurate, then Bankhead is the only office holder in the 162 year history of California to be recalled twice from the same office. And that’s a damn impressive accomplishment.
All this talk about Fullerton cop union boss Barry Coffman has resurrected fond memories of the hilarious video we shared last fall, after the notorious FPD Excessive Horning harassment episode. It seems that good ol’ Barry was one of the principle performers in Dan Hughes’ circus. Enjoy once more:
I know that whatever I say here is too little too late, but I must say it. I have to say thank you. I know that what happened that fateful night was nothing you had ever planned to have happen, and that there was nothing you could have done to stop the injustice that occurred to you. But I want you, and your family, friends, and supportive citizens to know that your death was not in vain. You have brought new life to a community by helping us to remember our pure humanity.
I may no longer be religious, but I retain an intense spirituality in which I hold true to many of the things I was taught as a child. One of my most remembered passages from the Bible is as follows: “As you have done it to these, the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me.” Although I always saw this as a positive passage, it reminds me now that there are two sides to every subject. You are in no way any less than any of us, except for in the way that our entrusted officers and government treated you because of who you were in their eyes. And I am so sorry that it took your death for us to realize that we all, as a community, had lost our power and needed to take it back.
Even with what happened tonight in our recall election, I wish that what had happened to you could be taken back a thousand times over. It should never have come to this. Tonight, the City of Fullerton stood up in defense of not just you, but itself, and it should never have taken your death for us to realize how much we needed to make change happen. There were so many more issues involved tonight, which we have known for so long but refused to challenge, and I am sorry that you had to be the catalyst to make change happen.
I am so wholeheartedly ashamed of how we let you down, but I hope that wherever you are, you somehow know that we will continue fighting for you, for our community, and for the rights of all of our citizens. I know that I, among many others, will continue to vigilantly make sure this never happens again to any member of our community, and should any injustice occur, that we will all work together to hold those persons accountable of the crimes they have committed.
All I can do tonight is look up at the sky and thank you, and I hope you that you can forgive us for all that has occurred. We love you, and we love Fullerton, and let this mark a new day in this city’s history and future.
A Friend forwarded this e-mail purportedly sent to Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz. Personally, I don’t mind having a beer or four for lunch before returning to the gun store, but I don’t wear a badge.
Please look into allegations that officers of the Fullerton police attended a training class on Oct. 18th, Tuesday and during their lunch break drank beers at Roscoe’s in Fullerton before returning to training.
Officers drank beer in front of LT Crum and his Sgt’s and none of them took any action for this obvious policy violation..
I apologize for the anonymous email, but I’m afraid of retaliation.
Yesterday we received this pearl of a comment from Mr. or Ms. Anonymous:
