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Here is City Councilman Don Bankhead, who wants to propose changes to the recommended City position on High Speed Rail. For a while he seems to think he knows what he’s talking about.
Oops. Now we’ll never know what Bankhead thought was necessary to delete before his screen went dark.
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.
The DA’s press release:
FORMER FULLERTON POLICE OFFICER CHARGED WITH DESTROYING EVIDENCE FOR BREAKING AUDIO-RECORDER AFTER INMATE’S SUICIDE
FULLERTON – A former Fullerton Police Department (FPD) officer has been charged with destroying evidence for 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, 41, is charged with one misdemeanor count of destruction of evidence and one misdemeanor count of vandalism. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of one year and six months in jail. Mater is scheduled to be arraigned March 26, 2012, at the North Justice Center in Fullerton. The Department is to be determined.
At the time of the crime, Mater was a police officer with FPD.
At approximately 9:45 p.m. on April 14, 2011, Mater is accused of conducting a DUI investigation after making a traffic stop of a vehicle being driven without its lights on in the dark. The defendant was in uniform and driving a marked FPD patrol car. Mater is accused arresting the driver, Dean Gochenour, upon determining that Gochenour was under the influence of alcohol.
Mater is accused of transporting Gochenour in in his patrol car to the Fullerton City Jail (FCJ) and turning him over to FPD jailers to be booked upon arrival. Throughout the duration of his contact with Gochenour, Mater is accused of wearing 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, the defendant is accused of destroying 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. The defendant is accused of destroying 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 today, March 13, 2012.
Deputy District Attorney Brock Zimmon of the Special Prosecutions Unit is prosecuting this case.
The DA’s letter describes the details of the event.
Curiously, this event took place 11 long months ago. Still, better late than never.
For several months we’ve been trying to find out about former FPD cop Albert Rincon: What he looks like and where he resides. Rincon is the pervert who was accused of molesting women in the back seat of his patrol car, who earned the City a rebuke from a federal judge, and who has cost the taxpayers of Fullerton a hefty $350,000 in a civil case settlement.
Watch out. This could be our boy.
A helpful blog reader forwarded a Facebook link to a narcissistic dimwit calling himself Albey Al. The references, and “friends” named Rincon suggest that this could very well be he.
Check out his facebook page. Could this cretin have passed Chief McPension’s rigid psychological exam? There seems to be almost nothing going on upstairs, so maybe he could have passed it with flying colors!
Of note: Albey Al appears to be living in the area.
Just in case this douchenozzle deletes anything, I’ve archived it here. Decide for yourself. Do you think we have found Albert Rincon?
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.
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!
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.
And how are they going to do it?
There are a lot of things wrong in Fullerton and a lot of issues at stake in this race. But one looms over them all.
What are we going to do about our assault-happy cops?
The Kelly Thomas murder was just the culmination of an escalating pattern of brutality and sadistic violence committed by our city enforcers of the law. This is not exaggeration or casting aspersion as has been documented on this blog with precision and accuracy. These are not all official facts ; they are all well-documented facts.
Unfortunately here is how the system works. When a cop decides that for the fun of it he’s going to slam your head into a concrete wall or into the pavement with all his force and then arrest you for Resisting Arrest, you can file a form about it. That form gets “investigated.” The results of the investigation are minimal, the officer is usually exonerated, or the complaint is closed without comment. The record of the cop who did it is unavailable for review by anybody but the Chief or an attorney who needs this information in a court of law. What we know for a fact this means is that any random police officer can build up a record of brutalizing and seriously injuring random citizens for any reason with virtual impunity.
Also, there is the “respect” thing. Numerous anecdotes confirm that pre-Kelly Thomas days, giving a Fullerton police officer a little bit of lip meant you were giving up your civil right not to be battered into a bloody pulp and thrown in a cell for good measure. Because of course people who would do something like that to their fellow human beings because they feel disrespected are so deserving of our respect. Or something like that.
That’s the FPD.
What I want to know from our fearless candidates is: what are you going to do about this? And how are you going to do it?
At 5:00 PM today the filing period to run in the Fullerton Recall Election came to a close. These are your candidates:
As a public service, FFFF will be providing detailed, insightful, and colorful descriptions of these candidates to help you Friends reach an informed decision on June 5th.