Friends For Fullerton's Future

March 11, 2012Fullerton City Council

Who is going to fix the Fullerton Police Department?

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?

March 10, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Caption This Picture!

by The Fullerton Harpoon63 Comments

March 9, 2012March 9, 2012"Dick" Ackerman

Here’s Your Line Up

by The Fullerton Harpoon145 Comments

At 5:00 PM today the filing period to run in the Fullerton Recall Election came to a close. These are your candidates:

F “Dick” Jones:

Travis Kiger
Glenn Georgieff
Roberta Reid
Dorothy Birsic
Matthew Hakim

Don Bankhead:

Greg Sebourn
Paula Williams
Jane Rands
Rick Alvarez

Pat McKinley:

Barry Levinson
Doug Chaffee
Matthew Rowe
Sean Paden

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.

March 7, 2012January 22, 2020Chris Norby

Quirk Pulls Papers for Norby’s Job

by admin151 Comments

Our Friends over at the Orange Juice blog are reporting that Fullerton’s Sharon Quirk has pulled papers to run against Chris Norby in the new 65th State Assembly District.

Good luck Sharon! And wake up Chris! You may have an opponent!

The real interest for FFF is that this will free up Quirk’s seat on Fullerton’s City Council, and will give Fullerton residents a chance to elect a pro-accountability candidate in November.

With a little hard work we can clean up Fullerton for a long, long time.

March 7, 2012A Step in the Right Direction

Jane Rands Files For Bankhead’s Job

by Mr. Peabody136 Comments

Well, somebody has to do Bankhead’s job since he has adamantly refused to do it himself – for almost 25 years.

Bankosaurus — The impeding cold streak was an omen of things to come.

Today, Jane Rands, former State Assembly candidate under the Green Party banner, has filed papers to replace council Precambrian holdover, Don Bankhead.

Jane appears to be somebody who is smart and believes in accountability, and would make an immeasurably better city council person than Bankhead – who has been targeted for Recall because of his dismal leadership failure.

FFFF looks forward to sharing more information about Jane and her platform in the coming days.

March 5, 2012Dead heads

We Get Mail: Take Him Out of The Ball Game…

by admin282 Comments

Here’s an irate e-mail we received from a Golden Hills Little League parent explaining that despite his political troubles, Fullerton FPD Culture of Corruption architect Pat McPension just couldn’t be denied his place as a speaker at opening day ceremonies. Strings were pulled, leverage was exerted.

But what’s this?

MCKinley3 — Something better came along...

Subject: McKinley – Little League Opening Day

I contacted you last week informing you that McKinley had strong armed Golden Hill Little League via Parks & rec’s John Clements to speak at GHLL’s Opening Day this past weekend. Despite the league’s concerns given recent news re: Mr. McKinley and the fact that this is a children’s event, they were informed in no uncertain terms that as Mr. McKinley sat on committe responsible for assigning fields to youth programs, not letting him speak would be a bad idea. With their backs against the wall GHLL, a non-profit youth baseball league, decided to allow McKinley a few words.

And the dude NO-SHOWED…

So after strongarming GHLL and indirectly threatening to look unfavorably on their requests for city fields in the future, McKinley didn’t even show…or have the courtesy to have his people call GHLL to let them know. He was a no call/no show.

Lovely.

Message to Golden Hills Little League organizers: no good deed goes unpunished.

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 5, 2012Behind Closed Doors

Ackerman Trying to Sell His Lemons, But No One Wants Lemonade.

by Grover Cleveland26 Comments

I have it on good authority that anti-recall team captain Dick Ackerman has been diligently hounding OC Register personnel to start flogging the wonderful deeds accomplished by the Three Rotten Eggs, Dick Jones, Don Bankhead, and Pat McPension.

Will it work? It’s hard to see how. Two of the three are career public employees with massive inflation-linked pensions; Jones was the drum-beater for the abortive pension spike of 2008 only stopped by Shawn Nelson; Jones and Bankhead have approved of an illegal 10% water tax every year for 15 years; and all three have been reliable water bearers for whatever idiocy was put in front of them by the city bureaucracy.

Ackerman has millions of reasons to fight the recall of the gents who are in the process of handing his client a deal worth millions in government subsidies, but the editorialists at the Register have no reason to promote these clowns.

True, Ackerman is drinking buddies with a couple of the Register social columnists – the same ones that went out of their way to pass on the smears of Ackerman against Chris Norby, and to promote the useless, carpetbagging Ackerwoman.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see if Ackerman’s efforts to promote the unpromotable, gains traction.

March 4, 2012March 4, 2012A Step in the Right Direction

A New Generation of Leadership for Fullerton

by admin103 Comments

With the deadline for filing papers to run in the Recall election approaching – it’s at the end of the week – it seems like an opportune moment to invite our Friends to suggest names of people they would like to see run for the seats held by the Tyrannic Triad, Jones, Bankhead and McKinley.

During the past eight months we’ve seen lots of people step up and take leadership roles, challenging the Old Regime for its incompetence, corruption and detachment from the very people they were elected to serve.

The issues have centered around the serial criminal behavior by members of the Fullerton police department that culminated in the beating death of Kelly Thomas; the illegal grifting of a 10% water tax; and the land development giveaways handed out to campaign contributors.

There is no doubt in my mind that there are dozens of folks in these protests that would do an immeasurably better job governing our City than the The Three Fissured Fossils up there on the dais now.

So share your ideas. Maybe we can talk some of these good people into running.

March 2, 2012March 2, 2012Behind Closed Doors

So Who (Besides Bruce Whitaker) Hasn’t Seen The Video?

by Joe Sipowicz262 Comments

Here’s an article by the pathetic Lou Ponsi in the OC Register about a guy named John Huelsman, an ex-cop, who unluckily happens to be the step-father of Jay Cicinelli, the Fullerton policeman charged with the beating death of schizophrenic homeless man Kelly Thomas, last July.

This man popped up at the last council meeting nattering the same nonsense about what an angel his step-boy is, so this isn’t really news. What is news is this guy’s claim that he has been able to review the City-owned video that captured the Thomas killing.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Huelsman is actually telling the truth. This begs the question – who hasn’t seen the video? We know that our elected representative, Bruce Whitaker is being illegally denied the opportunity to see it. But, really: the freakin’ step-father of the accused gets to watch it? Really? And a Fullerton council member may not?

So who let this guy watch the video? Was it the FPD? Was it the District Attorney? Such questions seem not to have occurred to the incurious idiot Lou Ponsi whom we can all count upon to miss the real story while peddling pro-cop bullshit.

Somebody better explain soon why some clown from who knows where can watch the video, when the people’s elected representative can’t.