If you are a Registered Fullerton Voter then YOU are absolutely the KEY to this recall. You are the only people qualified as legal “signature gatherers” who can sign the bottom of our petitions. You will be the team that takes down McKinley, Jones and Bankhead for their lack of leadership and transparency leading to and following the death of Kelly Thomas.
If you are available to do any signature gathering, we would like to ask you to attend a meeting this Wednesday, August 31st, 7:00PM in the church located at 112 E. Walnut Ave., Fullerton, CA 92832. There is plenty of public parking adjacent to the South side of the railroad tracks across from the train station. Walnut Street is accessible via Lemon or Highland, but not Harbor. Food and refreshments will be provided, so feel free to come hungry.
Meet here.
At this meeting, we will be doing the following:
Identifying leadership for signature gathering teams and even for other roles in this campaign
Initial signature gathering training
Summary of all of our excellent reasons for recall which should appeal to the left, right center, libertarian and anyone else who advocates for honest, transparent government.
Showing off our Signature Team Stations
The petitions have been filed with the City of Fullerton and we are awaiting approval. Our best guess is that we are one to two weeks away from receiving the go ahead from the city to begin signature gathering.
I have been wondering lately about the sort of personality of the policemen involved in the brutal Kelly Thomas killing, as well as the character types of the trolls who have been making comments attacking both the victim and the victim’s family.
For assistance in this matter I have called upon Dr. Reinhold Ott of the Schwabian Institut fur Psychologie in Tubingen, Germany, who has provided his expert psychological insights for us in the past.
The penetrating gaze of Dr. Reinhold Ott, M.D., Ph.D
Here is what the learned Dr. Ott had to say:
I believe the character study you have asked be to perform is relatively simple although, of course, not having the opportunity to study these subjects directly in substantive analysis, my conclusion may be considered tentative. Nevertheless, the personality profiles of the individuals involved in this horrific event and those who choose to gratuitously denigrate both the victim and his family for perverse reasons are actually quite common and easy recognize.
People who lack empathy completely, as is apparent in this instance, display a type of personality disorder known as narcissism; a disorder that is comparatively harmless in most cases, but that can become problematic when excessively narcissistic individuals are placed in positions of authority. The civilian overseers of police agencies and military forces the world over have always had to deal with this problem.
When this type of disorder is matched with a sadistic temperament (a temperament whose roots may extend from various sources) the consequences are bound to be disastrous, particularly when the individual is not only placed in a position of authority, but who is also heavily armed.
My suspicion is that the individuals involved in perpetrating this act on a helpless victim all suffer in varying degrees from similar childhood issues, most notably the absence of a strong paternal presence, or as is equally likely to be the case, the presence of a father who had an ambiguous relationship with the law and may have even been incarcerated. We cannot discount the strong possibility that a verbally or physically abusive relationship existed.
Such children find it extremely difficult to mature into a constructive adulthood, lacking a positive role model; their world view tends to be judgmental, parochial and self-centered. Moral confusion and self-aggrandizement lead to an exaggerated sense of self-esteem.
Equally problematic is the guilt/anger issues that attach to such children, most particularly boys, and if left unchecked, can generate into both a paranoia and, in extreme cases, a deep-seated sadism.
I would also be remiss if I omitted reference to the possibility of a pharmacological connection, the use of certain drugs tending to exacerbate already sever behavioral issues.
The drama of the night in question may be open to some interpretation, but the physical consequences of the encounter between Mr. Thomas and his assailants are fairly eloquent. I find it fascinating that the victim’s cries for his father appear to have caused no sympathetic reaction on the part of his attackers. Rather, the opposite seems to be true: at least some of the police seem to have been further enraged by those pathetic cries for help, and continued the attack until the cries were silenced – forever.
I would tend to ascribe the same analysis to those of your readers who choose to attack the victim and his family. My suspicion is that these individuals suffer from a severe personality defect in which pleasure in the attempt to induce pain on others is the result of a lack of positive accomplishment and more specifically, the absence of non-auto erotic gratification. The lack of mature observation and demonstrable education in the instances I have observed also indicates the strong possibility that these people may, in fact, be children posing as adults.
Well, thank you for that Dr. Ott. This explains a lot.
Here is an interview with a young man who was at the Transportation Center the night of July 5th, 2011. He was waiting for a bus.
His story has the ring of truth to it, and is interesting because it suggests several interesting facts. First, according to this account an “Hispanic” officer had Kelly seated on a curb and had his baton in his hands during some kind of discussion that lasted several minutes, at least; at which point Kelly got up and ran. He was quickly caught from behind, punched repeatedly and spent the rest of his “altercation” with FPD face down. There was no death-struggle between a superhuman drug-crazed freak and six officers grimly fighting for their lives.
There’s is no doubt from this account that the first two cops had difficulty subduing Thomas – most likely because they couldn’t get both hands cuffed behind his back. As the witness suggests, this could have been because the first officer was on top of Kelly from behind and Kelly’s arm was pinned beneath him. After that it was just a gang mugging.
Dedicated commenter “corrupt” gave me great idea a while ago about applying a sort of Hippocratic Oath to our police here in Fullerton. They already take an oath of some kind which, based on recent events, doesn’t seem to have done much good. Nevertheless, I persevere in my attempt to get our boys in blue to toe the line – before we replace them with boys in green.
Here’s my oath:
1. First, I will do no harm to those I am supposed to protect and serve. This includes perpetrating no credit card fraud, assault or sexual battery, kidnapping, theft, homicide, or encouraging suicide while in custody.
2. I will obey the same laws that apply to people who pay for my salary and pension.
3. I will not make public statements that are intentionally misleading, or that are outright fabrications.
4. I will not accept free food or drink at downtown bars.
5. I will not fabricate evidence, falsify reports or commit perjury in order to prosecute the innocent; I will not cause others to do same.
6. I will not consider being recorded by citizens in the exercise of my job duties a reason to illegally confiscate recording devices; nor will I cause said citizens to be assaulted, arrested, or prosecuted (see 4, above) for exercising their rights as free men and women.
7. I will not knowingly permit any of my fellow officers to violate items 1-6; I will immediately report any such violations to my superiors. Superiors will do likewise – up to the civilian immediately in charge of the Police Department.
If you have anything you’d like to add please feel free to elaborate, as always, in the comments thread.
See that guy over there? He doesn't have a bomb. But he might someday!
Here’s a comical OC Register post from today. I say comical somewhat tongue-in-cheek because almost all Register posts and articles are comical these days.
According to this one, the intrepid journalist Doug Irvine tried to squeeze some information out of the DA – such as the names of the cops who beat on Kelly Thomas’s head like a kettle drum with their taser handles.
Two officers were treated for broken bones. I mean there was a bomb. I mean....aw Hell let's just go get donuts...
The response from our Do-nothing DA? Oooooh! We have so many scary threats these days that we just can’t say anything. Well, there was one, at least!
Of course over at the the beleaguered FPD, spokesbozo Andrew Goodrich supplied his comrades at The Register with a scary bomb threat story (nothing was found, of course). Poor babies.
Jeezus, you wouldn’t think such heavily-armed and highly trained experts would be so easily intimidated, now would you? Apparently they are weak as kittens when the chips are down, even with their McKinley vests, and this justifies the ongoing secrecy. The logic is inescapable, right?
The funny thing is to observe how the Register writer, rather than take the useless DA and FPD to task for their obvious lack of transparency, turns his article into a weepy sob story about the poor, defenseless cops. And of course the fact of the DA spending more time on threats to his office because of his lackluster investigation than on the investigation itself just drips with irony. Could that irony really be lost on Mr. Irving. It would appear so.
Here’s the money quote that references our humble blog:
The District Attorney’s Office also cited as a threat an entry on the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog, which has dug into the Kelly Thomas case: “Someone should make these officers contact information and addresses public.”
Blogger Travis Kiger said that wasn’t a threat, and said he hasn’t seen any specific threats on the Friends for Fullerton’s Future blog. He challenged the District Attorney Office’s decision to keep the names secret.
“They release the names of suspected criminals every single day,” he said. “I don’t understand in this case how it would be any different.”
The District Attorney’s Office is “looking into” the one alleged threat that it received, Chief of Staff Susan Kang Schroeder said. Fullerton Police are “taking the threats seriously” but have no active criminal investigations into them, Goodrich said.
“They’ve all been anonymous in nature,” he said. “They would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to track.”
You’ve got to be kidding. Just goes to show you the extent to which the “law enforcement” establishment will go to protect its safety (or pretend to) while blowing off our safety – from them! And when the cops release information about suspects do they give a rat’s ass about their safety? Of course they don’t.
So did the FPD really receive a bomb threat? Who knows? But it’s gotten impossible to believe a single solitary thing that emanates from Andrew Goodrich’s mouth.
In the wake of a rolling tsunami of scandals, cover-ups, and abuse of its own citizens I have been hearing increased calls to disband the department altogether and bring in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
Apparently the issue is not just FPD-fatigue and the brutal costs their misbehavin’ is going to cost the taxpayers; nor even police misconduct in general – since the OCSD has had its own share of bad behavior in recent years.
Anything you can do I can do better...
No, the prime motivation will be the comparatively low cost per capita that the OCSD charges its contract city partners for varying levels of service. Some have said that the City could easily save the General Fund $10-15 million a year, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.
Former Fullerton councilmember and current County Supervisor Shawn Nelson would be in a perfect position to help broker this deal
So could we be seeing the streets of Fullerton patrolled by guys in green? Perhaps. Why not? The current police force has disgraced itself so badly in the past few moths that from a public relations standpoint there would never be a better time.
As has been pointed out previously on this blog, there are rules for us and then there are rules for the police. Stuff that they do would land us in jail with a hefty bail; they get paid administrative leave and walk the streets free men.
Those six guys over there won't talk to me. I've done all I can do...
Here’s another example of the distorted double standard: the so-called “investigation” of the Kelly Thomas death being concocted by our Do-nothing DA. We are told by the cop apologists to patiently await that magical moment when Mr. Rackauckas unveils the fruits of his labors.
I honestly can't remember...
But what might those labors have involved? We have been told that the investigation didn’t start until two days after the homicide. Two full days. Did the cops turn in their bloodied uniforms for analysis? Did they turn over their Tasers for forensic examination of finger prints and blood samples? Have they produced recording devices? Was the homicide scene secured for examination? Anybody want to take odds that none of this has occurred?
Ahm a doctah! Them injuries was slight...
I’m pretty sure if you or I bashed somebody’s head in all that evidence would have been secured, post haste, and we’d be cooling our heels in Theo Lacy, slam-bang, and no bail for you, buddy.
Are we supposed to scared?
But this is our new police state, brought to us courtesy of geriatric assclowns (thanks for the use, Joe S.) Jones, Bankhead and McKinley. It wasn’t enough for them to put the City’s finances at risk through extravagant pension giveaways. Oh no! They oversaw a veritable culture of corruption in the Fullerton Police Department, the depth of which the citizens and taxpayers are only now beginning to see.
Oh, and yeah. In this culture some of these miscreants believed they could get away with murder.
Hmm, we’ve already seen how eagerly council members can run to the trough under the pretense of acting in the interest of our beloved city — remember how Bankhead and Keller each racked up hotel bills at $400 per night on the city’s dime just to stay in the remote city of Long Beach?
$1200?? I didn't even open the mini-bar!
Well, now it’s about to happen again, only it’ll no doubt cost us more money this time around. Renown pit-bull reporter Lou Ponsi posted this in the O.C. Register the other day:
“The City Council last week named Mayor F. Richard Jones as a voting delegate and Councilman Don Bankhead as an alternate to represent Fullerton at the League of California Cities annual conference Sept. 21-23 in San Francisco.”
We're here on important business!
Since F. Dick has been doing such a bang-up job of representing Fullerton lately, I guess we should be grateful he’s willing to go all the way to San Francisco on our behalf. And let’s not forget that Bankhead has his back in case Hee-Haw can’t make it.
Ahh, San Francisco... One of our favorite road trips!
Well, if ol’ Doc sidles up to the hitchin’ post in S.F he may well have an awful lot of explaining to do, because at least in Fullerton, the summer of love it ain’t!
Giddyup! Now open up that Golden Gate, I'm a-comin!
