Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Former FPD Officer Jeff Corbett, made famous for giving former City Manager Joe Felz a pass on his drunken driving, is back in court over his falsifying a report in that very incident.
He had a previous jury trial where… something happened? Now he’s back with a bench trial.
Watch live here:
Never say the wheels of justice move slowly in America – we’re only 4 years and 3.5 months away from the incident in question.
I don’t read the Fullerton Observer because I find little value in their brand of blasé government cheerleading masquerading as serious “local” journalism. However, that doesn’t mean that I can always escape their content, after all they were the rag-tag group of City Hall Sycophants who hired a consultant to help the city smear me and this very blog with ludicrous claims of “hacking”.
More recently however it was brought to my attention that they ran a story titled “Weighing the Costs of Police Officers on Campus” and it’s a good example of where the Observer fails at local journalism.
The piece is a pretty run of the mill “school to prison pipeline” story with Fullerton data dropped into what feels like a form letter. It’s got local numbers and some local meeting information but it does what the Observer often does and it just… misses. And it misses where it counts – locally.
To summarize, it’s about School Resource Officers – or Fullerton cops on campus – and what role they have and possibly shouldn’t have in student discipline. Seems like a good idea for a story, I’m probably even in agreement with the writer on quite a few things.
But how in the ever loving hell are you going to write a story about SROs in Fullerton schools and completely omit the story of former Fullerton Police Officer AND SRO Jose Paez?
That’s the dude who used his department issued Body Worn Camera (BWC) to film up a 17 year old’s skirt. He also, based on the audit of his own BWC, had sexually explicit material of students on his (maybe department issued?) cellphone. We’ve never been given an explanation of this issue or a reason to believe anything has changed at FPD to stop another Paez from perving on our children.
It’s literally the single biggest example of why SROs, locally, need oversight and to be questioned.
In case somebody at the Observer finds this story, Paez’s case is #19NM12214 over at OC Courts.
See the issue?
An entire piece on School Resource Officers that omits the best LOCAL example of the complete lack of transparency and oversight in the very program being discussed.
It’s not a shock though. The Observer has long been unwilling to point real criticisms or questions in the direction of City Hall. For such a shocking story, that we broke mind you, they’ve only ever mentioned Paez precisely twice on their site; once to regurgitate the FPD press release and once to mention in passing that the Fullerton school board avoided the topic.
Hell, the Daily Titan has covered this story more than the Observer which speaks volumes.
People ask me quite often why I’m so critical of government and while there are a few answers to that question, one answer would certainly be because somebody has to be critical when the fourth estate is more interested in acting like the fifth column.
In case you haven’t heard by now, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office which is led by Todd Spitzer, filed a peeping charge against Fullerton Police Officer Jose Paez for filming up the skirt of a 16 year old student.
Let that sink in for a moment. A 16 year old, who Paez was on campus to protect, was his victim under color of authority.
According to the case information the violation date was 11/03/2017 and according to the FPD press release it was found by accident while investigating something else.
Based on the Body Worn Camera audit conducted by FPD we know that Paez also attempted to film up a teacher’s skirt on 08/29/2017 which shows a pattern of behavior.
He also had underage sex videos and photos on a phone in his possession. Apparently chain of custody at FPD, regarding Child Pornography, is so lax that they don’t know who has it on what devices or where it’s stored.
To further complicate the issue, Paez was allowed to schedule deletion of his own Body Worn Camera videos.
Taking into account the potential charges such as peeping on teachers and underage students and possession of child pornography on his phone it seems unprofessional that Fullerton PD wouldn’t contract this case out to another department or agency. This ins’t a case of policy violations to be investigated by Internal Affairs but rather it is one of potential criminal conduct against children under color of authority. The community and students at FJUHSD deserved an objective outside source to look into these issues.
This is something they did not get because Fullerton put their perv officer first and the wall of silence stood still. Not a single officer came forward about Paez. Not a single council member. Not a single school board member. An officer was allowed to prey on our children in his capacity of School Resource Officer and the protected status of the police was more important than public notification.
Thanks to the DA only levying a single charge dating to almost two years ago this smells more like another case of FPD being caught with their pants down than actual due diligence. The priority doesn’t seem to be in protecting our city and our city’s children despite all of the attaboys Chief Dunn gave himself in his Press Release on the issue.
What stopped Paez from sharing nude photos of your daughters with his friends and co-workers? What’s to stop his replacement from doing the same?
Nothing and that’s how FPD likes it so shut up and go back to sleep. They’ll make this go away like so many other cases of criminality by their own in blue and then have the audacity to ask for a raise which council will give them.
This is the upside-down world we live in where justice consists of a press release followed by a likely plea deal where a pervert with a pattern of behavior of preying on women and children while under the color of authority will be allowed to walk with barely a slap on the wrist.
Spitzer is continuing the efforts of his predecessor who refused to file charges against Fullerton Officer Rincon despite groping women in his patrol car during traffic stops. A pattern that consisted of letting off Fullerton Officer Christopher Chiu who forced a naked women to stand for him so he could shine his light up her crotch and then ask for her number.
Sexual predation seems to be A-OK behind the Blue Wall of Silence supported by the brass at FPD, City Hall and the DA’s Office.
We all knew, based on the Jailhouse Snitch program, that there was seemingly nothing the Orange County District Attorney’s Office wouldn’t do to protect bad cops but now that includes downplaying sexual crimes against a School Resource Officer. All to protect a pervert in blue.
When did FPD send the case to the DA? How long did they sit on the Paez problem? Was he fired or was he allowed to quit? Chief Dunn won’t tell you. Did FPD or the DA even ask for potential victims to come forward or were they too worried about the bad press they’d get by possibly uncovering a #PaezMeToo problem they ignored for at least a year?
Meet DA Todd Spitzer, same as DA Tony Rackauckas – a hero for self-proclaimed heroes and nobody else.
The City of Fullerton has, belatedly and selectively, released some police misconduct records. Despite the law changing on January 1st, 2019 and it now being the end of June, we have a whopping three files to look at on the city website.
The first of these files is regarding former Officer Chistopher Chiu.
What did Officer Chiu allegedly do?
He allegedly sexually assaulted a woman in a downtown parking structure, that’s what:
But not just any woman – the 19yo daughter of a fellow police officer.
After the alleged sexual assault, Officer Chiu also allegedly had the audacity to ask the victim out on a date:
No criminal charges came out of this case as by disabling his Body Worn Camera (BWC) there was little evidence of the alleged acts outside of victim and witness statements. Chiu was proven to have been in the parking structure at the time of the alleged incident, outside of his own patrol zone. However the victim was initially afraid of how her dad would respond and ultimately seems to have refused to press charges leading the District Attorney to drop the case.
If this happened as described she was brave to come forward especially without audio/video evidence of the allegations. If it didn’t happen then Chiu should have had his BWC activated to prove his innocence.
Ultimately the allegations against Chiu were sustained which was enough for administrative action but not for a criminal case.
Instead of a termination Chiu was allowed to resign via a settlement agreement where the city agreed to a no-fault, no-liability agreement allowing Chiu the freedom from the stigma of his actions which at a minimum include policy violations and at worse alleged sexual assault under the color of authority.
Were it not for SB1421 the public wouldn’t be allowed to know any of this information and so much more that is coming which is precisely the way the Police Unions want it.
We’ll continue to keep you posted as we learn more.
Another day, another story of alleged theft/fraud of city property here in the city of Fullerton finally coming to light.
“In late January 2017, Julia James contacted me about some questionable purchases charged to Facility Superintendent Bob St. Paul’s City-issued procurement card. I asked Tim Campbell to review the purchases for calendar year 2016. His review revealed several purchases charged to the CNG Fund that did not appear to be CNG-related. Based on the preliminary findings, I asked Tim to examine Bob’s P-card purchases for 2014 and 2015 as well. Over the three years, Bob used his P-card to charge the CNG fund slightly less than $12,000 for several dozen purchases. Many of these purchases had no clear relation to CNG operations; for example, there were multiple purchases for clothing, flashlights, tools, and canopies, some of which appeared to be for personal use. Most of the purchases were initiated by Public Works Analyst Trung Phan, the CNG operation’s manager.”
This time around it looks like the protocols and oversight in the city were so lax that over the course of years employees were able to use their city issued purchasing cards to buy over $50,000 worth of stuff that was of no use to the city.
“It took the audit team about a week to complete the additional review and inventory. When the team finished, the value of questionable purchases increased to at least $50,000.”
Former employees Bob St. Paul and Trung Phan allegedly worked together to charge items to the CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) station on Basque and Commonwealth and when the city tipped them off that they were under investigation – it appears they returned as much as possible in the dead of night and so no real investigation was done and no prosecution was possible.
‘While playing the archived video, we found several instances of Trung arriving at night, briefly stopping at the CNG station, and then unloading items from the back of his personal truck and taking items into the storage area.Bob was also observed returning an item very early in the morning.The incidents took place after Dennis and I counseled Bob and Trung regarding the P-card purchases, but before they were placed on leave.”
That video evidence was actually found out purely by accident which would be comical if it wasn’t so sad.
On top of purchasing things of no use to the city and absconding with them, only to return them in the dead of night, Trung also allegedly manipulated his payroll to get unjustified overtime.
“The research revealed that Trung charged overtime several times a month, claiming he had to come in after hours to reset the station’s equipment. This contradicted with indications by Fastech’s maintenance technician, that the equipment rarely failed.”
That nobody in the city up the food chain knew the efficiency or status of the CNG station and what the vendor even did, as evidenced by an employee able to fake overtime for unneeded work, is another damning indictment on city hall.
The culmination of all of this was yet more settlement agreements coming out of corruption or malfeasance on the part of government employees and not a word to the people of Fullerton. It’s just $50,000+ of your money that was wasted so why tell you anything?
What all was purchased? How much money was wasted? How long did all of this go on and was anybody else involved? The world will never find out. Why? Because:
“We halted the internal investigation when the employees made the decision to resign. As such, I am not anticipating a final report.”
That’s right. The city decided they didn’t want to know the full extent of the issue once they were able to settle with the employees in question and successfully sweep this issue, like so many others, under the rug.
We here at Friends for Fullerton’s Future had inquired about this issue when we were first alerted to it and the response at the time from the city was as follows:
“Regarding #2 of your request, the records you have listed are exempt from disclosure pursuant to Government Code section 6254(b), (c), (f) and (k); Government Code section 54963, Evidence Code Section 950 et seq., Code of Civil Procedure section 2018.010, and Government Code section 6255 (personnel, law enforcement investigative files, Brown Act, litigation, attorney-client privilege and attorney work product).”
So much for an open and transparent government. Once again we were all left in the dark while simultaneously being forced to pay for the useless purchases, admin leave and billable hours required to settle this nonsense.
Speaking of the settlements, the one with Trung, likely the same or similar with that of St. Paul, has the boilerplate Paid Leave (vacation) nonsense and other such niceties. The best part though, as usual, is as follows:
“Employer agrees not to defame, disparage or demean Employee for anything he did or may have done in the course and scope of his relationship with Employer.”
Lord help the next employer these two end up working for in the future which in the case of Phan is the CA Department of Transportation. I guess the city helped him to fail upwards.
You can read the settlement agreement with Phan Trung [HERE].
The report about the entire incident is as follows:
The last time we wrote about Fullerton Police Lieutenant Kathryn Hamel it was to share the rumor we had heard that she was on admin leave.
“Word also has it that Katie Hamel, wife of Irvine Police Chief Mike Hamel, has been put on leave but we’re trying to very that information and she would make, at least, #4 currently on leave.”
Today we’re wondering what she did to get fired.
We ask because “Dr.” Hamel appears to have a new career as the Dean of Criminology at the online diploma mill that is California Southern University.
We doubt she just walked away from her FPD gig with the total compensation package of over $230,000/year so the likelihood is that she was fired for cause.
Anybody care to share the cause?
The Fullerton Firefighters are pushing a narrative that they’re understaffed and underpaid on social media, so let’s talk about it.
We constantly hear about how underfunded, unpaid, underappreciated, undereverything our Police and Fire Depts are from the “Hero Deserve” crowd and the opposite side likes to point to pay rates, pension spiking, double dipping, medical presumptive, lies about early death, OT abuse, CalPERS costs and other fiscal rebuttals.
But what we almost never talk about is how we actually implement service and if we do things in a smart, fiscally sound or even common sense way in our departments. Our City Council won’t touch these issues because they’re petrified of the unions spending campaign money against them or they’re colluding with the unions in order to get those sweet, sweet endorsements.
Since council won’t discuss these things openly I figured we can do it ourselves before dropping numerous records requests.
Therefore for the sake of starting discussions I’ll drop two topics;
Does anybody have stats on these things? How many calls for FFD are actually medical? How many calls does each crew actually respond to and what do they do on scene? How much OT is accumulated for passive activities?
How many calls does FPD respond to and how many of those calls require backup? How much backup typically responds? What’s the response time for this backup? How is this different for traffic stops versus calls for service?
I think as the city prepares for budget meetings with so much of our budget going towards salaries and pensions these numbers should be discussed and be as transparent as possible. If we need to pay people more to retain them we need to make sure we’re getting the most bang for our buck and the best, most logical and fiscally sound, service possible.
Anybody want to dive into these questions?
This afternoon an alleged crazed would-be-intruder was taken into custody on Valencia near Magnolia just south of the airport.
While details of the incident are emerging, video of a door-cam from a victim shows the apparent individual punching a front door while a woman screams in the background.
As images in the news report below show a large number of Fullerton Police Officers on top of the suspect, with words like “taser” and “officer injury” included in the report, one cannot help but recall the ghost of Fullerton’s past.
This event follows a mass casualty event involving 9 victims and an alleged DUI in Downtown Fullerton this weekend.
We will follow this report with additional information as it is received.
Over the years we here at Friends for Fullerton’s Future have written about what feels like countless stories on the culture of corruption. A lot of facts, some rumors and a lot of annoyance as the city, police department and union goons do everything in their power to keep all of us from knowing anything even slightly negative happening behind the badges of our betters.
Well, on January 1st, 2019 California law changes to allow a little bit of information to eek its way past the Blue Wall of Silence. Thanks to the usually ridiculous California legislature and soon to be former Governor Jerry Brown, we’ll be able to learn about some of the actions perpetuated by some of the officers around the state. Here’s the law in question.
You’ll want to read section C and the bits about lies and dishonesty. I previously had it quoted it here but it’s too much legalese to blockquote. Basically if it’s proven that a cop lies or falsifies a report you can get the records of those findings.
We’d like to introduce you to Officer Marc Bastreri — and his DUI in Huntington Beach — a whopping 113 days after becoming a Fullerton officer.
More info to come as we get it.
This is Fullerton’s best and brightest.
Seriously, according to Fullerton’s own Comprehensive Financial Audit Report, as received and filed at council last night, we’re in the black because we’re understaffed and we only hire the best.
Or, rather:
“Expenditures decreased $1.5 million over the prior year due to increased vacant positions as a result of increased hiring scrutiny and the region’s competitive work force with low unemployment.”
We might need to work on that increased scrutiny thing what with alcohol related shenanigans being such a problem at FPD lately.