This interview has been greatly condensed here and a more detailed interview will be released at a later date.
The points being made here were that the officer’s actions appeared to make no sense and that an alleged innocent man who is, by the way, an epileptic, was for apparently absolutely no reason, allegedly accosted, downed and repeatedly tased in front of his two young children. It took place on, of all days, MLK day. this man referred to in the video by his fiance, who is African American, didn’t have the MLK day off and was actually cleaning up graffiti for his employer-covering up black painted graffiti a white fence with white spray paint. Does an fleeing robbery suspect hang out in plain view on a public street covering up graffiti? So at Fullerton City Hall tonight more very troubling allegations against our FPD. Can they live up to their phony PR press for one whole month without allegedly misbehaving?
I couldn’t believe that Fullerton Stories Davis Barber walked right past this woman on out the door as we were interviewing her. He apparently had no interest in the unfortunate alleged attack by yet another out of control FPD officer and covering this story. I didn’t see anyone from the Register or the Fullerton Observer express interest in this woman’s story either.
What was described at council was a sadistic cop getting his jollies by tasering a black man while he was working on private property on ML King, Jr Day. You must be so very proud Dan. Another one of your disciples running amuck against law abiding citizens.
Maybe the Chamber of Commerce can highlight this incident as a way to attract more minority businesses here in Fullerton. But it is one more way to put another nail in the health of our city.
Apparently another sick, sadistic person that our FPD has handed over a gun and a shield to while Danny boy allows them to do just about anything.
Wake up Fullerton. If any private citizen did half the things that our Fullerton police have been accused of on an all too frequent basis, they all would be locked up for many, many years.
Tasers are not the ‘non-lethal‘ weapons they are portrayed to be, by the way. This man could have been killed when the taser was repeatedly applied. You simply don’t do this to someone with a seizure disorder.
I noted that Danny is now afraid to sit in his previously everyday seat at council meetings. Our transparent police chief cannot even face the public for the limited time of 30 minutes imposed by our new so called “conservative” Mayor Sebourn. Gee continuing all the presentations and imposing a 30 minute maximum for the public, seems a lot like Mayor Chaffee all over again.
Televised murder of a homeless man, threats of grave bodily harm to protesters in custody, sexual predators in uniform, sticky fingered coppers, no one managing the sexual predators in Fullerton, the recent frame up attempt of Barry Levinson, alleged informant harrassment , and now some kingdom day love from one of Danny boy’s boys?
I guess we will see if the dash cam picked any of this up, if the body cameras were rolling, if the DAR’s were turned on and what the heck is wrong with all these men in black in this crazy town we all call home. Thank God this man will be ok, and his kids will get to see their daddy again. Kelly Thomas and Dean Gochenour sadly, weren’t so fortunate. Folks, the FPD’s reign of terror must come to an end now.
#1 by Dan Hughes has his head up his .... on January 29, 2015 - 5:12 pm
“The policy on how the cameras will be used, including situations in which they may be turned off, are being finalized and will be posted on the department’s website, Hughes said. “We have to have a few more discussions before we release the policy to the public.”
Let me get this straight, we hand cameras TO COPS with NO FINALIZED POLICY ON HOW TO USE THEM?
Do we hand out new weapons without a finalized policy? Do we hand out any equipment without a finalized policy?
#2 by Joe Imbriano on January 29, 2015 - 11:03 pm
Just another example of just how unprofessional the leadership is. They spent $650,000 of asset forfeiture seizure money to run one of the biggest PR stunts to make the FPD look like a bunch of altar boys. Yet they have no procedure on how to use them Guess for now they wont have to smash the thing when they kill someone, they can just turn it off before they go for the gusto. Looks like they hadn’t even planned for a policy. Thank Barry Levinson for calling them out on this one. Hey transparency Dan, where is the policy?
#3 by Roger on January 30, 2015 - 9:59 am
Mr. Levinson, do you know when they began using these cameras and if the video is available to the public? Does anyone know if the camera was recording the alleged incident described by this woman?
#4 by Barry Levinson on January 30, 2015 - 4:57 pm
Roger, according to Lou Ponsi of the OC Register all police officers have already been equipped as of this month. In the same story Dan Hughes is quoted as saying the FPD has more work to do before it issues its policies on the usage of the camera. No timetable was given by Police Chief Hughes.
This has been in the works for many, many months. It seems inconceivable to me that they issue the cameras without any associated policies. Roger the devil is always in the details.
Last council meeting I stated that body cameras must be required to be on for every police officer’s entire shift and any failure to do so should be grounds for dismissal. Without strict and enforceable policies these cameras will be as useful as the Digital Audio Recorders.
Anything less makes this a very expensive PR campaign for the police.
#5 by Anonymous on January 30, 2015 - 6:22 pm
agreed! Because filming a minor whose been the victim of a sexual assault, filming a spousal abuse victim, or filming a person who provides vital information to the police and doesn’t want to be identified are always an excellent idea. Better re-think that statement genius.
#6 by Mark Powell on January 30, 2015 - 8:22 pm
Anonymous,
I think we can all agree that there exists a time and appropriate place for everything, guidelines already exist for law enforcement officers to implement the body cameras you speak of.
#7 by Mark Powell on January 30, 2015 - 8:22 pm
Anonymous,
I think we can all agree that there exists a time and appropriate place for everything, guidelines already exist for law enforcement officers to implement the body cameras you speak of.
http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/resources/472014912134715246869.pdf
#8 by Joe Imbriano on January 30, 2015 - 9:16 pm
Dan Hughes handed out $650,000 worth of cameras a month ago with no written policy on when or how they are to be used. Barry Levisnon asked the hard questions of Evangelical police chief Dan Hughes about such a reckless and irresponsible situation rife with potential for abuse by the police. No response from Hughes. Tameka, the woman in the video addressed the city council for 3 minutes and described what she and others saw the officer do to her fiance in front of his 2 young children.
Dan Hughes said nothing to her, not even a statement of assurance that he would look into it. Our conservative mayor Greg Seabourn, said absolutely nothing to this woman and failed to mention anything about this incident either.
EV free groomed christian Jennifer Fitgerald, who was the city council cheerleader for the attempted framing of Barry Levinson, TOTALLY IGNORED THIS WOMAN AS WELL. As a woman, as a mom,as a christian and as a council member, her refusal to reach out to this woman and address this issue publicly as well as what she did later is utterly disgraceful.
While acting in her capacity as a christian conservative council member, instead of expressing interest in getting to the bottom of the issue, during staff communications before she had to recuse herself yet again due to a conflict of interest with her VP position at Curt Pringle and Associates, she proudly confirmed, for the record that all FPD officers have been wearing body cameras for the last month. Intentionally, deceptively and knowing full well all the while she failed to mention that there, to this very day, IS NO POLICY TO REQUIRE THE OFFICERS TO USE THEM! And as if that justifies ignoring these serious allegations. Is this supposed to make the average person just gaze over what has just been alleged?
Nice job Jennifer. Fullerton can always count on your lack of ethical leadership and your blatant conflicts of interest to save the day. Fitzpringle.com
#9 by Barry Levinson on January 31, 2015 - 12:10 am
If you give every police officer complete discretion as to when that body camera should be filming, I am afraid too often steps will be taken to subvert the real purpose for the cameras. If so we the taxpayer would have just wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Remember the police officer who intentionally smashed his DAR in the FPD jail and we ended up with a dead prisoner. We will never know the extent of that officer’s malfeasance because he destroyed evidence. That type of police crime should never ever be permitted again in this city.
Anonymous, I suggest that in the few instances where you would not want to identify the civilian, you can protect privacy by keeping the camera on but not filming a person’s face and still have the related audio as evidence of the encounter.
I believe that if I had not brought up the need for detailed policies and procedures with real consequences for a police officer who violates those policies at last city council meeting, the FPD may have ignored setting any policies for their cameras.
Because if Dan Hughes really wanted a body camera policy it would have been instituted and available to the public prior to their being handed out to all officers.
Currently, Police Chief Hughes has no deadline to provide this vital policy to both his officers and the public according to Lou Ponsi of the Orange County Register. The police chief should not only represent his department but should represent the best interests of all of the people living and working in this city as well. Hopefully, he will provide the type of policy and strict penalties for not following the policy (up to and including dismissal) that would make a difference going forward. If Dan Hughes really wants to reform his department he will take these very important steps very, very soon. As I stated above there is no good reason why these policies have not already been written and made public.
One more requirement for the new policy must be that any person filmed by the police must have total access to that film. Dan Hughes will you do the right thing for all your hardworking, honest police officers and the public?
I strongly believe that without all these elements that I have outlined above, this large 6 figure taxpayer expenditure will not have the desired results that the community demands. That desired result would be filming (both video and audio) objective evidence of how the officer conducts himself/herself when dealing with the public.