THE CHARADE OF FULLERTON POLICE DEPARTMENT REFORM UNDER FORMER POLICE CHIEF DAN HUGHES AND THE SILENCE OF OUR FULLERTON CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS…MAYOR BRUCE WHITAKER, MAYOR PRO-TEM DOUG CHAFFEE AND COUNCIL MEMBERS JENNIFER FITZGERALD, GREG SEBOURN AND JESUS SILVA. BY BARRY LEVINSON
Barry Levinson
Our streets are the joke of Southern California, we are drowning in millions of dollars in red ink caused by overly generous salary and pension increases, our traffic congestion is quickly reaching big city proportions and our elected representatives are the poster children for corruption and crony capitalism, yet the biggest problem still remains the corruption throughout the ranks of our Fullerton Police Department. They have the power to use lethal force against the public and the ability to put innocent people in jail. I have first hand experience with the latter statement. This can definitely impact adversely every citizen in Fullerton. It does not matter if you are an activist or you are someone who does not know the names of any of our elected officials. We are all at risk and will continue to be at risk until we clean house at the FPD!
So with this as the backdrop, I spoke at the Fullerton City Council during Public Comments on April 18, 2017. They give you a “generous” 3 whole minutes to speak. In reality, with the current group of council members, it would not matter if they gave you three hours or even three days to speak because they ignore everything out of the public’s mouths unless you choose to kiss their you now what!
I spoke about two very important subjects. The first subject was the failure of our “reformed” Fullerton Police Department to take the statements from Joe Imbriano and myself to report the crime of obstruction of justice by recently retired Police Chief, Dan Hughes in regard to his failure to allow his officers to follow normal police procedure to arrest Joe Felz for DUI and for leaving the scene of an accident with damages. Joe Felz was eventually charged with those two counts, months after the incident by the OCDA Office. I admonished the entire council for its continued failure to discuss this very important issue.
With my remaining 30 seconds I dropped a bombshell in the laps of our distinguished dais. I told them that I was informed by Banc of California employees at the Euclid and Rosecrans Avenue branch that it is closing because a developer bought the property to be part of the development of the entire Sunrise Village Shopping Center to become mixed-use high-density high-rise residential units. The city desperately needs the short-term infusion of money that would be generated by the Park and Recreation Department Park Dwelling fees of $11,700 per residential unit. If they build 500 units for example that would generate an additional $5,850,000 in revenue. This would help to cover the extremely generous salary and benefit employee raises approved by the council last year. More development approvals would be needed to continue paying for these salary and benefit increases approved under Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald in 2016 for subsequent years. I put the council on notice that I smelled a rat. Namely that the city in my opinion has been dealing with developers to make this mixed use project a reality in the near future. Why else would these landlords create vacant properties with the absence of valuable rents if they only had a hope that they could convert the shopping center to a concrete jungle of mixed use high-density housing units. I told them it was not zoned for that use and that the people of that neighborhood would fight to make sure it never ever came to fruition. You should have seen the faces of Bruce Whitaker and Jennifer Fitzgerald after I finished with my comments. They did not look pleased at all.
Of course, there was no response by any council members to these comments and the Interim Police Chief also was silent after he learned that his department would not take a simple police report by two members of the community. Gee silly me, I thought it was their job to take the statement and then go and investigate; not determine that no crime was committed so therefore no police report was necessary to be taken by them in the first place.
The first order of business has to be from the OCDA Office by filing obstruction of justice charges against Dan Hughes.
Like I said at the beginning of this post, the City of Fullerton and the Fullerton Police Department are corrupt and the Fullerton Police Department needs to clean house
#1 by Barry Levinson on May 23, 2017 - 2:44 pm
Since April 26, 2017 Joe Imbriano has requested from the Fullerton City Clerk an audio or video of the City of Fullerton Grand Inn Nuisance Hearing. We have learned according to City Attorney Dick Jones there is no audio or video of that public hearing. Question to Dick Jones and the City Clerk; Why isn’t there a video or audio of that public meeting? After all the taxpayers spent a few hundred thousand dollars not to long ago upgrading the audio and video system within the Council chambers. It virtually costs the city nothing to utilize the system and not more than a flip of a switch would be all that is necessary to video record any public function taking place in the City Hall chamber. So once again I ask a very simple question; Why wasn’t that meeting video recorded?
We now know that the city did however have a paid transcriber officially record that meeting. After much back and forth over many weeks, we now have our less than adequate answer from the City Clerk’s Office as follows:
On May 23, 2017 11:39 AM, “Mea Klein” < wrote:
Mr. Imbriano,
I contacted the Transcript company and they advised that the transcript is a copyrighted document and the property of the court reporter. The city cannot provide a copy.
You will need to contact them directly to obtain a copy:
Elite Court Reporters
23312 Madero Road, Mission Viejo, CA 92691
The cost for a certified copy of the transcript is $877.25.
Mea Klein
Assistant City Clerk
City of Fullerton
After learning about this totally inadequate response from the City, I sent them this email earlier today as follows:
Hi Lucinda and Mea:
Joe Imbriano just informed me that the cost to get a copy of the transcript of a public Fullerton hearing would be almost $900. I would expect that it is the city of Fullerton's responsibility to have this public information available to the citizens of Fullerton at either no cost or a minimal cost to make copies. I suspect that your response to Mr. Imbriano may break some laws of the necessity/requirement to have public access to public hearings and the transcripts of that hearing. Outrageous charges of close to $900 would clearly not be allowing that public access necessary for the citizens of Fullerton. What part of the term public access or the city employees being public servants does your response attempt to cover?
I would demand that until this document is provided to us at a very reasonable cost, that you allow us to review the city's copy of that document free of charge for as long as we would like on the premises of Fullerton City Hall. After all it is part of the public record and I assume we did pay for both the hearing and the transcriber as well.
Please let us know when you can make that document available to us. I would hope that you could make that happen in no longer than a day or two from now.
Respectfully,
Barry Levinson
Fullerton Resident
In addition, Joe Imbriano responded to the City Clerk’s Office as follows:
Mea, what I am requesting is a copy of a faithfully rendered transcript. It is merely a record of the "facts" of a judicial proceeding. Title 17 of The U.S. Code affords no "copyright" protection for such an item. The transcript is simply not copyrighted. Furthermore, this was a public records request made by a citizen and the reporting agency has already billed the city for a certified copy and been paid for his or her services. The city is in possession of the certified transcript. I am formally requesting a copy and it does not have to be certified. Therefore I am entitled to a copy with reasonable charges for the copies and you cannot make me pay some ridiculous ransom money for this document. The law is on my side. https://casetext.com/case/united-transp-union-v-albuquerque
Besides, everything was in place to record the meeting with the system we already paid for, all ready to go with the throw of a switch. The city chose not to. Now a much lesser document is not available unless I have to pay almost 1000 dollars? Why was this meeting not taped? This is outrageous. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading the video and audio systems at City Hall. This was public hearing and you are telling me that there is no audio available, no video available and no transcript available to me as a citizen unless I come up with $900 for a transcript? I want a written answer from the city attorney immediately from Dick Jones that your response denying me access to what I have requested is legal.
As for the city council who is copied on this, what are you five going to do about this?
Joe Imbriano
#2 by Fullerton Attorney on May 23, 2017 - 9:02 pm
You have remedies.
#3 by Anonymous on May 24, 2017 - 11:13 am
Please expand on your answer Fullerton Lawyer.
#4 by Anonymous on May 23, 2017 - 10:49 pm
Hughes incriminated himself big time on the record and under oath.
#5 by Anonymous on May 24, 2017 - 8:48 am
What on earth does the “Grand Inn nuisance hearing” have to do with the price of tea in China? Why do you want the transcript so badly?