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 Old School on April 24, 2017 - 10:57 am
Hughes wrote in his going away letter that he was being retained by the City of Fullerton as a Reserve Police Officer….Is he?
Has he been placed on leave while his crimes are being investigated? Is he collecting pay as a reserve police officer?
I don’t know either…..
Hi all-
It is with mixed emotions that I share with you that after 33 years of service at the police department, I will be retiring effective November 11th. I have informed the city manager and he will be choosing an external interim chief until a wider search and testing process can be completed. I will become a reserve officer in order to complete a few projects I have committed to. I have accepted a position as the Vice President of Security and Emergency Services at the Disneyland Resort and am excited about this new journey in my life.
There are no words I could use to adequately express how grateful and honored I am of serving as your police chief for the past five years. We have endured many challenges during this time but I believe those challenges made us better and I truly believe the best days for our department are still to come. The future of our department is exciting because there are such strong managers and supervisors prepared to lead our department. I could not be more impressed with our sworn and professional personnel that are committed to excellence and are loyal to serving our community with the highest level of integrity, character, and compassion.
You should be very proud of what we have been able to accomplish these past five years. We developed a strategic plan of embracing community policing methods and improving and developing strong trusting relationships within our community. We began utilizing a more academic approach to analyzing crime trends and partnering with our community to decrease crime and increase community relations. We created the Directed Enforcement Team to address quality of life issues and to provide more opportunities for investigative development for our personnel. We created the county’s first full time Homeless Liaison Officer Program and partnered with Coast to Coast, O.C. Mental Health, CSP, and other non-profit organizations to deal with this tragic social problem that local law enforcement has been asked to resolve. We have enhanced our presence and relationship with the schools as we partnered with Team Kids and GRIP to demonstrate a sense of caring for the future generation of our community. We have enhanced our relationship with the community we serve by improving how we communicate with one another. We increased department tours, held open houses, increased citizen academies, created a Chief’s community advisory committee, increased our presence at community events, partnered with O.C. United with the Love Fullerton events, initiated Annual Reports and Employee Recognition Ceremonies, created a social media team, initiated the departments first Legacy Album project which is projected to be completed in the next few months, and helped launch Behind the Badge OC so we could profile the many wonderful programs and people we have at our department and share information with our community that most news organizations are not interested in covering.
There were also many visible changes made within our department. The Traffic Bureau, Records Bureau, and the CSI offices all received significant renovations. We created the Wall of Honor and Wall of Service to memorialize those that have served honorably before us and to challenge each of us to emulate their actions. We transitioned our patrol cars to Ford Explorers and changed the police logo and added a blue lives matter flag on each vehicle. We memorialized five of our police vehicles by placing the names of the five officers whose deaths are attributed to them being a police officer. We provided every officer a Taser and soon each officer will be equipped with a tourniquet kit and Naloxone (Narcan). We were the first department in Orange County to deploy every officer with a Body Camera. We redesigned our web page, approved a new policy manual, created the Peer Support Program, and purchased a new Prism system to improve training. We also created challenge coins and worked with the Legislature to permanently honor two of our fallen officers by dedicating freeway signs in their name. A strategic staffing study was completed and later approved by city council to increase the number of sworn officers from 143 tom 160 in the coming years.
I will retire with many fond memories but what I will miss the most is the incredible people I have had the opportunity to work with. Each day I have come to work I have prayed for the protection of our personnel and the transformation of our city. I will continue to do so and will make myself available if I can ever be assistance to you.
I am excited for the future of our department and thank you for the amazing privilege of serving as your police chief.
With much appreciation, gratitude and respect-
Dan