Why new Mayor Greg Sebourn is such a huge disappointment to many who voted to re-elect him to the Fullerton City Council?
I REPORT, YOU DECIDE-By Barry Levinson
A week ago I posted an article on The Fullerton Informer website entitled “Fullerton Police Chief Dan Hughes — yet another look (Originally posted June 9, 2014; Edited with a few additional comments on January 14, 2015 including new P.S.), by BARRY LEVINSON
https://thefullertoninformer.com/#sthash.xb43kL8z.dpuf
It concerned Fullerton’s Police Chief Dan Hughes.
That post dealt with getting answers to important questions that the chief has been silent on for far too long. Mayor Sebourn immediately removed that shared post and now he has changed his settings to not allow me to post at all on his Facebook page.
Greg Seabourn
I am saddened that questions that he should be demanding Dan Hughes answer are apparently questions that he does not want to be associated with at all. I have been a Fullerton activist for limited government, civil liberties, safety especially for all our children and open and transparent government for the past 5 years. I also endorsed Greg for reelection. Yet despite all this he followed the council majority crowd by attempting to lynch me at an October 2014 council meeting (I believe they call that a piling on penalty in football) without knowing the facts or asking for the city video which proved all alleged misdemeanor charges hoisted against me by our Police Chief Dan Hughes to be completely bogus. However, there has been no public apology or even a simple mea culpa from our new Mayor. It is now way overdue Mayor Sebourn and I will graciously accept it, if you decide to do the right thing.
https://thefullertoninformer.com/the-lynching/
Now as Mayor one of his first pieces of business in this new-year was
to reassert a 30-minute limit for public comments at the front end of
city council meetings.
As someone, who has regularly attended the Fullerton city council meetings for the past 5 years, I can attest that many meetings had public comments lasting much more than 30 minutes. In fact after the Kelly Thomas brutal death by members of the FPD, public comments many times ran one to two hours and beyond. This is one of the few ways the public has the opportunity to ask questions and to attempt to hold all our public officials accountable in a public forum.
It is my understanding that at the start of each new council, the Mayor can set the meeting criteria including the length of each public comment speaker as well as the limit if any for all public comments. Yet instead of speaking out as the public’s representative and stating how important it is to allow the public the ability to speak before council you thought it necessary to ride rough shot over the public and their rights.
Shame on you Mayor Sebourn for setting rules that
will help limit free speech and the exchange of ideas during our
council meetings.
I recently recalled that former Mayor Chaffee seeing a large group of speakers waiting to speak before the council attempted to reduce each person’s time from 3 minutes down to 2 minutes to try to keep the total time within 30 minutes. I also recall that the remaining four council members all voted him down.
4 more years of this Greg?
Greg Sebourn is the same Mayor who at a recent Fullerton California Republican Assembly meeting lectured about the importance of knowing and supporting the Republican Party platform. I must have missed the part that states it is the Republican Party’s goal to limit our free speech before our elected officials. Mayor you talked the talk at that CRA meeting but you certainly did not practice it at the last Fullerton City Council meeting.
Mayor Sebourn, Conservative Republicans do not limit free speech but rather welcome and celebrate it.
P.S.
I am sure it was not only conservatives that were very unhappy with the Mayor’s need to greatly limit our free speech I hope all of you make your opinions known to Mayor Sebourn at our next council meeting.
Sincerely,
Barry Levinson
#1 by The ghost of integrity, decency and honesty on January 24, 2015 - 1:31 pm
If there are still a few objective minded people out there who believes my comments may be a bit over the top, please consider one more fact.
Nowhere, except on this website has the horrible allegations of police abuse against an epileptic black man at work on MLK Jr. Day been reported.
The Mayor and the FPD did not respond to Tamika Johnson’s allegations at the last city council meeting. Nor did any of them make any attempt to get contact information to follow-up with her. A city with integrity would want to follow-up on this story. A city without integrity wants to bury this story.
I am afraid my comments are all too correct. To call our city hall corrupt is to give them the benefit of the doubt as to their true activities. The city is very ripe for a Federal Justice investigation.
#2 by Joe Imbriano on January 24, 2015 - 3:31 pm
Oh the Register will investigate. First I believe that Ponsi has to sit down with Hughes and assess the situation, review the footage from the body and dash cams and figure out the Monday morning quarter back playbook to sugar coat, deflect, spin and bamboozle the public.
Look the Observer and The Register have to cover it now. The truth is out there and the cat is out of the bag. The Observer and The Register will gp into damage control mode or play good cop bad cop. In the meantime, a civil action needs to be filed and the cam footage needs to be subpoenaed.If what was alleged truly happened, we can infer that the FPD needs a Federal consent decree. I am confident that We have done our job and done the right thing by putting this out there right away and thereby forcing the issue.
#3 by Anonymous on January 24, 2015 - 5:27 pm
Honest question: has anyone attempted to verify the veracity of this woman’s allegations? Does anyone know anything about her or her fiancé?
#4 by Mark Powell on January 25, 2015 - 6:08 am
Firstly, I myself apologized to Ms. Johnson for the officer’s conduct immediately after she had addressed the city council.
I personally found her to be genuine and gracious.
I would suggest that you review the feed of last Tuesday’s city council meeting’s, and fast forward to the “public comments section”, (found on the city of Fullerton’s website), and decide for yourself whether or not you would believe a woman who was fulfilling a solemn promise to her children to seek justice for their father and is standing next to her husband’s employer, and then decide for yourself whether you think that Ms. Johnson is being honest?
My gut feeling on Tuesday night was that Ms. Johnson was being sincere in her allegations of officer misconduct.
I also found it morally reprehensible that our Chief of Police would pass right by Ms. Johnson after making her assertions to the city council with nary a word.
Silence speaks volumes.
#5 by Anonymous on January 25, 2015 - 2:04 pm
Another honest question: If someone put this woman up to attending the city council meeting and making said allegations, would that be morally reprehensible?
#6 by The Twilight Zone on January 25, 2015 - 8:30 pm
Anonymous, you are so disingenuous. No one has convicted that officer or accepted every word of Ms. Johnson as the whole truth. However, one would hope that when a very serious allegation is made against one of his officers that Hughes would at least want to talk to this women. But you see Anonymous that would take an honest public servant. We do not have one currently in the police chief position.
#7 by Joe Imbriano on January 25, 2015 - 9:58 pm
Not nearly as reprehensible as Xray vision Loya cooking up the frame up job of Barry Levinson, while Gin Fluoride playing Perry Mason, with Jencurt Fitzpringle, along with Pam Keller and Sharon Kennedy cheerleading, with Ponsi plastering Barry’s mug around with his bosses hit pieces, with unforgettable Hughes mixing up North and South in a building he has worked in for 30 years while he puts his John Hancock all over his report that probably took him at least a month to produce after they altered the southern lobby cam feed but yet Hughes didn’t have 5 minutes to spend with a woman who just got finished publicly making the most extreme allegations against an FPD officer since the Kelly Thomas murder.
Is that what Fullerton gets for 300 grand a year? A police chief that ignored her not to be outdone by the new mayor himself who ignored her, Davis Barber who ignored her, and Lou Ponsi who couldn’t find his way out of a wet paper bag, who of course ignored her?
Yes when on MLK day, police allegedly tase a totally innocent African American father in front of his 9 and 11 year old children multiple times when it was alleged that the officer was repeatedly warned that the man had a seizure disorder and the officer allegedly continued the shocks, you know Fullerton is very diseased. It is high time for some surgery and chemo over at city hall folks unless you just want to keep pushing the button on the morphine pack but you know that will kill you eventually. PS- tell whitewash Genncco that we want our money back. It looks like the FPD hasn’t learned a darn thing.
#8 by Anonymous on January 26, 2015 - 9:14 am
Very serious issues covered here, very serious.
#9 by Mark Powell on January 26, 2015 - 12:02 am
Honest question?
Did you watch Mrs. Johnson’s account during the public comments portion of the city council tape from last Tuesday’s meeting?
#10 by Joe Imbriano on January 26, 2015 - 12:17 am
Here is an honest question: How does Sex Ed Silva get an official proclamation and a standing ovation while this woman who is risking it all doesn’t get the time of day from these so called public servants?
#11 by Anonymous on January 26, 2015 - 11:03 am
I don’t believe there exists an honest answer to that question. Objectively speaking, their behavior defies logic.
#12 by Tonya on January 26, 2015 - 12:14 pm
She is not making things up I watched her. I was there. She is a brave mom too. This is not right what the police did to this man. He didn’t do nothing wrong. The police just jumped him for no reason.