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Let's take another look at how Fullerton may try to prevent a recurrence of the sort of situation that led to the death of Kelly Thomas ... excuse me, but apparently something is blocking our view. Please stand by and we'll see if we can focus in.
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We are now in the moment when evidence begins to accrue so as to favor one or another story regarding what really motivated the Fullerton recall. I don’t mean what motivated the voters: that was pretty clearly the killing of Kelly Thomas and the weak response of the Council to it. I’d say the same is true of the signature gatherers and demonstrators. I mean, what motivated the proponents — and most of all, the chief funder of it all, Tony “Deep Pockets” Bushala.
Scenario 1 — which I have to say, I believed when I first headed to FFFF half a year or so ago — is that Tony and the FFFFster leaders were really, legitimately, exercised over the killing of Kelly Thomas and wanted to make sure that those policing Fullerton would never allow it again. This is very likely true of voters, but not necessarily true of leaders.
Scenario 2 is that Tony and his gang, despite not liking it when a harmless homeless guy is killed, were just using the Kelly Thomas killing as a way of electing a majority to the City Council that would implement their anti-tax, anti-pension, anti-union, anti-public employee agenda.
(People within the FFFF cult have of course been frantically upset at the notion that Scenario 2, rather than Scenario 1, could have been the real primary motivation for the recall. For them, where Kelly Thomas has become a saint to whom they write letters (don’t make me link to it), contemplating whether the recall was not really about Kelly is a sin on the level of musing about whether Jesus was mostly after the publicity.)
Up until now, there has been no real way to tell which scenario has more support. The recall leaders’ actions would have been pretty much the same under Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 — because both of them required constant flogging of the Kelly Thomas story. They certainly didn’t campaign primarily (or hardly at all) on “bankrupt the city and void the pensions” or whatever they have in mind. It was only after the recall that the paths they would take under Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 would diverge.
(Perhaps you’ll recall that I asked candidates to go on the record as to whether they’d pursue bankruptcy to break existing pension obligations. Sebourn answered (with sort of a maybe); Kiger and Levinson didn’t. Tony, on OJB, said that he knew enough to keep his mouth shut until the sale is done.)
So I’ve been waiting for is to compare the seriousness: are they taking more serious steps to ensure that there’s no more Kelly Thomas-like situations or to conduct a war on public employees. They seem to be VERY serious about the latter — to an extent that will probably surprise voters and may bring Travis Kiger’s rein on City Council (and maybe Bruce Whitaker’s as well) to an early end.
You hear talk these days around Fullerton city government and you read on FFFF about plans to eliminate the Fullerton Police Department and outsource to the Sheriff’s Department — based on the hunger to relieve Fullerton of all pension obligations and without much consideration of whether the OCSD really would have acted much differently than the FPD did in that situation. You also hear about the possibility of following Stockton into municipal bankruptcy.
Fullerton is in nowhere near the sort of bad financial shape that Stockton is in — something robustly denied on FFFF, of course — but the solution to that appears to get it into that level of shape. But how could one do that? You’d have to do something like try to cut off a significant portion of the city’s revenue and in fact try to push through 30 years of refunds for homeowners — which is exactly what the yammering is about the “illegal water tax.” If Fullerton doesn’t look bankrupt, the reasoning seems to be, make it look bankrupt!
On the other hand, how serious are they about preventing police abuse? Well, feast your eyes on the latest FFFF brainchild — bringing in failed Sheriff’s candidate and Michele Bachmann worshiper Bill Hunt to head the FPD. Now I’m not going to address the merits of Bill Hunt for Top Cop yet — if some of the commenters are right, he’s a friend of Bushala’s, so one can’t say that he lacks the primary qualification — but what’s really interesting about the discussion there, which I urge you to read, is the question that isn’t asked:
“Is there reason to think that he’d have been, and in the future would be, less likely than Dan Hughes to have a police force that would engage in police brutality?”
The clamoring for Bill Hunt — <b>without any apparent exploration of his history or philosophy regarding police abuse</b>, which should be a major concern for those who are serious about wanting to reduce police abuse — suggests that they’re not really very serious about that at all. They just want their guy in power — someone who is likely to let the well-connected smoke dope in peace while limiting application of the laws to the less fortunate sons and daughters.
The final results aren’t in, in the competition between the two scenarios, but I’d say that at this point Scenario 2 looks like it’s winning by a mile.
Pay attention, Fullerton. Get answers before November. Don’t assume!
Great point by Greg Diamond. The argument for Bill Hunt wasn’t based on his record of cleaning up after bad cops and ensuring police brutality incidents don’t occur . . . it was something else.
We need trust restored in our community, we need transparency in our leaders so we understand their intentions, and we need real indication that the reforms we need are moving forward.
It’s Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” in action on a smaller, local scale…political operatives taking advantage of the “shock” of an unexpected event to advance a political agenda.
Given the FFFF’s views on most social issues before the Thomas beating, I’m frankly surprised anyone had the least bit of doubt as to what they’re real motives in the recall were. As Anon pointed out, this was the perfect “shock” opportunity. So I guess their idea of “transparency” is to pre-select a new police chief or city manager on a blog. What happened to the “national search” for a new chief? Probably just the first of many of their promised “reforms” to get thrown in the trash can with the old campaign signs.
“Shock Doctrine” assumes private interests using a disaster to engineer policies that financially favor them at the public’s expense.
Getting rid of a confirmed brutal police force and its, at best, clearly incompetent leadership is actually IN the public interest.
The “Shock Doctrine” is based on the assumptions that the private interest’s agenda is counter to the public good. In this case, it is at least possible that the public good is being served by the private interest.
That’s not about Hunt, but about the recall in general. I’ve read The Shock Doctrine and where I can see how it may look the same tactically from the outside I do not think it realistically applies.
I may be wrong but then Fullerton will be in a civil war anyway and the revolution will have been short-lived.
Fair distinction.
“Shock Doctrine” assumes private interests using a disaster to engineer policies that financially favor them at the public’s expense.”
And what is one of the means those private interests use to advance policies that financially favor them?
Ooops, it’s by influencing, financially and otherwise, politicians and public policy.
If Greg is correct in suggesting that the forces behind the recall had PRIVATE, business interests in using the shock of the Thomas murder to engineer political change that would benefit those private interests, then the Shock Doctrine analogy is entirely appropriate. THOSE interests could quite possibly be counter to the public good.
I think Greg understands that these private interests are more ideological than financial. Whether the private interests will dovetail with public interests remains to be seen. In terms of preventing police brutality I think they will. Shock Doctrine is predicated upon these interests being largely financial and invariably against the public interest.
People will not stand for the FPD not being cleaned up and seriously reformed and we won’t stand for further police brutality. As much as I like some of the people involved I will hold them to the same standards they have been holding current council members to. Once a revolution is successfully launched that lays the groundwork for future revolutions to come if reform is not along the lines promised. And the number one promise was to clean up the brutality and corruption of the FPD.
It’s a good sentiment on your part to keep them honest, but this time you won’t have an army alongside you.
The voting public is tired of armies anyway. They want rationality, honesty, and integrity. I have high hopes that the council will deliver and if they don’t they’ll be replaced. I don’t think they’d want it any other way.
I hope that you’re right. I don’t think that the public actually understood the politics of Fullerton this year at all; they were almost entirely reacting to the public embarrassment of the Kelly Thomas hearing and the Council majority’s bungling of the public response to it.
Thanks for coming to the site, by the way, and I hope that you’ll feel at home here. We have a lively chorus of intelligent conservative and libertarian voices here and a generally high level of discussion, as you’ll see if you poke around.
Hard to tell how serious the Bushalites are about bringing in Hunt. This story, by “Mr Peabody” was only somebody’s Hunt-enthusing e-mail copied over. I think it’s what’s called a “trial balloon.” And it elicited both support and outrage from the peanut gallery.
I’m surprised you mentioned Bachmann instead of Bill’s much more relevant and troubling friendship with Joe Arpaio, the nation’s most corrupt, brutal, racist and lawless sheriff.
I spent a lot of time studying, and then fighting, Bill Hunt when he ran for county sheriff two years ago. There are lots of reasons Fullertonians, and even Bushala, shouldn’t want him. I summarzied them for Fullertonians in this comment:
http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2012/tanned-rested-ready-bill-hunt-for-fullerton-police-chief/#comment-114329
If the FFFF story had fallen like a lead balloon, I would not have posted this one. But look at the comments made by the madding crowd. The very mascot of Kelly’s Army says basically “that’s great” without showing an iota of reflection about whether an FPD led by Hunt would have done a better job regarding Kelly Thomas. It just doesn’t come up.
You’re right, I should have mentioned Arpaio; didn’t think of it.
If you know the players on FFFF comments, you know which ones are part of the groupthink and which aren’t. (Critics like me don’t really factor into the calculations.) I think that the reaction among kool-aid drinkers was very (and uncritically) positive. The outrage came mostly from others of us.
I should explain why I hold FFFF responsible for many of the comments of its most prominent commenters. The site is structured to build cohesion around particular ideas and to serve as an echo chamber reinforcing the views of the writers. OJB, by contrast, is contentious (usually reasonably politely so, thanks to a few subtractions in personnel), but people are all over the map and politely expressed views are well-tolerated. “Mr. Peabody” posted that e-mail for a reason — and it wasn’t to make fun of it.
It can be an echo chamber but that thread got seriously derailed early on and then later on there was considerable discussion. Hunt’s supporters (including Tony, Travis, Bruce, Greg S. etc) are going to need start answering legitimate questions about Hunt, most of which Vern I guess posed several years ago. The linkage to Arpaio is the best place to start. No way is Arpaio accountable, transparent, good on police brutality, libertarian, saving taxpayers money, or respectful of the constitution. He is a disgrace. Even the founder of Oath Keepers thinks so. He should be impeached, prosecuted, and imprisoned.