Illustration courtesy of the Anaheim Investigator
Matt Leslie
Duane Roberts at the Anaheim Investigator has just published a story about OC Human Relations Director Rusty Kennedy offering to form a civilian review board for Fullerton and Anaheim. Mr. Roberts’ California Public Records Act request from the City of Anaheim was rewarded with an email sent from Mr. Kennedy to John Welter, then Anaheim’s Chief of Police, Dan Hughes, then Acting Chief of Police for Fullerton, and Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz. An excerpt of the October, 2012 email reads:
“John, Dan and Joe
….I am envisioning developing some type of Civilian Review Board (or alternative) process that we could offer in addition to our Police Community Reconciliation and Crisis Assistance Programs on contract with Fullerton and/or Anaheim, IF [sic] you are interested going forward.
rusty”
Earlier this year The Anaheim Investigator noted that OC Human Relations acted as a client of the Anaheim Police Department following a pair of police shootings last summer. The suggestion that an organization paid by a police department should also act in the capacity of a review board of that same (or any) police department reveals either a complete misunderstanding of the need for independent oversight or a willingness to act in a palliative capacity in the place of a truly objective board.
The now retired Chief Welter’s noncommittal reply can be read later in the Anaheim Investigator’s story. We do not know what, if anything, Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz or Fullerton Police Chief Dan Hughes had to say about Mr. Kennedy’s idea, but we do hope that they, and the members of the Fullerton City Council, understand that a truly effective model of police oversight requires independence from law enforcement funding and personnel.
fullertonrag.com 
“but we do hope that they, and the members of the Fullerton City Council, understand that a truly effective model of police oversight requires independence from law enforcement funding and personnel.”
I think they understand that, and it is precisely the reason that they don’t want one.
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remember the Kelly Thomas! Kelly thomas would be alive today if ‘Rusty Kennedy’s Orange County Human Relations Commission actually did what it promised to the communities of the OC; acting as a “clearinghouse”and independent “mediator”of OC communities’complaints of civil rights abuses committed upon them by their respective law enofrcement agencies. The OC Weekly, Friends For Fullerton’s future blog, the Anaheim Investigator blog all recount the public records that tell the reader that Fullerton PD has a long history of abusing the civil rights of fullerton’s communities. With tax dollars, fullerton city council bought hush with monetary settlements to their victims or forced by a court of law to pay a hefty sum to the victimes of fullerton PD. In 2008, fullerton Police Officer Rincon was molesting female detainees in his police car; the same year rusty kennedy’s commission awarded his colleague on same commission, fullerton
fellow OC Human Relations member by accusing fullerton’s community’s indifference to homelessness caused Kelly thomas death.
colleague’s police force, by accusing the community of fullerton’s indifference to homelessness was the direct cause of kelly thomas .Police chief Pat McKinley, a $1000 for Fullerton PD’s ëxemplary “police-commuhity relations. Since then, public records reveal fullerton PD guilty of perjury, false imprisonment, broken bones of detainees, suspicious jail suicide and in 2011 the horrific beating death of a homeless, schizophrenic, Kelly thomas, by fullerton PD in full view of the public at Fullerton’s transportation hub. and a month later, rusty kennedy attempted to deflect the culpability of his
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colleague’s police force lethal force by accusing the community of fullerton’s indifference to homelessness caused Kelly thomas death. From the facts stated above, rusty kennedy will run interference between the police civil rights abuses and the mnoral outrage of a wounded community.
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