Ron Thomas, father of the slain Kelly, thinks that the FPD were silent about the arrest because his civil suit over his son’s death is scheduled to begin next month. “They want it as quiet as possible…Ramos being arrested isn’t going to make him look good,” he tells Gabriel San Román of the OC Weekly in a story this morning.
Ron Thomas may be right, especially if we consider the contrast between the three week delay in reporting the arrest of Manual Ramos with the next day coverage of former state Assemblyman Chris Norby’s arrest for domestic violence on March 11, 2014. Mr. Norby was never charged with any crimes, and later divorced his wife, who was alleged to have battered him, injuring his eye. The arrest came during an election year amid speculation that he might be considering a run for Fullerton City Council. By any objective measure, the negative publicity following the arrest damaged his chances of succeeding in such a campaign.
During his 18 previous years on the Fullerton City Council, 7 years as OC Supervisor, and 3 years in the California State Assembly, Chris Norby was known as a critic of public employee unions, who lined up on the side of his opponent Sharon Quirk-Silva in 2012, helping to defeat him. In the State Assembly he authored a bill aimed at reforming asset seizure laws, which had been a boon to police departments throughout the state. He had also expressed frustration with the limits placed on reporting about problem officers included in the Peace Officers Bill of Rights. The prospect of his return to the Fullerton City Council would not have been a welcome one for the Fullerton Police Department, who have enjoyed a reliable three member majority of supporters in the form of Doug Chaffee, Jan Flory, and Jennifer Fitzgerald since November, 2012.
A year later, when the dust had settled, Chris Norby reflected upon his arrest in an April 28, 2015 letter to the Voice of OC. He noted in the letter that “During Family Court civil hearing, two independent witnesses testified personally of the physical abuse I had suffered. There were none against me.“
One has to wonder, just how did the media find out so quickly about the arrest of Chris Norby, while the arrest of Manuel Ramos on the same charge (they even had the same bail amount of $10,000) went undetected by reporters for three weeks? The OC Register first reported about Chris Norby on March 12, less than 24 hours after his arrest. The LA Times had a story up by March 13. The Fullerton News Tribune, owned and published every Thursday by the OC Register, includes a weekly crime feature called The Blotter, showing selected arrests throughout the city. The July 23 edition lists two separate July 16 assaults for addresses on W. Malvern and W. Commonwealth, but nothing on W. Oak, the site of the Manual Ramos arrest. Not until August 6, did the OC Register finally pick up on the story.
Did someone tip off the press about the Chris Norby arrest last year, while laying low about the arrest of Manuel Ramos last month?
Well done Mr. Baxter…well done!
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“Did someone tip off the press about the Chris Norby arrest last year, while laying low about the arrest of Manual Ramos last month?”
Yes.
It is encouraging that there might be a good apple somewhere in or near the FPD that helped this come to light when it did, and not even later.
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It will be interesting to note how prevalent the coverage of the Manny Ramos arrest for domestic violence will be in the next issue of the Fullerton Observer. Considering that the Fullerton Observer was ALWAYS quick to trumpet Chris Norby’s domestic violence calls the days after they occurred….how convenient for them and their so called impartial agenda of all things political in Fullerton eh?
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Nice, and fair, contrast.
Well done.
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Two weeks before the July 5, 2011 asault on Kelly Thomas,Ramos was involved in a what was described as a similar attack on 58-year-old Mark Edwin Walker
http://www.ocregister.com/a…/walker-357384-ramos-police.html
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Note that the Fullerton Observer gave half of their front page coverage, for a feature that usually runs in the back of the newspaper in August of 2014 to public employee union shill, Pam Keller, who was also happened to be the “intern” at Sharon Quirk Silva’s office who interviewed Chris Norby’s ex-wife, and then made sure the story got posted in the Fullerton Observer’s next edition of March 2014
Click to access 50dca9_549a01aa1c824ab58bb5f2776539b52f.pdf
As soon as the residents of Fullerton realize that Sharon Kennedy’s Fullerton Observer role here in town is nothing more than to offer a politically expedient puff piece of journalism enlisted to support the payrolls of the public employees unions here in Fullerton, think Teachers, Professors,Fire Fighters, Police, city hall workers…. we’ll all be much better off.
My God has any one of you people sat back and wondered why your streets look and drive like a central American barrio?
Hint…It’s because your dollars go to keep the public pension obligations of 500 million dollars here in Fullerton which are mandated by law to be paid before there is any money left over to fix the roads and help fund our children’s schools.
I sincerely hope that these same people that have reported what was only politically expedient to further their own agenda, have absolutely no pretense in getting past St. Peter’s gate, as last I heard, their are no slimy Lawyers around, like the ones the Fullerton Observer supported to be on our current City Council, when you attempt to explain away your moral malfeasances when talking with your creator.
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For what it’s worth, the Fullerton Observer did share the above story on it’s Facebook page:
https://m.facebook.com/pages/Fullerton-Observer-Newspaper/284602838240885
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This is the story that the Fullerton Observer’s Tracy Wood wrote about allegations against Chris Norby just a few days after the alleged incident was reported to then Assemblywoman’s Sharon Quirk Silva’s staff member, Pam Keller.
Click to access 50dca9_d7b1633196e349269d55ec9e70e2fb01.pdf
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…and then reported a few weeks later that the DA had refused to file charges against Chris Norby…
http://voiceofoc.org/2014/04/district-attorney-drops-domestic-abuse-charges-against-norby
…and no the Fullerton Observer didn’t publish a story in their next issue, or the issue after that, etc…. saying that the story was untrue.
“Expedient” is the only definition/adjective that accurately describes the Fullerton Observer.
…immoral is the other.
ex·pe·di·ent
ikˈspēdēənt
adjective
1.
(of an action) convenient and practical, although possibly improper or immoral.
“either side could break the agreement if it were expedient to do so”
synonyms: convenient, advantageous, in one’s own interests, useful, of use, beneficial, of benefit, helpful; More
noun
1.
a means of attaining an end, especially one that is convenient but considered improper or immoral.
“the current policy is a political expedient”
synonyms: measure, means, method, stratagem, scheme, plan, move, tactic, maneuver, device, contrivance, ploy, machination, dodge
“a temporary expedient”
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The Observer did invite the Rag to write a story about the FPD’s outsourcing of PR duties, and published that story, unedited, in the August edition.
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Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated
are confident they are acting on their own free will.
Joseph Goebbels
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But then neither were Greg Hardy and Ray McDonald who were given bans by the American football authorities at the point they were arrested for domestic violence, even though charges were not eventually forthcoming. Is it as sexually explicit at the new film ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ makes it seem?
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