Why Hasn’t the Fullerton Police Department’s Public Information Officer Told Us About Our Police Chief Being Placed on Leave?

Matthew Leslie

Have you ever heard of Captain Bob Dunn of the Fullerton Police Department? You might want to get to know him, because right now he is the Acting Chief of the FDP. It is being widely reported by news outlets that Friday night Fullerton Police Chief David Hendricks and FPD Captain Thomas Oliveras were involved in an altercation with Emergency Medical personnel attempting to treat the Chief’s wife who was suffering some sort of medical emergency while attending a concert in Irvine. No charges have yet been filed, but Chief Hendricks and Captain Oliveras have both been placed on paid administrative leave while the incident is being investigated. The story was evidently leaked Sunday via a screenshot of a message sent by Fullerton’s City Manager Ken Domer to members of the FPD. It is not known who else was meant to receive the announcement (certainly not the general public, at that point).

The City Manager’s office inexplicably waited until Tuesday morning to finally issue a press release, after news reports were already circulating on radio, television, and on the internet, giving the unfortunate impression that Mr. Domer was forced to acknowledge a story that was much more than just a personnel issue only after is was already in the public sphere. The press release itself is almost curt it its brevity, providing no details about the incident. We are informed that “…the City is hiring an external investigator to conduct an administrative review.” A standing Police Commission in Fullerton could do the same thing, if we weren’t blocked from having one by a bare majority of three members of the Fullerton City Council who are backed by Fullerton’s police union.

The other information outlet that should have alerted the public to the fact that the Chief of Police had been sidelined due to possibly violent behavior is the Fullerton Police Department’s own Public Information Officer, whose Twitter feed has been utterly silent about it, even now. Take a look at the most recent tweets from the account below:

Happy National Dog Day! Also, if the Chief of Police has been put on leave, we don’t know a thing about it.

Pedestrian Safety Enforcement, a congratulations to a new officer, and National Dog Day–all three tweets sent after their own Chief was kicked out of a major concert venue and placed on leave. Isn’t the Public Information Officer supposed to supply information to the public? Are we paying the PIO to send us pictures of dogs?