Whipped Cream Difficulties

Breaking news: Angela Spaccia has been found guilty of at least some of the charges against her. This is so breaking, I don’t even have a link yet; just the banner on the LAT homepage. Updates to come. In the meantime…

Edited to add: guilty on 11 out of 13 charges.

After eight days of deliberations, jurors convicted Angela Spaccia of multiple counts of misappropriation of public funds, conflict of interest and secretion of the official record. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on one count of misappropriating public funds and found her not guilty on one charge related to secretion of public records.

Nothing yet on how much time she might be facing, but remember: both she and Robert “Ratso” Rizzo “also are expected to face federal charges of conspiracy to commit tax fraud“. The fun never stops in sunny California.

I expect I will have some more to say about this tomorrow, along with some of today’s other news from the Banana Republicans: “striking a suspect in the head with an impact weapon is considered deadly force and is not acceptable police procedure“, and a bunch (18 to be exact) of folks with the Sheriff’s department have been indicted on federal charges “that deputies beat jail inmates and visitors without justification, unjustly detained people and conspired to obstruct a federal investigation into misconduct at the Men’s Central Jail.”

Were you wondering what Angela Spaccia, former assistant city manager of Bell, looks like wearing a bathrobe and smoking a cigar?

Wonder no more.

What does this have to do with corruption in Bell? Well, Spaccia texted that photo to Randy Adams, the former police chief, and it was introduced as evidence during Adams’ testimony yesterday. I think the prosecution’s intent is to establish that the Adams/Spaccia relationship went beyond the bounds of “professional”: not necessarily romantic, but perhaps a closer friendship than either one is letting on. (In turn, I guess this is intended to make the jury question Adams’ testimony for Spaccia.)

In other news, Adams was shocked, shocked! that the city of Bell was willing to pay him $457,000 a year to be Bell’s police chief. But Randy Adams appears to be much like the great Clay Davis: he’ll take any motherf—-r’s money if he givin’ it away!

It is perhaps worth pointing out that Mister Shocked, Shocked I Am:

…who had recently retired as Glendale’s police chief, wanted a salary in excess of $400,000.

It is also worth reminding folks that before he moved over to Bell, Adams was paid half as much in Glendale and ran a much larger department. And let’s not forget that little disability pension thing, but I suspect that will come out in the cross-examination.

I hate to jump to conclusions here, but I’m not sure calling Adams as a defense witness was the brightest thing Spaccia’s council could have done.

In the meantime, since you’ve got it stuck in your head anyway….

How long is forever?

If you bought a memorial stone at the former Crystal Cathedral, forever ends soon:

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, which bought the enormous glass and steel church last year, has begun ripping out the memorial stones as it begins major renovations to modernize the campus and convert the nondenominational megachurch to a Catholic place of worship. Over the next several years, most of the 1,800 stones will be removed, diocese officials said, and there are no plans to reinstall them. Instead, digital photos of the stones are now on display at a diocese-sponsored Web site.

By the way, Robert Schuller has been diagnosed with cancer.

There’s a new update in the case of Bruce Malkenhorst, former city administrator of the notoriously corrupt city of Vernon: the California legislature is considering a new bill…

Under the bill, to be introduced Friday, executives convicted of felonies could appeal the reduction of retirement benefits only to the public retirement system that cuts the checks. They could sue that agency but not their former employer.
Cities would be responsible only for benefits approved by officials of the appropriate retirement system. In the case of Malkenhorst, that is CalPERS.

My first thought on this: aren’t we talking about an ex post facto law?

“They might be able to say, ‘You are a crook, so you are not entitled to that income in the first place,’ ” said Edward McCaffery, a USC professor of law, economics and political science. “But to do that by passing a law that cuts off his ability to sue the city — I think that looks like a retroactive messing with a contract,” he said.

A better argument comes later in the article:

“Malkenhorst’s contract is with CalPERS,” Reeves said. “They are the payor and he needs to sue them.”

I’ve written previously about Louis Scarcella, the former NYPD detective whose cases are being re-investigated. The NYT asks a fair question: where were the prosecutors when all this was going on?

Answer: la la la la I can’t hear you…

But even some of those who were suspicious of Mr. Scarcella acknowledged that they mostly kept their concerns to themselves, saying that his ability to clear cases had made him popular with the bosses.
“Some prosecutors were leery; they didn’t trust it,” said one former investigator, who did not want to be identified publicly while criticizing his former supervisors. “He was one of the best detectives in the city. He’s turning over all these cases, and the bosses loved him. You’re going to go to the boss and say, ‘This doesn’t look right’?’”

More:

Jeffrey I. Ginsberg, a former assistant district attorney who also prosecuted two of the convictions under review, said the cases might look bad in retrospect, but they needed to be considered in the context of the 1980s and ’90s, when the crack epidemic was helping fuel a crime wave.
“The witnesses often came in orange jumpsuits,” said Mr. Ginsberg, referring to the outfit worn by inmates. “I was not afraid to go to trial on a weak case. I was not afraid to lose. I was not lying and cheating to get a conviction.”