The LAT has a longish summary of how the city of Bell got to where it is today, along with some background on Robert “Ratso” Rizzo.
A few choice quotes:
Hmmm. Perhaps someone should have been reading documents.
…
Wait a minute. There was a former mayor who did time? That’s an interesting detail I don’t recall hearing before.
Dear members of the Imperial Stars:
Here’s a link to the guitar tab for “Folsom Prison Blues”.
I think you might need that where you’re going.
When you’re out and about tonight, remember to drink a toast to Guy Fawkes, the only man ever to enter the Houses of Parliament with honorable intentions.
Also remember: if your gunpowder gets damp, don’t stick it in front of a fire to dry out.
Side note: Since I’ve been hammering on the Bell thing, I did want to link to this LAT article: basically, California Attorney General (soon to be Governor) Jerry Brown may have exceeded his authority by suing for the repayment of salaries and surrender of future pension money. Note that this just applies to the civil lawsuit: the criminal cases against Robert “Ratso” Rizzo and the others are proceeding.
The more I read about the city of Bell, the more I wonder. It seems clear that they weren’t just corrupt, but blatantly so. How did this go on for as long as it did?
Edited to add: I missed this. The Bell city council met last night. This is significant, since the council failed to make a quorum at their last meeting:
one council member resigned, another failed to make bail and two called in sick
And what was the primary piece of business at last night’s meeting?
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyenas!
Obit watch: Alex Anderson, “the cartoonist who first drew Rocky the flying squirrel and his buddy”, though he was “not directly involved in the production of the television series”.
Speaking of “This time for sure!”, the Austin Police Department has come up with a brand new set of charges that they hope will allow them to fire Officer Leonardo Quintana. (Previously.)
And in another follow-up, Randy Adams, the former police chief of Bell, California, has been accused of suppressing an investigation into corruption in Bell. You may remember former Chief Adams from such classic bits as “hire me for the job of police chief in Bell, then immediately grant me a huge tax-free disability pension.”
Here’s another interesting story from California.
Apparently, Riverside County has a “shortage” of judges and courtrooms, and the defendants in these cases refused to waive the right to a speedy trial, so a trial judge dismissed the cases. (I’m not 100% sure why a defendant would waive the right to a speedy trial to begin with, unless they’re making some sort of deal with prosecutors. “Waive your speedy trial right, and we won’t oppose your bail application,” maybe? I wonder if Patrick or Ken might be able to comment.)
Riverside County prosecutors seemed to be contending that there were judges available, if the court had called upon probate, family law, and juvenile judges to hear the cases. (I’m not 100% sure about the courtrooms, but is there a constitutional requirement that cases be heard in a courtroom? As opposed to, say, an unused meeting room at a public library, or the gym at the local middle school?)
The state Supreme Court, on the other hand, seems to be taking the position that if the California Legislature won’t hire new judges, then they’ll just start throwing out felony cases. By God, that’ll show ’em!
And the California Legislature, of course, doesn’t feel like it has the money to hire new judges and build new courtrooms…
Yeah, I don’t see this ending well.
Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, the indicted former city administrator of Bell, California, has lost his horse owner’s license. The license was suspended after he failed to appear at a hearing to answer charges of “conduct detrimental to horse racing”.
According to the LAT, Rizzo owned “dozens” of horses
including a thoroughbred named Depenser de l’argent — French for “to spend money”
See also the Daily Racing Form‘s summary, which gives more details on Rizzo’s racing ventures.
Robert “Ratso” Rizzo has been charged with two more crimes: conflict of interest, and “misappropriation of funds for a value exceeding $1.3 million”.
If he is convicted of the second count, Rizzo would have to provide a DNA sample.
But he won’t have to provide a DNA sample if he’s convicted of the first crime, or any of the other 53 felonies he’s been charged with?
(Edited to add: Well, according to the California Attorney General’s web site, “Starting January 1, 2009, Prop 69 requires that the Department of Justice begin taking samples for any adult arrested or charged with any felony offense.” So it seems that Rizzo should already have had to give up his DNA based on the previous 53 felony charges; I’m not sure why the LAT felt that it needed to call out #55 in particular. I’m also not going to comment on the whole “any adult arrested or charged with any felony offense” thing.)
And I wanted to note this yesterday, but it snuck past me. Guess where at least some of the money to pay Rizzo’s salary came from? If you said “a fund that was supposed to be used to provide housing for low-income residents“, take two gold stars and advance to the next blue square.
Two interesting obits from the police blotter:
Melvin Lane Powers. I meant to note this last week when it appeared in the HouChron, but somehow it got past me. Powers was a prominent developer in Houston, but before that, he was a defendant in the Candace Mossler murder trial.
(Edited to add: for comparison purposes, here’s the HouChron obit.)
P. Basil Lambros, L.A. defense attorney and sharp-dressed man. This didn’t ring a bell with me until I read the obit and realized he was Spade Cooley’s defense attorney. John Marr did a fantastic piece on the Spade Cooley murder in issue 19 of “Murder Can Be Fun“; I commend it to your attention. (No, it isn’t online, but sending John Marr $2 isn’t going to break you.) If you can’t wait, here’s the Wikipedia entry on Spade Cooley, who was a leading competitor of Bob Wills, and actually beat him in a battle of the bands.
Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral has filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition.
Today’s LAT has an interesting article about the “cult of indoor weed“. Basically, consumers have developed a preference for marijuana grown indoors; the result has been a large indoor pot industry, focused in the “Emerald Triangle” region (Mendocino, Trinity and Humboldt counties) of Northern California.
Meanwhile, CVS has been fined $75 million by the Federal government. Why? They weren’t aggressive enough in tracking people who bought cold medication. Meanwhile, since the “Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005” has been in effect, meth production has moved across the border into Mexico, where the cartels can buy pseudoephedrine in bulk.
So the city of Bell hired a guy named Randy Adams to be their chief of police. Mr. Adams used to be the chief in Glendale; I can’t find exact figures, but according to the LAT, the Glendale force is much larger than the Bell force. Looking over Glendale’s Wikipedia page, it appears their cops are a pretty active bunch.
In spite of Bell’s force being smaller than Glendale’s, and Bell having a smaller population, the city of Bell decided to pay Chief Adams $457,000 a year, which the LAT describes as being more than twice what he was making in Glendale.
Sleazy enough for you? But wait, there’s more!
At the same time Chief Adams was being hired for the post in Bell, he was also filing an application for a disability pension from the city of Bell.
Yes, you read that right. At the same time the city was hiring him, they were also approving his application for disability payments (without any waiting or vesting period), which would have amounted to $411,000 a year. Of that, the first $205,500 would have been tax-free.
In the words of TJIC, “Rope”.
Robert “Ratso” Rizzo and eight other officials and former officials of the city of Bell have been arrested and charged with 53 counts of “misappropriation of public funds and conflict of interest”.
Also among the arrested: Angela Spaccia, former assistant city manager for Bell, and former Maywood city manager.
Answer: the First District Court of Appeal.
We have previously noted the ongoing legal battle between the SF Bay Guardian and the SF Weekly (owned by Village Voice Media) over alleged predatory price-cutting by the latter. A jury awarded the Bay Guardian $21 million, but the Weekly appealed the decision.
That decision has now been upheld by the appellate court.
There is a claim in the linked article that the two parties have “reached a settlement”. Apparently, this settlement came after the SFBG was told they could seize and sell the Weekly‘s delivery trucks.
If you’re going to cheat, don’t be stupid about it. Try to show at least a little intelligence.
I draw my example today from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office, which has a bit of a problem. LACSO wants deputies in the jail to check on the inmates regularly, just to make sure none of them have decided to hang themselves, or are getting beaten to death by Bubba. So they have a system of bar code scanners around the jail; deputies are supposed to use those scanners to scan their assigned bar code as they make their rounds.
How did they discover this? Well, one of the inmates killed himself, and records showed that a deputy had been making his regular rounds. When the investigators dug a little deeper into the records…
…they discovered that computer records showed the deputy scanned several parts of the jail in 35 seconds — a physical impossibility.
…
As they investigated further, officials found that the deputy who was on duty during the suicide also went to the staff gym and made a “chow run” to a nearby restaurant on the day of the suicide when he should have been making his rounds, the report says.
The NYT would like for you to know that Maywood, California has not descended into anarchy after disbanding the city government and outsourcing services. Indeed, things seem to be going along pretty much as normal, at least in part because many of the city workers have apparently been rehired on a contract basis by those hired to run the city.
That’s putting it mildly.
Edited to add: One thing I didn’t pick up on, since I was on the road when the LAT reported this, is that many of Maywood’s functions have been outsourced to the city of Bell. It turns out that Bell has some issues as well: