Huntington Beach residents didn't have their police helicopter patrolling the sky over their city late this afternoon because the pilots decided to leave the city and take the expensive bird on a low-flying joyride.
The aerial officers probably felt lottery-jackpot-type joy because somehow their path mirrored the vehicle path of a veteran OC Weekly investigative journalist who is presently investigating multiple Huntington Beach cops for corruption.
Imagine the coincidence!
]
Despite making a whopping nine, 90-degree turns over several miles on the
road, the journalist's vehicle must have possessed intense magnetic
power because the HBPD helicopter joyriders couldn't break free for
nearly 30 minutes, waited for the journalist during a 5-minute stop and
then resumed the tailing in the opposite direction.
The helicopter was not in HB or its contract city, Costa Mesa.
Another miraculous coincidence: the same reporter was the leading journalist who exposed dirty OC Sheriff Mike Carona and his top two assistant sheriffs before their FBI/IRS arrests and federal corruption convictions.
After
previous, similar police helicopter/journalist vehicle phenomena,
high-ranking HBPD police officials tried to explain away the pilot's conduct by
claiming the helicopter had been on secret surveillance missions.
It's
an inadvertently hilarious assertion that a loud mechanical bird
purposefully flying under 200 feet and mirroring the multiple roadway
turns of an investigative reporter can be on a secret police mission.
Perhaps
the HBPD boys are still mad about one of the reporter's articles that
exposed the department for national ridicule after its officers secretly
planted a loaded gun in a suspect's vehicle and then tried to coverup
the unethical conduct.
You can read that article HERE.
Orange
County's various police helicopter pilots have no meaningful oversight
or accountability despite the powerful, publicly-owned equipment they
are allowed to operate.
Costa Mesa and Newport Beach killed their
police helicopter programs last year because officials deemed it too
expensive and unproductive in real crime-fighting efforts.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
(Send correspondence to: rscottmoxley at ocweekly dot com)
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.