Sandra’s Got Their Guns
Sheriff’s concealed-weapon policy prompts accusation of homosexual, Zionist plot
The 2,286 folks who got concealed-weapon permits (CCWs) under Sheriff Mike Carona must be shootin’ mad. Sandra Hutchens, the new boss at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, has decided to trash the previous administration’s wildly liberal CCW policy. That one hinged on an applicant giving the sheriff a campaign contribution or, apparently, demonstrating the ability to print one’s own name on an application without making more than two spelling errors. Hutchens says she’s going to issue CCW permits only to people showing “good cause . . . about a clear and present danger.”
The policy shift has left local Republican supervisors antsy, given indigestion to gun enthusiasts and outraged the Southern California anti-Jewish-conspiracy types. On Oct. 13, a local gun-rights blog posted an entry titled “Dyke Sheriff Begins taking away concealed weapons permits.” The post, written by a coward hiding behind the identity “Zenos,” continued, “And the great disarming begins. With the impending doom of the U.S. economy and the possible collapse of the government, the last thing the jews want is a pissed off armed public. Sorry you filthy fucking jews, it’s not going to work. People know it’s you now.” (All typos in the preceding quotation are, appropriately, [sic].)
Imagine what they’d say about Hutchens if she weren’t all of the following: a heterosexual Republican, Second Amendment supporter and lifelong law-enforcement officer who has not been afraid to use lethal force in her career.
I don’t know if Hutchens is Jewish; she says her religion is “irrelevant.” And I’m not sure if Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters or someone else will challenge Hutchens in the 2010 election, but I’ve got news for her political enemies: Don’t underestimate her.
On Oct. 9, Hutchens spoke at a Chapman University leadership conference and displayed not just depth and a sense of humor, but also charisma that, frankly, I didn’t know she possessed. (Prior to his FBI arrest on corruption charges, Carona had charm, too. His was awesome, if empty—like a traveling vacuum salesman fresh off an Alabama prison stint.) After the corruption we’ve seen over the years at OCSD, nobody is more suspect of sheriff’s department management, but I didn’t get that “fake” vibe from Hutchens. The sheriff, who has been in office for four months, never mentioned Carona, but her points ran contrary to his practices, the ones that unfortunately made the department an international embarrassment.
Hutchens told the crowd that she isn’t going to bow to political pressure on the CCW issue, isn’t afraid to hire people she considers smarter than herself, and doesn’t want deputies who will “blindly follow orders,” but rather ones willing to “challenge” the department to improve. She thinks employee accountability will increase when they see consistent, fair enforcement of policies, she says, and is committed to making the department “open, transparent and inclusive.”
That last one is a tall order. While the department has outstanding folks, there’s also an entrenched group of Carona-promoted knuckle-draggers who despise the notion of public accountability. Will they trip her?
Here’s what’s certain now: Despite an early fumble telling District Attorney Tony Rackauckas that he had no business questioning a botched sheriff’s probe into an alleged pedophile deputy, Hutchens is growing into her job. The age- and gender-diverse crowd at the Chapman event warmed to her quickly because, they told me, she seemed genuine.
MARRIED TO THE SNOB
Sassy Orange County Superior Court Judge William Froeberg, arguably the inspiration for Montgomery Burns on The Simpsons, frequently sucks his teeth, yawns and makes facial expressions during criminal trials similar to a person passing post-lunch gas. Judges such as Froeberg, a former prosecutor, rarely miss opportunities to let folks know who’s king in the courtroom. He has even felt compelled to comment about my choice of shirt in front of a jury hearing a death-penalty case.
Whatever.
But for years it’s puzzled me that Froeberg presides over cases involving sex crimes when his wife, Rosanne, heads the district attorney’s sex-crimes unit. It’s not that I’ve thought prosecutors in Rosanne’s well-run unit have taken advantage of the situation. By my reckoning, they’re all exceptional deputy DAs, tireless public servants and damn good people who’ve put countless monsters in prison.
Still, the close, personal relationship between this powerful judge and this high-ranking prosecutor seems to unnecessarily raise potential ethics questions. This issue became relevant again when I recently obtained evidence that prosecutor Froeberg used the e-mail account of Judge Froeberg to respond to law-enforcement officers attempting to build a case against a controversial sex-crimes suspect.
In March, for example, Orange County Sheriff’s Department Deputy James R. England sent an e-mail to Rosanne Froeberg’s DA e-mail account concerning the status of his investigation into Gerald Stenger, the fellow deputy and pedophile suspect mentioned above. (Stenger allegedly molested at least two young boys before committing suicide in his patrol car as DA investigators prepared to arrest him earlier this year.) Apparently oblivious to the appearance of her act or, worse, eager to underscore its potency, Froeberg responded to England’s communication from an Internet account bearing the name “William Froeberg.”
Surely, even in OC, that’s a no-no?
KEEP YOUR EX-ENEMIES CLOSER?
There was a time when Assemblyman Todd Spitzer (R-Brea) wasn’t a fan of DA Tony Rackauckas and vice versa, but those days are apparently long gone with Spitzer set to retire from his legislative job and rejoin the OCDA on Dec. 1.
“We are excited about the wealth of talent Todd will bring to our office,” DA spokeswoman Susan Kang Schroeder, who hasn’t been a Spitzer fan in the past, tells me. “He has gained extensive experience in the criminal-law arena since he left the office.”
The assemblyman, who made himself a pro-law-enforcement advocate in Sacramento during three terms, was coy with me about what role he’ll play. However, Schroeder says he’ll be a key prosecutor, a member of Rackauckas’ senior management team and the only one with the special title of senior trial counsel.
“We are going to look for every way to utilize his talents,” Schroeder says. “His role is still under development, but I expect his duties will include felony trial work.”
Mike Madigan, an accomplished private detective who writes the Twisted Badge website, broke the news last week that Spitzer spent a recent day talking to his future colleagues and sitting through a training course.
Does any of this matter? Yes. Spitzer, a former county supervisor, is conventional wisdom’s frontrunner to become the county’s top prosecutor after Rackauckas retires.
ANTI-AMERICAN, PRO-HATE CROWD WEIGHS IN ON JUDICIAL RACE
The freaks who claim gay Americans prompted God to aid the 9/11 terrorists in their attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon want Kermit Marsh to win OC’s lone contested judicial contest.
Do you need another reason to vote for Debra Carrillo?
Okay.
Marsh is a standard-issue Westminster GOP pol; Carrillo is a deputy district attorney who chases white-collar crooks.
VANITY UNFAIR
In its current issue, Vanity Fair profiles accused corporate crook/sex freak/drug addict Henry Nicholas of Newport Coast and Broadcom fame. Written by Bethany McLean, a superb journalist in the Enron scandal, this story ends with a pivotal 2004 quote from Nicholas but fails to mention the source: my then-OC Weekly colleague, Dave Wielenga, who wrote the seminal pre-FBI-indictment article about Nicholas. In contrast, the story credited the LA Times when it swiped from that paper.
IT’S YOUR MONEY, BUT THE GOVERNMENT SPENDS IT
The Board of Supervisors ignored shrinking public coffers to recently give a well-connected local law firm a whopping $60-per-hour raise for consulting services; taxpayers must now pay $460 per hour plus expenses to Stradling Yocca Carlson N Rauth—which you might recognize as the firm that sponsors Rick Reiff’s Inside OC KOCE broadcast.
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.