Did SDPD supervisor Kevin Friedman undermine prosecution of cop Anthony Arevalos?

"The woman testified that Arevalos sexually assaulted her multiple times during her arrest. Friedman was at the scene that night and testified that he never saw Arevalos do anything inappropriate. The jury acquitted Arevalos of all charges related to the arrest."

New Scandal Brewed as SDPD Sergeant Testified
Feb 3, 2012
By Keegan Kyle

When San Diego police Sgt. Kevin Friedman took the stand in November, a jury got its first glimpse of the man responsible for supervising the defendant, former cop Anthony Arevalos.

Friedman was Arevalos' boss until March last year, when police arrested Arevalos and charged him with soliciting sexual bribes from seven women while on duty. Police accused Arevalos of committing 21 felonies, the jury found him guilty of eight.
The breadth and severity of the allegations, part of a larger spike in police misconduct, raised the most serious questions about internal oversight at the Police Department in the last decade. It spurred apologies from the police chief and promises to reform.

But Friedman's role supervising Arevalos — a focal point of internal scrutiny — didn't become public until the final days of Arevalos' criminal trial. Arevalos' attorneys called Friedman to testify about several traffic stops involving him and Arevalos.

Even today, as headlines reveal Friedman's own legal battles, his involvement in one of the city's biggest scandals in the last decade isn't well known. When media outlets across the city broke news last week that Friedman has been charged with fixing two traffic tickets, none mentioned Arevalos.

At the trial, Friedman's testimony played a pivotal role in reducing Arevalos' maximum prison sentence. Arevalos' attorneys pushed Friedman to poke holes in the prosecution's case and undermine the credibility of one accuser. A third of the felony charges were related to her accusations alone.

The woman testified that Arevalos sexually assaulted her multiple times during her arrest. Friedman was at the scene that night and testified that he never saw Arevalos do anything inappropriate. The jury acquitted Arevalos of all charges related to the arrest.

During its cross-examination of Friedman, the prosecution pressed him to explain any unusual behavior by Arevalos. Those questions elicited some of the most damning evidence about Arevalos' character during the entire trial.

Friedman testified that Arevalos was known to target female drivers and brag about the beauty of the women he arrested. Friedman said officers nicknamed Arevalos "the Las Colinas transport unit" because he arrested so many women.

"If someone was attractive, he would display it," Friedman testified.

The testimony provided some of the most concrete evidence that officers within the department knew Arevalos acted suspiciously but did nothing to address the behavior. Until one woman stepped forward in March last year, Arevalos continued patrolling San Diego's streets, where he arrested more women than his peers.

After the trial, Friedman went back to work at the Police Department and stayed out of public limelight until December, when his name and picture aired in a story by NBC7 San Diego.

The station broke news that Friedman was also the subject of a misconduct investigation. Police suspected he'd fixed traffic tickets for two county prosecutors last year.

Then, in January, the Attorney General's Office made the accusations official. It pressed misdemeanor charges against Friedman and one of the county prosecutors, Allison Debow.
According to the criminal complaint, a San Diego police officer issued citations to Debow and county prosecutor Amy Maund because they weren't wearing seat belts during a May 28 drive. Debow called Friedman, a close friend, and asked if there was something he could do about the tickets.
Friedman hid or destroyed the Police Department's record of the tickets, the complaint says, and then told Debow to shred her own copy. The complaint says Maund had no knowledge of the scheme until Debow told her to shred her ticket, too.
The complaint doesn't confirm how authorities learned of the incident. In December, NBC7 reported that a county prosecutor unknowingly had her ticket destroyed and later reported it to her superiors. The Attorney General's complaint only says Maund unknowingly had her ticket destroyed, not whether she reported it.
The District Attorney's Office declined to say when it began investigating the incident, but the Police Department first knew of the allegations July 8, spokeswoman Lt. Andra Brown said. The department pulled Friedman from patrol, assigned him to administrative duties and launched an internal investigation.
According to the Police Department's timeline, Friedman was under internal investigation throughout Arevalos' entire criminal trial. Brown said the department completed its probe Dec. 8, about a month after Friedman took the stand. In total, the department's investigation of Friedman took five months.
Though Friedman has been formally charged, he is still assigned to administrative duties and being paid. Debow is also on paid administrative leave until the case is resolved. Their next court hearing is scheduled for March 7.

DA Absent from SEDC Embezzlement Case

DA Absent from SEDC Embezzlement Case
May 9, 2011
by Will Carless
Voice of San Diego

We've been asked one question a lot in the days since former Southeastern Economic Development Corp. officials Carolyn Y. Smith and Dante Dayacap were charged with embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds: Why didn't San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis prosecute this case?

Back in 2008, when the SEDC scandal was first breaking, Mayor Jerry Sanders announced at a press conference that he had asked Dumanis to investigate the alleged wrongdoing at the agency. Sanders' move came after a city commissioned audit found SEDC's compensation practices had risen "to the level of fraud."

As I pointed out recently, Dumanis has a special Public Integrity Unit that she created back in 2007, before the SEDC scandal broke.

I put the question to Dumanis' spokesman, Steve Walker, in an email.

His response:

The Attorney General's Office is the appropriate agency to handle this prosecution. Since this is a pending case, the District Attorney's Office will have no further comment at this time.

The California Attorney General's Office does prosecute plenty of people accused of misusing public funds. The state AG investigated the wrongdoing at the city of Bell, for example.

Gary Schons, who heads up the local office of the attorney general, wouldn't go into the matter when I called him. He simply said that his office also has a specialty in prosecuting these sorts of cases.

But, while the AG is an appropriate agency to do the prosecution, it's unclear why Walker would categorize the AG as the appropriate agency. In other words, why is the AG more appropriate than the DA's Public Integrity Unit?

The case, which focuses on a clandestine system of bonuses we uncovered in this story back in 2008, fits the stated scope of the unit, which Dumanis created specifically to root out misuse of public funds and corruption by public and elected officials.

Smith and Dayacap were highly paid, high ranking public officials. (Both made far more than the mayor in 2007.)

Why the AG brought the case instead of Dumanis is unlikely to become public.

As a rule, prosecutors don't discuss pending cases because they don't want to give the impression that they're attempting to try the case in the media, said Professor Heidi Rummel, a former prosecutor and expert in criminal law at the University of Southern California.

Prosecutors want "to avoid any potential unfairness or prejudices to the defendant before he has his day in court," Rummel said.

That Dumanis' office isn't prosecuting the case is irrelevant because, as a public prosecutor, she represents the government as much as her colleagues at the Attorney General's Office, Rummel said. As such, she should be as wary of prejudicing the case by what she says publicly as she would be if her office was prosecuting it.

The precaution of not talking about a case extends not just to the case itself, but also to the reasons why a prosecutor did or didn't take the case on, Rummel said.

Complicating the SEDC matter is the fact that the original investigation wasn't done by the DA or the AG or even any state agency. It was done by the FBI, which usually teams with U.S. Attorney's Office to prosecute the subjects of its investigations.

I learned in court on Wednesday that Dayacap had received a "target letter" from the U.S. Attorney's Office more than a year ago. But at some point between then and now, the federal government decided not to prosecute and instead the case ended up at the state level.

(FBI spokesman Darryl Foxworth wouldn't comment on the case either.)

Certainly, the passing-around of the Smith/Dayacap prosecution has confused the two defendant's lawyers. Jerry Coughlan, who is defending Smith, and Marc Carlos, who's representing Dayacap, both told me on Wednesday that they had no idea the Attorney General's Office was involved in the case before their clients were served with arrest warrants.

If I find out any more about why Schons, not Dumanis, brought the case, I'll pass it along.

Bonnie Dumanis: D.A.'s Public Integrity Unit: Not So Public Lately

The prosecution of Kathleen Sterling is worrisome. Almost immediately after Sterling and other Tri-City Healthcare board members fired a group of administrators in December 2008, powerful friends of the fired individuals began asking Dumanis to file criminal charges against members of the board who voted in favor of the firings. Bonnie Dumanis did not respond to the first two attempts to involve the criminal justice system in the matter, preferring to allow the case to make its way through the civil courts. But apparently the third time is a charm. Does this have anything to do with the mayoral campaign and/or efforts to change the makeup of the Tri-City board?



D.A.'s Public Integrity Unit: Not So Public Lately
April 10, 2011
by Will Carless
Voice of San Diego

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis' website for her recently announced mayoral campaign waxes lyrical about the prosecutor's protection of the public, high conviction rates and strong managerial and organizational skills.

Not mentioned in the list of accomplishments is the District Attorney's Public Integrity Unit, a crack team of lawyers Dumanis set up with much fanfare in the spring of 2007 as a weapon against San Diego's image as a den of political iniquity and corruption.

Indeed, four years after the unit was created, San Diegans would be forgiven for wondering whether it actually still exists. Since the controversial — and largely botched — prosecution of Chula Vista Councilman Steve Castaneda in 2008, Dumanis' team of anti-corruption lawyers has been remarkably low-profile.

Dumanis says the unit has hardly been slacking off. Her office provided a list of 88 public integrity prosecutions since 2007 as evidence that complaints are being investigated. And Dumanis and her public integrity czar Leon Schorr stressed that most of the work of the Public Integrity Unit is investigative and doesn't necessarily result in prosecutions.

But 85 of the 88 prosecutions listed by Dumanis involved rank-and-file public employees, not politicians or elected officials, who were the original stated targets of the Public Integrity Unit. Lumped into the successes of the unit are cases against police officers and city employees, and for attorney misconduct.

In four years, three elected officials have been prosecuted by Dumanis' office and, so far, only one of those prosecutions has resulted in punitive action: Earlier this year former Encinitas Mayor Dan Dalager was fined $1,000 for receiving discounted kitchen appliances from a resident he assisted while in office.

Dumanis proposed the Public Integrity Unit as a new and necessary weapon in the local prosecutorial arsenal, and warned crooked politicians that she would be watching them, and that they'd better behave.

Driving home the point that this was to be a unit that would specifically target politicians, Dumanis said at the same press conference that she would no longer be endorsing political candidates, and that her office would not be used as a political pawn. She later endorsed in several important races, including the 2008 city attorney's race, in which she backed Jan Goldsmith against Mike Aguirre...

In 2008, Chula Vista Councilman Steve Castaneda was also accused by the Public Integrity Unit of using his office for financial gain, but investigators found no wrongdoing by the councilman. Castaneda was then charged with perjury for allegedly lying to the grand jury that investigated him. A jury acquitted him of most of the charges and hung on two of them, which Dumanis chose not to pursue.

Castaneda accused Dumanis at the time of prosecuting him at the behest of his political rival, Chula Vista Mayor Cheryl Cox.

San Diego sheriff's department raids Francine Busby fundraiser

Okay, Bonnie Dumanis, this is getting to be a bit one-sided. You prosecuted a young man for trying to take a picture at Republican Cheryl Cox's fundraiser. Let's see how you handle a case of far greater abuse at a Democratic fundraiser. The very least that should be done is to make the caller (who was not a neighbor) pay for the cost of the helicopter and charge him with making a false police report.

Why were a canine unit and helicopter deemed necessary for this action? What on earth did the caller say, if anything, to make the sheriff's department pull out all the stops? Or was it the sheriff's department that overreacted?

Who Was Busby's Party Pooper?
Voice of San Diego
By WILL CARLESS
July 2, 2009

On June 26, at 9 p.m. someone called the San Diego Sheriff's Department and made what the department has described as a "noise complaint." The call resulted in several deputies, a K-9 unit and a helicopter being deployed to a private residence where a political fundraiser was being held for congressional candidate Francine Busby.

The evening ended in chaos, with the host of the fundraiser in jail accused of obstructing a peace officer and battery on a peace officer and several middle-aged guests alleging excessive force by a deputy who they claim shot pepper spray indiscriminately at a crowd of guests.

Of all the questions to surface since that evening, the identity of the mystery caller to the Sheriff's Department, and the nature of his or her complaint remain perhaps the most perplexing. Because the department won’t reveal any information about the caller and won't release any documents or recordings of the incident, the public has no way of knowing if the caller was a disgruntled neighbor, upset about noise from the party, or a political saboteur, intent on disrupting Busby's fundraiser.

For her part, Busby wants to know if the caller was the same person who hid in some bushes on a plot adjacent to the home where the fundraiser was held and heckled her while she made a speech to supporters. She has asked the Sheriff's Department to clear the air by releasing a recording of the phone complaint.

The Sheriff's Department issued a statement saying that it received a noise complaint from an individual regarding the fundraising event. But the department has refused to elaborate on the incident because it is currently under internal investigation.

Sanford Toyen, a Sheriff's Department legal advisor, said the records are exempt from disclosure under the California Public Records Act because they are records of a law enforcement investigation.

But public records law expert Terry Francke disagreed. Francke said while the department may keep the identity of the complainer secret, it is required to make public the basic facts of the complaint under the CPRA.

"Merely using a label like 'noise complaint' is insufficient," Francke said.

Kevin Keenan, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties, said the Sheriff's Department has to play a delicate balancing act between releasing information about what could be a malicious complaint and protecting the privacy of the individual who made the call.

But Keenan said the department could release certain information about the incident -- for example, whether the complaint was made by a neighbor or someone who did not live near the party and could not legitimately make the claim that they were disturbed by it.

"When there's a vacuum of information and a lot of legitimate concerns, it's usually the best policy to get the information out there," Keenan said.

According to the Sheriff's Department, a deputy based in Encinitas was called to the residence on Rubenstein Avenue in Cardiff after the department received the noise complaint at about 9 p.m. on July 26.

About an hour before the deputy showed up, Busby had made a brief speech on the back patio of the large house where the fundraiser was being held.

That speech prompted the mystery heckler to launch his reported tirade.

As Busby spoke to the crowd through a public address system, a man hidden behind trees and bushes on a neighboring lot started to shout obscenities and insults about her policies, said four people who attended the party. The profanity-laced invective went on for several minutes before one of Busby's supporters decided to shout back, Busby said.

"Somebody yelled back at him. Whoever he was, he was hidden in the bushes, we couldn't see him," Busby said.

There are three homes whose gardens back onto the yard where the fundraiser was being held. In interviews, the residents of all three of those homes said they had no idea who might have shouted at the group gathered for the fundraiser. All of the residents said they were Democrats and said they had not heard any noise from the party until the Sheriff's Department helicopter showed up...

Cheryl Cox should resign or be recalled; she has brought corruption, not character, to the Chula Vista mayor's office

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis' office investigated and prosecuted a young man for taking two hours off when he worked for mayor Steve Padilla. Why? Because Cheryl Cox supporters were outraged that the young man used the time to try to get a photo of Cheryl Cox with disgraced politico David Malcolm. Dumanis topped off her gift to Cox cronies (including San Diego County Supervisor Greg Cox, Cheryl's husband) by prosecuting another Cox opponent, Steve Castaneda. That political prosecution ended with the vindication of the victim.

Cheryl Cox told the voters that she was the candidate with more "character." That gambit was a hoax.

Cheryl Cox's character has been revealed to be cynical and corrupt. Not only is Cheryl dishonest and secretive, but she abuses her power. And worst of all, she happily watches as the District Attorney's office abuses its power on her behalf.

Chief of staff Dan Forster should go, and he should go now.

And Cheryl Cox should go with him.

Mayor's top aide got pay for other job on city time
By Tanya Sierra
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
December 12, 2008

Mayor Cheryl Cox's chief of staff was paid at least $25,000 as a consultant for his previous employer, with some of that work done on city time, according to documents released this week.

Dan Forster, who has worked for Cox since December 2006, said last month that he made $10,000 plus expenses for his consulting work for the North Slope Borough, a government agency he once worked for in Alaska...

North Slope Borough records show that officials agreed to pay Forster up to $27,030 between September 2007 and August 2008...Forster said Wednesday that he might have underestimated how much he was paid when asked about the work last month.
Invoices show that Forster has so far been paid $24,957, about $2,000 shy of his $27,030 contract maximum...

It is unclear how much of the work was done on city of Chula Vista time, but numerous e-mails – many with lengthy attachments – were sent to and from Forster's city e-mail account during his regular work hours at City Hall.

Last month, Forster said he did very little consultant work on city time. Cox said she gave Forster permission to consult during work hours because he was a good employee with an excellent record of being available when needed.

[This attitude is a complete contradiction of Cox's attitude toward city manager David Garcia. Being available when needed was not an acceptable defense in Cheryl's opinion just one month ago.]

The city's Internet and e-mail policy, however, prohibits employees from operating a business through the city's Internet link.

[Cheryl made it clear when she was a Chula Vista Elementary School board member that she didn't think policies applied to her.]

...This week, Cox proposed eliminating Forster's position because the city is struggling with a projected $20 million budget deficit next year...

Forster, who makes $124,000 a year at the city, said the idea was his and that Cox initially objected...

[I believe Mr. Forster's comment regarding Cox's objection to a clever idea. Cox is not a gifted problem solver, nor does she believe in doing the right thing.]

If his position is eliminated, Forster would stay through the end of June, when this fiscal year ends.

[Very clever idea, Mr. Forster, but not quite good enough. You should leave now, and take Cheryl Cox with you. And you should both be grateful that San Diego has a District Attorney who protects corrupt public officials.]

Cheryl Cox didn't even bother to pretend to oppose political prosecutions

Peter O'Toole and Bonnie Dumanis seemed to have opened the Public Integrity Unit for the sole benefit of Cheryl Cox, going after Cox's opponents for the flimsiest of reasons. Money spend on defending public employees has never bothered Cheryl Cox. She spent huge amounts at Chula Vista Elementary School District.

Of course, at CVESD Cheryl was in charge of deciding who would be attacked, too. She was sort of a two-for-one deal: Bonnie Dumanis and Cheryl Cox wrapped up in one package. Castle Park Elementary still hasn't recovered from Cox's illegal actions and her expensive payments to lawyer to help her get away with it.

San Diego Union Tribune
City won't ask DA to reimburse legal bills
By Tanya Sierra
October 8, 2008

CHULA VISTA – Chula Vista officials won't ask the district attorney to reimburse the city $609,000 for legal bills one councilman said are from a “fishing expedition” that caught nothing.

The motion to ask for reimbursement failed on a 2-2 vote, after a heated discussion at last night's City Council meeting. Councilman John McCann was absent. Mayor Cheryl Cox and Councilman Jerry Rindone voted against requesting a refund, and Councilmen Rudy Ramirez and Steve Castaneda voted for it.

Reached Monday, McCann – who did not indicate he would be absent – said he did not know how he was going to vote, and he was still waiting for legal advice.

In the last two years, Chula Vista has spent more than $600,000 defending council members questioned or prosecuted by the district attorney's Public Integrity Unit.

Ramirez made the initial request last month. Over the course of several meetings, some residents criticized the city for agreeing to pay $194,000 for Castaneda's legal bills, which he incurred for his defense during a perjury trial in April. Castaneda was found not guilty on six counts and a mistrial was declared on four others...

Last month, Ramirez asked for the council's support in requesting reimbursement for legal bills. He said District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis has unfairly persecuted Chula Vista with investigations that have led nowhere.

In an interview Ramirez said: “When I go fishing, I pay for the fishing expedition.”...

Where did Bonnie Dumanis send former PIU chief Patrcik O'Toole?

In March 2007 (see photo above) San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis announced the formation of the Public Integrity Unit with much fanfare.

Bonnie Dumanis recently moved controversial Public Integrity Unit chief Patrick O'Toole out of the unit. But what is he doing now?

He continues to be absent from the District Attorney's office flow chart. But perhaps that is because he doesn't want to be seen as subordinate to Bonnie. He'd rather not be seen at all.

I guess Bonnie and Pat want to leave the matter of O'Toole's current assignment up to our imaginations.

Here are some possibilities I've come up with:

1. A new PIU has been formed, known as the "public intimidation unit" or, alternatively, the "political impact unit." It will continue to investigate political enemies, but in a secretive manner.

2. O'Toole's new job will continue to involve the tipster(s) who initiated the investigations of the Chula Vista city employee who took 2 hours off work to spy on mayor and former CVESD school board member Cheryl Cox's yacht party with David Malcolm, and councilman Steve Castaneda's claim that he never planned to buy a condo which he never bought.

3. O'Toole will ask for and receive assistance from his friends in the Bush Justice Department, an office which has proven to be expert in political prosecutions (Don Seligman), and hiring and firing based on ideology and politics (Anthony Gonzalez and Monica Goodling and the eight fired US attorneys).

4. O'Toole will prove to be an invaluable aid to Dumanis' political ambitions, or, alternatively, the two of them will go down in flames together when their secret shenanigans are exposed.

The Cheryl-Greg connection and a political prosecution

Patsy Fritz seems to agree with me about who approved of the shameful prosecution of Steve Castaneda. The D.A.'s office claimed that Castaneda had intended to buy a certain condo, and that even though he never bought it, the D.A.'s office believed that Castaneda lied about wanting to buy it.

San Diego's district attorney charged a man with a dozen or so felonies based on the apparent ability to read his mind. San Diego needs a new district attorney.

[Photos: Cheryl Cox on left, Bonnie Dumanis far right]

Here is a well-written message I found on the San Diego Growth Blog:

"What we have here, I think, is the effort to curry favor by Dumanis, and the Supes' quid-pro-quo for her support during their election campaigns.

"...I have wondered why the Lincoln Club and Republican Central Committee are not shown as "friends of the court" in O'Toole's capers. I see this as Bonnie sucking up not only to the Supes, but to the downtown Republican establishment. She's been a Republican for some time (prior to her first race for DA) but for obvious reasons needs to burnish her Republican rep to get the downtown establishment's support.

"I truly regret the time, $$$ and effort I put into that race, garnering votes in North County for Dumanis. I was S0 idealistic about Bonnie, but she's turned into just another run-of-the mill influence peddler - for her own interests. Sad! She could have been a real force for ethics and reform!"

...Patsy

Greg Cox fails to address question of tipster in Steve Castaneda case

Bob Castaneda, the brother of Chula Vista Councilman Steve Castaneda, raised important questions about the two prosecutions carried out by the San Diego District Attorney's Public Integrity Unit.

Bonnie Dumanis appointed Peter O'Toole to bring in two political opponents of Chula Vista mayor Cheryl Cox for questioning. Both of them were charged with lying during these odd investigations. How did these investigations get initiated? Why were two men prosecuted for felony perjury even though the investigations uncovered no crimes?

Why has a complaint about Cheryl Cox and her agents been ignored by the Special Operations department?

I can tell you who was the tipster in that matter. I was!

Supervisor Greg Cox has written a letter that does absolutely nothing to answer the questions that have been raised. Of course Cox protests that he has done nothing wrong. But how will he restore the credibility of the District Attorney's office? He makes no effort to do so.

Here is a comparison of the letters by Bob Castaneda and Greg Cox.


The question remains: was the PIU tipster a friend of Cheryl and Greg Cox?

The answer seems sort of obvious, doesn't it?

Why wasn't Bonnie Dumanis' Public Integrity Unit interested in this case?

Voice of San Diego

DA Won't Prosecute Tom Story

So the charges have been formally dismissedagainst former Sunroad executive Tom Story, and District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis has released a statement saying she won't be bringing charges either.

A recap: Story was the former city official who was hired by Sunroad Enterprises and then became embroiled in the scandal over a building in Kearny Mesa that violated Federal Aviation Authority guidelines. Story was charged with violating lobbying laws by City Attorney Mike Aguirre.

But Aguirre was thrown off the case because a judge ruled he had violated ethical rules. That has left the prosecution of Story in something of a legal limbo.

Earlier this month, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis released a statement saying that she would at least consider bringing charges against Story. Now, Dumanis states that her office does not have jurisdiction to bring charges against Story.

There is one other way Story could be charged. Earlier this month, apparently on the advice of Dumanis, Mayor Jerry Sanders asked the City Council to consider hiring a special prosecutor to go after Story.

The City Council reached a deadlock, voting 4-4, which meant that no special prosecutor was appointed.

Story, it seems, is free to go about his business.


-- WILL CARLESS
April 30, 2008

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2008/05/01/this_just_in/209story043008.txt

Who is feeding tips to Bonnie Dumanis' Public Integrity Unit?

Lots of people want to know who contaminated Todd Sommer's tissue samples with arsenic and caused Cynthia Sommer to spend over two years in jail in San Diego for a murder that apparently never happened. This is important to know, but it was a freak occurrence, not part of a pattern.

We are seeing a pattern in another part of San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis' office: the Public Integrity Unit.

I'm interested to know who has been playing puppet master to Bonnie Dumanis.

Who is it who manages to get Patrick O'Toole's Public Integrity Unit to investigate Cheryl Cox's political opponents, then charge them with perjury during those investigations when O'Toole can't find anything more serious to charge them with?

I have an idea of who it might be.

I suspect it's the same person who got the County Grand Jury to investigate Proposition 227 compliance at Castle Park Elementary School at a time when crimes were being covered up at the school.

I reported those crimes to Supervisor Greg Cox. The only response from the county was the grand jury investigation.

I believe the District Attorney either got a direct "suggestion" from Greg Cox regarding all three of these investigations, or at least got a "go ahead" from Mr. Cox after one of his wife's associates came to the D.A. with a "tip."

And who might this other tipster be? My list of possibilities starts with Bob Watkins of Lincoln Club and San Diego County Office of Education fame, who has been endorsed by Cheryl Cox in his run for Duncan Hunter's seat.

Dumanis: This prosecution is too bizarre to be anything other than politically motivated

Chula Vista City Councilman Steve Castaneda goes on trial today in the second politically-motivated prosecution out of a total of two prosecutions by the secretive "Public Integrity Unit" formed by San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and the recently low-profile Patrick O'Toole.

Prosecutor Patrick O'Toole was unable to find any crime committed by Castaneda, so he charged him with lying during the investigation about whether or not he intended to buy a condo.

In April 2007, the Public Integrity Unit began prosecuting political opponents of Cheryl Cox. Patrick O'Toole, who had previously been appointed as US Attorney for San Diego by Attorney General John Ashcroft, headed the unit.

O'Toole prosecuted a staffer for mayor Steven Padilla who had taken two hours off work in an effort to get a photograph of Cheryl Cox with her disgraced family friend David Malcolm at a twilight yacht party fundraiser for Cox. The staffer was charged with five felony counts of perjury for telling a grand jury that he filled out his leave slip from work before rather than after he took off from his job at the City of Chula Vista. He pled guilty to lesser charges as part of a plea deal.

The now-dormant unit ended its active phase with a second and final prosecution, that of Steve Castaneda, who had run against Cheryl Cox for mayor.

Castaneda was prosecuted for allegedly lying about whether he planned to buy a condo, even though he never bought the condo in question.

According to the San Diego Union Tribune, "Castaneda was a tenant at the complex and was accused of seeking favors, such as free rent, from Sunbow owner Ash Israni, according to the 1,200-page grand jury transcript. The investigation found that Castaneda paid his rent and didn't ask for special treatment. O'Toole told the grand jury the perjury charges are warranted because Castaneda should be held accountable for 'lying about the facts'; even if no crime was uncovered...Castaneda has been vocal about O'Toole's investigations, saying they are politically motivated. He contended that Dumanis conspired with Chula Vista Mayor Cheryl Cox, his political rival in the 2006 mayoral primary."

"DA unit works as quietly as it began"


"Trial and Re-election bid could coincide"

Note to Bonnie Dumanis: This is how you conduct an investigation

Today in Finance for April 8, 2008
SEC Charges Five Ex-Officials in San Diego Muni Fraud

Commission Chairman Christopher Cox has cited the city government's scandal as a reason to expand the SEC's regulatory powers over municipal bonds.

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/11002450/c_10999584?f=home_todayinfinance&x=1


Stephen Taub
CFO.com | US
April 8, 2008
The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil fraud charges against five former San Diego city officials—mostly finance professionals—for their roles in the city’s financial crisis in 2002 and 2003.

The SEC charged the individuals for failing to disclose to investors buying the city’s municipal bonds that there were funding problems with San Diego's pension and retiree health care obligations and those liabilities had put the city in financial peril.

advertisement The five named were former city manager Michael Uberuaga, former city treasurer Mary Vattimo, former auditor an comptroller Edward Ryan, former deputy city manager of finance Patricia Frazier, and former assistant auditor & comptroller Teresa Webster.

"The facts will clearly demonstrate that all city officials and staff members acted with good faith and honest intention with regard to the bond offerings by the city of San Diego," stated Webster's attorney, Frank Vecchione. "At no time did Terri Webster act inappropriately or with intent to deceive any potential investor. The time has come to put the misperceptions and misrepresentations regarding Ms. Webster and these bonds to rest. We intend to do so."

Frazier's attorney could not be reached at presstime. Lawyers for the remaining three former officials did not return phone calls from CFO.com.

In the fraud complaint filed by the SEC on Monday, the commission charges that the five former San Diego officials knew that the city had been intentionally underfunding its pension obligations so that it could increase pension benefits while deferring the costs. The officials were allegedly aware that the city would face severe difficulty funding its future pension and retiree health care obligations unless it raised new revenues or pension and health care benefits or city services were cut.

The SEC alleges the ex-officials knew that the city’s unfunded pension liability was projected to grow dramatically from $284 million at the beginning of fiscal year 2002 to an estimated $2 billion by 2009 and that the city’s liability for retiree health care was another estimated $1.1 billion. But the officials failed to disclose those and other material facts in bond-offering documents and continuing disclosures, it added.

In a speech, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox has cited securities fraud within San Diego's city government in those years as a rationale for extending the commission's regulatory powers over municipal bonds. "While the SEC has anti-fraud authority -- allowing us to come in and clean up messes like [San Diego] after the fact," he said in a July 2007 speech, neither the SEC nor any other federal regulator can compel the municipal bond market to make the same sorts of disclosures that the SEC requires in the corporate securities market. "It's a basic common-sense consumer protection that is way overdue," Cox said at the time, calling for legislation giving the SEC "limited powers" to assure transparency in muni offering.

In its current complaint, the SEC alleges that Uberuaga signed the closing letter for one of the bond offerings, falsely certifying that it was accurate and did not contain any misleading statements. Ryan signed letters falsely representing that the city’s audited financials included in the securities offerings were accurate, the regulator alleged.

The commission also charged that Frazier regularly reviewed and revised the false and misleading disclosure documents and signed the closing letter for two out of a total five bond offerings relevant to the case. She falsely certified the disclosures as accurate and did not contain any misleading statements reviewed and made presentations to the rating agencies, the SEC alleged.

Webster reviewed city financials that contained some of the false and misleading disclosures, the commission charged, alleging that Vattimo took part in drafting the city’s false and misleading disclosures. Vattimo and Webster both allegedly knew that in 2003, the rating agencies had concerns about the city’s growing pension burdens and that those obligations could hurt the city’s credit rating. "Nevertheless, they withheld material facts from the rating agencies," the SEC added.


The SEC previously issued a sanction against San Diego for committing securities fraud by failing to disclose to investors important information about its pension and retiree health care obligations in the sale of its municipal bonds in 2002 and 2003. To settle the action, the city agreed to cease and desist from future securities fraud and to retain an independent consultant for three years to foster compliance with its disclosure obligations under the federal securities laws.

In December 2007, the SEC and the outside auditors for the city and its pension system, Thomas J. Saiz and Calderon, Jaham & Osborn, settled charges against the firm. Without admitting or denying the allegations in the complaint, the audit firm consented to the entry of a final judgment permanently enjoining them from violating the antifraud provisions of federal securities laws. The firm, which acted as the auditor of the city and the benefits plan, also paid a civil penalty of $15,000.