Police chief's many hats raise questions
San Diego Union-Tribune letters
Chula Vista chief’s jobs raise questions
Susan and Peter Watry
Dec. 9, 2011
Recently on KUSI, Chula Vista Police Chief David Bejarano said that he spends 14 hours a day on Chula Vista police business (“Bejarano cuts ties to security firm,” Dec. 9). By that statement, it would seem that he certainly earns the $187,000 a year that Chula Vista pays him.
But then, when does he find time to earn $100,000 to $1 million as a board member of Vibra Bank? And when does he find time to earn $9,000 as a board member of the Chula Vista Elementary School District? And when did he find time to earn the $100,000 to $1 million that he earned, until recently, as an owner in Presidential Securities? And when does he find time to earn $1,000 to $10,000 serving as a consultant to Tatro & Zamoyski, LLP?
Whew, some guy!
And now he seems somehow mixed in with some private security firm, which in turns seems somehow mixed in with trying to smuggle Gadhafi’s son into Mexico. Wow. Wait until Vanity Fair writes its next story about Chula Vista!
Chula Vista
Stock options and security companies
J.F. Smith
Dec. 9, 2011
For the past two days, after reading about the hundreds of thousands of dollars that David Bejarano has made via stock options from a bank in which he serves on the board, at least two questionable security companies that he has “lent his name to,” and to consulting for an attorney firm that specializes in security legal services, all while serving as the sitting chief of police in Chula Vista, I have to ask the question — does “conflict of interest” mean anything anymore?
San Diego
Showing posts with label . Bejarano (David Bejarano). Show all posts
Showing posts with label . Bejarano (David Bejarano). Show all posts
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Former Donovan State Prison guard Art Moreno seems to take advantage of his partner's new job--or is David Bejarano asking too much for Security Firm?
Somebody's being unreasonable here, and it's hard to know who it is. Perhaps Art Moreno figured a huge windfall had ended up in his lap when Bejarano was chosen as Chula Vista's top cop. The new job means Bejarano must give up the company. Bejarano says either his partner pays for his half or the company should be dissolved. But maybe the problem is this: perhaps the company isn't really worth much without Bejarano in it.
Top Chula Vista cop, partner in dispute
Police chief co-owns security company
By Tanya Sierra
San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE
May 7, 2010
In addition to being Chula Vista’s police chief, where he earns an annual salary of $187,000, David Bejarano is involved in a number of other activities. Among them:
• Chula Vista Elementary School District trustee
• Co-owner of Presidential Security Services
• Vibra Bank board member
• South Bay Community Services board member
• Consultant for personal injury law firm Tatro & Zamoyski
CHULA VISTA — A business partner has accused Chula Vista Police Chief David Bejarano of writing fraudulent checks on the private security firm’s account, an allegation that the city forwarded to the District Attorney’s Office.
City policy prohibits police officers from owning or working for private security firms in Chula Vista, and Bejarano’s efforts to dissociate himself from Chula Vista-based Presidential Security are at the root of the business partners’ dispute.
Bejarano co-owns Presidential Security Services with former Donovan State Prison guard Art Moreno. Bejarano stepped down as president of the company in August when he became police chief. About that time, he also curtailed his duties at the firm and wanted his name removed from advertising, marketing and other public material...
Bejarano’s lawyer, Joseph Casas, said the chief is the victim of a smear campaign. He added that his client’s name was removed from bank records without proper authority...
The corporation’s board of directors is composed of Moreno and his wife, Colleen, and Bejarano and his wife, Esperanza.
Bejarano, a former San Diego police chief, has filed suit in San Diego Superior Court to disband the company. In the suit, Bejarano alleges that Moreno and his wife “repeatedly breached their fiduciary duties and wrongfully acted in their own self-interest.”...
Presidential continues to pay David Bejarano a salary. Last year, he earned $73,820 with the firm and charged about $15,000 on a company credit card, Moreno said.
City Attorney Bart Miesfeld said as long as Bejarano is trying to cut his ties with the company, and as long as his responsibilities there do not interfere with his duties as police chief, he is not violating city policy that prohibits a police officer from working for or having a financial interest in a private police agency in the city.
Simon Mayeski, a member of California Common Cause’s San Diego chapter, questioned that assessment.
“I wonder why the city attorney is trying to write around this regulation, which sounds like a reasonable and necessary restriction,” Mayeski said. “It opens up way too many questions and puts the chief in a less-than-perfect position going about his business.”
Common Cause is a nonprofit that says it strives for an “open, honest and accountable government.”
Presidential Security has a number of contracts to provide security guards for Chula Vista businesses, including two shelters run by South Bay Community Services, where Bejarano serves as a board member.
City Councilmen Rudy Ramirez and Steve Castaneda said Thursday that Bejarano should have left Presidential Security by now.
“There should have been a specific timeline in which he had to divest himself from that business,” Castaneda said.
Mayor Cheryl Cox said she backs Sandoval and Miesfeld.
“I’m confident that the city manager and city attorney have done their due diligence,” she said.
[Due diligence? Does Cheryl Cox have any idea what that means? When she was a CVESD trustee, she helped make sure that no investigation was ever done regarding a 2001 report by two teachers that they believed there might be a mass shooting at Castle Park Elementary. At the same time, the district specifically claimed it had done its due diligence.]
Meanwhile, the future of Presidential Security and its 40 employees remains unclear.
After Bejarano was hired as police chief, he suggested to Moreno that they divide the company, according to an September e-mail exchange provided by Moreno.
“It can be done quickly, with minimal costs and you and your family can operate your share any way you want and my wife will operate our share,” Bejarano wrote to Moreno in a Sept. 28 e-mail.
Moreno said Bejarano should sell his interest in the company.
“Our last offer to him was $50,000, and we never heard back from him,” Moreno said.
Casas, Bejarano’s attorney, said Moreno has not made a serious offer.
“Mr. Moreno can put an offer on the table to us, which he has yet to do in any meaningful way,” Casas said.
A court date on Bejarano’s suit to disband the company has not been set.
Top Chula Vista cop, partner in dispute
Police chief co-owns security company
By Tanya Sierra
San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE
May 7, 2010
In addition to being Chula Vista’s police chief, where he earns an annual salary of $187,000, David Bejarano is involved in a number of other activities. Among them:
• Chula Vista Elementary School District trustee
• Co-owner of Presidential Security Services
• Vibra Bank board member
• South Bay Community Services board member
• Consultant for personal injury law firm Tatro & Zamoyski
CHULA VISTA — A business partner has accused Chula Vista Police Chief David Bejarano of writing fraudulent checks on the private security firm’s account, an allegation that the city forwarded to the District Attorney’s Office.
City policy prohibits police officers from owning or working for private security firms in Chula Vista, and Bejarano’s efforts to dissociate himself from Chula Vista-based Presidential Security are at the root of the business partners’ dispute.
Bejarano co-owns Presidential Security Services with former Donovan State Prison guard Art Moreno. Bejarano stepped down as president of the company in August when he became police chief. About that time, he also curtailed his duties at the firm and wanted his name removed from advertising, marketing and other public material...
Bejarano’s lawyer, Joseph Casas, said the chief is the victim of a smear campaign. He added that his client’s name was removed from bank records without proper authority...
The corporation’s board of directors is composed of Moreno and his wife, Colleen, and Bejarano and his wife, Esperanza.
Bejarano, a former San Diego police chief, has filed suit in San Diego Superior Court to disband the company. In the suit, Bejarano alleges that Moreno and his wife “repeatedly breached their fiduciary duties and wrongfully acted in their own self-interest.”...
Presidential continues to pay David Bejarano a salary. Last year, he earned $73,820 with the firm and charged about $15,000 on a company credit card, Moreno said.
City Attorney Bart Miesfeld said as long as Bejarano is trying to cut his ties with the company, and as long as his responsibilities there do not interfere with his duties as police chief, he is not violating city policy that prohibits a police officer from working for or having a financial interest in a private police agency in the city.
Simon Mayeski, a member of California Common Cause’s San Diego chapter, questioned that assessment.
“I wonder why the city attorney is trying to write around this regulation, which sounds like a reasonable and necessary restriction,” Mayeski said. “It opens up way too many questions and puts the chief in a less-than-perfect position going about his business.”
Common Cause is a nonprofit that says it strives for an “open, honest and accountable government.”
Presidential Security has a number of contracts to provide security guards for Chula Vista businesses, including two shelters run by South Bay Community Services, where Bejarano serves as a board member.
City Councilmen Rudy Ramirez and Steve Castaneda said Thursday that Bejarano should have left Presidential Security by now.
“There should have been a specific timeline in which he had to divest himself from that business,” Castaneda said.
Mayor Cheryl Cox said she backs Sandoval and Miesfeld.
“I’m confident that the city manager and city attorney have done their due diligence,” she said.
[Due diligence? Does Cheryl Cox have any idea what that means? When she was a CVESD trustee, she helped make sure that no investigation was ever done regarding a 2001 report by two teachers that they believed there might be a mass shooting at Castle Park Elementary. At the same time, the district specifically claimed it had done its due diligence.]
Meanwhile, the future of Presidential Security and its 40 employees remains unclear.
After Bejarano was hired as police chief, he suggested to Moreno that they divide the company, according to an September e-mail exchange provided by Moreno.
“It can be done quickly, with minimal costs and you and your family can operate your share any way you want and my wife will operate our share,” Bejarano wrote to Moreno in a Sept. 28 e-mail.
Moreno said Bejarano should sell his interest in the company.
“Our last offer to him was $50,000, and we never heard back from him,” Moreno said.
Casas, Bejarano’s attorney, said Moreno has not made a serious offer.
“Mr. Moreno can put an offer on the table to us, which he has yet to do in any meaningful way,” Casas said.
A court date on Bejarano’s suit to disband the company has not been set.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Is David Bejarano improving CVESD?
I made a big error when I created this post on Feb. 17, 2008. I found out how wrong I was on Feb. 21, 2008, and immediately removed the incorrect statements.
I made an incorrect assumption based on my own personal experience in this case. My appeal of a Superior Court decision was rejected as late-filed because I didn't file it within 60 days of the decision. My lawyer, Elizabeth Schulman, wrote me a letter telling me that the deadline was 90 days.
So I thought the Danielle Coziahr v. CVESD case had the same deadline. When CVESD didn't file an appeal within 60 days of the verdict, I thought it had decided not to appeal, and said so on this post. I was wrong. I apologize. The actual deadline is determined by this rule: "Unlimited Civil appeals are filed within 60 days from the date of mailing of the Notice of Entry of Judgment or if the notice is not
mailed, 180 days from the date of entry of judgment."
In my first version of this post, I wrote that the answer to the title question (Is David Bejarano improving CVESD?) was "yes."
It turns out that the true answer is not quite so positive.
Which is not to say that David Bejarano is doing anything particularly wrong. Even if he wanted to change things at CVESD, he only has one vote.
The only honorable thing he could do would be to resign from a corrupt board, and as we all know, Americans are not in the habit of resigning on principle anymore. The days of the decent and honorable US Attorney General Elliot Richardson are long gone. Many current government officials are making Richard Nixon look good. The CVESD board seems to be following the Nixon playbook line for line.
-Posted by Maura Larkins on Feb. 22, 2008
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Show some class, Pamela Smith and Bertha Lopez!
I'm sure that neither of the women currently on the Chula Vista Elementary School District board allows herself to be treated as less capable on the job based on the fact that she is female. Yet that's exactly how Pamela Smith and Bertha Lopez treated young teacher Danielle Coziahr because she had a baby. A jury found it to be illegal.
Show some class, ladies.
Apologize and settle the case, instead of appealing it.
Quit being rubber stamps for Pat Judd and Larry Cunningham.
You, too, David Bejarano. Is this what you signed up for when you joined the school board? To waste money on lawyers instead of teachers? Apologize, don't appeal.
FOR THE DETAILS OF the Coziahr v. CVESD lawsuit, click the link "A school district lawsuit (Coziahr v. CVESD) at right.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Cheryl Cox plays hardball with others, and softball with her friends
Cheryl Cox has moved from education to city government, and from suborning perjury to getting someone who took a couple hours off of work and might have lied about it charged with multiple perjury felonies. It seems that Jason Moore took some photos of a twilight yacht party held to raise money for her mayoral campaign. You wouldn't expect to wind up in jail for years for doing that, would you?
Cheryl likes to intimidate people. She once called me up, and started by saying, "Maura....This is Dr. Cox."
I knew I was supposed to feel intimidated because she gave herself a title and called me by my first name, but actually I had to struggle to stifle a laugh. Cheryl's doctorate is in education, and I know what it takes to get a doctorate in education. It isn't much. Have you ever heard of anybody flunking out of a graduate school education program? Only if he or she didn't show up. They seldom have to compete against geniuses. In fact, candidates for advanced degrees in education have the lowest GRE scores of all advanced degree candidates. Could that fact be related to the fact that we have a failing school system?
Cheryl approved multiple felonies, the perjury of a law officer among them,committed on behalf of Chula Vista Elementary School District. When I called her up to talk about them, she refused to discuss it. I did fax documents to her, so she was well informed of the crimes. She just didn't think they mattered, because they were committed by herself and her agents. She thinks she is above the law. So does Bonnie Dumanis.
David Bejarano has taken her place at CVESD. His wife is the secretary for Susan Fahle, who ignored my public records requests for over a year. I strongly suspect that Esperanza (Espie) Bejarano knows a lot about the crimes committed at Castle Park Elementary and CVESD. But of course, her husband was handpicked to help the board keep their secrets, wasn't he?
Would voters be SHOCKED to find out that Cheryl Cox spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to cover up crimes and protect her political career? Perhaps, since she campaigned on a platform of CHARACTER and FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY. She apparently fooled a lot of people into thinking she was better that Steve Padilla. Actually, Cheryl Cox is a lot worse. She finds it easy to talk the talk of clean government. She's just not able to walk the walk.
Cheryl likes to intimidate people. She once called me up, and started by saying, "Maura....This is Dr. Cox."
I knew I was supposed to feel intimidated because she gave herself a title and called me by my first name, but actually I had to struggle to stifle a laugh. Cheryl's doctorate is in education, and I know what it takes to get a doctorate in education. It isn't much. Have you ever heard of anybody flunking out of a graduate school education program? Only if he or she didn't show up. They seldom have to compete against geniuses. In fact, candidates for advanced degrees in education have the lowest GRE scores of all advanced degree candidates. Could that fact be related to the fact that we have a failing school system?
Cheryl approved multiple felonies, the perjury of a law officer among them,committed on behalf of Chula Vista Elementary School District. When I called her up to talk about them, she refused to discuss it. I did fax documents to her, so she was well informed of the crimes. She just didn't think they mattered, because they were committed by herself and her agents. She thinks she is above the law. So does Bonnie Dumanis.
David Bejarano has taken her place at CVESD. His wife is the secretary for Susan Fahle, who ignored my public records requests for over a year. I strongly suspect that Esperanza (Espie) Bejarano knows a lot about the crimes committed at Castle Park Elementary and CVESD. But of course, her husband was handpicked to help the board keep their secrets, wasn't he?
Would voters be SHOCKED to find out that Cheryl Cox spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to cover up crimes and protect her political career? Perhaps, since she campaigned on a platform of CHARACTER and FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY. She apparently fooled a lot of people into thinking she was better that Steve Padilla. Actually, Cheryl Cox is a lot worse. She finds it easy to talk the talk of clean government. She's just not able to walk the walk.
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