McCullough's Secret Agenda

A few weeks ago, when Mayor Robinson was talking about the “state of the City” I offered an alternative point of view about what was happening in the City.  Click Here. The strongest point I made was that in the past 3 years Lake Forest had more murders than every other city in South Orange County combined (that was patrolled by the OC Sheriff’s Department). It turns out there are 10 cities patrolled by OC SD and from 2011 to 2013 there were 7 murders and 4 of them were in Lake Forest. Of the 9 other cities, San Juan Capistrano had 2 murders in 2011 and Laguna Hills had 1 murder in 2012. No other city patrolled by OC SD reported a murder during that time.

I chose 2011 to 2013 because it was the most recent data, and I was anticipating that Scott Voigts, when he runs for election later this year, would lie to everyone again and tell us that “we are one of the safest cities in the U.S.” so I wanted to have the data on just how safe we are since Voigts took office. Readers of this column will know about Voigts’ lies and his broken promises, both of which spawned multi-part series in the recent past. 

I chose the 10 cities in South OC that are patrolled by OC Sheriff’s Department because when you do crime statistics, you always have the problem that crimes are handled differently in different jurisdictions. All my previous articles on crime have used these 10 cities.

I wasn’t only interested in murder, but in all the crimes, and so I reported at the same that the numbers of forcible rapes, robberies, DUIs, vehicular homicides, etc. also went up during the 2011-2013 time when Voigts was keeping us safe.

Hence the look at murder, forcible rape, robberies, etc. in the 10 cities, and the focus on 2011 to 2013 as reported in my column. There was nothing sinister in choosing these dates or these cities, and I had no idea how other South OC cities did (Irvine and Laguna Beach being the 2 cities in South OC not patrolled by OC SD), nor what the long term trend was, although over time, across the U.S., the trend in serious crimes has been down.

When the column and later the flyer appeared, Mrs. McCullough went into a fit, and from the council dais called me a “liar”, saying that I “distorted the truth”, and a few more comments not fit to print. Mayor Robinson sat passively as she ranted on: apparently he was unaware of the Council’s code of ethics that requires them to “Refrain from abusive conduct, personal charges, or verbal attacks upon the character, motives, ethics, morals, or comments of … the public. Refrain from other personal comments not germane to the issue before the City Council, commission, or committee.” Of course, for a council that routinely violates their own code of ethics, ignoring McCullough’s personal attacks was hardly precedent-setting.

Not content with her first rant, at a subsequent meeting she went off again, this time proclaiming that she “commissioned” a study that refuted my claims, and once more assuring everyone in the audience that we are one of the safest cities around. She misquoted from that study, a copy of which I subsequently obtained using the Freedom of Information Act, and she mis-represented the details surrounding the study.

Next time we'll go into the details.