Manuel Carrillo, Director of Parks and Recreation, Fires Commissioner

Manuel Carrillo Jr., Baldwin Park
Director of Parks and Recreation

Baldwin Park's Director of Parks and Recreation, Manuel Carrillo Jr., fires Commissioner John Rios with the support of the City Council. Mayor Manuel Lozano, Council Member Raquel Monica Garcia, and Council Member Ricardo Pacheco voted to fire the Parks and Recreation Commissioner. Carrillo requested the firing of the Commissioner because the Commissioner was revealing Carrillo's financial malfeasance; in this instance, Carrillo authorized the stealing of city resources to enrich a sham non-profit sports corporation.

According to sources, Rios was fired because he was asking questions of Carrillo - which is incidentally a commissioner's job. A commissioner's job is to oversee the department.

Rios asked Carrillo why he was allowing a soccer league to use and destroy the city fields and parks. The soccer league, a non-profit corporation, was charging the city's youth a fee of about $20 per child. The soccer league would use city property to conduct their operation, while ripping off the families of Baldwin Park. In the end, the city's parks and fields were destroyed. Taxpayer resources had to be spent to repair the fields.

One source stated that Carrillo, Lozano, Pacheco and Garcia permitted the theft of these city resources because the owner of the non-profit was giving all of them cash donations. The financial reporting forms, however, do not show any donations from the soccer league.

Once again, Carrillo and the City Council have engaged in a familiar pattern of misconduct. For asking questions, Carrillo requested that the City Commissioner be fired. Now, isn't that a commissioner's job - to ask questions and to oversea the board?

Where have we seen this before? In May of 2014, a boxing coach who worked there for 17 years asked whether it was fair to get a 40 cent an hour raise, Carrillo and the Council also fired him? Director of Parks and Recreation Suspends Employee For Whistleblowing Incidentally, Carrillo makes $200,000 a year.

Furthermore, the Council and Carrillo fired the boxing coach - after he was a named plaintiff accusing Carrillo of laundering money through an alter-ego non-profit. The suit is still pending.

As we know, for being the lawyer and investigator against Baldwin Park, I was arrested and then the Mayor filed a TRO.

Another pattern we're seeing is the potential abuse of using a non-profit status. Carrillo has been accused of running a fake non-profit, in which he collects donations from businesses the City engages with and buys Walmart gift cards in a sham Christmas event - called Santa Clothes. As the recipients, of which Carrillo is most likely one, all avoid paying taxes. Are we seeing the sports soccer league doing so too and really acting as a profit making entity?

The last pattern we see arising is that the victims are children and families of Baldwin Park. Carrillo cannot account for all the money he has collected from the children in the sports programs. Now, he endorses a sham sports non-profit to do the same.

But it gets worse. Carrillo and City Manager Shannon Yauchzee also contracted out a part of the City's Park to be a sewage dump. How would you like to see human waste seeping in a public park? But that's why they did.

It appears to me that what should have happened is that Carrillo is the one in need of an investigation and a possible firing. But in Baldwin Park - as we know - it's all about harming anyone who speaks out.

There are even more disturbing facts. The City of Baldwin Park engaged in a contract that allowed the non-profit soccer league to store their portable potties at the park. The soccer league didn't have to pay a cent for it. And when I asked Yauchzee if any non-profit could do so, he suggested that only sports non-profits could.

But instead of facing up to the allegations of corruption, the players involved shot the messenger - the Commissioner John Rios. And his message was simple: Clean up your act.

Well, nobody listened and some vandals knocked over the portal potties at the park, spilling human waste everywhere. But what can we say? I guess the City Manager and Council think its fine to expose children and members of the public to disease and toxic waste.

It's clear that Baldwin Park engaged in a crappy deal because its a crappy city run by crappy people and now there's crap everywhere, allowing me to report on a crappy story for you.