Boxing Coach Lawsuit Has Been Filed for Appeal - Should the City Pay For Manny Carrillo's Legal Fees for Stealing Money?

Banksy

Are taxpayers responsible for paying for the personal lawsuits of individuals who work for the city? Manuel Carrillo Jr., the Director of Parks and Recreation of Baldwin Park thinks so.

Currently, in Julian Casas second lawsuit, Casas has filed an appeal against the City of Baldwin Park because Carrillo has the city paying for his legal fees, in a lawsuit, in which Casas sued Carrillo - accusing him of laundering money through a sham non-profit corporation.

And although Carrillo believes his legal fees should be paid by the City of Baldwin Park, it's puzzling why the Mayor and Council Members are agreeing to this too. It appears that they're willing to whitewash all of the transgressions committed by the Director of Parks and Recreation. For instance, if money laundering wasn't enough, Carrillo's also been caught for being a potential sex offender in Texas, for hiring sex offenders to work with children, for hiring violent criminals to work with children, and yet, the City still lets him work with our children.

But in making the decision to pay for Carrillo's attorney's fees, it looks like the Mayor and Council Members don't want people to know that it's made such a decision. There's no minute order of the Council Members or Mayor ever taking a vote on this matter, which is required by law. Both the government code, regarding City Attorney representation, and the Brown Act, require that a vote be taken to defend Carrillo and to have that decision announced in an open meeting.

Also, even if the City Council did vote to have us pay for the Sex-Offending-Director's legal fees, such a decision is illegal. It seems pretty obvious to me that free legal fees are not part of the employment package when you work for a City. I mean, can you imagine, your employer telling you, hey if you work for us, we'll pay for all your legal fees whenever you get sued.

But hey - Robert Rizzo of the City of Bell tried to make that argument and said his employment contract demanded that the City of Bell pay for his criminal defense fees, even though he stole millions from Bell. The Court of Appeals, then, thought the notion brazen.

Wouldn't that be great to have a lifetime contract that said all legal fees would be paid for your personal matters on taxpayer money? It would encourage you to lie, cheat, steal, and abuse. Hey, isn't that what we have here with our director? But, because the City is not a private organization, his legal fees are costing the taxpayers, us, for all his wrong doings.

And if that wasn't enough, we also have to ask ourselves the question: What kind of attorneys are defending such a case? Funny enough, it isn't N.-Tafoya this time. I guess the City didn't find N.-Tafoya competent enough to defend the appeal. And if you've been following this blog, you'd know why.

Instead, it hired out the law firm of Albright, Yee, and Schmit (AYS). The attorney on record is Benjamin Caplan. It appears, however, that the law firm's reputation isn't that much better than Tafoya's. At one point, AYS over-billed the City of Southgate (another corrupt city) for $2 million to defend a council member. You can read the LA Times story here: Law Firms Agrees to Pay Southgate $2M.

Also, the FBI raided the firm once. FBI Raids Albright Firm In the story, the firm's partner, "Albright acknowledged accidentally duplicating billings of $6,000, an admission that was met with a mocking swipe by" the City's Council Member.

It's not the only time the firm's been accused of unethical billing with Southgate. The firm was also hired by a disbarred lawyer working for the City of Southgate. Outrageous Attorney Billing The disbarred lawyer also has ties to Robert Nacionales-Tafoya. As I keep saying, birds of feather flock together.

And with regards to Baldwin Park, the City paid AYS a grand sum to fire a boxing coach, named Julian Casas. Incidentally, yours truly defended Casas deposition against Clifton Albright - who tried to get Julian into admitting that he committed crimes against children, when no such thing ever happened. (Now, when you think of attorneys that are getting paid on our money, do you think they should be hired for such purposes?)

It's no wonder that the public has such a bad impression of lawyers. The new mission statement of the California Bar is, "Protection of the public is the highest priority of the State Bar of California." How this mission will be achieved when lawyers are enabling corruption is a pressing question, especially when such lawyers are supposed to be public servants?

And although the exposure of all these illegal decisions can be disheartening, I wanted you to know that the boxing club is attempting to fight back against those who make it and those who take our money for executing it.

Casas and his attorney filed an appeal and an emergency appeal in the Court of Appeals against the City and Tafoya. After all, someone had to do it, and it isn't going to be a big firm, who could lose potential revenue from defending crook politicians on our dime later.

Now, if you had money to bet, would it be on the City with $8 million in reserves, or the fired boxing coach and his lawyer - who lives at home still? So far, though, we've won against all the odds. Well, as the common knowledge says - fate favors the fearless.

Regarding the appeals, briefing has just been finished in the case. Now, we're all just waiting to see when the Court of Appeals will review it.

I suppose George Bernard Shaw said it best once: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." And it is our view, that This City needs one big cleanup of the Mayor, Council Members, and most of all Sex-Offending-Director of Park and Recreation.