“This is the secret system that covers up police misconduct — and ensures problem officers can get hired again”
Weed Police Department was unaware of officer’s history due to secret “clean-record agreement”
The Weed Police Department in Siskiyou County hired a police officer whose serious misconduct allegations had been concealed through a secret legal agreement with Los Angeles County, according to a new investigation into California’s hidden police accountability system.
One Comment
I’ve known Joe for exactly 41 years. I know him as well as I know my own blood brother. I worked as a police officer right next to Joe and I call bull**it on the SF Chronicle’s hitpiece implicating Joe Ourjanian as a problem officer, or worse, a bad cop.
Why did SF Chronicle entitle the article “This is the secret system that covers up police misconduct — and ensures problem officers can get hired again” and then talk only about Joe? Why did this SF Chronicle hitpiece target Joe, yet fail to identify even 1 of the other “297 officers and deputies” supposedly swept up in this dragnet of police corruption.
The accusation that Joe was somehow “bad”, or not fit for duty because of his “past”, is false. There is no “past”. Anyone that has ever met Joe knows, there’s no way he is/was a bad cop. Joe is one of the best police officers a municipality can ever hope to hire. The allegations against Joe are all false, I would stake my life on it.
The “investigation” done by SF Chronicle begins it’s hitpiece by nudging, or setting up the reader to believe that Joe is guilty of something, by regurgitating prior cases against Joe where he was found to be innocent. Even the clean-record agreement from the County of Los Angeles made accusations that were NEVER proven.
If there was one police officer I would feel comfortable leaving to protect my parents in the evening hours of some dingy little, dusty, go-nowhere, has-been, one-horse little town, like Weed, it would be Joe. Weed was blessed to have him and was cursed when he left for a better job.
Maybe what we should be talking about here is how Martin Nicholas, the Weed police chief at the time, extended law enforcement FAVORS to local business owners that would later become donors for a new police facility that was being talked about at the time. I wonder if Siskiyou News would be interested in reporting on that? Like that one? I have many others! Maybe I’ll find a journalist and we can smoke out ALL of the corrupt officials in Weed!! That’d be fun too!!
I was on patrol with Joe in Weed one evening when we noticed a stranded motorist at the Chevron gas station in the dead of winter. Joe was driving and decided to stop and help. I stood by and watched as Joe laid on the filthy ice and snow and changed the right front tire for her and her 4 children. She was so grateful and offered to give Joe money. Joe declined.
I have in my possession, right here and now, a letter from a Weed church that praised the actions of Joe for investigating and bringing to justice, a crazy man, that broke into the church and vandalized the entire interior with spray paint and a hammer. Does that sound like a problem officer to you?
What the public doesn’t understand is that police department is VERY political. If you piss off the wrong moron, you can find yourself in a bunch of made up trouble that’s pinned on you, and there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it. That’s exactly what’s happened here! Joe pissed off the wrong person and they came for him. They canceled him.
And to this horrible rag, Siskiyou News, shame on you for just regurgitating a bogus investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle without doing your own damn investigation! The author, Jay Martin, lacks journalistic integrity in my opinion because he never contacted or even attempted to contact Joe to get his side of these accusations. Maybe Jay gets paid by the word.