8 Bell City Officials Reportedly Arrested
The arrrests reportedly included former City Manager Robert Rizzo.
 Robert Rizzo, 56 (Huntington Beach Police Dept.) |
BELL -- At least eight Bell city officials have reportedly been arrested following a salary scandal that rocked the poverty-stricken city.
The Los Angeles Times reported the arrests Tuesday morning.
The identities of those taken into custody have not been released, however, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley planned a morning news conference to announce criminal charges in the salary scandal.
The arrests reportedly included four councilmembers and former City Manager Robert Rizzo.
James Spertus, lawyer for former Bell city manager Robert Rizzo, told KTLA that he had not been informed of his client's arrest.
Spertus said he believes politics is the motive.
"The only thing that justifies an arrest is the fact that elections are coming up in November," he told KTLA.
Spertus says Rizzo is in California and was willing to surrender at any time. He says he's contacted the L.A. County DA's office to learn more about his client's arrest, but he says his questions "have been met with silence."
A witness told the Times that he saw Councilman Luis Artiga taken away in handcuffs.
Rizzo and other top city officials stepped down in July after the salary scandal sparked outrage throughout the community. City councilmembers, who were earning six figure salaries, slashed their pay. At the time, Rizzo was earning nearly $700,000 a year. He's also set to earn $1.5 million this year.
On Monday it was reported that Bell spent nearly $95,000 to repay loans that Rizzo made to himself from his retirement accounts.
Auditors found no evidence that council members even knew about the re-payments, which occurred in 2008 and 2009.
Attorney General Jerry Brown announced last week that he has filed civil lawsuits against 8 Bell city leaders, both past and present.
Robert Rizzo, Angela Spaccia, Randy Adams, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo, George Cole, Victor Bello and George Mirabal were all named in the suit.
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There is a Latina lady, I believe her name is Christina Garcia, of the grassroots group calling itself 'BASTA' that has really been the lighting rod in this effort. She has been keeping the energy up and leading 1000's of ordinary Bell city residents in an unrelenting campaign to prosecute the Bell City officials involved in this corruption scandal.
I believe she may be an excellent template of how relatively ordinary citizens can galvanize as an organization with laser focus on going after wrong doers. This effort by the BASTA group and Bell citzens also proved to be rather media savy one, keeping the issue fully alive through what would have otherwise been sure media news cycle attrition and is well worth watching and learning from. These people were successful in directly connecting financial gain (by city officials) with their financial losses (as citizens) with only TWO DOTS. Enough so to pack city council meetings repeatedly with incensed, angry residents, without losing any momentum whatsoever for two solid months demanding prosecution.
And they got it.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley in a mid-day press conference today has called for charges resulting in prison time for Robert Rizzo (City manager pulling down combined compensation of $1.5 million dollars annually) and other city council members. As D.A. Cooley stated: they used the city funds as their own 'personal piggy bank' of which they 'looted at will'.
Another take-away from the series of events in the City of Bell, is that citzens of relatively modest means, residents of a city with a far below average median income for Southern California, have demonstrated a far above than expected understanding of the malfeasence and corruption going on in government and Wall Street. Within their own community they found themselves a ready made, ready-for-prime-time example extraordinare of what we all know is happening to our country, coast to coast.
So, for Christina, BASTA and the City Of Bell residents, it has, so far, been what the rest of us would consider a dream come true, the arrest and prosecution we all would like to see play out similarly time and time again on Wall Street, Bankster Street and elsewhere it is deserved.
Christina deserves a prize medal for her efforts (and perhaps body guards too...)
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