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Former Atascadero police chief steps in for King City

February 28, 2014

King City PoliceDennis Hegwood, the former Atascadero police chief who was terminated shortly after being cleared of rape charges, took the helm of the King City Police Department as interim chief late Wednesday.

King City Attorney Roy Hanley said that Hegwood, who Hanley worked with in Atascadero, is the right man for the job. Hanley said that the rape allegations that plagued Hegwood were fueled by closed-minded reactions to a biracial sexual relationship.

In 2004, a woman claimed Hegwood had raped her but later said the sex was consensual. Even so, city officials found fault with Hegwood having sex with a business acquaintance’s wife while on city time.

After first asking him to stay, city officials determined Hegwood should resign because ‘he had lost his moral authority,” and agreed to support Hegwood’s plan to apply for industrial disability, according to the resignation agreement. Atascadero also agreed to give Hegwood a total payout for health benefits, sick and vacation leave of $64,650.

On Tuesday, six King City police officers, including the former and acting chiefs of police, were arrested on felony charges including conspiracy, embezzlement and bribery. The brother of the acting chief was also arrested in the scheme which involved impounding the cars of mostly unlicensed drivers, then selling them when the cars’ owners were unable to pay towing and storage fees.

The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office is continuing to investigate allegations of corruption. In addition, the department is currently under an FBI investigation after several thousand dollars that officers seized from bank robbers went missing.

Hanley suggested King City hire Hegwood, who assisted over the past year in an internal affairs investigation into King’s City’s police department.


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What is with municipal governments and the people they hire? This disease is systemic throughout our country! Check out the Lawndale School Superintendent; 650K per year, multiple bankruptcies, shady loans, etc. There has got to be a way to get honest people into government positions.


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Hegwood announced that as his 2nd in command he wants Cory Pierce.


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Shelworth, allow me to be specific about the superintendent in southern calif. It will make us feel better about our local yokels dipping into the drug locker and public trough, including Hegwood. The specifics of Jose Fernandez, Superintendent of a small, three high school district, a former Inglewood City Councilman, are amazing. He is in a CURRENT bankruptcy but his largely Hispanic board voted him a loan YOU could not get with an 800 credit rating, two per cent interest on a $ 912,000 Ladera Heights home (Inglewood adjacent neighborhood in the Los Angeles County unincorporated strip and 5 miles from LAX). The term? FORTY years. Two percent!


Here’s the payroll details; $ 663,000 one year total comp (per Daily Breeze paper Feb. 26) $ 271,000 base salary with a 9% locked-in annual raise, plus one-time $ 215,000 paid to him directly so he could “buy” air time or fake time onto his Cal-Pers retirement (pension pumping). that’s where you juice up your eventual retirement pension by giving some money, that is then multiplied year after year.


His annual salary will revert to $ 271,000 + 9 per cent next year, + 18% second year, etc. . It’s all very incestuous and gives our own corrupt little county club a “run for it’s money” in terms of malfeasance and lack of integrity. Briefly, big selective election spending put the Hispanics onto the board, monster voter bond issues passed in the next two elections, Taj Mahal high school construction is happening right now using the bond money, TELACU (the local Hispanic election mafia, that’s a fact not a slur) pushed the elections then, “amazingly”, was awarded the construction management contract. Makes anything we can dig up on Paavo Ogren and Los Osos, or Bruce shacking-up with his subordinate, seem small and backwoods by comparison. Even Jamie dooming MB folks to huge bills. So Hegwood having sex with a buddy’s wife ON city time should be no big deal, right? Good Lord, save us.


The full articles in Daily Breeze and LA Times make interesting reading at finding municipal greed and malfeasance at a remarkable pitch. The added parcel tax on the dumpy Hawthorne local Moose Lodge is $ 2,000 a year.


The inmates are running the asylum. King City is just the latest pit of insanity and malfeasance.


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But what I want to know is why!?, it’s everywhere! I read local papers from lots of towns where I think I would like to live, and they all report similar shenanigans. I know there’s lots of things in the private sector too, embezzlement, fraud, etc, what happened to honesty? When I was a kid, (yes, a long time ago), there were a few kids we knew as “cheaters”, but they were few and far between. now it seems like it’s all of them! Very depressing.


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After reading the article and a dozen or so posted comments in complete detail, I can only add “The County of Monterey and City of King” to my remark last month that “the county of San Luis Obispo is truly challenged in it’s quest for excellence at the top.”


Rape allegations. Fired elsewhere. Worker’s comp (probably) overstatement or outright fraud. Other jurisdictions have: App, Solomon-Chitty, Gibson, Hill, CAPSLO, Irons, Smuckler, Is there no character, judgment and quality to be found anywhere? At the bloated salaries and pensions we pay?


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Don’t forget service-related disability. Most (high 90%) LEO’s “retire” with that added onto the pension…


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Hiring a fox to guard the hen house. The government in this country is clearly out of control and without any moral compass, at all levels.


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It’s really not that different from when Atascadero Unified hired EJ Rossi (Atascadero High principal now) knowing he had faced embezzelment charges in San Ardo. They considered it a “personnel matter.”


Why on earth would he have had to reimburse the district – through a settlement agreement – for tens of thousands of dollars if he hadn’t taken it to begin with? But, no, that was all just fine for the Atascadero school board.


It seems “personnel matters’ cover all manner of wrongdoing.


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I wonder if Hegwood was endorsed by his buddy McKinney or if there was even a background check performed. It sounds like King City will still be corrupt. At the time of Hegwood’s incident several past members of the APD said that he was a sexual predator and that they were ashamed of him. It’s really too bad that the Atascadero truth can’t be revealed due to legalities. After avoiding criminal charges and being paid off no one ever saw the guy again except his buddy McKinney. I guess he may have been ashamed of his behavior also.

With McKinney finally gone the city appears to be regaining some credibility, except for it’s Mayor who will promise you anything or tell you what you want to hear and then look the other way.


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If my memory serves me right Hegwood was brought to Atascadero by McKinney after Hegwood got into all kinds of trouble and left his Chief’s job at the Rialto Police Dept.


I think that it was former SLOPD Chief Jim Gardiner who did Hegwoods background investigation.


Basically it is an “all in the family” type scenario.


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thin blue line


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Mike, I have always been under the impression that Hegwood followed Wade here from that city with the (sort of) prison up by Bakersfield, Shafter I think. I do know that Hegwood road in to town on Wades coattails as I recall being at a CC meeting way back in 2004 (?) when a group of locals hijacked the podium during public comment and challenged the CC with a ‘written demand for termination’ and followed up with a tirade of complaints about Wade . They wanted Wade terminated for hiring Hegwood, and refusing to remove him from his position. I don’t recall why they were so angry with Hegwood but it must have been the rape allegations.They maintained that Wade and Hegwood were good friends and blah blah blah..


Frankly, it seems to me that it was determined that Hegwood did not have relations with that crazy woman during business hours. I distinctly recall Becky Pacas telling me about it she said that the investigation concluded that the whoopee charades didn’t occur on tax payer time. I really don’t know why people dislike Hegwood to the extent they do, I think he was one of our better Police Chief’s. Now I’m ducking…….. Regardless, I do agree that he needed to resign after the scandal……


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The person you are referencing from Shafter area was probably the person McKinney tried to hire on as an assistant city manager. I think he was a police captain or such in one of the valley cities, possibly Shafter.


The problem was that this guy got in trouble with his agency for some improper activity. I think it was supplying alcohol to/improper relationship with a young lady.


As for some of the other Hegwood matters I think you can reference the link to this 2004 New Times shredder piece


http://archive.newtimesslo.com/archive/2004-05-19/shredder/index.html


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The truth be known is that McKinney and Hegwood were such good buddies that on the day of the San Simeon earthquake, which was on a Monday, were at McKinney’s house drinking wine and watching Monday Night Football. At least those 2 are gone although the City of Atascadero is still paying the price for what McKinney had instituted and the payoffs to his buddies.


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Hegwood is just as corrupt as the rest of the Ol’ Boy Clique.


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So, let me get this straight. In the absence of moral authority i.e. conspiracy, embezzlement, and bribery, King City has now hired the “right man for the job”, who was previously determined that he “lost his moral authority.

It makes perfect sense. And the beat goes on……


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So I guess the question is …


If Hegwood received a police officer industrial/disability retirement related to his police chief job with Atascadero then how in the hell can he work as a police chief for King City?


Like Mayor Scalise said in 2004, Hegwood “lost his moral authority to be a leader of the department”


As far as Roy Hanley is concerned he was the Atascadero city attorney when Hegwood got his sweet deal. Wade McKinney and Roy Hanley must have worked hand in hand to orchestrate this backroom closed session deal.


Our government is full of con men and the working stiffs and honest citizens get the shaft over and over and over.


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Dumb move.


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