Calling its proposal a “potential savings,” the Airborne Law Enforcement Services (ABLE) is contemplating giving one Orange County police helicopter pilot two taxpayer-funded paychecks totaling more than $23,325 a month for the next six months.
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himself in his windfall position after he threatened to retire in
December, a move Starn oddly hadn't prepared for even though the
veteran pilot had alerted ABLE of his intentions as early as the outset
of 2009. Like other pilots who've left since 2007, Gleason has been
near retirement age for several years. According to Starn, Gleason's
departure couldn't be foreseen in time to train a replacement, thus the need to offer the pilot the lucrative special contract.
Mesa is not ready to move formally [to approve the deal],” said
Shawkey, who indicated that he favors the arrangement conceptually.
“I'm in discussions with the city manager on that now.”
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.