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Wednesday July 28, 2010
The Editor, WatchOurCity.com
Easy Money:
$120,000 funnelled to George Cole's Oldtimers Foundation from cancer awareness proceeds.

Rigging Elections:
Charter law allows Bell to run elections without County help.

Will The Real Thugs Please Stand Up?
Bell mayor Oscar Hernandez paid $250 to 18th Street gang members from Cudahy to hold Up 6 ft by 4 ft
banner "Keep the Mayor" during Monday's city hall protest, inciting a near riot. Police intervened after
shouting and shoving ensued.

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Bell, CA –
Bell vice-mayor Teresa Jacobo collected over $120,000 in fundraising proceeds generated from a
local cancer awareness campaign. The proceeds were then funneled to George Cole’s Oldtimers
Foundation to be used for non-cancer awareness uses.

Fliers for the cancer campaign were distributed widely throughout the southeast cities of Bell,
Maywood, Huntington Park, and South Gate.

Teresa Jacobo has been a Bell council member for nine years, first sponsored by George Cole.
Her website, www.teresajacobo.com states that her number one priority in Bell is “Implementing
breast cancer awareness, education and prevention”.

The diminutive gnome-like vice-mayor lists on her web page that she has been a coordinator for
the “Walk-Against Breast Cancer” campaign for 11 years, and does the coordinating “throughout
the year”. She also claims that she works “with the organizing of Southeast Relay for Life, with the
American Cancer Society”, and is a “Legislative Ambassador for the American Cancer
Association, and ACS CAN”.

What she fails to disclose to the national cancer awareness programs is that $120,000 from her
cancer fundraising activities is funneled directly to the general fund of the Oldtimers Foundation,
whose director, George Cole, Bell’s former Mayor, was her political sponsor and campaign
manager. Easy money.

____

By now everyone knows that the city of Bell is a Charter City, an anomaly for such a small
municipal entity of 36,000 residents. Before any media had reported on the Charter Law and
Absentee Ballot hot button topics, WatchOurCity.com had already analyzed and reported on how
Bell’s Charter Law status enabled city officials to cleverly circumvent state statutes. What residents
may not realize is that under Charter Law, a city has complete control to run its own elections,
without the need for the County Registrar/Recorder to intervene, monitor or manage the elections.

The Times published a report Monday revealing that former Bell police officer Cochran has filed a
lawsuit against the city of Bell, its elected officials, city manager and police chief Randy Adams,
alleging massive voter fraud. The allegations are that off-duty Bell police officers were forced, at
risk of being fired by chief of police and city administrator Rizzo, to collect absentee ballots from
senior citizens. Some of the ballots were from residents long ago dead. Elections in the city of Bell
were not held during the 2003 and 2005 campaign years. When elections did take place, during
the 2007 and 2009 periods, things got a little, shall we say, interesting.

WatchOurCity.com posted a report about Bell’s highly unusual methods of engaging public funds,
public resources, primarily its police force, for committing voter fraud (see report from March 4,
2009). WatchOurCity.com reported election results as follows:
"George Cole has
done it, again. His dirty
campaigns have yielded a
win for his slate of two new
council members for Bell
city hall [Teresa Jacobo and Luis Artiga]

Voting was won by
absentee ballots. Most
were issued and collected
by a uniformed city official
with a gun."
__

On Monday, three young Latino men provoked an angry crowd outside of Bell city hall amidst a
swirling of hundreds of residents as they loudly protested the city's corrupt practices and looting of
the city treasury. Fueling the collective civic disgust was anger at the unfathomable betrayal by
Bell's leadership triggering heavy anti-city council sentiment. The three young men dared carry a
large 6 ft by 4 ft banner stating "Keep the Mayor" into this maelstrom of civic angst. Turns out, they
were 18th Street gang members from Cudahy, hired by Bell mayor Oscar Hernandez.

The young men, tattooed, wearing crooked bling-bling baseball hats (one of them with the pirated
version of the Coco Chanel emblem printed all over the hat's canvas), and lowrider pants, when
confronted by a lady resident from Huntington Park, responded "Don't you know who we are?
We're 18th Street from Cudahy, straight up, homey!" Later we come to find out that Bell's mayor
paid them $250 dollars for the gig to carry pro-city council banner. They not only carried the
banner, but made a courageous and highly incendiary incursion into a crowd chanting "FUERA!,
FUERA! (Out!) which surrounded a picnic table commandeered by the John and Ken KFI Talk
Radio team broadcasting live. In light of everything else happening around Bell, it is not so shocking
news to hear that Bell's mayor hires local gang thugs. Earlier, as the crowds began to gather steam,
another trio of men were holding up the same pro-city council banner made of heavy vinyl. Except
that instead of provoking anger, they provoke pity, as the men were in their 70's. They too were
paid to be there. One old man, when questioned if he knew what was going on, responded in
Spanish "Pues, no se que esta pasando, pero me pagaron, un tal Oscar" (Well, I don't now what is
going on, but they paid me, a certain Oscar).
_________________________________________________________________________

George Cole, former
Bell councilmember
and Teresa Jacobo.
George ran
her Bell
reelection
campaign