Crime & Safety

Famed Laguna Beach "Calamity Cop" Has Plenty More to Worry About Now

Jon Fehlman, prone to accidents when he was on the Laguna Beach force, now deals with accusations of favoritism and mismanagement as a police chief in Washington.

Twenty years ago, Jon Fehlman was a Laguna Beach cop who was so often injured in the line of duty that the Los Angles Times dubbed him "Calamity Cop" in this 1993 profile.

The list of on-the-job mishaps Fehlman compiled is indeed impressive. Among them:

  • Rear-ended by a car
  • Hit head-on by a truck
  • Leg slammed by the door of a police car
  • Leg broken by flying car bumper, which came off Fehlman's car as he was making an arrest. When he fell to the ground, he also broke his tailbone.

Fehlman's misfortunes even earned him fan mail—these days, he'd surely have plenty of Facebook likes.

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Or not. Twenty years on, and Fehlman has moved up the chain of command—he's now the Police Chief of Bainbridge Island, near Seattle.

But, as this recent Seattle Times story reveals, people aren't too happy with the way Fehlman is running his department.

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Last summer, the department gave a badge and a gun to a man with a criminal history that included assault and weapons chages. The man's wife happened to be Fehlman's secretary.

And there's more. Accusations that the Bainbridge Police Guild president was harassing a city council member. An attempt by the department to block records from the public. Officers under investigation. And other controversies. From the story:

Last spring, on her Facebook page, Officer Michelle Vollmer referred to an emphasis patrol for traffic offenses and wrote: "We rained terror on the island and no one was taken alive." City Council members were so taken aback that, according to City Manager Brenda Bauer, they dropped their pursuit of federal funding for a school-resource officer.

"They were not happy," Bauer says.

"It was a joke," Vollmer says. The city "made a mountain out of a molehill."

You have to wonder if Fehlman kind of wishes he was back in nice, quiet Laguna Beach collecting physical bruises, as opposed to the punches his leadership is taking  ... 


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