r/Lathrop • u/Thatgirltorie • 13h ago
KCRA 3 reported on Lathrop lowering school speed limits. What they didn't report is the 6-month coverup of a city employee hitting my 7yo daughter on her bike, 57 MPH truck data, and police intimidation.
TL;DR: KCRA 3 just reported on Lathrop City Council passing a 15 MPH school zone ordinance. What they didn't report is that the vote was emergency damage control. For 6 months, City Hall covered up a crash where a city employee hit my 7-year-old daughter on her bike, knowingly ran a speed study during active construction to spoil the data, lied that truck speeds were "15-18 mph" when their own radar clocked commercial trucks at 57.3 MPH outside a preschool, deployed a PR firm and neighborhood watch trolls to smear me, and weaponized police code enforcement on a fabricated lie to intimidate my family. I’ve uploaded all 638 pages of certified receipts, police reports, and raw radar files publicly.
Hey everyone,
If you live in the Central Valley, you might have seen KCRA 3’s recent broadcast about the City of Lathrop voting to lower speed limits near local schools to 15 and 20 MPH. On television, it looked like local politicians taking proactive steps to protect children.
I am the mother who walked up to that podium Monday night and told the Mayor and Police Chief to their faces: "Ticket them. Please. Ticket them."
Because behind KCRA's camera lens is a 6-month nightmare of small-town municipal corruption, public records stonewalling, private PR spin doctors, neighborhood smear campaigns, and police intimidation.
Here is the documented record City Hall prayed would never see the light of day:
1. THE CRASH THEY TRIED TO BURY
On June 9, 2026, an employee of the City of Lathrop Finance Department (Lea Meneses) drove across the public sidewalk exiting City Hall without yielding and plowed into my 7-year-old daughter while she was riding her bicycle.
• Police Collision Report #2026-1647 found the City employee 100% AT FAULT under California Vehicle Code § 21804(a). Zero fault on my child.
• Did police cite the employee? No. They let her walk away without a single ticket.
• The City produced footage from an interior camera while concealing Camera 2—an exterior HD camera pointed right at the impact point. When I filed California Public Records Act (CPRA) requests, City Attorney Salvador Navarrete dismissed my 19-item filing claiming there were "no public records."
2. DATA SPOILING DURING ACTIVE CONSTRUCTION & THE 57.3 MPH REALITY
I petitioned the City for physical modular rubber speed tables in the Mossdale Landing neighborhood to protect elementary students walking to Mossdale Elementary and infants at an active licensed neighborhood preschool.
To derail our petition, Public Works Director Brad Taylor knowingly deployed speed radar counters during an ACTIVE CONSTRUCTION ZONE with heavy machinery and lane obstructions—a deliberate attempt to spoil the traffic study and artificially depress recorded speeds.
Then, on September 14, Taylor looked the Council in the eye and testified that speeds in Mossdale Landing were "very low, 15 to 18 mph" and called our residential streets "naturally traffic calming" to persuade Council to delay safety measures for 60 days. Two days later, he admitted in writing that his testimony was uncertified guesswork.
Here is the damning truth: Even with active construction artificially slowing traffic down, the City’s OWN raw radar telemetry file exposed what was really happening on residential streets in Mossdale Landing:
• Top recorded speed: 57.3 MPH (a heavy commercial truck clocked at 11:37 AM in a 25 MPH residential zone).
• Over 320 speeding violations logged across residential school corridors in Mossdale Landing.
• Commercial trucks clocked up to 51.4 and 57.3 MPH flying past walking children and a licensed neighborhood preschool in broad daylight.
3. "TWO LATHROPS": RIVER ISLANDS GETS 9 DAYS, MOSSDALE GETS IGNORED
Under Article I, Section 7 of the California Constitution, every neighborhood is entitled to equal municipal protection:
• River Islands (Wealthy Master-Planned Area): A verbal request was made on September 14 -> Rapid flashing crosswalk beacons were fully installed in just NINE DAYS (Sept 23) with celebratory city press releases.
• Mossdale (Older Working-Class Neighborhood): 7 months of formal petitions -> False numbers from staff, a 60-day delay, a paper sign, and $0 allocated from the City’s $260,000+ unallocated safety fund for physical speed tables.
• Even City Council candidate Shelita Jefferson publicly praised City Hall's 9-day response in River Islands for "showing that family safety is a top priority"—begging the obvious question: why isn't child safety a top priority in Mossdale?
4. ON CAMERA: MAYOR AKINJO OPPOSES SPEED TICKETS
At the very meeting KCRA covered on October 12, Mayor Paul "Sonny" Akinjo spent nearly 10 minutes pushing back against police enforcement because he was terrified speeding parents would be mad at the Council before the November election:
"You issue a lot of tickets a few months ago... was bad. It haunts a lot of people, even up till now... The council gets the public relation part. We are the one that gets the firing squad... we got to find a way to make things more convenient for the parents, too."
Police Chief Stephen Sealy then promised the Mayor an initial "grace period" where speeders will NOT be ticketed. A paper 15 MPH sign won't even be put up for 30–45 days, and metal signs don't stop 57 MPH trucks.
5. THE INTERNAL TEXTS: "DEFINITELY HAS AN AGENDA" & PR SPIN
When I started speaking out, City Hall didn't inspect the crosswalk—they mobilized their PR machine:
• Internal police text messages obtained under public records (PRA26-175 / Exhibit F) show Command Staff passing around a screenshot of my social media post.
• Captain Shea texted Chief Sealy that dispatch described me as "extremely argumentative." Chief Sealy replied: "So it begins. Let Barries know as well."
• Later in that exact thread, Police Chief Sealy explicitly wrote of me: "Definitely has an agenda."
• That very evening, City Manager Stephen Salvatore texted Captain Barries: "Today that lady has sent an email out to the council, and I'm going to need you to work with isaac gonzalez to draft a message for the council."
• They hired crisis PR firm MRG, LLC (Isaac Gonzalez), who pressured the California Bicycle Coalition (CalBike) to suppress and pull down a published interview about my daughter's crash, and asked police for specific security camera stills to craft their media narrative.
6. THE BRANDY PERKINS SMEAR CAMPAIGN & CREEPY TROLL LIES
The deflection quickly spilled into local social media:
• Brandy Perkins, Admin of the Lathrop Neighborhood Watch Facebook group, launched a relentless victim-blaming attack against me in her group, publicly lecturing me about parenting and demanding to know why my 7-year-old wasn't wearing a helmet (the strap had snapped on the way home, which under California Vehicle Code § 21804(a) has zero legal bearing on a driver failing to yield at a driveway).
• I publicly offered to meet Brandy at Starbucks or in my home so she could review the full 638-page certified binder and sworn police collision report for herself. She completely ghosted.
• Instead, Perkins publicly validated and pinned comments from anonymous troll accounts fabricating bizarre surveillance lies claiming my family was "driving a car behind our kids coming from a free lunch program."
• The truth: We never drove behind our kids while riding. We only began using a car to take our children to the park after my daughter was struck outside City Hall because she was so traumatized and terrified that she refused to get back on her bicycle.
7. WEAPONIZING CODE ENFORCEMENT ON A FABRICATED LIE TO INTIMIDATE MY FAMILY
The retaliation didn't stop online. In an attempt to harass my family and intimidate us into silence for speaking out at City Council, the police department weaponized municipal code enforcement against us on a completely fabricated lie—falsely claiming our private family home was operating an illegal commercial business storefront.
Sending police officers and code enforcement notices against a family's home on manufactured allegations just days after serving formal statutory notices to City Council is textbook municipal intimidation. They thought they could bully a mother into silence before the November election so their neglected speed crisis wouldn't hurt them at the ballot box.
ALL RECEIPTS ARE 100% PUBLIC
City Hall thought they could isolate a mother, smear her online, and intimidate her family. They underestimated who they were dealing with.
You don't have to take my word for any of this. Dismal Freedom Press has published the full investigative report, interactive maps, and raw data files:
Read the Full Investigation:
👉 https://dismalfreedom.press/two-lathrops-infrastructure-divide.html
Inspect the Raw 57.3 MPH Speed Audit & Telemetry:
👉 https://dismalfreedom.press/mossdale-speed-audit.html
Complete 638-Page Public Records Archive:
👉 https://dismalfreedom.press/data-library.php
If you live in Lathrop, San Joaquin County, or anywhere in California where local officials think they are untouchable, please read the records, share this story, and ask City Council candidates before November 3rd:
Will you vote for physical modular speed tables to protect our children, or will you keep protecting City Hall's PR machine?
Happy to answer any questions in the comments.