Crime & Safety

Arrested Boot Camp Instructor's Lawyer Criticizes Police

The defense lawyer of a local youth instructor with clients in Altadena and Pasadena voiced his unhappiness with the Pasadena Police Department in an interview with Patch.

The defense attorney for a youth boot camp instructor who was arrested last week on charges of kidnapping, extortion and child abuse told Altadena Patch Thursday that he is "profoundly disappointed" with how the Pasadena Police Department dealt with the case.

Bill Paparian, the former mayor of Pasadena, is representing Kelvin McFarland, 41, of Monrovia, who allegedly handcuffed a truant 14-year-old and tried to demand money for his services from the boy's parents.

According to the Pasadena Police Department, McFarland, who went by the nickname "Sarge," took the youth to his parent's home after handcuffing him and demanded money for transporting him.  He also tried to get the parents to enroll the kid in his after school program.

Find out what's happening in Altadenawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Paparian declined to go into details on McFarland's side of the story, but said he felt department officers went out of their way to criticize McFarland in local media reports.

"The department has been making statements that go way beyond just a simple press release," Paparian said.

Find out what's happening in Altadenawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Representatives of the department told the Pasadena Star News that McFarland used a badge to trick the 14-year-old in to believing he was a truant officer.  The Star News also detailed McFarland's criminal past, which mostly involved moving violations and arrests related to drinking.

McFarland is due to have his preliminary hearing on Monday at the Pasadena Superior Courthouse.  Paparian said he would be presenting a very different version of the story at that hearing.

He also said that local youth and parents who had participated in McFarland's Family 1st Growth Camp would be demonstrating at 9 a.m. on Saturday in front of the Pasadena Police Department and would give their accounts of his boot camp at that time.  Several youths also told the Star News that McFarland had been a real inspiration in their lives.

Some readers who left comments on our claimed to have been approached by McFarland and had less favorable things to say.  Here are some of them:

  • liza - "He tried to get me and my friends to go to his program! We were all getting into a van in pasadena for school and he approached our teacher and told us that some of the girls at my all girls school have already been enrolled in his program before! We all knew he was lying because our school is very small and we would have known if someone went to bootcamp.
    He was kind of aggressive in trying to get us to enlist!"
  • Victor - "My wife and her family used to be in the program and he try to arrest me for 10 years and he act really aggressive with me because my wife was young he act like if he was a cop... But when I told him I was with my loyal he just stop bugging me..... I'M sorry I don't speak a perfect ingles..... I'm really glad he's arrested I was really scared by the way he treat me......."

There was also some initial confusion over the identity of McFarland, as there is another youth boot camp instructor, Keith Gibbs, who goes by the nickname "Sarge."

Gibbs explains in this Altadenablog interview that he initially employed McFarland but had to let him go after he failed a background check.  He said McFarland went on to start a very similar program to his own, copying Gibbs' habit of wearing camouflage fatigues, and obviously his nickname as well.


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