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The Poor Hippy Myth

The Mendocino County Grand Jury has published its findings on District Attorney David Eyster’s innovative Marijuana Restitution Program, called 11470.2, and in doing so this august body has perpetuated the myth of the Poor Hippy.

In short, the DA offers defendants the choice of a proportionate fine and a misdemeanor conviction or an expensive and protracted court process at the end of which they'd likely emerge as felons with much larger fines. DA Eyster's predecessor charged everyone with felonies, jamming the courts with petty pot cases.

The three findings of the Grand Jury were as follows:

F1. The marijuana restitution program has proven effective in meeting its intended goals.

F2. Because the DA did not provide evidence to the Grand Jury of the existence of a program to assist indigent offenders, the Grand Jury was unable to reach a finding regarding such a program.

F3. The program does not provide additional funds for law enforcement but instead reimburses law enforcement for costs associated with apprehension of offenders or abatement of illegal grows. However, County government as a whole benefits from an additional source of revenue.

Finding F2 puts the onus squarely on the DA, David Eyster. But it should be noted that the Public Defender, Linda Thompson — whose job it is to defend indigent offenders — refused to participate in the Grand Jury’s investigation.

The Grand Jury also had three recommendations:

R1. The DA continue the marijuana restitution program as long as it is pertinent to State statute and County ordinance.

R2. The DA institute and demonstrate a publicly visible program to assist those who truly cannot afford to pay restitution.

* * *

The Poor Hippy.

The Poor Hippy myth was created by a faction of law enforcement officers who glory in imagining themselves as drug warriors, circa 1970. These good old boys, latterly inspired by Judge Clay Brennan, were the cause of considerable agitation against the DA’s 11470.2 Program (now approved by the Grand Jury) in the sensational Stornetta case a few years ago, and parlayed by first the Los Angeles Times, and subsequently the local medical marijuana community (already overly self-righteous) and misconstrued as an “extortion of defendants.” They loved running hippies through the legal system.

Stornetta, as most of us know, is a scion of the prosperous farming family of Point Arena. He was popped for a large-scale pot gro enhanced by Fish and Game violations. He paid his big fine and disappeared back into the fog, thus kicking off the myth of the poor hippy getting screwed by the courts while the rich guy like Stornetta skates. The lad's grandpap, incidentally, Stogie Stornetta, or uncle — there's a bunch of them — was arrested back in the day for a crude murder for hire. The old boy's much younger girl friend, and apparent author of the failed scheme to kill ol' grandpap's wife of many years, was packed off to the state pen while ol' grandpap, a guy hardwired to the Superior Court, went home to his wife and lived happily ever after. Of course, ol' gran may have ever after slept with one eye open, but we have no way of knowing.

Some noise, which sounded a lot like whining, had been made as to the legality of the Let's Make A Deal program boldly instituted by our break-through DA, despite assurances by University of California Hastings law professor David Levine and Doug Berman of Ohio State — both authorities on marijuana and the law — that Eyster’s program was legally airtight. But even the Grand Jury continued to use vaguely plural pronouns in reference to the judicially marginal Judge Brennan, as if there were a large contingent of dissenting judges out there condemning the program, when in fact Brennan is the only one. (And, incidentally, sources tell us Brennan himself, a long time toker, has invested in a large tact of land in the Bell Springs area in anticipation of pending legalization.)

True, there are some law enforcement officers who saw the DA Eyster's program as a big rip in the net that Dope Land's big fish could easily swim through by simply paying the imposed fine, taking their misdemeanor kiss and going right back out and planting an even larger grow. But if they got caught a second time they'd face felony charges, although the area's ace pot lawyers almost always get them off before local juries.

The law enforcement raiders who have lots of fun getting paid to bust otherwise harmless hill muffins have dispatched a couple of spokesmen to yours truly with the message that it was all well and good that the growers who could afford it were getting their felonies reduced to misdemeanors, but what about the “poor hippies” who were having to do hard time?

Were they referring to the guys who couldn’t afford to do what’s lately been called a Dozer Grow — that is, to scrape off a logged-over ridge up in the Timber Production Zone (TPZ) and put in 3000-plus pot plants? Or did they mean the retired growers from the 1970s leasing his land to potcroppers and investing in collector’s automobiles, winters in Costa Rica and acres of cocaine up his nose? Who exactly was this mythical Poor Hippy?

When growers heard about the mythical Poor Hippy who was being so unfairly treated by the DA they instantly became destitute themselves. Suddenly it was as if all the growers great and small were shuffling up and down State Street with all their stuff in Safeway shopping carts, their families huddled around campfires while the gruel warmed. As Kevin Costner, presently building a $30 million villa in the south of France, blandly observes, “Me? I’m not rich, I’m just middle-class, like everybody else.”

Our so-called Mom & Pop growers, such as the moneyed and politically influential Dan Hamburg family, can always point to someone higher up on the ladder of financial prominence, and plead (relative) poverty. It’s the American Way!

This is how The Poor Hippy Myth originated.

I recently took a year's investigative sabbatical and went to work on a marijuana grow up in Humboldt County to better acquaint myself with the cannabis industry, and establish myself as what is called “a primary source.” This experience, along with many other less-intensive involvements with the medical marijuana community, added to my mutually respectful and appreciative standing with law enforcement, and has given me “a perspective that’s unique,” if I may borrow a verse from Tom Waits.

First off, it takes a lot of money to invest in a pot pharm. You gotta have money, and lots of it to buy or lease land hereabouts. Then there’s the materials you need, all the myriad of bottles and packages of nutrients and pesticides and plumbing necessary to grow a marijuana plant. A walk through a store like Dazey’s Garden Supply in Garberville will give some notion of the expense involved. It's all very similar to the gold rush days, circa 1849, when simple things like picks and shovels were selling locally for a hundred times what they would cost elsewhere, and a contraption like a sluice-box could only be afforded by those who had already struck a rich vein.

Guerilla grows — trespassing on private or public lands — do not qualify for the DA's 11470.2 program; nor yet do low-level workers like trimmigrants qualify (they are no longer even charged as felons unless they are involved in other illegal factors like violating their probation). And sometimes these kinds of defendants are held up, disingenuously, as examplars of the Poor Hippies who can’t afford to pay “The DA’s Ransom,” as it has been disparaged by both the delusional grower who imagines his pot plants are holy miracle cures for everything from hypochondria to lung cancer, as well as the standard-bearer of the long-lost War On Drugs mentality inspired by Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” slogan and Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority — resulting in the incarceration debacle we are now trying to solve with de facto decriminalizing effects of Prisong Realignment and Proposition 47’s attempt to reduce state prison overcrowding.

The grow I worked on was started by some out-of-staters who had won a large settlement in a lawsuit. By the time they leased the land, put up the greenhouse, and bought all the necessary supplies, they had invested a great deal of money. The grow was a big one and required lots of low-level agricultural employees like myself, and in the end the fellow they trusted to take the “product” to market (out of state where a better price could be had)… well, he disappeared — having sent a text message that he rolled the truck in the Nevada desert and was taken to the hospital. He claimed to have no idea what happened to the cargo he was carrying. This nice young man, who claimed to be (and by all appearances he looked like one) a poor hippy, was never heard from again. (And, yes, cousin, it has occurred to me that this story was concocted to feed my appetite for a share in the profits.)

So much for The Poor Hippy syndrome.

But the Grand Jury wasn’t convinced. Two of the jurors recused themselves for reasons we may suppose had to do with their own involvement in the underground economy. (The cliche "everyone does it" is almost literally true in Mendocino County.) The others concluded that the DA declined to provide them with evidence that if a defendant was indigent, he or she would have his or her financial predicament taken into consideration.

I asked the DA about this accusation and he said it wasn’t true. He said he had told them specifically of two cases, one handled by attorney Robert Boyd, and others by Keith Faulder where the fines and fees were reduced to accommodate the bottom lines of these growers. I was unable to catch up with the elusive Mr. Boyd — one of those locals who lives in fear of the AVA — but Faulder was forthcoming and answered my questions, which he would have done for the Grand Jury, had they bothered to ask.

Keep in mind here that Public Defender Linda Thompson, whose job it is to represent Poor Hippies, refused to cooperate with the Grand Jury. Therefore, the only source for comment we have is the estimable Faulder who sent me the following email on the topic:

“About 20% of my cannabis cases are pro bono, which means the client cannot pay me, let alone thousands of dollars to negotiate a misdemeanor with the DA. Eyster has at times agreed to a misdemeanor disposition for those clients if they do a declaration with documentation [tax records, income and expense records] of their indigence.”

Your trusty courthouse correspondent sees dozens of these 11470.2 cases resolved every week at the courthouse. The money it brings in is nothing in comparison to the money and confusion saved from the previous system under DA Meredith Lintott that saw the courthouse become an auction barn with herds of hippies being run through on an almost daily basis— with no distinction ever made between who was the main guy and who was a mere trimmer — everyone charged to the max with two felonies, right off, one for cultivation and another for possession for sale — then if a gun was found, everybody got charged with that felony as well, no matter whose gun it was.

As one can well imagine, this was a field day for the old-time drug warrior, a source of considerable satisfaction in a day’s work. Busting these people is purely a matter of choice. The cops used to grid out the County. One year they raided the Boonville area, next year Laytonville. Since about every third home was a pot op there was never a shortage of bustees. And often as not, the backlog it created let the true grower off easy as pie, since he could say, “Hey, mon, I’m just a trimmer, dude, swear to Jah.” And with the crunch in resources after the financial meltdown of ’08, it was just a matter of time until the charges would somehow evaporate, just go away. Eyster changed all that waste and closed that loophole, and the Grand Jury recognized Eyster's innovation as a positive thing.

But the Grand Jury was remiss in not slapping a subpoena on Public Defender Linda 'Dump Truck' Thompson, and following up on the Robert Boyd lead.  A talk with Keith Faulder would also have helped them understand the context here. The Grand Jurors proved too gullible, and when they were handed the myth of the Poor Hippy, they grabbed it. And now they want Eyster to provide real solid accommodations for a non-entity, a figment of the local imagination, the Poor Hippy pot pharma — what a gas!

35 Comments

  1. BB Grace May 25, 2016

    I don’t understand why Mendocino is dropping the ball with The Stepping Up Inniative.

    https://csgjusticecenter.org/jc/house-appropriations-committee-approves-bill-funding-key-justice-programs/?utm_source=CSG+Justice+Center+Primary+List&utm_campaign=2f3cf46f3c-5_25_16_Hill_Update&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_db9d88bcfb-2f3cf46f3c-42433625&mc_cid=2f3cf46f3c&mc_eid=62cdc33f56

    House Appropriations Committee Approves Bill Funding Key Justice Programs
    May 24, 2016

    By the CSG Justice Center Staff

    “Today, the House Appropriations Committee approved a federal spending bill that allocates $29 billion for Department of Justice programs in FY2017.

    Under this bill, Second Chance Act (SCA) programs would receive $68 million, the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act (MIOTCRA) programs would receive $12 million, and the Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI) would receive $27.5 million.

    Congressional leaders recently took bipartisan action in support of these three key criminal justice program, which focus on increasing public safety and reducing recidivism and help state and local governments address their criminal justice challenges:….”

    • james marmon May 25, 2016

      “I don’t understand why Mendocino is dropping the ball with The Stepping Up Inniative.”

      Why? because it would shift funding away from Camille Schraeder’s enterprises. Her organizations depend on people being mentally ill and fucking up. Where is your head today Ms. BB Grace?

      • BB Grace May 25, 2016

        Enjoying what Stepping Up Inniative is doing.

        How can you be inspired to follow Stepping Up Inniative? Maybe by seeing what they are doing successfully, you can write essays, letters and posts about what those who are doing Stepping Up Inniative are acheiving that RQMG isn’t by comparisons of data dash boards? Something constructive besides venting.

        I think you are handling an important issue unmaster degreely and it would be better for everyone if you would refrain from posting names and insults. I would have thought that your training would have taught you better. I can understand being upset and saying things, but one get to an age when if you didn’t get the hard knock yet, shame. Hard knocks hurt.

        I know you’re smarter that this rage. No one can do anything about that but you. I hope you are doing something about it. This kind of daily grind is not healthy. There are better ways to skin a cat, eh?

          • BB Grace May 25, 2016

            I’m not a social worker. I don’t work for RQMG or the county. I care, but that’s the top and bottom of it for me. I’m not involved with Mental Health. Kemper Report confirmed all my suspicions and set me free.

            I wish everyone good luck on the issue, except you.

            I’m sorry you got HURT really really BAD. I don’t see you as a “Devol’s Advocate” accomplishing anything excpet clouding the reality that you’re passive aggressive because you have anger issues and need to heal.

            You need to heal.

            How about writing about Ukiah history, or cooking, or something other than bumming yourself out and calling others names and being whinny?

            I said date dash board because I knew it would get you. Got you.

            Ok. So how do you cook a steak?

            • james marmon May 25, 2016

              It isn’t about me BB Grace, its about children who are being kidnapped from their parents, drugged and then brainwashed to believe their biological parents didn’t love them. Just what we need, more monsters like Schraeder, or maybe another Talen Barton.

              • BB Grace May 26, 2016

                Marmon it is about YOU and your grievance against the County while enviously blaming Camille Schraeder for your loss of a job you coveted.

                If this was about abused children by the County your reports would be sharing information on the abuses in ways that would appeal for help beyond the AVA peanut gallery which are unable to help. What do you want me to do with your info that I can help? I think you need more than a hug, but really Marmon, it is about YOU and your profound pain, shock from being fired from a job that you invested your identity in. How do you “get over” that?

                It’s up to you to rebuild or continue with your bum rut, IF helping parents was what you were about.

                Maybe the people who live with you and love you unconditionally share your pain that Eyster unfriended you, but news like that only makes others, even those who don’t like Eyster not want to friend you, and most don’t care.

                I don’t care if Eyster friends you or not. No matter how you cut it Marmon what you are posting is all about you and your profound anger at losing the job that would have enabled you to help parents keep their beloved children.

                I’m sorry. I used to watch this stuff happen in the military, and that’s why I don’t like social services.. it’s too military.. these ranks.

                I grew up in the military. I ran away from home when I was 15 because I had enough with the military, but it seems the USA is just becoming one big military base thanks to social services.

                ((((((((Marmon))))))) I hope you find a new career.

                • james marmon May 26, 2016

                  I’m always in the right place at the right time BB. I’m thinking about becoming a therapist. I’d love to get both you and Camille in my office.

                  James Marmon MSW

                  • BB Grace May 26, 2016

                    I think you would be great as an OT.

                    “Occupational therapy (OT) is the use of assessment and treatment to develop, recover, or maintain the daily living and work skills of people with a physical, mental, or cognitive disorder.”

                    I think you could have a lot of fun and make a lot of people happy as an OT.

                    http://www.mendocinocollege.net/Mendocino-College-occupational-therapy.php

                  • james marmon May 26, 2016

                    Sonya Nesch too, hook her brain up to my computer.

                • BB Grace May 26, 2016

                  Just want to explain that I came to terms with the military around 1978 when I broke off my engagement to an USN officer.

                  Since then I have been free to appreciate the military on my terms. I have a lot of appreciation and respect for military arts. I had to grow up first. Glad I did though I’m sure that I would have eventually made a fine Rear Admiral’s wife (which he became).

                  I’m happy to stand and wave my USA flag and cheer for our troops at parades. I feel like I served. I carried a military ID for 23 years.

  2. james marmon May 25, 2016

    This article is a good example of “good ole mental-cino groupthink.” David Eyster can do no wrong, I hope both Eyster and the County get their asses sued off. I happen to know people personally that are victims of this extortion. They were poor hippies, some had to borrow money or sell everything that wasn’t already confiscated just to pay him off.

    Extortion
    NOUN

    1.the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.

    synonyms: blackmail · shakedown · exaction

    There, have I missed anyone today?

    David and I used to be facebook friends until we had this very discussion, he unfriended me.

    • Bruce McEwen Post author | May 26, 2016

      Your idea of poor doesn’t make any sense to me, James. If your friends had too sell everything off, they weren’t poor — if they were poor, they would not, by definition, have anything to sell off.

    • David Eyster May 27, 2016

      It was not discussions such as this, James, that got you unfriended. Instead, it was your ongoing tirades of what I often perceived as unreasonable or nonsensical rantings that you attempted to force upon me through my non-business (read: personal) Facebook page. Just because you want to rant publicly about something doesn’t mean I have to also accept it through personal, non-business related channels. Enjoy the holiday weekend.

      • james marmon May 27, 2016

        Glad you’re paying attention, it makes attention seeking behavior all that much more interesting. I wouldn’t have expected any other response than this one coming from you.

        Meantime, Lowery and Family and Children’s Services are still incompetent and corrupt thanks to your non-actions. We had one child murdered and many others legally kidnapped in which I hold you partially responsible for. Nothing changes if nothing changes, David. It may all seem nonsensical to you but it doesn’t to the families of the children whose lives have been changed forever.

        You even bragged to the Board of Supervisors about saving the County big money on Baby Emerald’s murder. Paul Sequeira did a masterful job putting that murdering monster away, I sat through every day of that trial. My only problem with his handling of the case is that he stepped around exposing the County’s true culpability in the child’s death. Even your dump truck friend Linda Thompson went along with deal. No wonders Angelo her puppets love you.

        Outside of your “buy a misdemeanor” program and your non-handling of Bryan Lowery’s deleting of official records, I have no problem with you.

        You too have a nice holiday weekend. Maybe I will see you over there, I’ll be around.

        • james marmon May 27, 2016

          You and the dump truck also let FCS and the County off the hook on the Talen Barton case too. That boy should have had a psychological evaluation at 17 years old when he tried to smash his prior foster mother’s head in with a weight. He should have never been allowed to go live with that family in the first place. They were so happy that this family was willing to take him in that they ignored serious warning signs.

          Yes, you, Thompson, Angelo, and the fab five all deserve one another, after all its about the money isn’t it? Who cares about how many lives are destroyed in the process. That boy didn’t even get a fair trial because his story would have hurt the Agency and the local foster care industry and presented mitigating circumstances in the sentencing phase. Another good job, another slap on the back.

          Now there’s a rant.

        • james marmon May 27, 2016

          The official records that you allowed Lowery to get away with deleting were my investigative narratives where I determined that Mendocino County Sheriff deputies unlawfully detained two teenage Covelo girls without a warrant and delivered them to Lowery for interrogation without the mother’s consent or a court order. Their statements about one of the deputies making sexual innuendos to the girls about prostitution were also deleted from my official investigation narratives.

          I guess people doing their jobs under color of law like I was trying to do does not include documenting everything, especially when law enforcement and the Agency fuck up.

          I’ve been a social worker a long time David, you guys can only get away with discrediting me for only so long, I will prevail sooner or later. I did nothing wrong, and I’m a strong believer in Karma.

          Cover up after cover up, I got so tired of it. I guess it becomes a every day routine for some of you. You and the rest of the gang have caused me to loose all respect for the legal system,. I was an insider and learned the hard way how you treat honest crime fighters.

          Best wishes,

          Serpico.

  3. james marmon May 27, 2016

    Before all this happened I had even forgiven the Sheriff’s Office for the June 7, 1980 “Branding Iron” incident where my brother and I were brutally beaten by Mendocino County Sheriff’s deputies and thrown in jail without medical attention. Sheriff Jondahl’s crew put my brother Steve who was suffering from severe concussion in a 2 man cell with Kenneth Parnell the infamous kidnapper and child molester.

    I credit Parnell with keeping my brother alive until John Crowfoot, my dad’s friend, was able to get us released and taken to the hospital. The pictures of our faces were unbelievable, we couldn’t be identified. You remember all this David, you were in the mix then too.

    I setting here right now reading the August 1982 Mendocino County Grapevine, with the front page headlines “Altered testimony in the Marmon Case,” with a picture of the before and after police reports. If you recall, I believe it was Sheriff Tuso who blew the whistle in his bid to unseat Jondahl in office.

    Yeah, I have a problem with altered records and I have a problem with corruption in Mental-cino. In 1989 I went into recovery and changed my life. I put myself through high school at 37 years old and then college where I eventually received my masters in social work. I changed my friends and my belief system only to have it all shattered. I’m right back where I started. The bad guys are actually really the good guys, you guys art the bad guys, thanks for returning me to my senses.

    • james marmon May 28, 2016

      Quote from the August 1981 Mendocino Grapevine.

      “Sheriff Jondahl told the Grapevine he was aware of the white out testimony and that it had been sent to District Attorney”

      “If we could have proved the purpose of the act was to obstruct the court case,” DA Allen told the Grapevine, “then we would have charged them criminal obstruction of justice. But their intentions were not evil. They made a serious mistake, but not a purposeful crime.”

      This is how you guys work Mr. Eyster.

  4. Mike May 28, 2016

    Maybe it’s time to let the past go completely “traceless” in a sense (without going stupid and taking in the lessons of experience).

    Easter threw Bruce Anderson in jail and Anderson seems to have some capacity to let that history go “traceless” in a sense.

    Or, we can just freeze frame everyone and grind our teeth down to nothing by the time the labored breathing in a hospice bed sets in.

  5. Mike May 28, 2016

    I don’t think trying ever works but coming to see the actual nature of the freeze framed characters and storylines and just plain relaxing about whatever it is people are picturing about oneself sure seems to work wonders! A few seconds here and there grow into longer time periods free of the tar pit.

    Hint: the characters and storylines are just products of solidifying and keeping the thought chain strongly linked or connected. Just cut the string bundling all of that and let it fall and scatter as it will on the ground.

    Edit other post: Easter is Eyster. Get with it Apple.

  6. Mike May 28, 2016

    About the subject of the article:

    Another possible DA option (I imagine, not an expert here) that might fit better with due process and equal protection is to focus solely on public land grows AND private land grows that demonstrably have “public nuisance” written all over them (like in water draws, environmental damage, clear security impacts, etc).

    Otherwise, just exercise prosecutorial discretion and decline to prosecute cases until the upgraded system set to go in effect is actually in place.

  7. Eric Sunswheat May 28, 2016

    Author Leslie Korn’s 2016 book on nutritional essentials for mental health, intended for professional licensed health professionals, and students training to be so.

    The book could represent a sea change in viewing role of nutrients and behavior outlook in mental health treatment, in place of usually permanent mind altering prescribed drugs, which mostly has no provable therapeutic scientific basis for use, other than social control beat down.

    In actuality, while in the book describing nutritional additions, for each mental health condition currently being ‘treated’ by no scientific basis big pharma meds, some of nutrients described might be considered a summary overview.

    There could be more detailed and sometime better nutritional health approaches available in bits and pieces elsewhere, with more appropriate versions of supplements suggested, depending on availability and strategic cultivation or financial resources.

    The value of the book is in the collected works, now being poised as continuing education training model, for active employed case workers, and has been brought to the attention, of Camille Schraeder taking over Ortner contracts, and the County of Mendocino Board of Supervisors.

    It would seem, the review exercise could go beyond crunching numbers with the Kemper Report and the whimsical paper chase with Ortner, auditing what can be determined in the divestment of tens of millions of mental health funds in a two year time frame without binding contractual terms.

    The questions could include how much drugging of patients, should be part of the statistical inquiry over view, and in what methodologies, and on what basis, and for what percent of the population served.

    That would be part and parcel of gaining insight as to what County management oversight of mental health services would be, and a proper role of the Board of Supervisors and its ad hoc committee, to determine past activities and future goals grants implementation.

    A question is how many persons have followed every discussion at Board of Supervisors on role of toxic drug mind control phase out, nutritional health diagnosis monitoring of mental clients and diagnose nutritional deficiency, heavy metal contamination, and efficiency in chewing function to absorb consume nutrients, for intake jail arrested persons, or is the discussion even on the table.

    Those arrested not yet criminally convicted, arguably should not be subject to punitive detention before trial, and thus deprived of access to better nutrition necessary to cope with stress of life disrupted, to make decisions, and mount a defense.

    Those subsequently convicted and placed on home detention, are required to stay inside at home, and not experience therapeutic health life affirming mid summer day vitamin D3 sun exposure, because Sheriff Allman considers home detention punishment.

    This global subject overview was part of an agenda item years ago brought by Sheriff before the Board of Supervisors, to approve his home detention policy. The punishment is denial of health from risk of major disease by lack of sunshine.

    Sheriff department may say they provide minimum nutrition for adequate life according to nutritional guidelines, but if Sheriff jailers who would actually subsist on such fare, most probably would be declared to be unfit to be employed.

    An alert Sheriff might suggest better employee nutrition, or County Risk Management could, especially if jail employees are caught snacking on sugared substances, because most may be likely to not retain balanced judgement in circumstances requiring quick thinking, and could take it out on the incarcerated, but almost never would be held accountable with a settlement in a court of law.

    From what has been briefly seen in the newspapers, District Attorney David Eyster has absolved the Mendocino County Jail administration, of all responsibility in the with holding and debated false portrayal of information of Steve Neuroth’s 2014 death as suicide.

    This situation apparently occurred in the jail intake holding cell and probably with forced strait jacket resulting in bone breaking, of mental health patient Steve Neuroth, because of meth toxicity, irrespective of failing to treat with toxicity reversal emergency triage medication, because of inadequate training of staff in attendance.

    Reversing meth toxicity has straight forward protocol. It’s not a new situation. The jail accepted him as prisoner, instead of transporting to hospital even though meth toxicity symptoms of seeing ‘snakes’, were observed by Willits police.

    Patient Neuroth was on a program with Ortner Management in the hand off from County Mental Health a year before, for once a month injections into his ass to modify his behavior, which has always been considered as a gentle friendly man, and generous with his girl friend.

    County mental health contractors monitor jail intake website for their mental health clients, on a daily basis.

    The exception to Steve Neuroth’s peaceful disposition was in his medical records, when detained for forced drawing of his blood was undertaken, prior to or part of review at Ukiah Adventist Emergency Clinic, once that year of death in 2014, and once the year before.

    Each time this was or related to have been, just prior to being transported by ambulance for which he was billed, to Ortner mental drug and lock facility out of County for a week before being returned to the Ukiah community.

    At his Gibson Street HUD mental health housing, in which he could not have his homeless friend woman, live with him as a guest, for more than two weeks in time frame of possibly a year, without being threatened with eviction write up.

    His food supply consisted of handouts from the Food Bank next door, including from friends that didn’t want all of what was distributed for free, who stopped by his housing.

    Neuroth had discontinued daily so called anti-psychosis or mind control degenerating daily medications, when it was brought to his attention by a non-professional, that it could be causing his inability to achieve intimate relations with his perceived partner.

    Medication side effects was a published risk in the substance medical disclosure, therefore he switched to monthly treatment instead hoping for change, which demonstrated no improvement in situation.

    Most of Neuroth’s exposure to meth may have been second ‘hand’ from giving oral intimacy, to a reluctant partner under the influence, who had been in and out of jail herself, and was trying to distance the relationship, because he could no longer function as the lover as she had known him to be, for years before.

    Neuroth’s other sometimes intimate, his public girl friend, was a much younger mental health patient experiencing mobility problems (confidential), seemingly as side effects because of chronic toxic mental health medications, believed he was probably on meth because he didn’t seem to have his monthly money for her.

    His mental health administered monthly subsidy funds with oversight by mental health payee, were being diverted to the one he thought he really loved, who was trying to detach away, as he became more compulsive pushing resources at her.

    Mental Health knew for years that he was overly generous with women and give it all away. Steve finally gave up his mental health HUD housing a few months before death, with mistaken belief he would find other housing which he never found, to rent and share with his, now becoming imaginary girl friend.

    He subsequently stood on a Ukiah street corner for 20 days waiting for her to pass so he could talk and give gifts, until accidentally confiding to Ukiah police after complaints made, that he was sleeping on railroad tracks. He was then written up and told to leave town.

    The Sheriff’s department through the Sheriff would not report circumstances of death after Willits Police arrest transport, and then after lawsuit was filed by relatives, will not release details until litigation is resolved. Anyone who wants to receive it then through the department, is required to submit fingerprints.

    This is the Sheriff who was lauded by the Red Cross recently as a hero in mental health, because of a vacuum of leadership in County government.

    The Red Cross was trying to improve its own image, after substantial criticism in the way it operated or not, in the wave of Lake County fires last year, that became a federal disaster area.

    Steve had earlier that day of arrest and death in Ukiah, been turned away from Access Center mental health consulting crisis center, also in Ukiah, where he was accused of ‘spinning’ and refused a bottle of water.

    Subsequently a staff member who had wanted to give treatment but was countermanded by a supervising employee, and then went searching for him, soon after resigned his job.

    Steve’s estate lawsuit is headed for its day in federal civil rights court trial, unless litigation funds are depleted, or someone blinks and the lessons learned from the incident become known, a settlement occurs among reasonable parties, and become implemented with an ombudsman for competing interests, either by default or by intention.

    Question is, has the lesson been received, and history learned, or are we condemned to repeat the cycle, with continued mismanagement ‘bang for the buck’ for discretionary treatment, with a 5 year sales tax for mental health facility treatment separating it from jail in custody.

    Are we looking for sustainable recovery implementation dollars, and is this for, either convenience to sweep the streets, or God’s sake to improve health and well being, and provide opportunities to help with preparation and cultivation of nutrient dense supplemental food, and improve efficiency of existing farms and gardens, that can’t be replaced with machinery to avoid weed removal with toxics.

    The polarity is here, in a time of increasing societal change climatic shift, and weather disaster extremes, and tasked with resolving planet human population needs and carrying capacity ethically, although the caveat looms as clock ticks towards high noon with the sixth great species extinction, as the planet bats last.

    Be forewarned and benefit from a teaching moment, and do not let Steve Neuroth’s death be in vane, and simply be squashed or resolved in a payout to his estate. Learn from the experience and connect the dots, and attempt to resolve ones own personal trials and tribulations, peacefully and gently as Steve always did.

    • BB Grace May 29, 2016

      re: “clearing” your name.

      Take a feather pillow to the top of the Ukiah Court House during a good wind storm; Open a seam on the pillow case and turn it inside out shaking it vibrantly like a flag until all the down is released and you can watch it fly far and wide for what seems like forever. When you tire from watching the feathers float and fly, spin and soar far into the future, replace all the down into the pillow case.

      The task of picking up every piece of down successfully is about how well you will “clear” your name.

      You’re spreading your down with your own wind.

      What gets me, is you act like you care about the children and parents struggling with very personal issues with the County. Issues that are heart breaking and beyond my education or experience to help except baking cupcakes. You appear to enjoy scaring those who look to you for help while using them in your greivance to “clear” your name.

      Have you given any thought to the name you are creating for yourself today?

      Wave that flag, (pillow case) wave it high and wide, summer time done come and gone my o’ my….

      “US Blues” Hunter/Garcia

      • james marmon May 29, 2016

        BB Grace, my advocacy for parent’s rights and the mentally ill started years before I was wrongfully terminated, that’s why I was wrongfully terminated. You should see my personnel record, complaints, grievances, questioning authority and all kinds of stuff. You should have seen what County Counsel Doug the midnight rambler Losak took to my State Personnel Board hearing, two large boxes. What I do now is not in retaliation, it is in continuation. I am so proud of myself, and I will hold my head high as I take down this scum.

        • james marmon May 29, 2016

          As for the Courthouse, I love that place. There was a very popular Post Card in the 80’s that pictured the Courthouse in Ukiah and it captured me in my little red convertible driving by. You see Ms. BB Grace, I am part of Mendocino County’s very fabric.

          Signed

          Ghost Rider.

          • BB Grace May 29, 2016

            Yes, Mr. Marmon, Past your fluffy puffs there appears to be a snag in your fabric.

  8. james marmon May 29, 2016

    Tim Stoen once asked my brother Dan Woolley what he did to piss off David Eyster so much, sleep with his sister or something?

    We had the same question?

    It was over child support, not criminal, all turned out well.

    • Bruce McEwen Post author | May 31, 2016

      Friends, pot-phamas, countymonkeys, buy me some beers, I came to bury Stoen, not to praise him…

      The evil men do lives long after them,
      whereas the good is buried w/ their bones…”

  9. Bruce McEwen Post author | May 31, 2016

    My what a bunch of crap!

    Using my article to indulge such a lot of anal obsessions is something of an insult; however, I’ll not take offense, considering the infantile ambitions of the voices, here.

    Yes, Mr. Marmon, the Mormons work with the CIA. They train their missionaries at BYU to speak every language in the world. This is more for the purposes of proseletization than covert governmental adventures, but it plays beautifully into the Langley’s hand, and there is a National Guard Armory right alongside I-15 as you enter Salt Lake City, where these returned missionaries sit and listen to every communication they can pick up on their ultra sensitive sattelites. But to get this mixed up with the the antiquated notion of the Illuminatti, is about the same thing as believing that the Rosicrutians and immortals who live hundreds of thousands of years and ago around the city back streets with swords and duel for incomprehensible feats of longevity — in other words, dude, set aside the bong!

    In future I’ll thank you all to dump you shitty Pampers elsewhere.

  10. james marmon May 31, 2016

    Mr. McEwen, I made no mention of Mormons or the Illuminati on this thread, I think its you that needs to put the bong down or that high octane beer you’re drinking. I’m sorry Bruce if I don’t have the same man crush for Mr. Eyster that you do. That’s your man.

  11. Bruce McEwen Post author | May 31, 2016

    forgive me, Jimmy. I musta a been up in the night. These hot summer nights can drive a man batty, eh?

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