Off the Record (October 2, 2019)

A READER RESPONDS to a recent story in the Press Democrat about the fouling of the Russian River: "It was only last century when we stopped using our waterways as dumps, for every form of human waste including our sewage. Most of the rest of world still does this as has been done from the beginning of times. The article made no mention of the Regional Water Quality Board, who is the responsible government agency to deal with water pollution. They have a long history of being regulatory, and politically driven, not problem driven. They know there is a problem in the Russian with E. coli, but have chosen to go after septic tank owners, and not where the real problem exists. They have not even tried to track down the cause of the problem. Looks like the County of Sonoma has. A hundred years ago we did much better. NCWQCB only goes after people they can regulate. And boy do they like to regulate, whether they are addressing a problem or not. I have mentioned this to them on many occasions. Dealing with real problems is not in their practiced mission statement. Look at what they are doing in the pot permit process. So it's not end of times, just another example of a failure in our government by an another staff driven agency that is insulated from the legislature. They do what they want, which means staring at a computer all day, and are overseen by a board that allows them to do this." 

RUBES: Some of Ukiah's leading citizens were agog last week when Snoop Dogg flew in to Ukiah's Rube International the other day apparently to visit nearby FlowKana. Snoop Dogg. Consider, if you dare, the implications.

LOTS OF US have been staggered at the astonishing injustice visited upon two Wisconsin men for a murder they obviously did not commit. The truly excellent (and unrefuted) Netflix production called Making a Murderer, is a must-see. What I found most striking about the non-case that police investigators manufactured against Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey is that both are clearly and absolutely without the guile it would have taken to pull off what they've spent years in prison for allegedly pulling off. And for Avery it's the second long prison stretch he's done for a crime he didn't commit, the first one a brutal rape by a creep with rape priors the police managed to ignore in their zeal to nail the hapless Avery.

THERE'S AT LAST some real hope that Avery and his nephew, Dassey, might be freed. A Wisconsin inmate has reportedly confessed to the killing of Teresa Halbach that Avery and Dassey have been locked away for. Newsweek reports the inmate, who will remain unnamed until law-enforcement officials can review the confession, told the filmmakers of the upcoming documentary series *Convicting a Murderer* that he killed Halbach. “We haven’t confirmed the legitimacy of the confession, but seeing as it was given by a notable convicted murderer from Wisconsin, we feel responsible to deliver any and all possible evidence to law enforcement and legal teams,” director Shawn Rech told Newsweek. “Having been in production for 20 months, we’ve uncovered an unfathomable amount of information and evidence that is leading us to the truth. Our investigation does not end here.”

STARTLED into laughter during Cal's football game against Mississippi last week when the camera briefly focused on a bloated Ol' Miss fan holding up a quaint sign demanding victory over the "Berkeley Communists." The commies squeaked by the Rebs, 28-20. 

THE DEMOCRATS still can't believe they lost to Trump, although their candidate was the only Democrat candidate who could have lost to him. And here comes Nancy Pelosi, the embodiment of reverse political inspiration, boldly announcing that she has begun an inquiry into impeaching Trump. An inquiry. Which will find, after a lot of pro forma, Democrat huffing and puffing, that Orange Man can't be impeached because the Senate would have to vote him impeached, too, and the Republicans have the numbers in the Senate to prevent his removal. If Trump, live on national tv, suddenly lunged at Pelosi and began clawing at her clothing in a frontal sexual assault, Republicans would call it "Fake News" while the Democrats began an inquiry. 

THE DEMOCRATS, and their media stenographers, have been howling for Trump's gravity-defying comb-across ever since he became a candidate. So here they come, the whole tedious gang — Pelosi, Neener Neener Schiff, the 20 or so candidates for president, and all the way down to career Northcoast officeholders like Mike Thompson, all of them, on-cue, with the same tired line: "Today we have the proverbial last straw."

ADAM SCHIFF? Christ spare us all. This great defender of the republic has introduced resolutions defending Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, was all in for the invasion of Iraq which destabilized the entire world, supports the Saudi onslaught on Yemen, and, perhaps most damning of all, he’s a vegetarian.

CORRECT ME if I’m wrong in seeing it all this way: Trump obviously held up military aid to pressure the reform Ukraine government to get damaging info on Biden, also a crook. The money was withheld as the under-armed Ukranians were trying to hold off the Rooskies, not that Trump cared because he wanted the goods on Biden, which are plentiful right here at home. Should Trump be impeached for using his high office and the threat of withheld aid to slime the slimey? Frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn whether he is or not. He wouldn’t have been elected in the first place but for Democrat corruption. And now we have the CIA and the NSA magically become Democratic good guys as the Democrats cherry pick whistleblowers while simultaneously supporting the prosecutions of Manning, Assange, Snowden. Best case scenario? The whole gang — Trump, Schiff, Guliani, Pelosi , MSNBC, CNN, NYT — are permanently removed from public life. 

HOME INVASION SEASON is upon us. An implausible story from the Press Democrat described a pot robbery on the McNab Ranch where a half-dozen masked men allegedly got past a pair of "guards" and made off with a load of dope. Another similar event occurred recently on the fringes of Ukiah out on deep, deep Low Gap Road. The McNab job, which sounds more like a dope deal gone wrong, remains "under investigation." The alleged Low Gap perps, a trio of rich kids from Sonoma County, probably so psyched up on "gangsta" rap that the coddled doofi actually believed they were "gangstas," got themselves busted virtually in the act —popped within an hour as they drove around nearby Ukiah trying to locate each other in the middle of the night. Pot apparently is again worth the gro-effort, meaning thieves are also again thick on Mendo's back roads.

AROUND THE COUNTY COURTHOUSE the Kenneth Rogers case is known as the "immaculate conviction" because Rogers (of Westport) was, after major betrayals by his attorneys and the cretinous trial judge (the late Ron Brown), packed off to state prison on the basis of zero evidence against him. All surmises and assumptions, but not a single fact that Rogers orchestrated a shooting attack on the home of a Westport political rival.

THE ROGERS case has been docketed in the United States Supreme Court on three issues including, Can the State of California deny a criminal defendant his rights to legal representation at a critical stage of the proceedings where the State refused to hold a hearing on the release of a Rogers' property worth some $128,500.00, so Rogers could retain legal counsel of his choice? And does the State of California have a legal duty to protect the public from the risk of attorneys like Donald Masuda who literally stole Kenneth Rogers money, preventing Rogers' ability to retain legal counsel of his choice? 

Background:

Trial: https://www.theava.com/archives/425

Sentencing: https://www.theava.com/archives/5409

New Trial?: https://www.theava.com/archives/4597

NEW YORKER FICTION, in this lowbrow's opinion, is mostly unreadable. Check that: readable under duress maybe but so extremely didactic in the new snowflakey ways that it's of no interest, at least to this outback semi-literate. If I was alone in my low opinion of most New Yorker fiction I'd doubleback and read some of the unreadable, but lots of people tell me they feel the same way about New Yorker short stories. Every couple of months they run a good one, which I suspect they do out of pure deference to the reputation of the author not that the editors care much or even recognize a good story when they read one. Anyway, Tom McGuane's "Wide Spot" in the September 23rd edition of the mag is the real deal. Perfectly told little gem. I want you to read it class, and report back.

FOG BELT READER COMMENTS: “Peters challenging Gjerde in the 4th District Supervisor race has finally got Gjerde off his duff. Dan is suddenly taking his job seriously! We've seen more and heard more from him in the past week than we have in the past three years. Seems Peters is already getting things done. Thank you Lindy!”

A BRIT JOURNALIST, rightwing division, called Toby Young told an English tv show that Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, was "terrifying children around the world with her catastrophic and alarmist" language." And other pundits, Fox News types, are suggesting the kid is nuts or, at a minimum, needs therapy for depression. The crowds of young people I saw on tv seemed mostly jubilant in the face of the looming apocalypse, but joy and enthusiasm are the nature of the young beast, right? None seemed crazy. The apocalypse remains on the periphery for most first world youth, but they certainly see daily hints of it in the mass aberrant behavior they see everyday outside their bubbles.  If they're poor, as millions of American young people are, they experience personal apocalypse in family collapse and the social chaos they grow up in. The young participants in last Friday's demos were mostly the children of privilege, the beneficiaries of private educations and insulation from the daily menace faced by their global age-equivalents. I think Greta Thunberg has done a good thing in calling attention to the accelerating catastrophes she and the rest of the young will confront as adults, and given a mental health match-up between her and the average Republican, my money would be on Greta.

ON THE SUBJECT of End Times, the United Nation’s-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns of “severe damage” to the world’s oceans and icy regions. The 42-page summary published Wednesday morning says Earth’s oceans are under such severe strain from climate change that everything from seafood harvests to the well-being of hundreds of millions of people along the coasts will soon be in jeopardy. Rising temperatures are to blame for a drop in fish populations and an increase in acidity levels threaten marine ecosystems most places, including off shore Mendo. The rising temps also contribute to ice melt, meaning oceans have risen about 16 centimeters since the beginning of the 20th century—more than double the rate of the previous 100 years. The warmer oceans will continue to fuel harsher tropical storms and floods, which poses the greatest threat to coastal populations. “The oceans are sending us so many warning signals that we need to get emissions under control,” said leader author Hans-Otto Pörtner, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. “Ecosystems are changing, food webs are changing, fish stocks are changing, and this turmoil is affecting humans.”

"THE MENDOCINO COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, in Ukiah, has been moving their collections from the Held-Poage Home into their new archival building. During this process, they have been narrowing their holdings to better reflect their mission to specifically preserve Mendocino County history and the history of the neighboring counties. They are letting go of hundreds of history books, first editions, antique books, antiques, and items from their collection that have been cleared as having no historical significance.

Hundreds Of Items Added. They are adding hundreds of books to this sale and just received a large donation of antiques ready for a new homes. So it’s definitely worth a look if you came to their first sale. 

Members Only Preview Mixer: MCHS members are invited to get first pick of the sale the night before the sale opens the public. Members can stop by on October 11th (Friday) from 5-7pm. Don’t worry if you are not a member, you can join at the door! 

MCHS Book & Antique Sale: Sale opens to the public October 12th (Saturday) from 10-2pm.

If you are not a member, they welcome you to join! 

Annual Dues:

• Couple Life Membership: $500
• Individual Life Membership: $300
• Patron: $100
• Couple (one address): $40
• Individual: $30

Membership includes an invite to our quarterly luncheon, a subscription to our quarterly historical journal, discounts on our publications and exclusive perks for MCHS events.

To become a member please contact us at mchs@pacific.net or (707) 462-6969 or sign up online at mendohistoricalsociety.com"

VAUGHN'S OUT. Ephemeral candidate T. Vaughn writes: "As of today I am dropping out of the race for 4th District Supervisor. Diabetes management has become a major focus in my life and the stress of running a campaign is too much good luck Dan & Lindy.”  

SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS ON THE ROAD: “Curious about name recognition and quality perception of Mendocino County produced Cannabis, I set out to perform field research. Visiting several southern California dispensaries, I was able to speak at length with employees and consumers about their product preferences. The answers tended to be consistent. Where is the best Cannabis produced? Los Angeles warehouses, because the terpenes are better preserved indoors. Best outdoor? Mexico. How about the Emerald Triangle? What’s that? What do you think of flower from Mendocino? Blank expression, where is that? Humboldt? No idea. Do you consider the county of origin when buying outdoor flower? No. What do you look for when purchasing? Strain, price. Perhaps there is an opportunity for the industry to create County brand recognition, but if it exists today, I couldn’t find it. One gentleman, when asked about Mendocino farms, did direct me to Amazon-owned Whole Foods. And, despite a dispensary telling me they didn’t have product from Mendocino, I did notice Flow Kana on their menu.”

KATHY WYLIE asks the candidates a pertinent question: Pensions and county debt. 

There has been a LOT of talk about the retirement plan potentially bankrupting the county. Dan, Lindy, Terrence, I'm curious about your stance on this issue, (as it has some of the biggest financial implications to the county IMO). Thanks.

LINDY PETERS: “Briefly stated, all of us at the County and City level need to build up our reserves and keep a careful and watchful eye on the bottom line. Placing the burden on taxpayers by increasing the sales tax percentage proved to be unpopular with the voters. They expect sound fiduciary decisions so we don’t have a “balloon payment” type of situation staring us down in a few years. I have been harping on this point at the City level for the last few years.”

DAN GJERDE: “Mendocino County has received some well-deserved criticism for actions it took 10 to 20 years ago. But since that time, before I joined the board and during my time, Mendocino County has moved more swiftly to reform its pension system than has CalPERS, the statewide pension system.

For example, Mendocino County has moved more swiftly to reduce its assumptions of investment returns, to make the assumptions align with past performance. In the past 15 years Mendocino's pension system has earned returns of just over 7%, and that time period includes the Great Recession. As of two years ago, our forecasts now assume a 7% return. Mendocino County's pension system will definitely not bankrupt Mendocino County, but it does require constant monitoring. For the past five and a half years the board of supervisors has entrusted me to provide that watchful eye, as their appointee to the investment and management board for the retirement system.”

MARK SCARAMELLA COMMENTS: On a conventional level, both of these comments are reasonable as far as they go. (Although we can live without the silly “watchful eye” metaphor — how can they do that when they can’t even bring themselves to stay on top of the county budget via ordinary monthly reporting?) But the County has indeed bumped up their contribution a bit based upon the 7% rate of return assumption for the stock market (which has indeed gone up and up and up for the last few years and will inevitably go down, down, down) and the County has forced new hires into "defined contribution" 401k-style pension plans instead of the "defined benefit" most county employees still have. The entire pension arrangement, of course, is highly dependent on the extremely volatile stock market; if the stock market took a significant dive for any significant length of time, the precarious balancing act that the county is doing to cover their pension obligations could be thrown seriously out of whack — meaning, the county would be compelled to pay pension obligations out of the general fund, meaning reduction in county services provided.

MAKING the problem much worse, however, is the county’s sustained handing out of ever larger salaries to their upper management class along with the associated increased pension liability which goes with them. The county could theoretically lobby the state to put a cap on pensions, we suppose, and they could include a provision in management pay raises that says something to the effect that these raises do not affect pension rates. Not that these belated provisions would improve the big picture at this point. 

But, such proposals would require that the very people who benefit from the lopsided pension arrangements advocate against themselves. Nobody seriously begrudges the relatively low line worker pensions that are part of collective bargaining, especially given the workloads many of them have to put up with these days. But those few of us who watch the county budget closely know that the pension obligation is a time-bomb of a problem, made much worse by the skewed high salaries and pensions of upper management.

KUDOS TO the Fort Bragg Planning Commission for their 4-1 vote against an Auto Zone chain store at the town's south end. Auto Zone would be welcome in Ukiah, if they aren't already there, but more visual blight at FB's first mile is definitely not on.

SONYA NESCH, one of our most valiant local soldiers in the unending struggle for decent mental health services in Mendocino County (and everywhere) has just published a very interesting memoir of her illustrious 101-year-old cousin, Jean Landis, a World War II pilot. Ms. Nesch's title explains much: "WWII Pilot, Then Congressional Medal: A Great Ride for WASP, Jean Landis." WW II female pilots weren't recognized by the Army until President Obama awarded them their long-denied recognition. Ms. N's book is available via Amazon, as is her invaluable "Advocating for Someone with a Mental Illness."

PETER ALLEGAERT isn't simply one more talented Mendo painter, he's the only one I know of to render the county's perpetually imperiled beauty not only as it is but he does it with humor and real bite. I treasure the prints of his work that I have. I remember when the artist and his wife lived near Elk, and as I dimly recall, Mrs. Allegaert was also a talented artist. And they departed, and again I'm drawing on dim memories here, for a place whose destruction hadn't achieved the warp speed of Mendo's. I think the last Mendo straw for the Allegaerts may have been an infamous clearcut next door to their place on Cameron Road, but whatever the last straw was it had already been reflected in the artist's work, the only honest depiction of Mendo at a time when art that said something was drowned in seascapes and surfboarding chipmunks. Suddenly up pops Allegaert's granddaughter informing his many Mendo admirers that not only is the artist alive and well and still painting, he is selling prints of some of his work out of his website at www.peterallegaert.com. All true sons and daughters of Mendocino County should own an Allegaert, as should anyone who appreciates honest art. 

SUPERVISOR TED WILLIAMS has placed a couple more items on next Tuesday’s Board agenda. In his nine months as Supervisor, Williams has placed more items on the Board’s agenda than all the other Supervisors combined for the last four years.

AGENDA ITEM 6c for example: Discussion and Possible Action Including Affirmation of the County’s Duty to Implement and Defend Laws Created Through Initiative 

(Sponsor: Supervisor Williams) 

Recommended Action: Affirm County's duty to implement and defend laws created through initiative. 

ED NOTE: For those who came in late, Item 6c is presumably aimed at getting the County’s other four Supervisors to address the question of whether or not Measure V should be enforced. After all, the voter-approved measure to declare Mendo’s thousands of acres of standing dead tanoaks killed via the herbicide Imazapyr is a public nuisance. The voters said so. The last time it came up Supervisor Williams volunteered to try to work with Mendocino Redwood Company on some kind of compromise after Supervisor John McCowen argued that the trees were not that much of a hazard and defended MRC’s position that they are immune from nuisance declarations under California’s “Right To Farm” statutes, and that maybe MRC could be persuaded to voluntarily deal with the “nuisance” by removing the dead trees around the edges. We gather from this item that Williams has not made much headway in his negotiations with MRC.

WHY NO TRIAL RUN? (by Tommy Wayne Kramer, Mendocino County’s must read columnist, found only in the Ukiah Daily Journal) “Months ago a local writer named D.E. (Rick) Johnson wrote a letter that was printed in the Daily Journal in which he put forth a few commonsense points about the proposed shrinking of State Street.

The crux was that the city should approach so drastic a makeover with caution. The city should subject the plan to a trial run by placing cones and bales of hay along the proposed route whereby officials and average citizens would be able to evaluate the changes to State Street before those changes become irrevocable.

Since his letter appeared I have had a dozen or more people echo Johnson’s remarks, in their own words of course, and perhaps without ever having read his thoughts and observations. It all seems so obvious.

But our leaders have never offered so much as a terse reply, let along a thoughtful and appreciative response. There is no sign the city is taking anyone’s opinions into account, at least not the opinions of mere citizens.

Opinions? Thanks, but the City of Ukiah hires consultants for opinions. And besides, what do citizens know about traffic on State Street anyway?

I’m no consultant and I don’t think I’ve given as much thought to this as Mr. Johnson but I’m with him and so are a lot of other people. The city should get out the hay bales and the traffic cones and run some experiments, work out some kinks, indulge the taxpayers, give lip service to citizen input and then, of course, do whatever the consultants say to do.”

GROUPS of anti-vaxxers are comparing their dangerous ignorance to the civil rights movement! This preposterous stance is simply more evidence that we live in combined a-historical and hysterical times. For pure disproportion this particular comparison wins the blue ribbon. Civil rights soldiers risked their lives. Anti-vaxxers risk the lives of others, particularly children, their own included. I remember when Judi Bari wanted to call Redwood Summer, “Mississippi Summer in the Redwoods.” Fortunately, the late Bari, although often wildly disproportionate on a personal level, immediately understood that Redwood Summer and Mississippi Summer bore no relation in terms of personal danger quotient, not to say that the comparison was breathtakingly insulting to the civil rights soldiers of Mississippi Summer.

YES! The current rise in measles cases more than warrants SB 276, the newly-signed law designed to rein in unscrupulous doctors who have been granting medical exemptions to vaccinations for dubious reasons. According to the CDC, measles cases have skyrocketed this year with (as of June 30) over 2,900 confirmed cases and 36,000 suspected cases in the US. The number of cases jumped 300% in the first three months of the year compared with 2018.

FROM LAST WEEK'S ICO in a story on failing school attendance by W.W. Keller: "The problem of chronic absenteeism is particularly acute in rural areas, and Mendonoma is no exception, where many people live at or near the poverty level and population is spread out geographically." Complicated question, for sure, but the assumption that poverty is high on the list of causes, implies that Native Americans and Mexicans, who the school district dare not identify by ethnicity but depend on for funding, aren't educationally ambitious for their children. Later in the article a school administrator says the school buses in the Point Arena area lack drivers, forcing school principals to drive the school buses and vans which, some of the time, "are so full that they reach capacity and have to leave students standing at the curbside." Which, one would think, is unacceptable if it happens even once. This may be unfair to the old boy, but PA's superintendent of schools, Warren Galletti, being paid at nearly triple the rate of a beginning teacher, maybe oughta visit the homes of the chronically absent students to find out why they are so often among the missing. 

A SECOND interesting ICO story by W.W. Keller begins, "Anna Dobbins, a Point Arena City Councilmember, said she was walking along the bank of the Garcia River on Sept. 7 at about 11:30am when she was challenged by a person (sic) who said he was a member of a hunt club that leases land from Mendocino Redwood Company, the property owner…"

MS. DOBBINS pointed out that navigable rivers are legally open to Americans up to their highest floodplain mark, i.e., basically the river banks, and that hunters or anybody else shouldn't be shooting in areas of the river where people might be walking. The hunter's version of the encounter was that he was merely concerned with Ms. Dobbins' safety. I've been challenged several times by property owners when they discovered me hiking along Anderson Valley's waterways that ran through their land, but only once was the alleged property owner rudely aggressive about my presence, and that happened when a woman roared up behind me as I boldly strode across the then-new single lane bridge across the Navarro at the west end of Rays Road. "This is private property! Get off immediately!" I was mid-span with my outta control dog, Roscoe. "I'll jump if you promise to take care of my dog." She gave me a giant harrumph and drove on, too fast for conditions, as I recall. The Anderson Valley, by then, had already been fenced off by big piles of money whose vaults were someplace else, and if it wasn't the moneybags or their serfs patrolling their undeserved acres, it was armed dope growers, and if the dope growers told you to leave it was always a good idea not to argue.

THE ONLY menacing encounter I've had while out a' walkin' occurred one afternoon on a dusty road serving a Boonville area called Deer Meadows. I liked it because it climbs steeply for max aerobic satisfaction, and I say "liked" because I gave it up not for the incident I will describe, but because I got tired of eating its dust when traffic along it became too frequent. So, I'm walking along minding my own business, as the perp community habitually says to the cops, when a pick-up with a Mexican guy behind the wheel pulls alongside of me and stays alongside of me as I walk on. I recognized the man but didn't know his name. I'd seen him around, and I was pretty sure my nephew had given his daughter a college scholarship when she graduated from Boonville High School. Now here he was death-glaring me, me a liberal all my days! I kept walking and he kept pace beside me in his truck, staring at me. I deployed my best Spanish? "What's the problemo?" He said something like, "You be careful." Which sounded like your basic threat, and so it being broad daylight and me with a stout walking staff, I boldly came back with, "Maybe you better be careful." He kept abreast of me for another lengthy stretch of dust, all the while muttering what I assumed were curses and threats. Finally, he turned around and drove off. Subsequently, I'd see him around town, but he seemed not to recognize me, so I'm assuming he had me mixed up with some other aged gringo who'd done him wrong. Now, fer shure Boonville's beloved weekly does tend to make many gavachos and gavach-ettes angry, but the newspaper is not anything like a factor in the immigrant community, and yours truly assumes he enjoys a non-hostile relationship with that community which, truth be told, often seems to confuse me with the aforementioned benevolent nephew. (I'm the Anderson without the money.) I'm glad that encounter didn't come to ultra-vi. I could see the jubilant headline in the Press Democrat: "Boonville Editor Clubs Innocent Immigrant In Unprovoked Attack."

CATCHING UP WITH JANE, Jane Futcher: “I’ve taken a breather from journalism since I stopped hosting the Cannabis Hour and stopped growing pot. With so many changes in the industry, if you’re not up on the latest disaster you’re in the dark. Worked all summer to finish Draft One of my WWI novel, then went to Denmark, Norway, Scotland and London, and just got back. Now contemplating Draft Two of novel.” 

ALL SCHOOL DISTRICTS now have Shelter In Place drills, school staff explaining the exercises to little kids in ways that don't frighten them, at least that's the way the educational brain trust justifies instilling a sense of overall menace in the small fry. I remember being ordered to crawl under my desk in the third grade or so, probably regarding the exercise as just more inexplicable thing you had to do because the authority told you to. My granddaughter, age 6, told me that her first grade class had, that very day, practiced sheltering in place. "If a deer gets sick on the playground or there are dead squirrels we lock the doors and hide," she explained. Reluctant to argue with a six-year-old, I wondered at the peril presented by a dead squirrel, but it's interesting that The Menace has moved from The Bomb, to Everything.

TWO ON-LINE COMMENTS ON THE JAKE JONES CASE from Redheaded Blackbelt site: 

 (1) The two incidents were 1) that he failed to create required paperwork on a case where dog was discovered dead, dog was discovered allegedly stabbed or shot. Jones either shined it on, probably not taking it as important enough to record. Then he lied to his boss as a CYA and number 2) we don’t know because it was considered a personnel matter. Basically it would seem that Jones was temperamentally unsuited to police work or getting along with his boss. 

Then Warnock hired him anyway, claiming to have reviewed the prior complaints and found them either minimal, explained away or part of the past. But then DA Eyster told Warnock that it was poor judgment because such disciplinary incidents are require to be public records, can thus be used by defendants’ attorneys to cast doubt on the involved policeman’s testimony. Mind you, the DA can still pursue the case but he would have to work to overcome the questions about police testimony. The Humboldt DA’s choice was to not risk it and thus either dismiss or bargain away any case where Jones was involved. That does not mean that a jury could not be convinced that the police testimony was reliable but simply the DA wouldn’t risk it.

What this shows is that maybe the whole court system is so burdened by unrealistic rules that are misused by attorneys that it fails to provide either protection or justice.

(2) I know Jake personally. I don’t know anything about the situation other than what has been presented in the media – because up until a few months ago he was under the equivalent of a gag order and was under threat of discipline if he talked about it. Having said that, Jake has always been a stand-up guy and I believe this situation and the reaction to it are absolutely ridiculous. Here’s a guy a who has literally devoted his life to public service: He was a firefighter for several years and served with distinction. When he felt he could do more for society in the capacity of a police officer, he put himself through the academy at great personal cost (time, family relationships, money, moving) and then took a job in a place that basically just chews up and spits out lesser cops (Eureka). During his time at Eureka, by all accounts, he did a good and reputable job.

It was only when Eureka bosses learned that he was in application at Willits, where he was living, that they began to dig into his work product in what I believe was an attempt to keep him from leaving – not an uncommon concern among EPD officers as that sort of behavior from admin has been demonstrated before. Case in point, Jake was written up a few weeks before this incident because he was one minute – ONE MINUTE – late to work. He drives from Willits to Eureka, folks, one minute could probably be credited to him since he’s driving 4 hours up the death corridor to come to work. I expect he probably stayed over a few extra minutes so it’s not like he stole a minute worth of pay from the city or anything.

Now Jake has resigned from EPD (had he stayed on, even as a ‘Brady officer’ he couldn’t have been fired, just reassigned), gone to Willits, now been fired from Willits (because there, as a new hire, he was still on probation), and he will never be a cop again because of this publicity. He’s essentially lost the career he worked long and hard for – as Julia Fox was quoted as saying in NCJ – why the hell would he toss a career over something so “chickenshit”? Answer: he wouldn’t. But other people might have no problem tossing his career in an attempt to influence behavior and send a message.

I’m not rendering this comment to change anyone’s mind, because god knows cop haters will always jump on this sort of thing to further their agenda that all cops are thuggish liars, but I read over the other 30 comments and didn’t see one in support of this guy, and that’s BS. He did a lot of good and could still do a lot of good were it not for the crap slung at him by administrative types. I respect WPD’s decision to hire him because there stands an example of a boss who can probably see through BS and make his own decisions. I’m saddened that now he and all the rest of WPD are under some sort of Mendo DA microscope when all he was doing was hiring a good candidate.

Jake, if you are reading this, I believe you and I believe in you. You’re my friend. I wish you the best in getting past this and I am truly disheartened with EPD’s reaction to the original situation and the subsequent shitstorm it has started. If there’s any consolation, know that time will blow most of this over. It sucks right now, I’m sure, but it will get better. Go back into firefighting, or construction, and know that you are probably going to be a lot more stress-free and a happier guy for not being a cop anymore, anyway. Honestly, I wouldn’t wish being a cop in this day and age on my worst enemy.

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] Well, after the Biden family’s deals with Ukrainian energy companies are thoroughly scrutinized, investigations must be launched into their profitable links with Chinese Security Services. That’s where the Big Money was.

And I’m not being critical of Joe Biden’s sons; they appear to have been pretty good guys. I’ve known people like them in my life, the sense of entitlement that comes from having a wealthy and successful father. Sure they did a lot of blow, so what? That takes cash. What, you think Joe Biden is the only Pol in DC who leveraged his position to help out his kids? It at least goes back to President Grant, who saw that his son Fred was taken care of, and how! It’s only natural.

[2] FLOW KANA, an online comment; "Flow Kana is the enemy. Make no mistake about that. It is our first test in the new corporate world we welcomed when we fell for the fake “legalization”. Will we strongly oppose and drive out the corporate take-over that they are? Or will we foolishly embrace them as we fall for their little public relations stunts like some river clean-up and a free food truck? Remember — every single dollar that you think they are donating here is actually coming out of here — out of the pockets of your neighbors. They are the present face of corporate take-over and are backed by Altria i.e., Philip Morris. They have hired some locals to put a “local” appearance on the corporation but…those people working for them are confused or are sell-outs and are not to be believed…or trusted.