Letters To The Editor

AARON BASSLER

Letter to the Editor

As an extremely frustrated father and community member I feel the District Attorney’s report on the police shooting of Aaron Bassler shows clearly the need for change in the way our County government responds to issues relating to mental illness especially when public safety is a factor. I have no problem with the way the Sheriff handled Aaron’s apprehension. Among other things he conducted it with an understanding of the mental health issues and the trauma Aaron’s family was dealing with. This I believe helped prevent further loss of innocent life. In the end he did what he had to do.

My frustration comes from the County’s response to an emerging crisis. I believe these tragedies happened because of a near total lack of communication and understanding of the connection between mental illness and public safety by our County. The DA’s report highlights some the problems. He independently makes his own diagnosis of Aaron’s illness based on his and jail staff perspective. He researches it no further than to ask Aaron’s mother what she knows, when the DA should know she had no access to Aaron’s mental health records because of privacy laws. The DA strongly believes Aaron’s “situational mental instability was primarily driven by alcohol and/or illicit drug abuse” and not mental illness. Any review of multiple Chinese Consulate incidents shows clearly that Aaron had bizarre and strongly held delusions. The DA did not investigate this. The investigation into Aaron’s mental health should have taken place much sooner and involved a broader perspective than just an overworked jail staff.

This report goes out of its way to blame the family and especially the mother. This is a little like the pot calling the kettle black. The DA seems to have no understanding about Aaron’s mental health or the dangers it posed. For different reasons, his mother was thinking the same way. I don’t believe she is a bad person any more than I think the DA is a bad person. What is bad is a system that lets her and jail staff make decisions without some help. None of Aaron’s doctors would ever talk to his mother about Aaron. Aaron didn’t even allow the doctor’s secretary to talk to her. The system did not help her at all. The DA also uses some footnotes to condemn the whole family through pure speculation of who knew what when. The truth is when I could see Aaron was becoming dangerous, I didn’t go door to door to the whole community or to every ex-relative 30 years removed and try to convince them of the problem, I went to those with the power to help — County government. Through a letter to the County psychiatrist, jail medical staff, public defender, district attorney, and judge by different routes. The letter clearly stated my concerns about Aaron’s medical condition and safety, the family's safety and that of the community.

The DA’s speculation about who should be talking to who in both of the large families is again the pot calling the kettle black. Who didn’t communicate with whom in government? Where did the letters to the County Departments go? I admit that at the time, I had no idea how bad communication in government was and that allowed another tragedy to happen. First of all I thought my letter to the Sheriff’s jail medical staff informed them of my concerns about Aaron’s medical condition and dangerousness. He was in jail after two violent arrests. Also I had contact with multiple Law Enforcement Officers in the months leading up to the first shooting that informed me that Aaron was frequently observed in the Westport to Usal area acting suspiciously. In the first encounter, two officers came to my door and told me Aaron was a suspect in the shooting of an elk. I assumed he must be suspected of owning a high power rifle to bring down something as large as an elk. The location was described as North of Westport and near Usal. A third Officer talked to me on two different occasions about Aaron’s trespassing and suspicious behavior, again giving me the Westport to Usal area as the location. The Government had all the information I had and surely much more; so I assumed if he wasn’t a suspect, then they had information or contact with him proving him to be somewhere else at the time. I should add that I knew Aaron had problems but it’s hard to believe your own son could commit such a terrible crime. I also heard conspiracy theories based on Sheriff Department speculation about cartel involvement. After all, cartel or not there is a lot of growing going on in the county however it’s organized; and Aaron would be an outcast among outlaws. He would be an easy fall guy to take a wrap. When his mother told me about dropping him off, she was not clear about the day she did it. It could have been after the shooting. My head was spinning and I missed a chance to make a difference. I’ll have to live with that.

The DA says this case is being used as a lightning rod to bring change. This is absolutely true. I would like to make a difference before the next similar case. I don’t know if I can change the mind of the DA, but looking into the future it seems to me blaming the family is an age-old reaction that provides no better outcomes for the future. A real investigation into why this happened would show that the same information was available to both government and the family, and we both failed. As a citizen and tax payer I see no future in trying to change the inner workings of a family especially if you treat them as the enemy. If government isn’t working well on mental health and public safety, in a democracy we can change that.

It should be obvious that we have a local government communication and collaboration problem with everyone working independently from everyone else. There is a lot of misunderstanding about what Laura’s Law does, but its greatest asset is that it brings communication and collaboration to local government, and that will provide better outcomes in similar cases.

Jim Bassler

Fort Bragg

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THANK YOU CLIVE SILVERMAN!

Editor,

Clive Silverman was the leader in getting the courts resurfaced. He negotiated with contractors, raised additional funds, got the volunteers when needed, and made sure we had beautiful, professional courts in Boonville.

Thanks to all of you who contributed your monies, time, and hard work! This is truly an example of what this wonderful community can and will do. The best place on earth!

Maureen Bowman

Boonville

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OVERSIGHTS

Letter to the Editor:

The DAs Bassler Report overlooked some Mendocino County Department failures.

Mental Health received a letter to the Chief Psychiatrist from a family member on February 25, 2011 at 10:43 a.m., asking for a psychiatric evaluation and treatment for Aaron Bassler because of his severe psychiatric symptoms (delusions, paranoia, marked personality change, isolation) and potential dangerousness to others. The Chief Psychiatrist said he was never given the letter.

Jail Medical Department received the same letter on February 25, 2011. Aaron was in the jail and could have received a psychiatric evaluation and treatment. The Jail Psychiatrist said he was never given the letter.

Fort Bragg Public Defender’s office received letters from two family members. One letter was handed directly to the PD on February 22, 2011 and described Aaron’s psychiatric symptoms and asked for a psychiatric evaluation and treatment for him. A letter from a second family member was handed (by a third family member) directly to the PD at Aaron’s next court hearing. This letter described specific psychiatric symptoms and expressed concern for the public safety.

The Supervisors will not implement Laura’s Law which provides the psychiatric treatment that Aaron clearly needed and the family tried so hard to get for him. Aaron met Laura’s Law criteria (contrary to what the DA said). The Supervisors cut the Jail Psychiatrist’s hours from 20/week to 8/week which meant elimination of some essential psychiatric care at the jail.

Sonya Nesch, author of

Advocating for Someone with a Mental Illness

Comptche

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SECURITY, UKIAH STYLE

To the editor:

I went to the Friday matinee at the Ukiah Theatre. Imagine my shock when myself and two other ladies (all Social Security recipients) were ordered to open our purses for inspection before being admitted. When I expressed my outrage to the teenage ticket seller he said, “because of what happened in Colorado.”

First of all, it is generally men who are guilty of these atrocities, not grandmothers.

Second, why was my husband not made to empty his pockets? This kid glanced into one of the four sections of my purse. I could have had a gun strapped to my thigh. Are they looking for guns or looking for candy bars? What next? A body cavity search to see a movie?

I won't be going back.

Kathleen Prince

Ukiah

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REMEMBERING JAMAL

Editor,

Death is death, whether by cancer, car accident or suicide. On July 22nd, my brother, Jamal Essayah took his own life. At age 23, Jamal spoke and lived his truth. He used to say, “This is my truth and I don't want to step out of my integrity.” His dedication to honoring his path was not easy for others to understand.

I have seen that it can be uncomfortable for people to express their caring to the family in such a situation, but there is no wrong way to reach out with love and support.

I asked people who knew Jamal to give me a few words that came to mind when thinking of him. Here were a few: friendly, passionate, child-like, honest, funny, his smile, intelligent, determined, loving, his curly hair, movies, creative, inspired, caring, compassionate, dedicated and trusting.

I am always going to miss my brother. He was such a light in my life. I trust that he is at peace in this universe now and that he will continue to shine in my world wherever I go.

Along with the countless hearts he has touched around the world, Jamal is going to live on in my families’ and mine forever.

Laura Essayah

Boonville

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RETHINK YOUR ASSOCIATIONS, TOM

Editor:

I was saddened and dismayed to read of the shooting of four sheriff’s deputies, two fatally, in Louisiana a few days ago (“Two deputies killed, two wounded,” Friday). Investigators have linked at least some of the perpetrators to an anti-government group known as Posse Comitatus that doesn’t recognize any authority above the level of county sheriff.

I was shocked to read that Northern California sheriffs are involved with and speaking before a similar group, the Constitutional Sheriffs’ Association (“Sheriffs blast state, federal regulations,” Sunday). Do they not realize that local sheriff’s deputies are the frequent target of anti-government lunatics with guns?

For three county sheriffs to be whipping up anti-government fervor is highly irresponsible. It’s dangerous, even, to their own employees. And why are these sheriffs recommending harvest levels in federal forests, anyway?

And, of course, these sheriffs are like all the federal-government-is-bad blowhards — they have their hands out for money from, you guessed it, the federal government. More money for weapons for their departments, more money for marijuana enforcement.

I hope the citizens of Mendocino, Del Norte and Siskiyou counties rethink their choice of sheriff next election.

Sharon Tremble

Occidental

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THE UNKNOWN CANCER CURE

To all concerned about cancer:

Three years ago or so I coughed up a streak of blood in the mucus. Sure enough, I had lung cancer. At first nearly undetectable, it was the size of a quarter in six months. I went through chemo and radiation treatment with no results. I was given a couple of months and was scheduled to do it again. In the mean time I caught the first paragraph on the last page of Harpers Magazine and learned that the University of Alberta Medical Center gave dichloroacetate to animals afflicted with human cancers and were amazed to see brain, lung and liver cancers completely disappear. With help from an Internet savvy friend, I obtained some of it which hasn't been approved for human use due to safety concerns. Well, I've got nothing to lose so “experiment on me!” Two and a half months after a round of “treatment” I declined a second round and went to visit friends, maybe for the last time. I had a bottle of powdered DCL and put a quarter of a teaspoon in my morning cereal for a week and soon experienced some of the unwanted side effects. Among them, a wobble in my walk maybe three or so times a day. I read the dosages again as outlined on the Internet and it said it has a half-life of 48 hours. I cut back a bit to allow it to clear out before I did another dose. Hardly troubling and it did assure me that I had the real thing.

I was in Canada on Salt Spring Island exactly 27 days after I started taking it, looking at the garden. I had the strangest sensation of movement for just a few moments exactly where the tumor had been blocking the whole upper lobe of my right lung. An hour later I realized I was breathing free and was exhilarated. It had done what it had with those lab animals! For a month I thought I was becoming a schizoid. “It worked!” “No, it's not possible” — a cure for cancer? We've always been told “some day.” Within a month I got back to the cancer clinic and underwent another PET scan. “Congratulations,” my oncologist told me. “Your tumor has disappeared!” — obviously pleased that for once their “treatment” had work. “I hate to disappoint you but this is the work of dichloroacetate.” They refused to believe it. I don't blame them. I could hardly believe it myself.

This was an underground thing and pages and testimonials were increasing. I expected it would make headlines any day. But it has not, apart from a few medical journals and one highly technical article in the Economist. I wrote letters to newspapers etc. and didn't even get published. I finally realized, besides being so hard to believe they don't even want to hear about.

The cancer treatment industry, pharmaceutical corporations, specialist hospitals and countless others make very good money “treating” cancer and prolonging your life and cleaning out your wealth or your insurance company and family. The very last thing they want to hear about is a cure for cancer. I didn't want to believe they could be that cold-blooded. But they are.

Well, the last I heard, it's effective with some but not all cancers. All I know with certainty is what I tell you here. My knowledge is old but certain. I'm sure a lot more is known. But until all cancer patients are given pharmaceutically purified DCL in appropriate doses we will get some answers. In the meantime countless patients are dying unnecessarily.

I understand it is now available from many sources. But one must be careful. It has been used industrially but that has deadly impurities like toluene and other nasty stuff. It must be purified and have sodium added due to its acidity, but there is nothing to prevent some evil bastard from making a quick buck passing off the industrial stuff for the medicinal. One must be careful perhaps even getting it tested by a private lab company.

Sooner or later this will make the headlines and a great scandal will ensue. It causes no damage to healthy cells and it thankfully will destroy all metastasized cells throughout the body. I have no more lung cancer and have the PET scans to prove it. “Try it on me, I have nothing to lose.” That was my attitude and it saved my life. Don't take my word for it, it's all on the Internet.

David ‘Woody’ Wood

Ukiah

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SMOKING & HARLEYS

Editor —

Consider the pleasures of an open road motorcycle ride on a hot summer day. To stay cool you wear little but jeans and may be a t-shirt. The miles slip by effortlessly. You take the turns fast, but the bike responds perfectly as you throttle up. It thunders with power as you, one with the bike, eat up the road. If it's a Harley, everybody for miles around knows you're out. (Most Harley owners are generous about sharing the Harley experience — the raw throaty roar, not degraded by something as silly as a muffler.)

But it's not perfect. A motorcycle is inherently unstable. Get off, walk away and it falls over. Cars don't do that. (Write this down — help you remember.)

Control of the machine is exercised through two tire-to-pavement areas of contact that are smaller than the palm of your hand. If you hit ice, oil or even water, the coefficient of friction between these patches and the pavement approaches zero. If this happens on a curve, you are off the road. If you hit a bird, a dog or a coyote, you're off the road. And, God help you if you hit a cow or a deer crosses your path.

You single guys can harmlessly (harmless to us anyway) appreciate this pleasure. But motorcycle riding is irresponsible for a family man — perhaps worse than piloting a light airplane. At lease, with a plane, you're surrounded by a crash absorbing structure. On a motorcycle, you straddle the machine. Your body is the crash absorbing structure. That's nuts.

Think about it — or not. Your call. Like smoking, it's a legal and socially acceptable way of committing suicide.

(Old saying: many people would rather die than think. Some do.)

Best regards,

Bart Boyer

San Diego

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FLYOVER TAXES

Editor-

I’m writing to alert other valley residents to an innovative new taxation system I encountered with the local Community Services District (CSD).

As you know, a portion of the money we pay to the county with our property taxes goes to the CSD. The amount is based on the number of residences you have. My wife and I own one residence, so we have been paying the regular $72.

Earlier this month I received a letter from the CSD manager saying that the district’s “latest information indicates” that we have two residences on our property, not one. Therefore our taxes would go up by $36 — unless we did something about it.

I looked out the window to make sure no new residences had shown up overnight, and then telephoned the district manager, left a voice mail message, and sent email as well, saying that we have only one residence. The district manager responded that the fire chief would call me.

This was another stumper: What does the fire chief have to do with my property taxes? I was also mystified about the “latest information” the CSD supposedly had. We’ve been fixing up our property for years now, and every time we get a final inspection for a permit, the county’s tax assessors pay us a visit. If we had a second residence lying around somewhere, they would have found it – and started taxing us on it. So the “latest information” about a second residence didn’t come from the county.

Well, all the mysteries got solved when the fire chief called. After we exchanged pleasantries, he asked, “So what are the other buildings?” I was momentarily confused. For one thing, he has never visited us, so how would he know about our buildings? For another thing, it sounded like the CSD was not taking my word about having one residence. So I asked what buildings he was talking about. His response was “the ones I can see from the aerial photography.”

Suddenly I realized where the “latest information” about a second residence had come from. The CSD made it up. They looked at our property from the air (probably with Google Earth) and saw the roof of my wife’s art studio. It’s been there since 2005, but the CSD decided that it’s a residence.

Then I realized why they had turned the art studio into a house without visiting us, or asking us, or anything. The district manager and the fire chief both work for the CSD, which naturally wants to push up its tax revenues. And now they can do it simply by firing up a computer and virtually flying around the valley.

This is where things get really ironic. Like many people in the valley, my wife and I donate regularly to local non-profits, and we go to as many of the fund-raisers as we can. We’re also volunteer EMTs with the ambulance. We want the community to prosper. Heck, if the fire department asked us for $36, we would give it to them.

But I don’t think it’s right to shoulder a tax burden that the CSD invented all by itself — especially when it treated us as guilty (of multiple residences) until proven innocent.

So if you or any of your readers receive a similar letter from the CSD, read it closely. Count your residences, if you are fortunate enough to have any, and make sure the totals tally. The good people at our local CSD seem to be going about revenue generation in a new way, one that certainly caught this community member by surprise.

Thanks for reading,

Thom Elkjer

Boonville

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DR. BODHISATTVA

Dear Editor,

Because I was assigned to the Administrative-Segregation Unit of the Mendocino County Jail almost every day for the four years I was a corrections deputy, from 2000-2004, I worked closely with Dr. Doug Rosoff. I was his escort in Ad-Seg, sort of like his bodyguard.

It was with great, great sadness that I learned of Dr. Rosoff's death in a bike accident on Friday.

Although he was a forensic pyschiatrist, Dr. Rosoff was absolutely one of the best doctors in any medical specaility I've ever known. Caring. Compassionate. Knowledgeable. Effective. Intuitive. A healing presence.

He listened to inmates who were his patients, often for 10 or 20 minutes on bended knee in front of the open foodports of their cells in Ad-Seg. He was never impatient. Never judgmental. He spoke in soft, low, calming tones. And he was often very funny. He often used humor to defuse an inmate's anger or frustration. He once told me, “God is a laughing Buddha.” And Dr. Rosoff made inmates laugh, if he could. Inmates got a smile, along with their psych meds. Dr.Rosoff usually threw in some useful insight, too.

Most of all, Dr. Rosoff knew that emotional and spiritual pain was real pain. And it's easy to ignore an inmate's pain in Ad-Seg where inmates are locked down in a small, single cell for 23-1/2 hours a day. It's easy to neglect an inmate in Ad-Seg. Why? Because Ad-Seg is where human beings — classified by staff as sick, disturbed, violent, or abusive — are warehoused. Ad-Seg is a human warehouse, and it's at the center of what many call the “prison-industrial complex.”

But Dr. Rosoff would have none of that. He saw the humanity in warehoused inmates, and he helped them see that humanity in themselves. That was his greatest gift.

Dr. Rosoff was a bodhisattva disguised as a psychiatrist. Angels do walk among us.

It is my hope that Dr. Rosoff's life be honored by a proclaimation or some other memorial. He was much loved and respected. And he will be missed.

Sincerely,

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

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NOT DRUGS ALONE

Dear AVA,

Though David Eyster and his colleagues at the DA's office put together an excellent report on the Aaron Bassler affair, blaming drugs for his killings is way off the mark. No drug ever turned anyone into a murderer. Not LSD, not speed, not opiates, not marijuana, not alcohol, not Twinkies, not anything. While it's certainly possible that Bassler would have refrained from killing had he not been addled, drugs alone cannot account for his actions. It takes more than a match to burn down a house.

If Bassler had been schizophrenic, his condition surely would have surfaced during incarceration. But that doesn't rule out mental illness. Far more subtle and difficult to detect is the psychopath or megalomaniac. Both of these character types fall under the heading of “personality disorder,” which originated in the Freudian concept of the regressive personality. Like an infant, the regressive thinks other people exist only to serve him. Everyone is Mommy. If you're the center of the universe — the standard of everything good and true and right — anyone who disagrees with you or threatens you must be stupid or evil and therefore fully deserving of punishment. How is it possible to do wrong when the concepts of “good” and “me” are interchangeable?

Right, Kendall?

Freud provided a clue for identifying regressives. Since the life of a small child revolves around basic needs such as feeding and the timely expulsion of bodily waste, it's no surprise that life-long regressives are commonly fixated on pleasure and control. Bassler loved to suck on that blunt. And when he killed Matt Coleman, he couldn't resist defecating on the corpse, a shockingly literal evocation of the anal-expulsive tendency, ordinarily revealed in mundane acts of cruelty and messiness. Inseparable from his assault rifle, Bassler revealed a phallic fixation in addition to oral and anal tendencies. In short, he was a poster boy for the regressive personality.

It's significant that his mother knew he was armed when she dropped him off at the road leading to the site of Coleman's death the very next day yet refused to believe her son was a murderer. She knew he was troubled but blamed it on a bad acid trip years earlier. At the heart of the regressive personality is pathological narcissism. Not only is the narcissist automatically good and right, but so is anyone the narcissist identifies with, especially an offspring. Regressives often have a regressive parent, and sometimes the pathology of one generation is amplified in the next.

Laura's Law is irrelevant here because regressives virtually never volunteer for treatment, and there's certainly no medication for something so fundamentally askew. We could authorize mental health professionals to evaluate prisoners for personality disorders — adding years to sentences for those who qualify — but that would entail a new bureaucracy, a new center of power, and would further distend an already bloated prison system. Worst of all, since every center of power is a regressive-magnet, we'd soon have an army of psychocrats projecting their own malignancy onto anyone unlucky enough to wind up in jail.

If there's a real solution, it's education. We need a nationwide crash course in personality disorders (beyond what reality TV already provides). Some people should never be gifted with weaponry or elected to high office or appointed Deputy Director of Administrative Services at Parks and Recreation.

Ted Dace

Manhattan, Kansas

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PITTSBURG?

Dear Mr. Editor,

Let me get this straight. Four thousand tax dollars went to send Supervisor Smith to Pittsburg? Or was it Pittsburgh? And does Supervisor Hamburg really believe that either of those cities is in “the Midwest”?

A loyal subscriber

D. Bullock

Ione

PS. Hi Diana!