PRESS RELEASE STATEMENT OF THE WEEK: “What IS certain is that the City of Ukiah is committed to transparency…”
“the details…cannot be shared…”
Both cannot be true at once. Either you’re up front about everything – transparency – or you’re not. And City of Ukiah is not. But they lied and said they are.
If no one holds them accountable, then I suppose they’re going to get away with having it both ways through their lies.
UKIAH POLICE CHIEF NOBLE WAIDELICH has not been heard from as his name is casually bandied about as a presumed domestic abuser, even in the LA Times, and how a Ukiah domestic drama drew the attention of Los Angeles is perhaps accounted for by the fact that the Chief's former wife and accuser, is now a resident of Fontana and her lawyer, undoubtedly au courant with contemporary portrayals of cops as badged psychopaths, rang up the paper and said, “Check this Waidelich guy out up the behind the green curtain. And look how the cops up there, all the way up to the DA, conspired against her.” Ordinarily, the LA Times sticks to show biz domestic dramas.
THE CHIEF is probably silent on the advice of his attorney, James King, of Willits, a former Mendo County Superior Court judge. (We have more former superior court judges than any population our size in the nation because we have more active judges for a population our size in the nation, a swindle pulled off years ago which we won't explain here because it's been explained here many times prior, but it was pulled off by the lawyer-dominated California legislature with a big assist from Mendolib of the time who thought it was funny that dopeheads like them got themselves elected to life-time sinecures as judges. (cf Richard Kossow)
AND, as of Tuesday, June 14 when Shannon Riley, assistant to Ukiah's seldom seen city manager, Sage Sangiacomo, and the person always shoved up front by that phantom Ukiah administrator when it's time to deliver bad news, issued a press release announcing that Chief Waidelich had been sent home with pay while he's criminally investigated by the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department, the referral to SoCo having been made by the Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall to avoid accusations of a “conflict of interest,” translated as accusations that a Mendo police investigation into one of their own would be prone to cover-up if Waidelich was found innocent of wrongdoing.
GIVEN that his record as a cop is unblemished, and given that there hasn't been a peep out of the guy in his own defense as he's pilloried in the media and vilified in social media, Chief Waidelich's in deep before all this gets anywhere near a courtroom.
MENDO'S DEFENSE ATTORNEYS tend heavily to wuss-ism. They ought to be out there shouting to anybody who will listen that their client is being maligned, but they don't because in Mendo there seems to be a silent agreement that we don't fight our cases in public even as our clients are being lynched by public opinion.
I THINK, though, that DA Eyster's destruction of Amanda Carley's career in law enforcement was way out of proportion to Ms. Carley's alleged lies about her life with Waidelich, which ended almost a decade ago. She and Waidelich had a lot to lose if she reported their domestic combat, assuming it had happened, and her girlfriends told the LA Times that Carley had showed them bruises and had even appeared in public with a black eye, attributing her injuries to Waidelich. But the couple shared ownership in property, and their jobs were in play if their difficulties became public. It's easy to understand why a woman in her position went back and forth on her claim that she was a victim of domestic abuse.
SO THE DA, claiming Carley had lied, placed Carley on the Brady List, a roster of cops suspected of lying, which precludes them from testifying in criminal prosecutions. And just like that, Carley was finished as any kind of cop or probation officer, which is how she'd earned her way most of her adult life. Seems unfair. Perceived untruths in the context of marital turmoil aren't at all the same as professional untruths told on the job.
AND NOW WAIDELICH, who has since remarried, is facing some kind of new criminal allegation on top of the pending Carley matter, as Ukiah sends him home with pay, while Sonoma County investigates him for… another domestic?
MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: Ms. Carley is suing Mendocino County for damages as well. According to that LA Times article the County was quick to investigate her and take her gun away (as a probation officer) when it learned of Eyster putting Carley on the Brady list.
The LA Times: “The county then opened another investigation — this one into Carley — for allegedly lying about whether she was abused. At that point, Carley was working at the Probation Department as a deputy probation officer. Her supervisor immediately took her firearm away and reassigned her caseload. She was interrogated and threatened with criminal charges by the county for withholding the truth. Waidelich was promoted to sergeant. Taking away her gun seems partisan and premature, said George Kirkham, a criminologist at Florida State University and consultant to more than 50 law enforcement agencies. The investigation leading up to the disciplinary action appeared cherry-picked, he said. ‘This was not an objective and thorough investigation in terms of basic elements of interviewing all parties, looking at all evidence physical or otherwise, then rendering an objective report,’ Kirkham said.‘The county had an obligation to take action, and it certainly would not involve promoting him.’
THE COUNTY had nothing to do with promoting Waidelich who worked for the Ukiah Police Department, not the County.
The LA Times continued: “After the investigation concluded that Carley ‘did not fully disclose information about the domestic violence — that occurred — in her relationship with Waidelich on three occasions,’ she was served with a written reprimand for ‘providing false or misleading information to a law enforcement officer’.”
CARLEY’S civil case against Mendocino County was originally filed in 2017, but it’s only now been reactivated. She originally sued the DA’s office, the Probation Department, DA Eyster, then-Probation Chief Albert Ganter and Waidelich. But DA Eyster has since been dropped from that suit on grounds that Carley’s claim constitutes a SLAPP suit (i.e., that Eyster’s statements and actions are protected within the scope of his official duties and barred from civil liability). That trial is set to begin on September 26 — unless it is postponed.
IT'S ONE THING to fire a guy, another to kick him while he's down, maybe even killing him professionally. For overweening piety and transparent virtue-signaling, the following paragraph from Ukiah's city manager is a prize winner:
“It is with great conviction that I uphold the City of Ukiah’s values of service and professionalism as I make the decision to terminate Mr. Waidelich from the agency,” said Ukiah City Manager, Sage Sangiacomo. “Recent events have transpired, illuminating the fact that this individual is not a good fit for the City. Our community deserves better; the good men and women who do this work every day with integrity deserve better.”
“GREAT CONVICTION”? What does your self-alleged “great conviction” have to do with the guy you placed on paid leave one day, fired the next, all of it without the great reveal: What is Noble Waidelich accused of? Why is Ukiah blackening his name before the investigation into his alleged unfitness is completed? Is he accused of a crime? If he is found innocent will he be reinstated?
THE REST of Sangiacomo's paragraph (and press release) reads like it was translated into Albanian and back into English. “Recent events have transpired illuminating the fact that…” Events have a way of doing that, even the un-illuminated ones.
IF UKIAH deserves anything, the town has earned serious consideration as Civic Saps of the Year. Just in the last few months, Ukiah has paid out a quarter of a mil to a commercial lady who said a Ukiah Police Officer extorted her for sex. But that officer, despite his reputation as a consensus bad guy, has not had his day in court, so why pay her off before he's even been tried, let alone convicted?
THEN UKIAH hands another quarter mil to a crazy guy who goes off his meds, buys a load of methamphetamine from his neighborhood meth man, takes all his clothes off in a speed heat, and gallops naked up and down South State Street. Ukiah hands him and his family a quarter mil as the victim while the primary question goes unasked: “Like, who's truly responsible here, the speed freak or the cops who had the unpleasant task of restraining him?”
AND THEN there's Sangiacomo's outrageously lush contract of better than $400,000 a year, bennies included, for “managing” a town of 16,000 people. (Visiting Ukiah once a week to shop and eat breakfast at the wonderfully retro diner, the Windmill, I've looked in vain for evidence of Ukiah's management, but then I'm from Boonville, the Swiss Watch of managerial order.)
I THINK Waidelich has been lynched. The way he's been fired and vilified by Sangiacomo is not defensible, especially considering that the guy has done a blamelessly reputable job as a Ukiah cop for many years. He's suddenly a menace to the community?
MAYBE it's time for the Ukiah City Council to take a look at Seldom Seen Sage, their wildly over-compensated city manager. He's presided over the police department throughout the recent departmental chaos and bears ultimate responsibility, doesn't he?
WHILE we're visiting Ukiah, what's with the new Millview Avenue Apartments advertised as “For farm and ag workers?” Probably grant-funded, at least partially, but workers of all races are hurting for housing, besides which shouldn't the wine industry be paying for “farm and ag worker” housing as the county's largest ag employer?
THE FORT BRAGG POLICE DEPARTMENT has reached full staffing levels with the recent promotion of three new officers.
Last year Fort Bragg Police Department began the hiring process to hire three local police recruits to attend the College of the Redwoods Police Academy in Eureka California. The three newly hired recruits received intense six months of police training. On Friday, June 10, 2022, all three recruits graduated from the police academy in a small ceremony attend by several Fort Bragg Police personnel, family and a host of other agencies.
On Monday night June 13, 2022 at the City Council meeting all three recruits were sworn in as police officers for the City of Fort Bragg. The recruits; former CSO Antoinette Moore, David Franco and Tyler Baker were joined by family and friends to witness the short ceremony. These three officers are from the local community and will provide service to the community for years to come, it is the goal of the city to provide opportunity for local persons to live and work within the community.
There is no rest for the three new officers they will receiving intense Field Training from certified Field Training Officers for the next ten to sixteen weeks at which time based on their performance they will become solo police officers.
The Fort Bragg Police Department is now fully staffed; we are one of the few agencies to have reached this status. It was the investment of the City Council, City Administration and Police Management allowing the hiring of these three local individuals, investing in their initial careers with an expected long-term commitment. (Chief John Naulty)
FRED GARDNER: This from the disjointed memoir I wrote for the Chronicle about my stint as Hallinan's press secretary:
Hallinan's defining act as a progressive DA was his endorsement of Proposition 215, the ballot initiative by which California voters legalized marijuana for medical use in 1996. California's other 57 DAs opposed Prop 215, as did every police chief and sheriff in the state, the attorney general, Senators Feinstein and Boxer, President Clinton, former President Jimmy Carter, even the beloved ex-Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, MD. In 2000 Terence was the only DA to endorse Proposition 36, the treatment-not-incarceration initiative.
The sad truth is that the "progressive" changes Hallinan introduced at the Hall of Justice —diversity in hiring, drug court, mentor court, the first-offender prostitution program, creation of an elder-abuse unit, zealous prosecution of domestic violence cases, to name a half dozen— could not begin to reverse the escalating social breakdown on the streets of San Francisco. His job was to enforce the law as written. All a "progressive" DA could do, really, was try to give a break to as many offenders who deserved a break as possible.
FRAGMENTS from a fragged mind. Esther Mobley, the Chron's always interesting wine writer even to not particularly interested people like me, reports that self-driving tractors “could be widespread on California farms by next year.” There is resistance from labor, most of which is unorganized, which is the way Wine World prefers it as it fights any and all attempts of farmworkers to unionize, as Roederer famously did thirty years ago here in the Anderson Valley when the UFW briefly got a foothold. Mendo's wine industry immediately convened union-busting seminars, and Roederer, one of the wealthiest wine companies in the world, hired the legal vampires from Littler-Mendelsohn to drive the UFW out of the Anderson Valley via snitches, blacklists, denial of single worker housing to pro-union workers, firings, and other foul means the San Francisco-based L&M specializes in.
THE DEMOCRATS' pathetic Trump-Is-Bad infomercials playing on national government radio and national lib television are occurring in the context of real issues, not that Trump isn't one of the rolling catastrophes out there, but what's the point of these milk monitor proceedings if they aren't aimed at locking him up? The point is Trump is all the Democrats have in lieu of a program. Not hard to predict what's up for 2024: the orange monster will be back as the fascist party's nominee. Win or lose he'll kick off Big Trouble, all of which will usher in a chaos we've never seen in our plump, oblivious country, in the even more threatening context of global eco-cide, millions of displaced persons, social implosion here at home accelerated by inflation with nobody of the intelligent, adult type in the leadership positions. And none in sight.
I CAN’T REMEMBER the last time I read a Press Democrat editorial, those thundering statements of the obvious, but this one I couldn't resist. A minor masterpiece of misdirection, it demonstrates the Rose City's first obligation to straight-up Democratic Party fraud.
FIRST OFF, the paper is owned by former congressman Doug Bosco, who has also magically become the private owner of lucrative segments of the old Northwestern Pacific Railroad, and the shot caller for the rest of the abandoned line, all of it shuffled off to Bosco by the Democrat state legislature and, now comes a chimerical scheme by the Democrats to create the Great Redwood Trail along the old train tracks. Which will never happen — can't happen given its fiscal-geological-logistical impossibilities.
TO ENSURE that millions of tax dollars are thrown at this happy trails fantasy, the Democrats, with the pd faithfully printing their press releases as news, have conjured scare stories about a mysterious, unnamed Indian tribe desiring to ship coal from the Bay Area to Eureka via the impassable Eel River Canyon. To make sure the coal fantasy doesn't eclipse the trail fantasy, the northcoast's congressional drone, Jared Huffman, supplemented by other professional Democratic officeholders, enacts legislation to make sure the abandoned rail line stays in Bosco’s and the northcoast's insider Democrat's grasping hands, all of it falsely reported by their stenographers at the Press Democrat. Gawd!
THE PD’S EDITORIAL: “Coal bound for China won’t pass through Northern California on rail cars after all. That’s good news for the health and safety of the region, but until the state transforms the abandoned line into a recreational trail, the threat remains.
“When news broke late last summer that a secretive corporation wanted to restore the railroad line between Willits and Eureka for freight, opposition grew quickly. It soon came out that the freight likely would be coal mined in Wyoming and Montana. It would pass through small California towns and verdant natural areas on the way to cargo ships headed for Asia.
“In an editorial at the time, The Press Democrat opposed the plan and had grave concerns about both the potential environmental impacts and the secrecy surrounding it.
“The rail line went out of service two decades ago in part because the land on which it is built is unstable. It also runs along the Eel and Russian rivers — critical waterways that provide drinking water for nearly a million Californians and habitat for endangered species. Dust blowing off coal-laden train cars or — in the worst case — a spill that dumped coal laced with toxic chemicals could prove catastrophic.”
BERKELEY is considering placing a vacant-home tax on the ballot, while in Mendo vacant homes, especially of the B&B type, remain vacant as the county's working people get shelter at extortionate rates or sleep in their vehicles.
DEPT. OF UNINTENTIONAL HUMOR, this headline: “Dems increasingly question whether unpopular Biden should be party’s nominee in 2024.”
DON'T TELL MENDO DA EYSTER, a dedicated lawn guy, but Jim Gale, founder of Food Forest Abundance, pointed out in a recent interview that in the United States there are 40 million acres of lawn, lawns being the most destructive monoculture on the planet, absorbing more resources and pesticides than any other crop without providing anything edible except the occasional dandelion. Gale says if we were to turn 30% of that lawn into permaculture-based food gardens, we could be food self-sufficient without relying on imports or chemicals.
CONSERVATORSHIP for the Ukiah Police Department? With Ukiah's Finest in what seems to be organizational free fall, much to the glee of the Defendant Community and cop bashers generally, the ava suggests that either Sheriff Matt Kendall assume department reins, or Ukiah brings in Fort Bragg Police chief, John Naulty, to retrain our county seat's much maligned police. “Boys, you don't have to beat the shit out of naked, rampaging 5150s. Most of them can be talked down, the rest forcefully but proportionately restrained. Repeated ‘compliance’ blows to the head, understandable and tempting as they may be, tend to be ineffective and likely to be misunderstood by the more effete sectors of the county’s population. Women. Yes, boys, the fair sex can be quite distracting these days, wrapped up like sausages, soaked in seductive scents, but it's generally not a good idea to marry in a state of blind lust, and if you do legally encumber yourselves in holy matrimony, don't do real estate deals with them. You can meet the stable, sane, marriageable ladies at church, and Ukiah, a most pious community, has a church on every corner.
DISHEVELED. One event dominated Tennessee Williams' life: his Sister Rose's bilateral prefrontal lobotomy performed on January 13, 1943, two years before 'The Glass Menagerie,' the play he forged from her condition, was first produced. He rarely mentions the lobotomy in his private notebooks, the fragmented daybooks which he kept for much of his life. By keeping virtually silent about the lobotomy, he maintains its status as incommunicable trauma, an episode outside words or knowledge. A lobotomy is a crime committed against language, emotion and mental agility: that Tennessee's response to Rose Williams' evicted brain couldn't be caught in the net of his notebooks (though the operation, the brutalization, received explicit acknowledgment in such works as 'Suddenly Last Summer') suggests that her silencing gave him pause and turned writing, for him, into a trial. He identified with her wound; and indirectly reinflicted it, in his writing, drinking and pill popping. Williams sought anesthesia but he also wanted something more complicated and enveloping than mere unconsciousness: he wanted recapitulation. And recapitulation — the sensation of going back through the proxy of words to the crime — brought with it a measure of thrill, a pleasure he expressed through overstatement, overwriting, each play foraging in the same moraine. — Wayne Koestenbaum
A KNOT OF TRAFFIC files past a group of CalTrans workers filling in a pot-hole. One of them turns around, and seeing a large snail on the ground behind him, stomps on it vehemently. Noticing the shocked expressions on his onlookers’ faces, he says, “Hey, that little shit has been following me around all day!”
AMERICA is definitely deep into its Weimar period, out-Weimaring pre-Nazi Germany spectacular decadence by a zillion miles, as Saturday morning's (or any morning's) dose of NPR daily confirms, this morning with a long interview of a New Orleans restaurant owner, described by the bubbly wubbly interviewing him as “tattooed on his legs and arms,” so we know fer shure we're in the presence of mega-cool. Chef Dude-Bro's culinary breakthrough? He puts caviar on fast food breakfast potatoes.
WHAT HAVE the Trump Is Bad hearings proved so far? Not much beyond that he incited a riot, not an “insurrection.” If, however, it turns out that the portly, iron-haired windbag provably instructed one or more of his sub-fascists to take and hold the capitol by force of arms, with permission to murder any elected, librul-type person found on the premises, then he's over. Or at least put permanently on ice. But so far, nada, no major crime beyond Democratic showboating. (Liz Cheney, heroine of democracy? Please.)
SOME HEAVY ALIENATION OUT THERE, on-line confirmation:
(1) Sonoma County should just absorb Mendocino County all together. Mendo is a lost cause. Corrupt and rotten to the core for way too long. Just flush the whole thing and drain the leech lines.
(2) Sonoma is full of Witches, crazies, and every homeless person North of Pismo Beach. The Sonoma Cops are worser and worser. I gave up on the North Coast, and moved to Lake County, where absolutely nobody gives a fuck about anything the government does, and where the County is the largest employer. Mendo is a shitshow, but Lake doesn’t even have a show. Lake County wants to turn into Wendover, with Casinos and Bordellos, starting with the Konocti Harbor Resort.
EITHER I’M INSANE or Robert Reich (who wrote a column this week urging Liz Cheney to run for President) is. I guess it must be me, because Reich isn’t alone. There are more and more liberal Democrats who want a Republican Party run by the Cheney faction. By next week, they might even prefer that the Cheney’s run their party. — Jeffrey St. Clair
ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] “Sheriff Kendall reported that two new-hire deputies have graduated from the Police Academy in Windsor. One more new deputy is coming, who has been mentored by Lt. Jason Caudillo. The Sheriff’s office is not able to patrol Redwood Valley as much as they would like because of the volume of drug problems and behavioral health issues around the Motel 6 area, and Brush Street in Ukiah. Lt. Caudillo reported that new apartments in Ukiah specifically intended to provide housing to people with addiction and behavioral health issues are generating a lot of calls to the Sheriff. The homeless camp on Brush Street is generating a high volume of calls. Social workers from four or five agencies regularly visit the camp in an attempt to enroll people in social services, but they don’t have much luck getting people signed up, resulting in more calls to law enforcement. Lt. Caudillo is working with Second District Supervisor Mo Mulheren to clean up this area. He contacted the California Conservation Corps and was quoted $208,000 in fees to clean up the camp because it includes hazardous waste, needles, and human waste.”
(—Monica Huettl, Summary of the June 8 Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council meeting (via MendoFever).)
[2] On this perfect day the last of the cotton wood fluff blowing in the breeze, birds atwitter, river high, my taters comin' up better than anything else I planted, poppies about to burst, check’s in the mail but the mail ain’t what it used to be, but let’s not worry bout that for now.
Let’s thank God for this glorious world, ask Him for mercy on our wounded, sick and dying. For those in war zones of the earth & of the mind. For preparation and sustenance in the famine. Food, water, shelter, clothing. Mercy for our greed and gluttony, pride and perversions.
Lord of the harvest, forgive and sustain us, bring us to your kingdom, if it is your will.
[3] When society changes from a meritocracy to some form of municipally doctored egalitarianism then all is lost. It begins in education. In the quasi-government institution where I work this means incompetent people occupying critical positions. The waste, nepotism and inefficiency is appalling. The 'social justice' leaders just paper over this disaster with money... that will be until the money is eventually gone. Anyone saying the emperor has no clothes is labeled a fascist.
[4] Those trying desperately to steer and contain the culture into a timeline of their making will find the premier and run of their “Jan 6” show a big failure.
Along with this not mattering to many the fact is very few people watch tv these days. Also summer is nearly here and the opportunity to block out the political static will be too enticing.
The controllers know they’re in a different climate and atmosphere yet they don’t know how to do anything different than they’ve always done. It’s why things are so obvious to us. It’s why things seem so weird.
It feels like we have to wait for *them* to crash and burn before we can move on.
[5] Of course Trump is guilty! Personality aside, his insights and managerial skills brought out the crazies in every arena, en masse. Like zombies awakened from their graves and flooding the town square, screeching, staggering, wide-eyed, reaching, stinking corpses. It is a wonder to behold. Trump unleashed the Zombie Apocalypses we all so feared and they are everywhere.
[6] I was recently told (by a woman who is a professional life coach to the elderly) that falls are perhaps the number one danger to elderly people. A broken bone almost always leads to rapid decline and often death.
In fact, this woman advised me that I should throw my clogs in the trash, as they are so unstable as to pose a risk of falls in older people. The shoes she suggested I get were the kind worn by people who run marathons, specifically the HOKA brand. (She favored the Bondi line.) This was because my feet and knees were killing me from standing and walking on concrete all day at farmers’ markets. The good shoes are a big help.
The main take-away from this whole discussion is that elderly people should NOT do ANYTHING that poses the risk of a fall. Whoever is putting Biden on a bicycle has a pretty cavalier attitude towards the guy’s health, to say the least.
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