Mendocino County Today: Friday 6/7/24

Sun Song | Cooling | Local Events | Ukiah Annexation | Ukiah Theater | Ed Notes | Swift Kick | Filigreen Farm | Petit Teton | Beach Trestle | Carolyn Tobermory | No Refund | Pink Pride | Boonville Kindergarten | Royal Treatment | Andree Connors | Milligan Exhibit | Yesterday's Catch | Female Sasquatch | SF Trumpers | Yakuza Boss | Wine Water | Israeli Airstrike | Distress Buttons | Oxford Protestors | Landlord's Game | Portuguese Capes | Frida & Diego | Johnny Rosselli | Monkeywrenching | Hospital Bill | Capitalist Pyramid

---

---

TEMPERATURES will begin to ease today with seasonable conditions persisting through the weekend. Above normal temperatures will return early next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 48F with overcast skies this Friday morning on the coast. The fog played tag with the coast all day yesterday, I expect more of the same today. Cooling temps into the weekend then warming back up next week.

---

LOCAL EVENTS (Today & Tomorrow)

---

MULHEREN GIVES UKIAH $3 MIL A YEAR

by Mark Scaramella

For years Ukiah City officials and County officials have been unable to reach a tax sharing agreement which both Ukiah and the County would approve. After all, on one level the outskirts of Ukiah are more or less in “Greater Ukiah” anyway; on the north and south end of Ukiah it’s hard to tell where the city limits end and County jurisdiction begins. But in the pre-covid past the officials from the County were understandably reluctant to hand over some of the most lucrative taxable county properties to the City without some tangible offset of some kind. Those officials, principally Supervisors Pinches and McCowen as well as former CEO Carmel Angelo, are gone now.

Lately it seems that Ukiah officials have realized that Mendo now has the most gullible and naïve board of Supervisors in County history. So Ukiah officials seized on the opportunity to rope Ukiah area Supervisor (and former Ukiah City Councilperson) Maureen Mulheren into their happy talk tax sharing sales pitch, aka an ad hoc committee Mulheren hosted out of public view.

Predictably, Mulheren made coming up with a tax sharing agreement one of her top priorities, no matter how lopsided. And on Tuesday she got her wish: An agreement which would annex large chunks of unincorporated taxable properties on the outskirts of Ukiah into the City of Ukiah, thus transferring all applicable tax revenues — property, sales and bed taxes — from the County to the City of Ukiah, roughly estimated to be around $3 million per year.

What does the County get in return? 1. Nothing tangible. 2. Nobody knows.

Of all the parties directly involved, only Supervisor John Haschak seemed to even care enough to be skeptical.

Theoretically, Mendo would have a slightly smaller area to provide law enforcement and other services to, and Ukiah would have a larger area, but there’s no identifiable financial benefit to the County because the County would not be reducing staff, just making a few minor staff reassignments and adjustments.

The agreement has some ill-defined terms which would give the County a percentage of new development tax revenues in the newly annexed areas of Ukiah, but nobody knows what that development might be, when it might occur, or how much it might be worth tax-wise.

Dispelling any doubt about who benefits from this obviously one-sided deal, a small parade of chirpy Ukiah officials, including Mulheren’s fellow ad hoccers Ukiah City Manager Seldom Seen Sage Sangiacomo and Ukiah City Councilperson Mari Rodin, told the Supervisors that the agreement would have some wonderful but unmeasurable economic benefit to the County and would “raise the boats of all of us!” as Rodin proclaimed.

According to Rodin, developers will magically stream into the welcoming arms of Ukiah’s newly annexed areas and build all kinds of new construction thus increasing tax revenues for everybody! Never mind that nobody knows what or when or if. Rodin giddily told the board, “This agreement creates the conditions for economic flourishing [sic] that we so desperately need. … This is all of us working together for the benefit of our entire county. … It’s amazing there’s no press here. You are on the brink of something really special and forward thinking for the County. … Please don’t conceive of this as a loss to you all.”

Oh no; don’t do that. Who could possibly think that losing $3 mil a year is a loss?

Acting County Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector Sara Pierce told the Board that she had made a preliminary hypothetical and limited attempt to guess at the tax calculations that would be required under the terms of the agreement, but she didn’t get very far because the County’s property tax system would have to be “overridden” to even begin to estimate the actual tax implications of the agreement and nobody knows exactly which parcels the agreement would include. Pierce said she’d have to work up a very complicated spreadsheet off-line and that she has very little staff to do it and it would be error-prone.

Supervisor Ted Williams at first expressed some reluctance about the one-sided deal, but soon reversed himself as he jumped on the Mulheren/Rodin/Sangiacomo “everybody benefits” bandwagon of cheerleaders. Oddly, Williams justified his reversal by claiming that the County will be in bad financial shape whether they give $3 million a year to Ukiah or not. What’s a few million here or there when the ship is sinking anyway?, Williams seemed to be saying.

No one from the general public commented on the proposed agreement crafted in the private meetings of Mulheren’s ad hoc committee. The only County staffer to comment was Probation Chief Izen Locatelli who, after pointing out that he and his fellow senior staffers had not been consulted on the idea, added that there was no plan and no financial analysis to accompany the proposal. Locatelli suggested the board at least give the idea more thought before voting on it.

In the end the Supes voted 4-1 to approve the agreement with two of the votes in favor by lame duck supervisors who won’t be around when the $3 million a year is gone. Supervisor Haschak was the lone holdout saying he didn’t think the agreement had been thought through or planned well.

In case there was any doubt about how speculative the potential benefits to the County might be, after the vote Supervisor Mulheren thanked her three colleagues who voted with her concluding, “Thanks for the optimism.”

Next stop: the hyper-bureaucratic Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCO) for processing the annexation aspects of the deal. Nobody knows how long that will take. After that, a list of properties/parcels will be handed over to the Assessor and Auditor/Tax Collector to figure out how to implement the deal and make all its formulae fit within the County’s unworkable tax collection software system.

We’re not sure, but we think we saw Sage Sangiacomo and Mari Rodin smiling at each other as they left the Board chambers.

---

---

ED NOTES

A PAIR of Ukiah-area intractables illustrate the dilemma faced by every community in the state, large and small, which is, what to do with the thousands of Scotties and Kelishas, Mendo born and bred but beyond the coping abilities of existing strategies for dealing with the homeless, and right here I'm turning it over to Bruce McEwen, ace courthouse reporter (ret), who wrote in February of 2012 (!):

The official state estimate says that 32% of the California budget for indigent medical services is consumed by 2% of the indigent community. “Indigent community” is PC-speak for that sector of the homeless, or street people, who regularly show up in emergency rooms where, by law, they can't be denied services. A lot of them are hopeless drunks and drug addicts who used to be treated in the state hospital system that Reagan closed down.

In Mendocino County, low-end estimates say we have a year-round average about 100 full-time homeless individuals. High-end estimates put the number of in-County homeless as high as 1200. Whatever the number, it doubles and even triples during late summer when itinerant potheads arrive to take jobs trimming marijuana. Dope season, you see them standing around on the busiest streets of the County's population centers aloft their trim scissors in search of seasonal work. Trimmers often sign up for an array of benefits designed to keep the chronically homeless alive, as do many other transients, but it's the frequent fliers, not the trimmers and other travelers among the homeless that eat up a big part of the indigent medical budget.

Two locally-based individuals suck up a very large portion of that budget all by themselves. Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Kelisha Alvarez and Scotty Willis.

In the past year, these two, a couple, visited the Emergency Room at Ukiah Valley Medical Center 99 times. Heck, call it a hundred, but due to patient confidentiality restrictions, the stats cannot be independently confirmed. But hospital staffers, speaking off the record, say the couple made at least that many visits, and often arrived by ambulance.

Mr. Willis is an epileptic who occasionally suffers real seizures. At other times, he fakes them to avoid situations he'd prefer to avoid, like going to jail or court.

Mr. Willis's love interest, Ms. Alvarez, fakes all of her seizures so far as anyone can determine because she has no documented medical condition besides obesity at 5’3” and 285 pounds. She's got this weapons-grade heft that can convert her into a kind of mobile wrecking ball, plus a very bad attitude. Both the love birds have well documented criminal histories.

At the young age of 25, Kelisha Alvarez’s rap sheet is considerably longer than her boyfriend's. Kelisha has so many violations of probation that it seems the courts have often simply let her slide rather than deal with her in any formal sense. For instance, she was granted a Deferred Entry of Judgment years ago, then refused to cooperate. She tried Proposition 36 for treatment instead of jail for first time drug arrests and blew that. The same for Penal Code 1000, another first time drug offender alternative program. Having been given every chance in the book, Kelisha simply turned around and threw the book back at the courts.

Among her long list of crimes, Ms. K has been caught lifting booze off the shelves at Safeway, admitted stealing from elders, racked up an assault with a deadly weapon, a battery against both peace officers and EMTs. Mostly, though, her charges are disorderly conduct, trespassing, disobeying court orders, using offensive language — she’s a great one for high decibel, race-based insults — and tweaking. Although she always has money for meth and booze, her fines are usually dismissed for her inability to pay them.

In their most recent interface with the forces of law and order, the fun couple was hanging out at the Ukiah hospital’s emergency room watching TV like it was their living room when they went off because they'd been asked to leave. Scotty and Kelisha had just that day been ticketed for public intoxication and “camping” on the east side of the Safeway parking lot. Scotty has torn up many similar tickets, along with citations for assault and vandalism.

The Safeway parking lot doesn't offer television or camping facilities, but Kelisha was missing her favorite tv programs and wanted to go hang out at the ER where she could be more comfortable as she caught up on, perhaps, General Hospital and, during the commercials, amuse herself by insulting hospital staff…

McEWEN wrote the above in 2012, but Scottie's still out there eating up public resources and destroying the Ukiah area's plummeting "quality of life," while Kelisha, exiled to Oklahoma a few years ago in a creative deal worked out by the DA, is back in Ukiah but seemingly a little less actively aggressive, although she is still an occasional subject of law enforcement attention.

BOTH of them should have been permanently locked up years ago, and would have been before America lost its way in '67, but here we are nearly a quarter century later and they're still out there eating up their hog's share of emergency services. The demand for the few existing locked-door mental health facilities is so great that only more extreme cases than Scottie and Kelisha can get a ticket in. Maybe the new psych wing of the County Jail, still not under construction, will provide a permanent home for Scottie and Kelisha, but until then they're out there.

McEWEN CONTINUED:

On this occasion, January 18th, 2012, the Charge Nurse, Kim Swift and RN Jack Worthington went over to see if the couple was there to see the doctor or just hang out. In her subsequent declaration of what ensued, Nurse Swift said, “They both stated they were actively seizing while sitting in the lobby watching television and drinking a bottle of iced tea. Dr. Begley evaluated both in the triage room. Dr. Begley first evaluated Kelisha Alvarez, cleared and discharged her. Dr. Begley then evaluated Scotty Willis and cleared and discharged him as well.

“At that time, Mr. Willis refused to leave the triage room. Jack Worthington, RN, and I attempted to escort him out when Mr. Willis stated he needed his iced tea from the lobby. I obtained his tea and Mr. Willis started walking out the door with each of us having a hand on his elbows. We were by the guard shack at the ambulance entrance when Mr. Willis threw an elbow into Mr. Worthington’s head, knocking off his glasses. He then punched Mr. Worthington in the face.”

“I couldn’t see anything,” Worthington stated in his declaration. In the ensuing scuffle Worthington's finger also got jammed and badly swollen, his shirt was ripped open and he received a nasty scratch on his neck.

Nurse Swift tried to pry Scotty Willis off Worthington and was set upon by Kelisha Alvarez, who knocked the iced tea flying then slipped in it and fell on her five foot wide ass.

“I stood over her and told her to stay out of it,” Nurse Swift said.

Staff members Shawn Stark and Jay Girard scrambled to help restrain the lunatic Willis, who Worthington had managed to pin down on a bench.

“The mother of a patient in bed 10 of the emergency room ran up to me,” Nurse Swift said, “stating she had seen the whole thing and had called the police.”

When Officer Aponte of the Ukiah Police arrived, he sized up the situation with a groan of frustrated recognition. It would do no good to arrest the two "epileptics" because they would just fake seizures and tie up a good part of Ukiah's emergency medical system for hours.

Nurse Swift continued her account of her very long day: “The police arrived but I don't think they took it seriously. Officer Alponte was dealing with Ms. Alvarez. I had other patients in the lobby who needed to be triaged.”

Alponte was about to let Kelisha go, apparently content simply to get her off the hospital's premises.

“Don’t let her walk away,” Swift said. “I want to press charges. I'm tired of her spitting, hitting, throwing stuff, and cussing at us!”

Officer Alponte, probably with a sigh, arrested both of the roving tar babies and booked them into the County Jail.

As soon as they got to court the next day both defendants had seizures.

I'd seen EMTs removing people from the Courthouse on gurneys, but I didn’t realize it was always the same two people.

This particular case eventually went to civil court because the hospital had filed for a restraining order to keep the charming couple out of the Emergency Room. They'd have to find another place to watch television. Attorney Jan Cole-Wilson is representing Ukiah Valley Medical Center. Scotty is represented by the Public Defender’s office, and Kelisha is represented by the Alternate Public Defender. Of course, the representation of public defenders doesn’t extend to civil matters. But whatever the technicalities of representation, when defendant Kelisha got to court she shortcut the proceedings by faking a seizure.

Just last week, there she was being helped from the Courthouse by a medical team who carted her off to ER in an ambulance. If your kid has an accident and needs immediate medical attention, better brush up on your first aid because the ambulance might be tied up with Kelisha and Scotty, spitting on the EMT's, punching them in the face, gouging at their throats with filthy fingernails, and calling them “niggers.”

The pending court matter is aimed at keeping Kalisha out of the Emergency Room, but what can you do?

“Just shoot the bitch,” one lawyer, who begged to remain nameless, suggested.

“Let me get my hands on her fat neck,” another “undisclosed source,” volunteered.

The hearing was reset while Kelisha was hauled to the Emergency Room where she was evaluated and found medically fit and released. Having screamed random ethnic slurs, spit on and scratched at everyone who came within range of her enraged bulk, Kelisha, for the umpteenth time, was good to go. The hospital people learned long ago — probably back when Kalisha picked up her assault with a deadly weapon charge — to keep the trays of surgical instruments way out of her reach whenever she appeared.

Attorney Jan Cole-Wilson commented, “On the next hearing date Kelisha and Scotty didn’t appear. Judge Mayfield granted the restraining orders, but what can you do? You can’t really keep them away from the ER if they claim it’s a medical emergency, can you? I’m a liberal and I very much want this service for people who can’t afford medical care. But it is very frustrating.”

The Hospital’s public relations guy, Keith Dobbs, formerly a managing editor at a daily newspaper, was pleasant and accommodating. He came equipped with Nick Bejarano, and the two fine fellows ushered me into a sunny office with bare, polished surfaces. I asked about a program Ms. Cole-Wilson had mentioned that provides housing, income, and medical insurance for the 2% of chronic ER cases like Scotty and Kelisha. I had a hard time imagining any program short of permanent incarceration that could keep Scotty and Kelisha from doing their thing. Dobbs said he would email me the info.

What did he think of Scotty and Kelisha?

“We’re here to serve the community,” Mr. Dobbs blandly intoned. “To do what’s right for those who need patient care.”

I asked him again.

“Our mission is to reflect God’s love.”

Ukiah Valley Medical Center is an arm of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

“Yes, yes, but how about you, personally?”

“It’s not our place to judge. Because of patient confidentiality, we cannot talk about the case. Or her diagnosis. As for the restraining order, I can give you a copy of that.”

The charge was dropped in exchange for a plea in another case, for which Kelisha was given 30 days, and her fines written off.

Kelisha Alvarez’s booking summary (prior to 2012 alone):

7/18/2009 Under the influence of a controlled substance

2/24/2010 Disobeying a court order

3/18/2010 Disobeying a court order

6/18/2010 Disorderly conduct

7/3/2010 Disobeying a court order

10/15/2010 Probation revocation

11/20/2010 Trespassing, petty theft

12/22/2010 Disorderly conduct

1/13/2011 Failure to appear, probation revocation

7/18/2011 Assault with a deadly weapon

1/20/2012 Battery against peace officer, emergency tech, et al in performance of their duties.

---

Scotty Willis Booking Summary (prior to 2012 alone):

6/18/2009. Contempt of court.

2/7/2010. Receiving stolen property.

2/26/2010. Vandalism

7/15/2010. Probation violation.

10/25/2010. Trespass of a business, probation revocation, threats to committee crimes resulting in death or great bodily injury, brandishing or exhibiting deadly weapon other than a gun in a threatening, rude or angry manner.

11/27/2010. Disorderly conduct.

2/8/2011. Battery, violation of another person’s civil rights.

3/20/2011. Trespass on closed land.

11/30/2011 Resisting or obstructing a public officer, probation

1/20/2012. Battery against peace officer, emergency tech, etc. in performance of their duties.

ms NOTES: The contract with the new jail wing builder has been approved and signed. I'm not sure if they have physically broken ground yet. I suspect they have some long-lead time items to order first. But it's definitely under way with, supposedly, a fixed price. Sheriff Kendall says it'll take at least ten additional COs to staff the new wing, but he also said he hopes to be able to reduce the staff and inmate load in the current jail in some kind of partial compensation. A staffing plan for the new wing has not yet been made public. The PHF construction was put out to bid last month and they hope to get bids by the end of this month. County planners say it will be complete by the end of 2025, but I saw one architectural project plan that had it taking a year longer than that.

---

---

VELMA'S FARM STAND AT FILIGREEN FARM

We Are Back!

Friday 2-5pm (we will extend weekend hours in the coming weeks.. stay tuned)

We are excited to re-open the farm stand for the season! Limited hours as we get started but hoping to ramp up to Saturday's AND Sunday's as the bounty increases. For fresh produce this week: sprouting broccoli, sprouting cauliflower, green cabbage, napa cabbage, garlic scapes, hakurei turnips, fennel, kohlrabi, beets, carrots, and kale. We will also have dried fruit, tea blends, olive oil, frozen blueberries, tomato sauce, and everlasting wreaths available. Plus some delicious flavors of Wilder Kombucha!

All produce is certified biodynamic and organic. Follow us on Instagram for updates @filigreenfarm or email annie@filigreenfarm.com with any questions. We accept cash, credit card, check, and EBT/SNAP (with Market Match)!

---

PETIT TETON FARM

Petit Teton Farm is open Mon-Sat 9-4:30, Sun 12-4:30. Along with the large inventory of jams, pickles, soups, hot sauces, apple sauces, and drink mixers made from everything we grow, we sell frozen USDA beef and pork from our perfectly raised pigs and cows, and stewing hens and eggs. Squab is also available at times. Contact us for what's in stock at 707.684.4146 or farmer@petitteton.com.

Nikki and Steve

---

---

BRUCE MCEWEN: Carolyn [Wellington] was Boonville’s Tobermory; she knew everybody’s secrets. As the cub reporter in town, I loved her. But it was all off the record.

Short Stories: Tobermory by Saki

---

SORRY, NO REFUNDS

Editor,

The Ghost of the AVA.

Really miss the print version, but hoping your health is diong better. Been waiting to see what your plan is going to be, but my curiousy is getting the better of me and I have to ask: Does “suspended” mean something may be coming down the line? If not, will there be a refund of unmailed issues?

Truly,

Casey Pryor

Willits

ED NOTE: I hope you'll join AVA Nation on-line, but no refunds unless you happen to run into The Major in Ukiah. He's authorized to dispense cash owed.

THE MAJOR ADDS: We are also giving double credit for the website subscription for the time left on your print sub. Send us your email and we’ll get you started on theava.com.

---

---

RENE ESTES: When did the school system in Boonville start offering kindergarten? I didn’t get to participate. I looked through some of the history online but didn’t find my answer. I am working on my personal history for my family genealogy and I didn’t know this piece of information.

STEPHEN ROBBINS: They didn't have it in 1954, that's when I started 1st grade.

---

CRAIG GETS A REPRIEVE

The very warmest spiritual greetings,

My Ukiah, California assigned housing navigator was able to get her tribal social services group to approve my moving into the Royal Motel tomorrow at noon, for two months ending August 5th. Additionally, my application for an SSI increase due to not having a substantial cooking situation the past two years was successful. On June 5th a one time disbursement for $3,457.89 was auto-deposited into my checking account, and the monthly SSI has been increased from $392.61 to $855.81. The total monthly social security benefit is now increased from $868.61 to $1331.81.

Beyond August 5th, I will "follow spirit" going where I need to go and doing what I need to do.

Craig Louis Stehr

Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

---

---

HE PAINTED THE TOWN

by Sarah Nathe

When Kevin Milligan first saw Mendocino in June of 1997, he was taken by surprise. He had never been farther north in California than San Francisco and had no idea a place as quaint and beautiful could be found there. A working landscape painter, he was engaged in producing a collection of lithographs on the California Coast, but he was most familiar with Big Sur and Carmel. It became immediately apparent to Milligan that Mendocino offered numerous subjects suited to his art. The day he arrived, he set up his easel in Evergreen Cemetery and looked toward the bay. “Headstones in the foreground and the ocean in the back, it was a timeless scene, and captured the essence of the town,” he wrote.

To celebrate his discovery, the Kelley House Museum is devoting its summer exhibit to his evocative paintings. Paint the Town: The Art of Kevin Milligan opens on May 30th and runs to September 30th. Milligan came back to Mendocino again in August to paint other iconic views and structures, and the following June he moved to Mendocino and opened the Coastside Gallery in a water tower on the corner of Lansing and Calpella Streets. Over the next few years he painted many of the town’s structures and vistas, and became interested in their histories. He spent countless hours in the Kelley House Museum archives, and in 2002 he published Mendocino: A Painted Pictorial, a lovely coffee table book with 87 color plates and associated stories.

Milligan was born into an artistic family in St. Louis, Missouri. When he was seven years old, his family moved to the country, where his father Guy Milligan, a professional illustrator and designer, began to work outdoors on paintings of the area. He invited Kevin to come along and try his hand with a brush. Between 1975 and 77, Milligan studied with acclaimed figurative painter Wilbur Niewald at the Kansas City Art Institute. After earning his MFA at the University of North Carolina, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1981 in order to pursue his art.

During his time in Mendocino, Milligan walked every street and wandered the nearby hillsides. The following paragraph from his book captures his connection to the town:

“For years, I observed the town from an easel while painting in fields, back streets, and balconies and looking down from hills. Details of the town’s sights and sounds embedded themselves in my memory. I became so familiar with my surrounding that I could recognize the sound of a particular gate closing behind me, or how the ravens made their click-clock call as they flew out of the cypress trees beside Crown Hall, over the west-end fields, and circled the leaning Carlson water tower. In the summer months, this field is a favorite location. From my easel, I can look across yellow, dried grass to the rosebushes and pine trees next to west-end houses set against the ocean and sky—all forming a perfect harmony.”

The exhibit showcases eight of Milligan’s original paintings, as well as three of his father’s, alongside black and white photos of the historic buildings and landscapes that inspired them. Milligan’s histories of the buildings accompany the artwork. Thank you to the collectors who loaned their artwork for the exhibit: Genie Christoff, Steve Worthen, Barry Cusick, Meredith Smith, and Loretta McCoard. Milligan’s book, Mendocino: A Painted Pictorial, will be for sale at the Kelley House, as will a notecard set with six of his stunning Mendocino images.

(Please join the Kelley House Museum on June 8 from 5-7pm for the Second Saturday art walk in Mendocino to celebrate the opening of Paint the Town: The Art of Kevin Milligan. Kelley House members are welcome to come at 4pm for a private preview. Regrettably, the artist is not able to be in attendance.)

---

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, June 6, 2024

ANDREW CHAFFER, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia.

SARAH FRANCO, Comptche. DUI.

WILLIAM GOFORTH, Willits. Failure to appear.

TARA HILL, Ukiah. Attempt to keep stolen property, stolen vehicle, disobeying court order.

LAMONT JONES JR., Ukiah. Paraphernalia, county parole violation, resisting.

ADAM KESTER, Willits. Attempted car theft, attempt to keep stolen property, probation denial for more than two felony convictions.

CHRISTOPHER KIGER, Clearlake/Ukiah. Sexual penetration with foreign object victim under 14, oral copulation victim under 14, lewd lascivious upon child under 14, continuous sexual abuse of child.

ANGELA MILLER, Cloverdale/Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JOHN PETERSON, Comptche. Domestic battery.

NORMA PORTILLO-DOCKINS, Ukiah. Perjury, falsification of evidence.

OSCAR TORRES-MAGANA, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

---

---

TRUMP RALLY AND FUNDRAISER OFFERED A SPLIT SCREEN OF HIS SAN FRANCISCO SUPPORT

by Joe Garofoli

San Francisco, of all places, was a split screen of supporters for Donald Trump on Thursday. 

It was hard to tell which side of the screen was more mind-blowing to see in a region whose residents contributed $116 million to Joe Biden’s campaign four years ago.

But it’s easy to predict which supporters will be with him forever. It’s the ones who didn’t have to pay.  

They were at Marina Green on Thursday, where in the shadow of the fog-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge, a couple hundred horn-honking, red-cap wearing acolytes marinated in misinformation lined Marina Boulevard for 3½ hours of lively homage to their leader. With some circling the area in pickups blasting “God Bless America,” the largely blue-collar crowd will ride with Trump until the end. And then some. 

The other side of the screen played out a little over a mile up the hill in a Pacific Heights mansion owned by venture capitalist David Sacks. Entering the gated perimeter near Divisadero and Lyon streets in black SUVs were Trump’s potential new friends. The largely techy crowd paid between $50,000 and $500,000 to be in Trump’s presence, even if some may find his views on immigration, electric vehicles and LGBTQ rights repulsive. And even if he showed up hours later than expected after a late departure from a rally earlier in the day in Phoenix. 

Aside from the potential to leave town with $12 million, according to one top GOP official,  it’s easy to dismiss Trump’s San Francisco drive-by as the ultimate troll of the city that has nurtured his top antagonists (Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom) and which hosts high-dollar Democratic fundraisers like they’re backyard barbecues. 

But for a rare time in Trump’s life, Thursday wasn’t about him. It’s about his new rich tech friends. 

The question to be answered: Could they ever be as loyal to him as the folks on the Marina Green?

“I hope you take some pride in this,” San Francisco Republican Party Chair John Dennis told the Marina Green rally. Between the rally and the fundraiser, “you have no idea how much you are freaking out the Democrat Party that there is this kind of support in San Francisco,” he said, using the incorrect name of the Democratic Party that many Republicans invoke. 

Dennis didn’t attend the high-dollar fundraiser and declined to comment why. Neither did Jason Clark, the Bay Area regional vice chair for the California Republican Party, who was in Washington. Neither did Jessica Millan Patterson, the state party chair, who cited a scheduling conflict for missing all of Trump’s events in the state.

They were hard-pressed to name a Republican leader who they knew was attending the Sacks soiree other than Harmeet Dhillon, the San Francisco attorney and Republican National Committee committeewoman who has defended him in court over the years. 

At the fundraiser were cryptocurrency execs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the billionaire twins best known outside the tech world for suing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly ripping their idea off for a social network. Trump has been far more supportive of crypto than Biden. 

Also there was Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance, a friend of Sacks and endorsee of Trump’s who was key to pulling the event together. They noshed on tiny hamburgers with American flags adorning them, Dhillon said.  

Cuddling up with party leaders wasn’t the point. All those people have already kissed Trump’s ring smooth. Appearing with Sacks and party co-host Chamath Palihapitiya, the well-connected Valley hosts of “All In,” the nation’s No. 2 ranked technology podcast, is the mother lode for Trump. 

Trump won’t win California or even Silicon Valley. But the blessing of a few well-heeled techies might spur others to come out of the Silicon Valley Republican Protection Program and let their conservative flag fly. 

“You have high-profile, well-regarded individuals who come out, so to speak, as conservative or Republican, and that gives people the permission to say to themselves and to those around them, ‘Hey, you know, I feel the same way as this person does,’ ” said Jay Donde, the leader of a more centrist group that won control of the San Francisco Republican Central Committee in March. 

Donde said the “early adopters” who supported Trump were people like Peter Thiel. Sacks is leading the “second tranche” of pro-Trump techies.

Or is it the Trump-curious in Silicon Valley? 

“Whether or not that reflects an underlying shift in sentiment towards Donald Trump or an underlying shift in sentiment away from Joe Biden, I think is TBD,” Donde said. “I think it's less about enthusiasm for Trump and more about the dam bursting in terms of private dissatisfaction with the Biden administration in the past four years.”

That’s why we won’t know for a few months if Trump’s tech bromance extends beyond Sacks. One fundraiser — even one with a top ticket of a half million bucks — doesn’t forge a political marriage. However, this early date went well on one level: Dhillon told The Chronicle afterward that it raised $12 million. 

But there is no doubt about the loyalties of the people on the Marina Green. 

Few there Thursday were San Franciscans. Many drove there from all over Northern California, including a 25-car caravan from the East Bay. And, contrary to the stereotype of Trump supporters, many were people of color, including Elizabeth Starks, a Peruvian native who leads the San Francisco/Peninsula chapter of the California Republican Assembly, one of the party’s most conservative clubs.

She sees Trump, fresh off of being convicted for 34 felonies in connection to paying hush money to an adult film star, as the vessel to bring more Christian values back into the culture.

“All the children must learn the Ten Commandments. This is very important,” Starks said. “With the Ten Commandments, everybody is going to be good and we are going to bring back Trump.” 

Then there was Johnny, a restaurant server from Napa who declined to give his last name. He was waving a flag that said, “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Trump,” even though he voted for Biden. “I’m holding the flag for somebody else,”  he said. 

Johnny now backs Trump because he said that Biden has started “all these wars for political reasons.”

“We know they wanted Netanyahu out of Israel. So let's go there. And Hunter Biden was in Ukraine,” Johnny said, without further explanation. 

Quick reality check: Russia attacked Ukraine. And Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

“Obviously Hamas did it. But were there operatives in Hamas?” Johnny asked conspiratorially — again, with no evidence. 

Most alarming was that Johnny wasn’t alone in blaming Biden for starting the wars. It was a common refrain. 

So was absolving Trump for all of the slurs he has hurled at immigrants. Standing next to a long red and white banner that said “Chinese Americans for Trump. Happy Birthday Prez Trump,” Jennifer Strohfus, who was born in China, said she wasn’t offended by Trump calling the coronavirus “the China virus,” or his racist attacks on Taiwan-born Elaine Chao, who served in his own Cabinet as transportation secretary.

“There is a difference between the Chinese government and the  Chinese-American people, so don't confuse the two,” said Strohfus, who lives in Milpitas. “The Chinese government is evil, but Chinese-American people are kind and intelligent.”

As the chilly fog rolled in, some of the Marina Green crowd migrated up the hill to wait outside the security barricades in Pacific Heights to catch a glimpse of Trump entering the fundraiser, which he did around 7;30 p.m. They were greeted by a knot of Trump opponents. There unfolded a surreal San Francisco moment where, on opposite corners at the intersection of Pacific and Divisadero, the anti-Trumpers chanted, “Lock him up!” while the Trumpers sang, “Happy Birthday” to Trump, who turns 78 on June 14.

Livermore resident Ron Read, wearing a “I’m on a government watch list” T-shirt, walked through the crowd passing out flyers for a “Trump Truck Rally” this month in Pleasanton. He came to San Francisco in part “for the fellowship. Getting to hang out with like-minded people,” he said. 

“I know Trump is a news junkie, so if he can see on the news that this crowd showed up in San Francisco for him, maybe he'll do some sort of event here for us,” Read said. 

Instead of just showing up for the rich tech crowd. There’s no telling how long their relationship with Trump will last. But it’s off to a very prosperous start. 

(sfchronicle.com)

---

---

DOES CALIFORNIA WINE USE TOO MUCH WATER?

by Esther Mobley

Making wine requires water. But how much?

Water is a precious resource in drought-prone California, and its use in agriculture is rightfully a contentious topic. Recently, I’ve heard from readers — and from listeners who tuned in to a recent episode of KQED Forum where I was a guest — who are concerned about the sustainability of viticulture in this state. While a wine glut is compelling some grape growers to remove their vineyards, some readers are suggesting that this might be a good thing from a water use perspective.

So I wanted to understand: Just how big of a water suck are California grapevines, really?

The TL;DR here is that California wine grapes don’t gulp nearly as much water as crops like almonds, pistachios and alfalfa. But the real story here is much more complex — so wine and water geeks, read on!

“Let’s say everything is equal and you have wine grapes growing exactly next to almonds. The almonds are going to use more water,” said Mallika Necco, an assistant adjunct professor in UC Davis’ Dept. of Land, Air and Water Resources and an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Generally, a grapevine might use 25-35 inches of water per year, while it might require 41-54 inches to irrigate almonds, according to Megan Bartlett, an assistant professor in UC Davis’ Dept. of Viticulture and Enology.

Grapes are unusual among California crops for a few reasons. First, they can command a much higher price than many other fruits or vegetables — especially in places like Napa and Sonoma counties — which means that growers are willing to spend more in order to ensure high quality.

Second, they’re one of several crops whose quality can actually improve under water stress. Many grape growers employ what’s called deficit irrigation, giving the vines just enough water to get by, which some believe can lead to more concentrated flavors. It’s counterintuitive, but sometimes drought years coincide with excellent wine vintages.

A not-insignificant number of California growers even employ dry farming, eschewing irrigation altogether and leaving the vines to rely only on precipitation and whatever groundwater their roots can access. In fact, the French government long prohibited irrigating grapevines, and still strictly limits it — proof that dry farming is not only possible for vineyards, but commonplace.

Tomatoes are another crop that can taste better with less water; perhaps, like me, you’ve shelled out for those pricey, delectable, dry-farmed Early Girls. But “I don’t think we see as nuanced irrigation management in any other crop as we do with wine grapes,” Necco said.

Although irrigation accounts for most of the water used by grapevines, growers also apply water for other reasons, like frost protection. So while a vineyard in a hotter, inland area like the Central Valley could require more irrigation than a vineyard in cooler, coastal Mendocino County, Necco said, the Central Valley grower might never need to apply any water to keep frost at bay in the winter. Frost protection could account for as much as 20% of a Mendocino County vineyard’s overall annual water use, she added.

Then there’s the matter of the water source. When an irrigation hose drips water onto a vine’s roots, where is that water coming from? If it’s coming from a pond filled with rainwater capture, great. If it’s coming from an aquifer that’s not being replenished, or diverting from a stream, that may not be so great.

“There’s a lot of questions about water use and the sustainability of viticulture in Paso Robles,” Necco said, “because they don’t get very much rain, and it’s primarily groundwater-irrigated.”

Agriculture overall uses about 80% of California’s developed water supply, according to the Pacific Institute. So as the state attempts to combat the effects of climate change, it’s essential that farmers find ways to get by with less, Necco said. Dry farming may not be a feasible option for every farm or vineyard, but she’s currently researching how regenerative farming practices — which are becoming increasingly popular in the wine industry — may make crops more water-efficient.

“There needs to be a reduction in the amount of water that’s used for agriculture,” said Necco. “It’s going to happen in the next two decades. That will dramatically shift what we grow in California.”

---

ISRAELI STRIKE KILLS DOZENS AT CIVILIAN SHELTER IN GAZA

An Israeli airstrike on Thursday hit a United Nations school complex in central Gaza that had become a shelter for thousands of displaced Palestinians and, Israel said, Hamas militants. Gazan health officials said dozens of people were killed, including women and children.

The strike was the latest in a deadly surge of fighting in central Gaza, where Israeli forces have announced an offensive against what they describe as a renewed insurgency by Hamas.

The strike hit a compound that had been operated by UNRWA, the main U.N. body that aids Palestinians in Gaza. About 6,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering in the complex, located in the central Gaza area of Nuseirat, when the strike took place, said Juliette Touma, an UNRWA spokeswoman.

The Israeli military said its fighter jets had targeted three classrooms in the school building that held 20 to 30 Palestinian militants affiliated with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller militia that, like Hamas, is backed by Iran. Israeli forces had twice postponed the strike to reduce civilian casualties, the military said.…

nytimes.com/2024/06/06/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-school-killing.html

---

---

OXFORD ACTION FOR PALESTINE

by Miyo Peck-Suzuki

The police have been regular visitors at Oxford Univerity’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment since we set it up outside the Pitt Rivers Museum on May 6. The university’s vice-chancellor, Irene Tracey, says they are there to ensure our safety. The cops try to keep up the illusion with chit-chat. Was it cold last night? Will we be around for much longer? How did we manage to source so many tents? … But answering these questions would tell them which, and how many, of us are sleeping at the camp; who has been organizing what; and what we are going to do next. When they ask about the weather, I say: “I don’t know what you mean.”

On May 23 seventeen protesters were arrested as they tried to stage a peaceful sit-in at the vice-chancellor’s office in Wellington Square. They were prepared to stay for as long as it took for the vice-chancellor to agree to meet with us. They brought sudoku books, games, crochet materials and novels. But the police arrived within the hour and told the protesters they would be arrested unless they left immediately. Everyone agreed to go, but the police arrested them all anyway. One of the students involved caught it all on video.

More than a hundred people hurried to Wellington Square to support the arrested students, including students who were not involved in the encampment, faculty and local residents.

For over three hours we sat in the road, arms linked, blockading the police van which held our friends. “Forty thousand people dead!” we chanted, “you’re arresting kids instead.” Two cops were laughing. I recognized them; they’d been among the encampment’s “frequent fliers.” Eventually the police moved in to remove us. Videos show them dragging people out of the road by their feet. One broke a student’s glasses across his face, drawing blood. Another threw a nineteen-year-old undergraduate to the ground so hard that she was later diagnosed with a concussion. An elderly woman who scolded the police for their overreaction was knocked over; a clip I saw the next day showed her lying on the pavement.

Since then there have been no more faux-friendly questions at the encampment. Instead the police are finding ways to let us know they are watching. An Egyptian friend of mine was stopped and questioned for walking near the university’s administrative offices late at night. “I recognize you from the protest,” the officer said to him, though he had not been protesting. A second camp was established at the Radcliffe Camera on May 19. It is constantly circled by police. “Oh look, it’s the gobby one,” an officer said when he saw a protester away from the camp. Another officer recently approached one of the students who’d been arrested, addressing him by name. When they recognized two of us sitting near Wellington Square an hour before the start of a rally, the police walked over and filmed us, holding the camera a foot from our faces. But the university still insists they are there to “protect” us.

On May 23, senior administrators sent out an email condemning our “threatening and violent actions,” claiming that Oxford Action for Palestine “have not been transparent about their membership nor whose interests they represent,” and expressing disappointment that we have not used the “many formal and informal channels” of communication available to us.

The email astonished us. Various student groups have repeatedly tried to use both formal and informal channels of communication at the university to make themselves heard. Members of the Oxford Palestine Society and Rhodes Scholars for Palestine have chased meetings with the vice-chancellor and other senior administrators after launching student petitions. At least twenty-three Junior and Middle Common Rooms – college student bodies – have passed motions expressing support for the encampment and its demands. Students have been in touch individually with members of the senior leadership team to urge not only for divestment, but also for greater communication between the administration and its students who stand against genocide. The message is always the same: Wait.

Can Gaza wait?

Describing us as “violent” puts us in greater danger as we continue to sleep out in tents. By claiming they do not know who we are, the university’s senior leadership have renounced their duty of care. The university has indicated to our aggressors, whether that means the police or the passersby who call us terrorists, that it will do little to protect us. On the many occasions that our encampment has faced hostility and harassment, the university administration has offered no comment. The university says its own security services are reporting on our welfare, but they have never spoken to us either.

There were no arrests in 2010 when Oxford students occupied the Radcliffe Camera to protest at rising fees. As far as I can tell, the administration did not call those students “violent.” Most of them were white. Our protest, against the mass murder of Palestinian Arabs, is fronted by students of color. Last Tuesday, the university’s sovereign assembly, Congregation, met to hear answers to questions that some of its members had pre-submitted about the university’s investments and its plans to support the rebuilding of higher education in Gaza. As faculty entered the Sheldonian Theater, identity cards in hand, at least two professors of color were subjected to more rigorous checks than their white colleagues.

The accusation of “violence” deflects attention from the reason our protest escalated: the university’s repeated refusal to speak to us. It implies that we crossed a line and deserved what we got. But what did the alleged violence consist of? The university has accused the protesters who staged the sit-in at Wellington Square of “forcibly overpowering” a secretary on their way into the vice-chancellor’s offices, which they all strenuously deny. To have been in the administrative offices on May 23 was no doubt unpleasant, even scary. But does shouting and barricading doors make a protest “violent”?

These debates also distract from the reason we are protesting in the first place. The day after the sit-in, the International Court of Justice – no radical bastion – ordered that ‘Israel immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in Rafah, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that would bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.’ Two days later, Israel killed 45 people in Rafah, many burned alive, when they bombed a tent encampment for Palestinians they had already displaced.

As many political theorists and historians have shown, policing at home and colonial violence abroad have always been closely intertwined in Britain. The Thames River Police, founded at the end of the 18th century, were originally funded by the West India Planters Committees and West India Merchants. Their mandate was to protect colonial plunder as it reached English shores on cargo ships. And there are direct connections now between Israel’s war on Gaza and police violence in the West. US police forces send their officers to Israel for training. They employ security companies such as Instinctive Shooting International, which promises training “from the most elite Israeli counterterrorism forces”’ and offers lessons in managing “civil unrest and riots.” As the Palestinian feminist theorist Nada Elia has pointed out, when ISI claims that its methods are “field tested,” the “field” they are referring to is Palestine.

The Metropolitan Police, meanwhile, has declined Freedom of Information requests to disclose whether it sends its officers to train in Israel, citing national security concerns. Even so, the relationship between the Met and Israeli security is not a secret. High-ranking Met officials – including Cressida Dick, Alistair Sutherland and Mark Rowley – have spoken at the conferences and summits hosted by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), an Israeli think tank which offers consultancy and training by “the most senior veterans of the Israeli military, intelligence and security establishments.” The home secretary (at the time foreign secretary) James Cleverly spoke at the ICT conference last year.

The university administrators’ claim that they do not know whose interests the protesters represent is genuinely perplexing. They must not realize how close their rhetoric skates to an antisemitic dog whistle. This is especially unfortunate given that the administration has, so far, refused to acknowledge the Jewish students involved in the encampment, or how often those students have been subject to antisemitic harassment. In its May 23 statement, the university claimed the encampment had created “a deeply intimidating environment” for “our Jewish students and members of staff.” A letter to the vice-chancellor from concerned Jewish faculty pointed out that “the characterization of Jews as a uniform mass with a single viewpoint is itself a common and insidious antisemitic trope.” Is it really so difficult to believe that Oxford’s students, like other students around the world, are trying to represent the interests of Palestinians – their interests in survival, safety, dignity and self-determination?

There is a small – shrinking – window of time for Oxford to make its choice: divest from companies that are complicit in Israel’s assault on Gaza or add this genocide to a long list of colonial mea culpas. At the very least, our protest means that when the time comes – as it surely will – for Western institutions to account for how they acted in this moment, Oxford cannot claim that it didn’t know any better.

(London Review of Books)

---

---

THE TRADITION of Portuguese women wearing hooded capes, particularly in the Azores Islands, dates back centuries and is deeply rooted in the cultural heritage of the region. These hooded capes, known as "saias de monte," are an integral part of traditional Azorean dress and serve both practical and cultural purposes.

Historically, the Azores Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean, experienced unpredictable weather patterns, including strong winds and rain. The hooded capes provided protection from the elements, keeping women warm and dry as they went about their daily tasks, whether working in the fields or tending to household chores.

Beyond their practical function, the hooded capes also carry symbolic significance within Azorean culture. They are often intricately crafted, with elaborate designs and vibrant colors that reflect the unique identity of each island within the archipelago. The capes are passed down through generations as cherished heirlooms, symbolizing the continuity of tradition and the bonds of family and community.

In addition to their role as protective outerwear, the hooded capes are also worn on special occasions and festivals, where they serve as expressions of cultural pride and identity. Women don their capes with pride during religious processions, folk dances, and other traditional celebrations, adding to the rich tapestry of Azorean folklore and customs.

The tradition of wearing hooded capes continues to be upheld in the Azores Islands today, serving as a reminder of the region's rich cultural heritage and the resilience of its people. Through their distinctive dress, Azorean women pay homage to their ancestors, honor their roots, and celebrate the enduring spirit of Azorean culture.

---

"In the top of a high tree, I saw Frida in overalls, starting to climb down. Laughing gaily, she took my hand and ushered me through the house, which seemed to be empty, and into her room. Then she paraded all her paintings before me. These, her room, her sparkling presence, filled me with a wonderful joy. I did not know it then, but Frida had already become the most important fact in my life. And she would continue to be, up to the moment she died, twenty-seven years later."

— Diego Rivera

---

THE CALIFORNIA MOBSTER WHO WAS HIRED TO KILL FIDEL CASTRO — AND ENDED UP DEAD IN A BARREL

A handsome mafia fixer and “strategist” who became a Hollywood producer, the facts of Johnny Rosselli's life read almost like a mob thriller script

by Paula Mejia

In the early 1950s, Frank Sinatra found himself at loose ends. The public’s musical tastes had shifted and so had his voice. Headlines about his divorce (and his affair with actress Ava Gardner, whom he later married) dogged him in the press. His career slumped. Then, Sinatra got wind of a picture, “From Here to Eternity,” and saw an opportunity for a comeback. He pleaded with the film’s producer Harry Cohn for a shot at the film’s sought-after role of Maggio, but Cohn wouldn’t have it. Sinatra started calling in favors far and wide.

According to late author Lee Server, New York mafia boss Frank Costello was among those Sinatra asked for help. The story goes that Costello, who admired Sinatra, called on an LA mafioso named Johnny Rosselli to intercede. Rosselli “was happy to go see Harry and convey to him Costello’s casting advice: Give Sinatra the part or else,” Server wrote in his book “Handsome Johnny.”

Sinatra nabbed the part, and even won an Oscar for it.

This story’s been mythologized over the years — including one version where the mob apparently cut off the head of Cohn’s favorite racehorse, a la “The Godfather,” as a pointed message to the studio mogul — but underscores an important point: Anytime someone in the mob needed a guy to help them see something through in Los Angeles, they probably called on “Handsome Johnny” Rosselli.

LA’s Forgotten Fixer

As a boyishly handsome mob fixer with ties to Al Capone, one who became a semi-successful Hollywood producer and hobnobbed with bigwigs all around LA, the facts of Rosselli’s life read almost like a mob thriller script.

Only it really happened.

Rosselli had a hand in so many consequential historical events throughout the mid-century, from John F. Kennedy’s election to the emergence of Las Vegas as a gambling haunt. At one point, he was even recruited by the CIA in an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Contact information aside, his business card listed a single word on it: “strategist.”

“When Rosselli would walk into a room, he was the kind of guy who became the center of attention,” says Geoff Schumacher, the vice president of exhibits and programs at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas and author of a book about Howard Hughes. “He was a really good-looking guy. He was very charismatic. He always had a smile, which is unusual maybe for a mobster. And he was everybody’s pal. Or at least, it seemed, he wanted you to think so.”

Though Rosselli is a familiar figure among mob historians, it’s odd that he isn’t better known in the public consciousness. But much like the LA Mafia writ large, the realities of Rosselli’s life have been overshadowed by tales of the New York and Chicago mob. Though Rosselli perhaps shrewdly didn’t aspire to lead the mob himself, his preference to be behind the scenes may have contributed to him being a footnote in Mafia history instead of a main event.

That doesn’t make his life any less fascinating.

Rosselli was born Filippo Sacco on July 4, 1905, in Frosinone, Italy, located about 50 miles southeast of Rome. When he was young, he and his mother emigrated to Boston to join his father, who’d gone there years before looking for work amid the depression that plagued southern Italy at the time. When his father died, Rosselli stopped going to school and walked around seeking employment, shining shoes and selling newspapers to help his mother. He was eventually pulled toward Maverick Square, a place where so-called wise guys hung out and occasionally dispatched kids to be their lookouts.

During the throes of the Prohibition era, Rosselli got involved with several rackets, including selling morphine and theft, before a stint in New York. His self-mythologizing streak seems to have begun around that time; he told some people he’d been born in East Boston, and others Chicago, and started going by Rosselli instead of Sacco. The winters didn’t sit right with him, though — so when a friend told him to come out to sunny LA, which boasted weather not unlike the Mediterranean, Rosselli took the long trek out there via train in 1924.

Los Angeles suited a young Rosselli. It didn’t take long for him to get bound up in illicit activities, starting at a joint on West 6th Street that sold bootleg booze and was a preferred hangout of wise guys. There, Rosselli listened closely — a quality that helped him, along with his affability, rise up the ranks as he went from being a secretary and a bodyguard to eventually a full-on fixer.

“He was a mover and a shaker,” Schumacher says of Rosselli. “He was someone who was looking to make deals, he was always speaking about trying to think two steps ahead of everyone else.”

In the late 1920s, Al Capone took notice, and he tapped Rosselli to come work for him in Chicago, before returning to LA and acting as the famous gangster’s West Coast guy.

The mafia in Los Angeles weren’t heavy hitters in the 1920s, though. “In the underworld hierarchy they were hobbled by Old World proclivities and prejudices, like their reluctance to work with non-Sicilians, and by many years of internecine clashes and the disruptive tendency to bump off their own leaders,” Server wrote in his book. “The big Mob families in the East tended to think of the Los Angeles group as country bumpkins, if they gave them any thought at all.”

Additionally, he adds, some LA mobsters’ day jobs — primarily importing the likes of olive oil and fruit — proved to be more lucrative than their illicit activities at the time.

But the LA Mafia didn’t interact much with the “mainstream underworld” of racketeers operating in Los Angeles, Server also notes. That changed when Jack Dragna — a mafioso who eventually took over the LA mob — and Rosselli, a guy about town with a penchant for quietly and successfully ginning up illegal endeavors, teamed up for a series of armed robberies, raiding the likes of bookies and speakeasies tied to gangs with City Hall in their pocket. The bold move let the LA criminal underworld know that they were in charge now.

Rosselli and Dragna ruled many enterprises of the day, notably a series of gambling ships off the coast of Long Beach in the late 1920s. Rosselli flew under the radar in part because he gave off the impression of being on the straight and narrow, at least socially.

“The impression I have is: a lot of people who Johnny Rosselli knew, in those days, did not know his background,” Schumacher says. “This was fairly common at the time, that you had mobsters who were operating in plain sight, and people didn’t really fully understand what was happening.” Even if people in positions of power knew who Rosselli was, he “was such a fun guy to be around and they trusted him,” Schumacher says.

It also helped that Rosselli bore the gift of being in the right place at the right time. He made appearances where he could rub elbows with the rich, famous and powerful, primarily at the openings of race tracks and other starry events. He made friends with studio executives like Harry Cohn (whom he’d later apparently strong-arm into giving Sinatra that part) and actress Jean Harlow after he’d been tasked to be her bodyguard.

Of course, Rosselli knew enough dirt to bury any of these moguls. At his peak, he had everyone eating out of his hand.

“He was someone who hobnobbed with regular people: with business people, with Hollywood people,” Schumacher says. “But at the same time, he was representing and/or had the best interests of the mob. So not every mob guy, no matter how smart or savvy he is as a criminal, is able to rub shoulders with elite society and get along with them and have them feel like you’re one of them. But Rosselli was able to do that. Rosselli was definitely someone who transcended that reputation.”

In the 1940s, Rosselli enlisted in the U.S. Army. A few months in, on the cusp of him being shipped off to war, Rosselli was arrested in an attempt to squash organized crime and for his links to a high-profile extortion case. He and others were indicted for extorting Hollywood studios “and also charged with fraud against the stage hands and projectionists unions of an amount estimated as high as $6.5 million,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

When he got out of prison almost four years later, he tried to find legit work, at least as far as his parole was concerned. He went back to work for Dragna, but also started working as a Hollywood producer. Rosselli turned out to be good at it, and several of his films, noir capers like “Canon City,” were both critical and commercial hits.

In another life, he maybe could have made a solid career as a film producer. But Rosselli “burned a lot of bridges,” Schumacher says. Besides, there was a lot going on — both in LA and beyond. He was tasked with helping clean up the candidacy of a young man with political aspirations named John F. Kennedy, according to Server’s book, and he was also called to Las Vegas several times.

“Though unheralded as such, Johnny Rosselli could be counted among the founding fathers of the reborn Las Vegas,” Server writes. Rosselli had been part of the crew, along with Capone’s guys, that scoured Nevada trying to make open gambling legal in the early 1930s. Later on, Rosselli — “the mob’s point man in Las Vegas,” as Schumacher wrote for “Desert Companion” — assisted in helping Howard Hughes buy the Desert Inn, as well as the Sands and the New Frontier.

But perhaps the most wild true story about Rosselli’s larger-than-life existence had to do with the CIA recruiting him to help assassinate Fidel Castro.

He batted around a variety of methods, including a sniper and poisoning his meals, but everything failed, Server notes. Assassins either got spooked or went missing, and the poison administered to Castro either didn’t take or it didn’t happen altogether. He set another delayed-onset poisoning in motion, but that didn’t work either.

Later, Rosselli was asked to testify before the U.S. Senate in the mid-1970s about the CIA plot. Rosselli was asked by Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater if he’d taken extensive notes, given his vivid recollections. Rosselli coolly responded: “Senator, in my business, we don’t take notes.”

When Rosselli got on the stand before the Senate, Schumacher says, “he was very open, and I think there were people who thought he was a little too open, that he was somehow going to implicate them in one way or another in criminal acts.” That violated the sacred notion of omerta, he adds.

“This goes back forever, the notion of omerta,” Schumacher says. “If you’re in organized crime, you’re not going to talk to the cops. You’re not going to talk to anybody about what you do.”

That testimony is likely what did Rosselli in. He died under mysterious circumstances, potentially at the hands of the mafia: His body was found in a 55-gallon oil drum floating in Florida’s Dumfoundling Bay, and his legs had been sawed off.

Though Rosselli had the good sense to not get overambitious throughout his younger years, preferring to not be front and center and more of a backroom fixer, Schumacher believes hubris ultimately felled him.

“Rosselli, I think, got a little overconfident in the ’70s,” he says. “He figured his time as a mobster was pretty much over, which was true: He was living in Miami, away from LA and Chicago and Las Vegas. And he must have figured that … he had reached a level where he was safe. But clearly, others did not agree.”

---

MONKEY WRENCH GANG

---

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

My wife just found a hospital bill in an old book from a hospital in Pennsylvania for my grandfather in 1936. It does not mention what the surgery was but just the accounts receivable, the bill.

He was in the hospital from 11/18 to 1/11.

Ready for this?

Room $5.50 per day. $297.

Dressings. $5.00

OR. $30.00

Lab. $19.00

Drugs. $11.00

Total. $362.00

Less 5% discount. $18.10

Total $343.90. He paid $150. Down.

Those were the days.

---