"Creating a nation of radically immature adolescents as a way to keep the wheels of industry turning unleashes on society behaviors in adults typical of the two-year-old. Irritating enough in a toddler, these are terrifying in an adult population." —Joseph Chilton Pearce
Ukiah Police Department Incident Report: “On September 7th at about 7pm Ukiah Police responded to WalMart, at 1155 Airport Park Boulevard for a shoplifter that had fled the location. The officer determined a store employee had observed a female placing clothing into paper bags, later determined to be valued at over $250, which she then took with her and exited the store without paying. The employee contacted the female outside the store, but the female refused to cooperate and fled the location. The officer searched the area but could not locate the female. The officer returned to the store and learned store employees had located a backpack left behind by the suspect. Inside the backpack was some of the stolen clothing, as well as over 1 gram of methamphetamine, and a jail bracelet with the name of 32 year old Jennifer Louise Tinsley. Store employees viewed the Mendocino County Jail online booking photos and confirmed Tinsley was the theft suspect. On September 9th at about 7:10 PM a Ukiah Police Officer saw Tinsley in the pocket park in the 100 block of South Oak Street. Tinsley admitted to the theft, and she was arrested for shoplifting and possession of methamphetamine. Tinsley was on probation for shoplifting and drug influence, and was charged with violating probation. While being transported to the County Jail and while the police vehicle was stopped on North State Street at Low Gap Road, Tinsley was able to slip her handcuffs and open the door. Tinsley ran from the car and refused orders to stop as the officer pursued her on foot. Tinsley was captured behind the QuestMart, at 915 North State Street, and was also charged with resisting arrest and escape, and booked into the County Jail.”
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Tweakers like to hang at Ukiah's Wally World (WalMart) because it’s easy to shoplift in the mega-emporium's crowded aisles. Reacting to the neo-deluge of shoplifters, Wally World's management has hired their own security force. Advanced Protection Services (APS) rent-a-cop cars now patrol the parking lot, and store detectives called “prevention officers” hover in the aisles.
On September 7th, at about 2:40 pm APS Prevention Officer Jackie Wilson apprehended Ms. Tinsley in the act of shoplifting, and called the Ukiah Police Department to arrest her. Officer Anthony Delapo was dispatched to take Tinsley into custody — or rather, back into custody, since she’d been released from the County Jail so recently that her jailhouse identification bracelet was still in her backpack.
Poor judgment? Lack of cognitive ability? Natural born victim? Hell-driven tweeker?
Take your choice.
Tinsley said she had “found” the pack, which also contained — besides her jail ID bracelet — “1.3 grams of a crystalline substance, which tested positive for methamphetamine,” according to Officer Delapo. A quick check of the County Jail's booking log matched up nicely with the bracelet, and the doomed Ms. Tinsley was taken back into custody.
All the players in this depressing little drama know each other. The prosecutor in the case, Deputy DA Josh Rosenfeld, has just returned to the DA’s Office after serving with the Ukiah PD. Rosenfeld left the Courthouse last January to attend the Police Academy, from which he graduated in June. He's been a police officer until just last week. So he knows Officer Delapo well, and has now gained some valuable first-hand experience with what the cops are up against.
Rosenfeld: “Where was the backpack found?”
Delapo: “APS Officer Wilson said a second officer found it behind the Fairfield Inn.”
Rosenfeld: “Did you search it?”
Delapo: “Yes.”
Rosenfeld: “And what, if anything, did you find?”
Delapo: “An MCSO ID wristband and a small amount of a white crystalline substance.”
Rosenfeld: “Was there a name on the wristband?”
Delapo: “Yes, it was Jennifer Tinsley.”
Rosenfeld: “What did you do with the white powder?”
Delapo: “I performed the presumptive nick test.”
Rosenfeld: “And what were the results?”
Delapo: “It tested positive for methamphetamine.”
Rosenfeld: “Did you weigh it?”
Delapo: “Yes. It was 1.3 grams.”
Rosenfeld: “Is that a quantity you usually associate with sales?”
Delapo: “Yes.”
Rosenfeld: “How do you know the defendant, and can you identify her?”
Delapo: “When Jackie — Ms. Wilson, that is — provided me with the booking log, Ms. Tinsley was on there and I can recognize her right there in the green jumpsuit, next to the public defender.”
Anthony Adams was the public defender Tinsley sat next to.
Adams: “Did Ms. Wilson actually see the backpack that night?”
Delapo: “Yes, she did.”
Adams: “Did you advise Ms. Tinsley of her Miranda rights?”
Delapo: “Yes, I did.”
Adams: “And did she agree to speak to you?”
Delapo: “Yes. She said she received the backpack from an unknown female on Waugh Lane.”
Adams: “Is it routine for people who have been released from jail to keep their ID bracelets?”
Delapo: “I don’t know.”
Adams: “Was there any other indicia to indicate that the pack belonged to Ms. Tinsley?”
Delapo: “No.”
Adams: “You said it was a small amount of methamphetamine?”
Delappo: “Yes.”
Adams: “And could that small of an amount be for personal use?”
Delappo: “It could be.”
Adams: “Did you test her for being under the influence of methamphetamine?”
Delappo: “I did not.”
Judge Behnke: “You said it was 1.3 grams — did you allow for the weight of the bag when you weighed it?”
Delappo: “Yes, I did.”
Adams: “There is some question, your honor, as to whether Ms. Tinsley possessed the meth for sale or her own personal use, and I would ask the court to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor.”
Rosenfeld: “I would ask the court to hold off on that for a while. More assessment needs to be done, and other charges are pending.”
Judge Behnke: “Not to put too fine a point on it, but her story is someone gave her the pack to go and steal things from WalMart and the pack was later found behind the Fairfield Inn, which is nearby. There is a charge of escaping from an officer, and a history of prior drug problems. I agree with Mr. Adams that it should probably be resolved as a misdemeanor, but it also seems I do need more information. This is a complicated story, so I’m gonna deny that motion today — but I do find sufficient evidence that a crime has been committed, so we’ll bring it back on October 8th for arraignment on the information. She’s also in violation of her probation, and we will revisit that on the eighth as well.”
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Hundreds of these cases go through the Mendocino County courts every month; thousands just like it go through the courts statewide, and tens if not hundreds of thousands, all over the nation clog up the courts every day. The cases seem dull in their pathetic sameness — unless violence is involved, and it often is — but the sheer volume of the meth-addicted keeps escalating.
In 1979 the State of California funded the first-ever scientific study into the root causes of crime and violence. Their first report, published in 1981, ‘An Ounce Of Prevention,’ stated that the first and foremost cause of the epidemic of violence in America was due to the trauma suffered by mothers and infants during hospital births.
The report said that hospital childbirth interferes with the bonding process between infant and mother, which in turn impedes the potential for all future bonds — with parents, friends, spouses, and society.
In 1992 Joseph C. Pearce wondered where all the unable-to-focus Americans were coming from. He wrote an influential book called, ‘Evolution’s End,’ arguing that Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) had become so epidemic by 1983, that 75% of the teachers in a Midwestern state department of education — which had hired Pearce to give a one-day workshop — “couldn’t sit still, listen, attend, and gave no sign of comprehending what I was talking about. Had they behaved as students in a class as they did when I gave that course, they would have been considered hyperactive, with attentional deficiency.”
Of course they might have simply been bored by the old crank's (sic) presentation.
The 25% who passed Pearce’s course, he claimed, were all born before WWII, many outside of a hospital. His conclusion was that children born in hospitals are largely uneducable, due to ADD.
Which, even at the time of Pearce's wacky book, translated as almost the entire population of these United States.
Several million of whom, especially children of the lower classes, were soon put on speed simply to bring order to classrooms.
Apologists for the use of pharmaceutical speed (Ritalin) in dealing with children who can't focus on learning claim that speed has a calming effect on children. True enough, and a few years later when, as adults, these children are staying awake for a week at a time disassembling and reassembling carburators, they're still focused — super focused — but they're buying their meds on the street instead of getting them from the school nurse.
What Ritalin does to the seven-year-old is the same thing methamphetamine does to the 27-year-old who endlessly takes apart carburators. Child psychologists, an ongoing menace to the health and welfare of American children, call this chemically-induced focus “entrainment.” But speed only mimics the mind-body entrainment, causing a kind of trance, which is more conducive to schoolroom decorum, not learning.
And a tweeker is born.
After 35 years it's too late for “an ounce of prevention.” It seems we’ve finally reached “evolution’s end.”
And so it happens that 35 years after ‘An Ounce of Prevention,’ we find Jennifer L. Tinsley having her hand smacked again for possession of 1.3 grams of the only cure she’s ever known.
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