Mendocino County Today: Monday, Aug 8, 2016

• Kathy Hulbert
• Insane Treatment
• Pekin/Wolfe v Navarro Store
• Fort Bragg Vandalism
• Jane Reichhold
• Catch of the Day
• Panic of 1819
• Booksellers
• Coulda Been Santorum
• Library Events

ALTHOUGH formal confirmation is pending, Kathy Hulbert, 57, of Philo, was found dead Saturday morning in her van, which had unaccountably careened off a steep section of the Ukiah-Boonville at the 9.6 mile marker and fell some 200 feet from the roadbed. It is speculated by emergency services personnel that the accident that killed Ms. Hulbert and her dog may have occurred several days prior to the discovery of her vehicle and remains.

ACCORDING TO THE CHP, Ms. Hulbert was headed toward Boonville in her 1994 Chevrolet Gladiator when, for unknown reasons, her van left the road. The accident is still under investigation.

KATHY HULBERT, a resident of Gschwend Road, had lived most of her life in the Anderson Valley. She is survived by two children, Luke and Dallas Nelson of Ukiah and several grandchildren. Ms. Hulbert was much in demand as an in-home care worker. A kindly woman much admired for her knowledge of and devotion to animals, Ms. Hulbert had struggled to regain herself after succumbing to drugs as a younger person.

MENDOCINO COUNTY JAIL STAFF SAY LOCKING UP THE MENTALLY ILL IS ‘INSANE’

by Justine Frederiksen

(Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a series exploring the need for a secure psychiatric facility in Mendocino County. This story focuses on the Mendocino County Jail.)

Few places are less soothing than a holding cell. Especially the one you’ll be put in at the Mendocino County Jail when you’re already feeling so hopeless you want to die.

Most cells don’t have windows, but this one doesn’t even have a place to sit. There’s only blank walls and a drain hole in the floor.

If you’re in there, you’ve been stripped naked and put in a padded vest. When you need to eat, food will be pushed through a flap in the door. When you need to go to the bathroom, you’ll use that hole in the floor.

“And there’s nothing but the voices in their head to keep them company,” said Robert Hurley, a nurse at the jail. “That’s the exact opposite of what they need.”

“My job is detainment, not treatment,” said Sgt. Eldon Johnston, describing the safety cell as a tool guards need to prevent people from hurting themselves. But at a hospital, Hurley said, someone in that state could be supervised rather than caged.

“Someone would be standing within an arm’s length of them at all times,” he said. “Someone who is trained to help calm and comfort them.”

“They can even do this,” said Claire Teske, who manages the jail’s medical staff, reaching out to put her hand on Hurley’s shoulder. “Never underestimate the healing power of human touch.”

The Last Resort

But there is no psychiatric hospital in Mendocino County, so many people who need one end up at the jail instead.

“We’ve become the option of last resort,” said Corrections Commander Tim Pearce. As he spoke on a recent Thursday, Johnston came into his office to update Pearce on the latest 5150 hold, which meant a person was being detained for a mental health evaluation. In this instance, the woman being held was waiting outside in a deputy’s car until a mental health worker could respond.

“We’re trying to divert them from here,” said Pearce, explaining that booking someone into his facility usually begins a vicious cycle that does little more than overcrowd the jail and waste public resources.

“There are criminals who need to be locked up who happen to have a mental illness,” he said. “But many other people are getting arrested for crimes related to their mental illness,” such as disturbing the peace (yelling at themselves or others), trespassing (hanging out in a business, usually just acting strange) vandalism (tearing branches off trees or punching cars), or the vague “obstruction of justice.”

Such as one man Teske said was in jail because his mother called and asked that he be arrested because she saw no other way of getting him help.

“What a guilt trip for a mother to have to go through,” Teske said. “Do you want your loved one to have to get locked up for treatment?”

Not A Therapeutic Environment

Even if it didn’t make family members feel guilty, the jail is still the wrong place to treat mental illness, Teske said.

“It is not a therapeutic environment,” she said, explaining that even if your crisis is not so acute that you need to be secured in the safety cell, the jail cannot offer people what they really need, which is close contact and interaction with other humans trained to treat their illness.

“People with mental illness are segregated immediately, which is the opposite of what they need,” said Hurley, explaining that this segregation is required to keep them safe from the other inmates, who prey on them in all sorts of ways. First and foremost, they want their drugs.

“Mental health patients are given medications that these guys would kill their mothers for,” said Hurley of the benzodiazepines such as Valium or Xanax. “They’ll tell them, ‘When you get your pill, you’re going to put it in your cheek and not swallow it, then you’re going to give it to me, or I’m going to beat you up.”

And while separation from the other inmates may be a good thing, the patients are also kept far away from the nurses trying to help them.

“We can’t just go into their cells and check on them or give them medication,” said nurse Teresa Brassfield. “We have to find a guard that has the time to escort us down there and stand by while we treat them. And having someone in uniform standing over you while someone is asking you about how you feel is not conducive to you sharing what is really going on in your head. They need to trust us, and they’re not going to trust someone they feel has taken control over their lives.”

Break The Cycle

Often after a few weeks of this treatment that is the “opposite of therapeutic, but we have to do it that way,” Teske said people are released.

“And we send them out with two weeks worth of medication in their pockets, which is usually quickly sold or stolen,” said Brassfield, explaining that the patients are victimized outside as much as they are inside. “People know what medication you’re on, so they’ll buy you a bottle of booze and wait until you pass out so they can take it.”

Without their medication, the person then spirals downward and is soon acting out, getting arrested and back in jail to start the cycle all over again.

“I can think of 10 or 12 people who are stuck in that cycle right now,” Teske said. “One time, one of them was only out for six hours before he was back.”

Pearce said this cycle could be broken if the county had a psychiatric facility like the one Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman is proposing be built with the Mental Health Facility Development Ordinance. The sales-tax initiative, which qualified for the November ballot, calls for the development of a Psychiatric Health Facility offering 24-hour acute inpatient psychiatric care and crisis residential services for psychiatric episodes.

“Let’s get their mental illness treated, rather than having them stuck in the system because there’s nowhere else for them to go,” said Pearce, explaining that such specialized treatment would not only better serve the patients, it would better serve the community, leading to fewer repeat arrests by the Ukiah Police Department, fewer repeat bookings into his facility, and, even though it will cost millions of dollars to build, leading to less of the taxpayers’ money being spent on housing them.

“If this facility can break that cycle, it will pay for itself very easily,” Pearce said, explaining that it is much cheaper to hire psychiatric case managers to supervise multiple patients than it is to keep those people in jail. “In the long run, you’re going to save a lot of money.”

“We can’t fix it all at once, but we can take baby steps and build from there,” Teske said. “And we could be a model for other communities who need this, too.”

“Every county needs to have a mental hospital,” Hurley said. “These are the people that are dirtying up our parks, that are sleeping under the bridges and in the culverts. I think putting people with mental illness in jail is insane.”

(Courtesy, Ukiah Daily Journal)

THE LIVE MUSIC presented at the Navarro Store by the enterprising Dave Evans has become a highly popular summer event in the Anderson Valley. Dave, a natural promoter whose persuasive ebullience draws first-tier musicians to appear under the store's redwoods, has been ordered by the office of Alcohol Beverage Control to fence his modest venue, a venue that draws everyone from senior citizens to passing tourists who can't believe that Charlie Musslewhite, for one, is playing live just down the road from their campground.

THE FENCE, you see, has been imposed on Dave by the ABC to keep under-21's apart from the adult persons enjoying a beer while they watch the performers. The ABC's barrier is a see-through cyclone job. It destroys what had been the most pleasant family entertainment ambience anywhere on the Northcoast, converting every few weeks a corner of redwood forest to a live music stage reminiscent of the old fashioned outdoor dance floors of gracious days gone by.

SO, who sicced the ABC on the Navarro Store? Patrick Pekin, a Fort Bragg lawyer. Readers will recall that Pekin was narrowly defeated by Keith Faulder for Superior Court judge in the recent election. Dave was and is a Faulder supporter who had gently and diplomatically refused Pekin permission to erect a Pekin For Judge sign at the Navarro Store. Dave had explained to the vindictive Pekin that he fully supported Faulder for judge and felt it would be disloyal to Faulder to also advertise Pekin.

PEKIN is also representing John Wolfe of Navarro. Wolfe claims he struck a Navarro grandmother, Ann Knight, in self-defense two hours after that night's concert at the Navarro Store had ended and more than an hour after Dave had closed his store. The assault occurred in an area that is assumed to be part of a CalTrans right of way, not Navarro Store property.

BUT PEKIN AND WOLFE have teamed up to blame Dave Evans for Wolfe's vicious attack on Mrs. Knight, and Pekin has gained a measure of petty revenge on Dave for Pekin's failed judicial ambitions by unleashing the notoriously unreasonable ABC bureaucracy on Evans.

THE NAVARRO GRANDMOTHER was struck with such force by Wolfe, the gallant self-defender, that she required 14 stitches in her face and is still not fully recovered a month later.

WOLFE has lost his job at the Boonville Brewery, has alienated the entire Anderson Valley community and was due in court Monday in Ten Mile Court on felony assault charges. Applying the chickenshit standard here, Wolfe certainly has the right attorney in Pekin.

* * *

PEKIN RESPONDS:

Dear Mr. Anderson,

I have never reported anyone to ABC. I did not report the Navarro Store to ABC and no one from my office reported the Navarro Store to the ABC. My wife and I enjoy the Navarro Store and we have absolutely no problem with them.

As regards the recent judicial campaign which I lost, I was never vindictive towards anyone. I never threw mud at my opponent or any of his supporters. I never engaged in any duel with your paper. I understood starting out that you might pick a side, and you did, and you would zealously support your man, and you did that too.

Your man won, and I congratulated him and all of his supporters for that. It was a fair win and a fair election, I requested no recount. I made it quite clear that I have no hard feelings. I’ve been a good loser. I think it’s time you, Mr. Anderson, worked at being a better winner.

Please be so kind and print a retraction for the August 8, 2016 Anderson Valley Today article regarding the Navarro Store.

Yours,

Patrick Pekin

FORT BRAGG POLICE UPDATE ON RECENT VANDALISM SPREE:

During the weekend of July 8 and 9, officers of the Fort Bragg Police Department responded to multiple calls of vandalism to large windows in the front of local businesses. Rite Aid, Round Table Pizza, and Starbucks all sustained damage to their store windows amounting to thousands of dollars in damages.

On Wednesday, July 13, officers were dispatched to the Rose Memorial Park Cemetery for a report of a damaged/disturbed headstone at the location.

Investigation revealed that the headstone had been tipped over and mosaic stones were located around the site that matched the stone used to break the window at Round Table Pizza and the Rite Aid Store.

Investigators began linking several of the earlier cases to one another as more evidence was discovered.

Other similar incidents continued to occur over the next few weeks, until on the morning of Wednesday, August 3, officers were again dispatched to vandalism in progress at the front of the Ten Mile Court House, where a tall male subject was observed throwing a rock through a window of the courthouse.

Due to the similarity of the incident, and the subject fleeing in the direction of Round Table Pizza, officers checked the area and discovered that Round Table Pizza had again had windows broken by large stones.

It was also discovered that the suspect had begun leaving notes, and the name 'Justin Smith' written at the end of the note.

Later in the early morning hours, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies received a call of vandalism at the Thanksgiving Coffee facility on South Harbor Drive where it was discovered that windows had been broken in a similar manner, which led both MCSO and FBPD to believe the same suspect had caused all the damage.

Later on in the morning of August 3, Justin Lee Smith (age 41) was located walking in the area of South Street and South Franklin Street and was detained for questioning in regard to the vandalisms. Probable cause was established to place Smith under arrest for the crimes, and he was taken into custody.

Smith is currently being held at the Mendocino County Adult Detention Facility in Ukiah where he awaits arraignment.

These cases are still under active investigation, and anyone with information or surveillance footage that may assist investigators, is asked to contact Officer O’Neal at the Fort Bragg Police Department at 707-961-2800 ext. #167 or leave information on the Crime Tip Hotline at 707-961-3049."

LOCAL POET AND ARTIST FOUND DEAD ON BEACH

by Lindsey Smith

A passerby found the body of a dead woman, who was later identified as local poet and artist Jane Reichhold, at the base of the Iversen cliffs last Thursday morning.

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, which collected her body said it could not determine what had happened to her and that an autopsy has not been released and there is no available cause of death. However, Werner Reichhold, Jane’s husband said he believes she ended her own life.

“Jane was a very gifted person and she had her own understanding of life, very different from any others,” Werner said. “She spent a long, long time especially in body pain.”

He said Jane, who was 79, had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia approximately a decade ago. Fibromyalgia causes widespread pain in the muscles and bones, fatigue, sleep and memory issues, and can affect a person’s mood, as well. There is no cure, although non-narcotic pain relievers, anti-depressants and anti-seizure drugs can help control symptoms, according to the Mayo Clinic. Although Jane had lived with the disorder for a decade, her pain had worsened after a fall a few years ago, Werner noted.

“She fell down in the house two or three times a day the last weeks,” Werner said. “She even lost quite a bit of her eyesight … she wasn’t blind, but she couldn’t read and write, and she couldn’t work in her studio anymore.”

Werner said his wife had written her own obituary two months ago and told him she wanted to end her life on her own terms, rather than die in a hospital.

On Thursday morning, after having breakfast with his wife, Werner left for Santa Rosa. When he returned he could not find her in their house off Iversen Road or on the property, and reported her missing.

Her description matched that of the unidentified woman’s body deputies had collected earlier in the day, and they and Werner were able to confirm that the dead woman was, in fact, Jane. Werner has not yet decided whether to publish the obituary Jane left, and noted that her body has already been cremated.

Jane worked as an artist and poet. She began publishing books in 1979, according to her website, ahapoetry.com and Werner said she published 45 books over the course of her life. Her haikus ran weekly in the Independent Coast Observer’s “Bouquets” section in the Classified Ads under the name “haikujane.” Last week’s haiku was:

blue sky

the words I cannot say

small clouds

(Courtesy, the Independent Coast Observer.)

CATCH OF THE DAY, August 7, 2016

KELLEN ALLEN, Manteca/Ukiah/ DUI, suspended license.

MACEE BATES, Willits. Domestic battery.

EMERY ELLINGWOOD, Willits. Failure to appear.

MANASI GODBOLE, Wallingford, Pennsylvania/Ukiah. Drunk in public.

JOHNNY GOFORTH, Covelo. Probation revocation.

JASON HAWK, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.

MARCOS HERNANDEZ, Redwood Valley. Drunk in public, suspended license.

GAGE HEWETT, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

JOEL JUAREZ, Fort Bragg. Burglary, controlled substance.

DAINEN MACLEAN, Willits. DUI.

JOAQUINA MARIN, Potter Valley. Domestic assault, assault with deadly weapon not a gun.

JOHN MOORE, Willits. Failure to register.

ANTHONY PINOLA, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

EDUARDO RODRIGUEZ-ORTIZ, Redwood Valley. Possession of meth, meth possession for sale, sale of meth.

REBECCA SALAS, Lakeport. Child endangerment.

THOMAS SANDERS, Ukiah. Drunk in public, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

NICOLE SANDERSON, Laytonville. Vehicle theft, receiving stolen property, conspiracy.

AUSTIN SHEALOR, Ukiah. Unauthorized entry into dwelling, probation revocation.

ERIC SILKHOGAN, Hayward/Ukiah. Controlled substance, ex-felon with firearm, loaded firearm in public, ammo possession by prohibited person, suspended license.

JAMES SIMMONS, Laytonville. Vehicle theft, receiving stolen property, conspiracy.

CARLOS TORRES-CALDERA, Redwood Valley. DUI, child endangerment.

PANIC OF 1819: THE FIRST MAJOR U.S. DEPRESSION

How have past financial crises affected the history of the United States?

by David Reynolds

http://www.theglobalist.com/panic-of-1819-the-first-major-u-s-depression/

BOOKSELLERS

by Valeria Luiselli

(Translated by Louis S. Bedrock)

My daughter and I returned to Paris under the blazing sun of July. We were coming from Burgundy, where I had written a sad, angry note for this column, after the mass murder in Nice, about how our cultural baggage is obsolete and doesn't help us face the horror of our times; about how the myth of Paris had died in our arms. But I was wrong about one thing. Because, although culture in the abstract no longer anchors us to this complex, fucked-up world, there do in fact remain places--a few--from which we can rethink our role in the world and imagine alternate ways of organizing life.

Some readers will be familiar with the name of Sylvia Beach, founder of the bookstore Shakespeare and Company, which opened in 1909 and lasted until the Nazi occupation of Paris in 1941. Beach was the first editor of *Ulysses *when all the other editors had rejected the novel of Joyce; she made space in her bookstore for the aspiring writers of the time like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and the poet H.D. Beach, the bookseller, did more than open a bookstore: she founded a world for The Lost Generation.

After the war, the bookstore was closed for six more years until George Whitman renewed the project in 1951. Carrying forward the communitarian spirit of his mentor to another level, between 1951 and 2011 he provided shelter to more than 30,000 writers and young readers who, in exchange for a bed, cleaned, cooked, organized and kept alive the bookshelves. Among his guests were Allen Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti. The bookseller Whitman rebuilt the world that the war destroyed and he furnished it with beds.

When he died, his daughter Sylvia Whitman took up and reinvented the tradition. Both ethereal and leaden, she goes up and down the stairs all day carrying plies of books; she's opened a cafe next door, organizes readings incessantly, and her next project is to rehabilitate a house in the country and convert it into a " book farm" where writers and readers can spend a period of time working the land and working on paragraphs. It is clear that if there are still people of vision in the world capable of combating the evil of the century, they are the booksellers.

I am writing this piece in the apartment above Shakespeare and Company, which Sylvia offered to us for as long as we like in exchange for writing something together and donating it to the bookstore's archives. My daughter sleeps by my side, and here among the bookshelves, the personal library of Simone Beauvoir surrounds us. Before she fell asleep, my daughter said to me,

”Mama, we're in a building made of books.”

She is right. And perhaps if there were more buildings like this, it would be easier to reinvent the world.

THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY voters could have picked Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, once the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, and, with four million votes, the runner-up to Mitt Romney in the 2012 primaries. Santorum is not only opposed to abortion, but all forms of contraception, even among married couples. (“It’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”) He has said that a child conceived by rape is a “gift from God,” and compared homosexuality to “man-on-dog” sex. He signed a pledge written by the religious group Family Leader that life for African Americans was better under slavery. He has claimed that the “American left hates Christendom,” that separation of church and state is a communist idea, that “radical feminism” has given women the idea that it is “socially affirming” to “work outside the home,” and that schools in Massachusetts have banned children’s books featuring heterosexual parents. His wife home-schools their seven children, and he believes that education is the responsibility of parents, not “government workers,” otherwise known as teachers. When Obama proposed a plan to make universities more affordable, he commented: “President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob!’

— Eliot Weinberger

A WEEK OF MAGIC AND FUN AT THE UKIAH LIBRARY

<> All Ages Summer Reading Program June-August 2016

http://mendolibrary.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=3696d38b68efac10f9e33fa9a&id=5ecf5538c4&e=a3c5eb703b

<> The Ukiah Library is proud to partner with Maldonado Crazy Monkey

(http://mendolibrary.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3696d38b68efac10f9e33fa9a&id=172265ccbc&e=a3c5eb703b)

to offer free self-defense classes for teens this summer as part of the Library's Summer Learning Program! This is the last class in our three part series, feel free to join in even if you didn't attend the first class. The last class will be on August 9th @ 3:30pm.

Registration is required, please call 463-4490 to sign up! For more information about the Ukiah Library Summer Reading Program, please contact: Melissa Eleftherion Carr at 707-467-4634 or carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us.

<> On Thursday, August 11th at 5:30 pm, the Ukiah Library is hosting a children’s magic show featuring Magician, Perry Yan. Watch closely! The incredibly quick Perry Yan will dazzle and amaze you. Join us for a free magic show the Thursday before school starts and start the year like a young wizard.

http://mendolibrary.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=3696d38b68efac10f9e33fa9a&id=b9a4f56464&e=a3c5eb703b

<> The Friends of the Library Monthly Book Sale is this Saturday, August 13^th from 10am-3:30pm. Stop by, browse the tables, and find a new favorite book! All proceeds benefit the Ukiah Library.

http://mendolibrary.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3696d38b68efac10f9e33fa9a&id=f0bc27fe26&e=a3c5eb703b

<> Teens are invited to an after-hours party at the Library this summer. We’ll play Hide & Seek in the Dark & Zombie Tag, compete in a live-action version of Hungry Hungry Hippos, & participate in a Chocolate Olympics! We’ll also announce winners from our Summer Reading Raffle drawing. Please call 463-4490 to sign up. Sponsored by Friends of the Ukiah Valley Library. For more information about the Ukiah Library Summer Reading Program, please contact: Melissa Eleftherion Carr at 707-467-4634 or carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us (mailto:carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us) .

For a full list of events, check out our website: www.mendolibrary.org