17 March 2010
How the Napa Pig State Murders Us Accidentally on Purpose

It happened again on Sunday. I was shooting firearms with friends, 300 feet deep into my redwood forest, and I glanced down my trail to see a sheriff's deputy walking up, despite my locked gate and a no trespassing sign.

Stop right there, I said. You're trespassing. So what? he responded. There's a locked gate, I said. So What?

Confronting him down the trail, I was informed that he could check out whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, wherever he wanted.

Warrant? He didn't need no stinking warrant.

I failed to mention the Constitution; he would've said, again, So what? Or, outraged at my impudence, he might just as well have started beating me right then and there. Napa sheriff's deputies have a lot of lattitude.

How would I know? Tom and Susan Ridley own the Brookside Bed and Breakfast across the road, as well as a piece of Henry Vineyards. I'm guilty of taking possession of my land, and Susan Ridley wants to drive me off of it. She files false reports against me, and everyone in the county knows it. They're happy to humor her, though, none more than the Sheriff's Department.

And they do whatever they want to me.

I always resented that "pig" epithet for law enforcement back in the '60s. I knew better than anyone what scumbags lurked out there, I knew society needed protection, and I didn't resent even cops who rousted me, if they did so in a professional manner. Nothing personal, no contrived humiliation, cut you loose after the cop determined you were not, in fact, doing anything wrong.

I also knew there were exceptions, cops who just couldn't adjust to this new hippie culture, and couldn't help acting like assholes. I even tried to understand and forgive them.

But then there were the bullies and thugs who just liked pushing people around, any excuse would do.

Back in the day, law enforcement came in three packages: the California Highway Patrol, the Sheriff's Department, and the Napa Police Department.

The CHP were businesslike, they'd pull you over to check you out if they had reason, gave you a ticket if you asked for it. I never encountered a CHP officer who tried to jail me because he didn't like my attitude.

The Napa Police Department split between two categories; some, who acted like the CHP, though more rigorous since they were looking out for their town.

The remainder were the worst kind of brutes, ever ready to bully or intimidate on principle.

Mike Roth died a member of the NPD after decades as the most vile bastard I ever met in uniform. He threatened to shoot me one night because I was suspected of disturbing the peace; I was standing on Jefferson by the old Dairy Queen and yelled hello to Billy Moon Eyes as he drove by. After my complaint about him in 1968, perhaps the first, they promoted him to undercover detective.

For years he ran around this town pistol- whipping people, or threatening to, planting evidence. Getting the worst kinds of criminals--thieves, robbers, depraved addicts, child-neglecting whores--to frame decent, law-abiding kids. These people languished in jail for years, they did life on the installment plan. Because they smoked marijuana.

How bad a scumbag was Mike Roth? A friend of mine slapped around a guy he saw beating a woman one night. The guy told him, essentially, that he had the right to pummel her. He was a close relative of Mike Roth.

That's why so many of you are raising your grandkids. No, your son probably wasn't that bad. Mike Roth and the Napa DA just decided to ruin his life. Because they could, because that's what they do.

Yes, I know, it got worse than marijuana; LSD, cocaine, heroin, methedrine. But Mike Roth and his fellow detectives didn't care. They enthusiastically ruined your youngsters' lives by the hundreds, with the full encouragement of every public agency in the county before there were any serious drugs around. In fact, they did it to kids before they used drugs.

After a grand jury finally exposed the bastard, the Napa Police Department followed its usual course. They put Mike Roth back in uniform, to continue his career of mauling people with badge and gun.

Mike Roth was a pig, and now he's a dead pig rotting in the ground.

Bob Jarecki was another pig. He charged one friend with growing marijuana. Took the pot seeds he found at the house, threw them into a flower pot, nursed them to life, and used that as evidence. The victim of that survived his ruination to become one of Napa's best civil engineers; he builds the grandest wineries in the Valley. Mike McBeth was at that bust. Once a college-bound A student, he died a drug addled wretch at 30-something. They helped him get over his marijuana problem for 10 years, with jail and the state hospital. Damn near insane at the end.

These men were pigs, absolute, no-good shoulda-been-imprisoned pigs.

And that's a fact.

But while such men weren't quite the rule in the police department, the Napa County Sheriff's Department was full of them.

Things have changed.

Now, every law enforcement agency in this Valley worships at the grave of Mike Roth and his methods.

They're all bully pigs themselves, or they actively cover for the bully pigs. And that's your sheriff's department, police department, the district attorney's office, the judges.

Your lawyers and public defenders cower in fear of them. No citizen has a chance here.

What's the result of this organized municipal crime? Fully half the men in Napa County have been prosecuted without cause, due process or anything like normal protocols--let alone Constitutional protections--by the aptly termed criminal justice system. The authorities warp lives by the thousands, men, women, rich, poor, young, old.

Ever hear the line: Go to Napa on vacation, stay on probation? And how apt that the county jail and courthouse are in the middle of the new downtown development. How nice for visitors; wifey can stay in a nice hotel right across from the gulag, the trial across the street. Room rates and reservations are no problem--the other bureaucrats killed off the town's businesses, so the hotels are empty, and you can always get a seat at the deserted wine bar.

And early this year, they celebrated drunk driving month at a city council meeting; the pigs bragged that they'd doubled the number of arrests in 2009 over the year before, 300 to 600. Do you feel any safer driving? No, I didn't think so. The cops are too busy shaking people down at DUI checkpoints to pay attention to dangerous drivers.

The authorities brag that they can plunder you for $12,000 for a drunk driving arrest. You really think this is about drunk driving? They snagged one guy because he was drowsy after his late-night shift at Queen of the Valley; he lingered a few seconds too long after a red light turned green.

Napa uses pigs and penalties to steal your money so they can pay themselves four-times as much as you will ever earn.

It's not just a crime; it's a betrayal. They have enslaved us.

Over the next year, the nation's going to gawk at the trial of the Bay Area Rapid Transit policeman who executed a rowdy negro on the train platform; the victim was surrounded by cops, facedown, on the ground.

A cell-phone video camera captured the murder on film, and the action is all but inexplicable.

But Bay Area cops flooded the phones of right wing rant radio to make this all seem some kind of okay in the immediate aftermath. I listen to these shows all the time, I am an unapologetic American reactionary, and I wouldn't object to someone having shot that same guy if it had been a victim defending himself.

In that case, however, these same cops would arrest the guy and charge him for murder.

The treatment for cops is different, though: they believe they and their colleagues can shoot you for disobedience. There it was, on video, yet cop after cop called in to explain how scary it was to be all alone with four armed buddies and a backtalking perp.

The irony escaped them. Our cops are so afraid of citizens--the tax-payers who arm and pay them--that they feel compelled to beat or shoot us if we don't submit fast enough.

Wherever could policemen in America get such an idea?

Napa Community College, of course, staffed by your local cops and deputies.

That BART cop, Johannes Mehserle, received his badge and gun as a result of the fine education he received from the local constabulary. He did what his instincts told him to do: Just shoot the bastard.

Instincts implanted and honed at the local police academy. His mistake was acting on them, in front of people. Damn. The instructors left out that part.

I first read the Constitution when I studied Political Science with Jean Schroeder at the college, and her widower, Andy Anderson, told me often of how he and Jean had resisted the police academy's establishment.

There was nothing about the Constitution and rights in the curriculum, he complained, and whoever proposed the academy was unconcerned about the oversight. Andy and Jean came to resent the swaggering instructors, cops who looked askance at the real teachers, as if they, too, were scumbag perps. Then there was the paramilitary thing, grim-faced students goose-stepping around, faux drill-sergeants screaming at them.

Andy, you see, was a real soldier--a British officer--who saw lots of action in World War Two. I was a paratrooper and green beret, and I spent my life working with or against the world's most efficient military killers. Neither of us ever saw such chickenshit he-man posturing in our military lives as we saw at Napa College.

In the three years that Napa County has persecuted me, I've encountered dozens of these thugs produced by the academy or the Sheriff's Department.

Bill McGlothern, one of the most profoundly stupid human beings I ever met. The deputy who threw me off my property of 50 years, and sent my antiques and rare books to the dump. Without a court order.

Aubrey Washington, who showed up at my property one day, spent five minutes trying clumsily to get through the gate as I watched. When he figured out how to drive, finally, and came to a stop by me, I asked if I could help him. What makes you think you can help me? he sneered, as if talking to ghetto scum. Are you on probation or parole? he demanded.

The Undersheriff, John Robertson, who could not bring himself to acknowledge that the idiot McGlothern had screwed up, and yelled at me that he was doing me favors and resented my ingratitude.

John Thompson, the congressman's son, who showed up at my place with his badge and gun a week after I went to his dad's office for help. Congressional aide Brian Boteri threw me out with a sneer when I mentioned the Constitution; he'd take care of it. Then Deputy Thompson showed up to make me an offer I couldn't refuse on behalf of some Dickinson, Peatman, Fogarty legal clients. I had no choice but to accept the deal, sign the contract. Then they all reneged on it.

Then there's John Holman, Robertson's Special Operations expert. He tried sneaking up on me with another deputy, both armed with machine guns, for a scheduled search that had been worked out in some detail with the judge and the planning department. I was menaced with machine guns and ordered around like some Jew tormented by the Gestapo, forced to sit in my own dirt for half-an-hour. McGlothern and Holman took turns trying to humiliate me, while another deputy watched in embarrassmemt. All of this for a building inspection, that I passed, after a dozen illegal, warrantless searches.

If in any of these encounters I failed to do exactly as ordered, regardless of legality, these men would have assaulted me, shot me or jailed me at the first opportunity. They've encouraged me to commit suicide by police shooting for almost three years now. And they're still trying.

They're pigs, I tell you, and I'm an expert.

My dad was a cop in Los Angeles in the 1920s, a secret service agent for Roosevelt in the '30s, a G-man in the '40s, and a federal narc in the '50s. He was the oldest field agent they had when he retired, because he liked working the street. Big Jim, they called him, and he scared the hell out of anyone who should give him trouble. All he had to do was show that he was restraining his anger; enough to make you wet your pants, like standing face-to-face with a lion who will bite your face off if you're not very careful.

He talked more candidly to his five-year-old than would be acceptable now. I learned that he hated predators, explained why, explained why some people got no slack. And he could make a predator disappear if he wanted, law or no. But he also talked about people who broke the law or did stupid things because they were weak or unfortunate. They had to be corrected--punished--too, when they got caught, but he didn't feel good about, and he was as kind to a fellow human being as the person deserved.

Once he took me to a little waterfront diner in San Francisco, stools for six, just Dad, the fry cook and me. I couldn't understand the conversation, but Dad explained later. He'd put the guy's son away for heroin, and the kid was getting out soon. Dad knew it, wanted to make sure he'd have a chance to go straight when he got out; wasn't really a bad kid. So he went to talk to this other father, and offer his help. It was evident that they were already some kind of friends. My Dad didn't want to see some other father's son ruined just because.

I underwent my first interrogatons with that man, and I went on to suffer more than a hundred inquisitions as an adult; torture, as you would call it, was employed rarely.

But in half those situations, I could have been summarilty executed with little notice. That didn't happen, though, because I never gave anyone clear cause. So they sent me on my way.

Those guys knew they could kill with impunity in most circumstances, but knew as well that if they got it wrong, or treated the wrong person badly for the wrong reason, very bad things happened. You didn't just lose your job. Someone killed you.

If you screwed up enough it could be worse; they killed your family too. And if you really screwed up, someone might exterminate your village. Or all the villages for a hundred miles.

I've been to those villages, I've been to the concentration camps containing the survivors.

That's one reason, no matter how much power you have, that you need to be careful, avoid making it personal, keep it businesslike. Otherwise people die when you least expect it.

But the pigs and punks who run Napa and the police academy don't teach that.

What a shame if the people you claim to protect get tired of being plundered, jailed, ruined by the system. There are lots of them, you know, and if they ever turn on you, your badges will become targets, your guns will kill other cops. Your pensions, by the way, won't be worth spit.

Think about it.

And that's advice from an expert.

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