YES, THE JAILS COMMISSION STORY IS STILL COMING. (COLD-RIDDEN & STILL WRITING.) BUT, IN THE MEANTIME……

LAPD DOESN’T PLAN TO USE UNMANNED COP ‘COPTERS TO LOOK IN YOUR PERSONAL BACKYARD……YET (AREN’T YOU RELIEVED?)

The LA Weekly’s Dennis Romero has the story:

So cops can now fly unmanned aircraft known as drones, which could be used to peek into your backyard and maybe even into your window at night.

So will the LAPD, a pioneer in the use of helicopters for law enforcement, soon be buzzing drones over your house as you smoke your favorite herb and become paranoid with fear?

Not likely, cops tell us:

The department doesn’t really the see the advantage of using unmanned aircraft and has no plans to test them out, at least for now.

In fact, the LAPD’s biggest concern, as it has been in the past, is having its manned helicopter units collide with drones.

But you can chillax.

The man in charge of the LAPD’s Air Support Division, Capt. William D. Sutton, told us the department doesn’t yet see much advantage in using drones. He thinks their safety record isn’t satisfactory yet:

” Back east a department had purchased one and lost control of it. It flew into a vehicle. We’re going to see how it goes.”

The FAA this week said that police departments could test out surveillance drones as long as they’re lighter than 4.4 pounds and fly below a 400 foot ceiling.

Given the city’s budget constraints, the LAPD is no hurry to buy drones, even if the drone-making capital of the nation is right here in Southern California…..

Whew! (For now.)

TUESDAY, CITY COUNCIL VOTES TO FOLD THE GENERAL SERVICES POLICE INTO THE LAPD (DESPITE NEWLY CHALLENGING NAMING ISSUES)

The Daily News Dakota Smith has the story. Here’s a clip:

The Los Angeles Police Department will absorb the General Services police and security officers under a plan approved Tuesday.

The City Council voted unanimously to consolidate the two agencies, transferring the 220 officers and security guards from General Services to the LAPD.

With the move, the LAPD will take on the work of General Services police: patrolling libraries, City Hall offices and other city facilities.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa backed the merger, including the plan in his 2012-2013 budget.

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Councilman Mitch Englander urged his colleagues to support the consolidation plan.

“This isn’t a divorce, this is a marriage,” Englander said. “And I say, Mazel Tov.”

Currently, General Services’ sworn officers carry guns and patrol the city’s parks, libraries, and City Hall offices and grounds. The security guards protect the Los Angeles Zoo, Convention Center and other facilities.

Following the consolidation – expected to take place July 1 – both groups would fall within a new department called LAPD’s Security Services Division.

Yeah. About that name. “The LAPDSSD” looks a lot like the hissing/yowling noise my cat makes right before coughing up a hairball. Do not even think of messing with the LAPD brand. Not possible. Don’t go there. Really.

JERRY BROWN CHANGES MIND AND DECIDES TO NOT CLOSE YOUTH PRISONS AFTER PRESSURE FROM COUNTIES

This has long been a split decision for most who assessed it, WitnessLA included but, of late, the consensus has been to leave a few of California’s youth prisons open for the thousand or so of the state’s most troubled law-breaking kids, mainly because the counties don’t yet have the facilities or the programs to adequately serve these kids, may of whom have challenging mental and emotional health issues. It appears that Governor Jerry has now come around to this position.

Karne de Sa at the San Jose Mercury News has the story. Here’s a clip:

Responding to pressure from probation chiefs, district attorneys and prison guards, Gov. Jerry Brown has done an about-face on a revolutionary plan to shutter California’s youth prison system that was once the nation’s largest — and arguably the most notorious.

Just four months ago, a small section buried in the governor’s belt-tightening budget caused a massive stir in the juvenile justice world. With annual costs per inmate at about $200,000 and its population down 90 percent from peak years, the youth prison system should stop accepting serious and violent youthful offenders beginning next year, the Brown administration concluded.

For prison reformers who have long battled 23-hour confinement, education in cages and endemic violence, Brown’s Jan. 5 recommendation to eventually shift all the young inmates to county facilities was a startling and welcome move.

But in a revision of the budget released Monday, the governor now calls for upending his previous plan. The change came about after howls of protest from corrections officials, who flooded Sacramento budget hearings with demands that the Division of Juvenile Justice, or DJJ, remain open.

Counties, already struggling with an influx of adult prisoners shifted to their watch under other state budget reforms, simply couldn’t handle these most-difficult youths, they argued. Prosecutors warned that without state-run youth lockups, more juveniles would be sent to adult prisons.

The cost per kid, however, is nuts, and has everything to do with union issues, plus lack of economies of scale, thus has to be rethought. Put another way, it does not—I repeat, NOT—cost more than $200K to house, educate, give programs and health care to, and adequately guard these kids. Period. That money is going elsewhere. If you’d like to know where, I’d start by calling these folks.

Post on Monday’s Jail Commission meeting coming shortly. Still writing.

EDITOR’S UPDATE: I’m writing a far longer story than I’d originally intended—mainly because I think the topic deserves it. Bottom line, the story will be in Wednesday-ish.

EDITOR’S NOTE: On any given day, the biggest chunk of the County’s jail population—45 percent— is made up of people waiting to go to trial.

Most of that pretrial 45 percent are in for felony charges. About half of those with a felony charge are accused of violent or sex related crimes.

But this leaves a big chunk of people who are in jail awaiting trial for far less serious charges. Many of this group are locked up, not because they are considered a public safety risk, or a flight risk, but because they simply don’t have the money or the assets (like a house) that will allow them to make bail.

Both Dr. James Austin and the Vera Institute compiled reports for LA County that recommended implementing an innovative system pretrial supervision, which would mean that certain people could get out, pretrial, without having to post bail, but they will have some element of supervision to insure that they show up for their court dates.

Matt Fleischer is keeping a close eye on the issue and has an update.

DR. JAMES AUSTIN SAYS THAT MAKING PRETRIAL RELEASE A REALITY IN LOS ANGELES IS NOT A SURE THING—BUT THE CHANCES LOOK GOOD

by Matthew Fleischer

It’s been nearly a month since LA County Sheriff Lee Baca stood side-by-side at a press conference with nationally-renown corrections expert Dr. James Austin to debut Austin’s plan to shutter Men’s Central Jail and reduce the LA County Jail population by up to 3,000 inmates. Austin worked with the Sheriff’s department for three months to develop his plan. (

The Austin plan, if you’ll remember, calls for the release of selected non-violent inmates awaiting trial, the transfer of inmates to lower-cost fire camps, expanded release opportunities through the sheriff’s Education Based Incarceration program, and the expansion of capacity at the North County Correctional Facility. The pretrial release component is generally considered the report’s centerpiece, and also the element that could be the most controversial.

Baca seemed impressed—publicly professing his support for the plan, and announcing for the first time that, thanks to Austin’s efforts, the complete shutting of MCJ could be accomplished without building a $1.4 billion new jail.

As I wrote in the wake of the press conference, however, Baca’s supportive statements were no guarantee of action. “The sheriff is not committed to implementing the Austin plan,” Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore told WitnessLA.

Even if the Sheriff does wish to implement the plan, he still has to convince the Board of Supervisors, the CEO, the probation department and the local judiciary of its potential efficacy. The prospect of closing the most dangerous jail in America certainly seems daunting.

I reached Austin by phone last Friday to see how things are progressing.

---

What is your role now that the plan has been completed? Are you sticking around to help implementation?

I’m funded to work with the Sheriff to help implement that plan. We’re starting that process. I just had a meeting with the CEO and the Board of Supervisors. We’re putting together the nuts and bolts.

How are things progressing in your estimation?

I’m still optimistic. By June 1st we’ll know how real this thing is going forward. We’ve got some players outside the Sheriff’s department, obviously–the CEO and the supervisors. Everything has to be negotiated. We have a ways to go.

Can the Sheriff enact any elements of your plan unilaterally? Does the money already exist for electronic monitoring of inmates released pretrial?

As far as the money situation, I’m not sure. Legally you can do it. But it’s best we get everyone involved. During the planning process I met with the overseeing judge, who was fully behind the plan. Funding is an issue, perhaps. But Baca can do it legally. He has those powers under the Rutherford case.

What is the first step we should be seeing the department take that would indicate they are taking this report seriously?

The releasing some of the pretrial people. The second thing would be to get the construction plans in place for shutting down parts of Men’s Central Jail and getting it reconfigured for lower risk inmates.

Have any pretrial inmates in the county system been released yet?

No inmates have been released. At least not that I know of. Things could have happened and I wasn’t informed of. But not to my knowledge anyway. We should see something in terms of releases soon though.

Kevin Roderick at LA Observed has the gory details of the NOT-Trutanich endorsements in a story titled: Times endorses Jackie Lacey for DA, Daily News says ‘anybody but Carmen’

Here’s a clip or two (but read the rest):

Not a good day on the newspaper editorial pages for City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, who wants to be seen as the frontrunner in the district attorney race. The contest is drawing more interest than usual from the newspapers (and from lawyers) since it is rare for the DA job to actually be open at election time. The choice made by Los Angeles County voters “likely will be their most consequential vote in years,” says an LA Times editorial on Sunday. The Times opinion staff has been intensely covering the race, interviewing the candidates in detail and posting videos online….

[HUMUNGOUS SNIP]

The Daily News really doesn’t like Trutanich anymore: “Lacey and Jackson are the real candidates in the district attorney’s race. They are true prosecutors, not politicians, not liars and not bullies.”

Here’s the Daily News endorsement essay. And here’s the LA Times editorial on the matter.

On a warm Saturday night in mid-September 2007, a 22-year-old gang member named Giovanni Macedo waded into a crowd near MacArthur Park and—as he had been told to do—opened fire on a street vender who had failed to pay the gang of which Macado was a member $50. Specifically, Macedo claims membership in the Columbia Lil’ Cycos (CLCS), a clique of the 18th Street gang, was reportedly ordered to shoot the vender by members of his clique who were more senior than he was.

Although he did what he was told, he wasn’t a great shot. He hit the vender four times, but the wounds fortunately were not fatal.

Yet another of Macedo’s bullets went way wide of the mark with truly tragic results. A woman, a friend of the vender, was standing nearby with her 23-day-old baby, Luis Angel Garcia, who was in his stroller. One of Macedo’s errant bullets hit the tiny boy and killed him.

The shooting, as mentioned above, was over money. Extortion, to be specific.

There is a longstanding pattern in which the EME—the Mexican Mafia—requires “taxes” to be paid by anyone, namely gangs, who sells narcotics in areas of town it considers to be under its jurisdiction. Traditionally, they collect the taxes from the Latino gangs over which they excert power.

In the past few years, however, the EME has extended it’s taxing strategy to various kinds of people who are not gang involved and not selling drugs. In an around MacArthur Park that evidently meant the street venders who sold various wares in the area—clothing, knickknacks, food, that sort of thing. The street gangs were the collectors of the money and the deliverers of threats, to persuade the venders to pay up. Extortion, in other words.

The greater portion of the extortion money, which piled up into considerable amounts each month, reportedly went up the food chain to EME hire ups.

This particular vender didn’t like being extorted and said no to the demand for $50. After several go-rounds, the gang members decided the vender had to be “dealt with.” The order went out from those at the top of the clique to shoot the vender. The rest of the tragedy unfolded from there.

As it happens, the EME is not at all in favor of shooting uninvolved 23-day-old babies. In fact the Big Brothers, so to speak, were very unhappy about the matter, and held all the Columbia Lil’ Cycos responsible.

To fix matters, the CLCSs were told to kill their shooter, Giovanni Macedo. Otherwise there would be “consequences” of a dire nature for the gang as a whole.

A kidnapping plot was concocted to kidnap Macedo and to take him to Mexico on the pretense of getting him out of town for his own good, to avoid arrest. Instead, once in Mexico Macedo was strangled. A rope was looped around his neck, and then he was tossed by his former friends off the side of a raised road in an isolated area.

Unbeknownst to the kidnapper/stranglers, Macedo did not, however, die. Instead, he lived to be brought back to the US to testify in great detail for the Feds. (In return for his cooperation, he was sentenced in a plea deal to 51 years and four months prison for the killing of baby Luis.)

The result of Macedo’s testimony plus that of a list of others was that, on this past Friday afternoon, four additional members of the CLCS clique were found guilty of a pile of RICO charges, namely participating in a racketeering enterprise responsible for the September 2007 shooting of the street vendor and the murder of baby Luis—and the attempted hanging of their fellow homeboy Macedo too.

With Friday’s guilty verdicts, a total of 37 people have been convicted in the same RICO case investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the LAPD.

The four defendants found guilty on Friday, one of them the main Mexico kidnapper, are scheduled to be sentenced by United States District Judge Dean D. Pregerson in September.

Those involved with the case at the US Attorney’s office seemed particularly satisfied with Friday’s verdict.

US Attorney Andre Birotte Jr stated for WitnessLA, “To me this case represents the advantages of a focused, selective strategy that targets the very worst offenders for prosecution. The results here will resonate loudly among the gang and also the neighborhood where the gang operates. The message that this case sends is that no one— not even a gang leader or shot-caller—is either above or outside the law. And that is a message that we are proud to send.”

Photo by Brian Van der Brug, Los Angeles Times

Just about the time that POTUS Obama was snarling traffic getting to his starzilla party in Studio City, civil rights attorney and best selling author Michelle Alexander was rockin’ the house across town in Compton, where she gave a 90-minute speech in front of a large and wildly enthusiastic crowd at a the New Philadelphia AME Church, talking about how Jim Crow is alive and well in this country’s criminal justice system.

Alexander is a legal scholar and a racial equality advocacy lawyer with an impressive resume that includes a Supreme Court clerkship and lots more after that.

But what has really put her on the map is her 2010 book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, in which, with mounds of research, Alexander lays out her thesis that the mass incarceration the U.S. has embraced since the mid-1980’s as its primary method of social control is, for black communities, simply devastating. The result is a second class caste system in which, in some major American cities, more than one half of all working age black men, and a growing number of black women, and other minorities, are relegated to a permanently disenfranchised status—much like in the days of Jim Crow, but in far greater numbers. Right now if you are a black man anywhere in America, there is a 32 percent chance that you’ll go to jail or prison at some point in your life.

The New Jim Crow has been the book that criminal justice activists and experts have been urgently recommending above all others these past two years—to the point that when it came out in paperback in January, it became a surprise NY Times best seller.

I first became aware of Alexander’s work when I watched an April 2010 episode of Bill Moyer’s Journal that featured her together with superstar civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, and the combination of what they had to say grabbed my attention, as it encapsulated and quantified what I’d seen anecdotally in my reporting for years.

The usual wiggly iPhone videos below will give you a glimpse of what she has to say as they are from the very beginning of Alexander’s 90-minute talk Thursday night.

You might also enjoy the clip of Alexander with Stephen Colbert on the Cobert Report.

Better yet, just get the book.

However you do it, find a way to check out what Michelle Alexander has to say. Hers is a deeply important American voice that is very much worth your time and attention.

PS: THIS WILL BE A SHORT POSTING because everyone at WitnessLA is working on stories. So stay tuned. There’s a lot coming up soon.

IN THE MEANTIME, TAKE A LOOK AT THIS STORY ON THE CRIME REPORT: CRACKING THE BLUE WALL OF SILENCE, in which former and serving NYPD cops talk about racial profiling and arrest quotas.

ALSO CHECK OUT THE 30-YEAR SENTENCE FOR A FIRST TIME OFFENSE BY THE TEXAS GRANDMOTHER who may or may not have known she was smuggling a ton of drugs in the tour buses that she co-owned, but who got the book thrown at her because she wouldn’t take a deal and had nobody else to give up, so had nothing of value to trade to prosecutors. The Houston Chron has the story.

PS: I’M DELIBERATELY IGNORING THIS STORY, but it’s not that I didn’t see it.

The LA Times Robert Faturechi has a follow-up to his story about another LASD clique, specifically a clique that is part of the gang enforcement unit, Operation Safe Streets or OSS. The reported clique is called “The Jump Out Boys.”

In the original story, Faturechi reported that concern about the group surfaced when a supervisor came across a printed pamphlet that outlined a sort of mission statement for the clique and that reportedly seemed to portray officer involved shootings “in a positive light.”

This new story has a drawing of the tattoo that two sources confirmed to the Times was indeed the ink sported by the Jump Out Boys. It features a bandana-headed skull with demon eyes, its skeletal hand holding a large revolver. Two playing cards, the ace and eight of clubs, are fanned out behind the skull, representing the infamous “dead man’s hand,” that Wild Bill Hickok was said to be holding when he was shot and killed. (Actually, Hickok was supposed to have held two aces and two eights, plus a fifth card, still face down, the identity of which is in dispute. But nevermind. The ace and eight still is universally considered to represent that death-haunted hand.)

Moreover, Faturechi reports that “investigators suspect that smoke is tattooed over the gun’s barrel after a member is involved in a shooting.”

Yeah. About that smoke thingy.

Unfortunately, the suspicion regarding the added smoke may have a troubling precedent in the department.

WitnessLA has acquired a document indicating that when, a few years ago, some Sheriff’s department higher-ups became concerned about the gangster-like behavior of some of the Regulators clique based at Century station, they reported hearing reports that, if a member had been involved in “a fatal deputy involved shooting,” then smoke was similarly added to be “emitting from the barrels” of the revolvers featured in the clique’s signatory tattoo. (In the case of the Regulators, the clique tattoo reportedly depicted a trench-coated skeleton wearing a cowboy hat and holding not one, but two nice big guns.)

Okay, look: Yes, we know that many Los Angeles Sheriff’s stations have colorful mascots and that, in an era when the nice young guy ringing up your groceries at Trader Joe’s has a sleeve full of intricate tattoos, it does not necessarily indicate any kind of wrong doing if a few deputies have the mascot discreetly inked on, say, their ankles. And we understand that it’s good to build camaraderie among deputies, and that a little bit of harmless college fraternity-like behavior might help to do so.

However….when only certain people are invited to join the said inked group, a less than healthy “in” group and and “out” group cultural atmosphere is created at the station. Then, if the tattoo for the “in” group depicts some kind of gun-brandishing death-dealer, at that point one has taken a very large step out onto a decidedly slippery slope. And it is a slope that leads directly away from constitutional policing, and directly toward an us-versus-them, work-in-the-gray, shave-the-legal-dice and do-what-you-gotta-do mentality..

The insignia above, circa late 1990’s for the LAPD’s Rampart CRASH unit, is a signal example.

We want our kids to be informed, thinking, confident compassionate, educated people, such a goal is in everyone’s interest, for heaven’s sake, and yet increasingly, as the economy continues to wobble, the commitment to this obviously worthy goal on the part of those with resources seems to be faltering.

It doesn’t help that education has been slashed to a horrific degree. while, at the same time, nonprofits that serve kids and families at risk have watched their funding shrink down to nothing.

And now LA Youth, the Los Angeles based newspaper for and by kids— the largest of its kind in the nation, and an institution that always seemed safe—-is right at the edge of closing its doors at the end of this school year, one more possible casualty of the economic tsunami of 2008.

(Thanks again, Wall Street. Really. Your giant vampire squid-osity is a gift that keeps on giving.)

However, all is not lost. What LA Youth needs to rescue it from disaster is $500,000 in operating funds, and then it can make do with some of the other grants it will receive for specific programs.

They’ve already raised some of what they need, but it ain’t close to enough. They must hit that $500K mark by May 15.

I’ve been a friend and admirer of LA Youth for years now, and have spoken to kids and read essays by other kids, who explain in detail how their lives and sense of self would be far, far different had it not been for the mentoring they received as writers/editors/mentees for this stellar organization.

The video above is by a teacher at Locke High School, where LA Youth runs a weekly program. Just listen. She explains how writing for the newspaper allows kids—many of whom come out of risky personal circumstances—to discover that they count for something, that they have a voice, that what they think/feel/perceive/know can matter.

Put another way, a lot of kids who were struggling in school have now graduated from college, because of the intellectual/emotional lifeline this program tossed to them.

Okay, that’s the pitch. You can check out LA Youth here, and CLICK HERE to donate, if you are so moved. I am told that every little bit helps. (And if you happen to know a wildly wealthy philanthropist, feel free to drop a hint.)

EDITOR’S NOTE:

This story by an LA boy named Brian who struggles with schizophrenia, (his last name is withheld so it isn’t archived forever on the internet), was published by LA Youth in 2005, and is emblematic of the extremely valuable work the publication does. Below, is a clip from the introduction to the story by Brian’s editor at LA Youth, Amanda Riddle, who worked with him as part of the paper’s Foster Youth Writing and Education Project, which helps kids who are inside the foster care system and/or the juvenile probation system (or, as in Brian’s case, in a group home) sort through and express their experiences through writing.

Here’s Amanda.

Whenever I’m asked, “What’s the longest time it’s taken for a story to be written?” I don’t hesitate to answer. It was Brian’s story about living with schizophrenia. It took a year. Brian and I met once a week, except for when he was hospitalized or just not doing well. Sometimes we worked for an hour, other days because of his ADHD he could focus for only 20 minutes. His story was written paragraph by paragraph, anecdote by anecdote, testing the patience of both writer and editor. But Brian and I were both committed to publishing his story….

THE VOICES NO ONE ELSE CAN HEAR

by Brian

People with mental illness don’t always live on the streets or end up in a psych ward. They can have normal lives. I have struggled with hearing voices, but I’m getting myself through it.

Before I was 10, I lived pretty much a normal life. I had fun with my friends. I played outside in the street and slept over at their houses. Every Memorial Day, I would drive with my parents up to Santa Rosa to see some family friends, a boy and girl who were about my age. But that all stopped when I was in fifth grade.

I was in class one day and I heard stomping and clicking. I thought someone was walking down the hall and clicking his or her tongue. But when I walked outside, nobody was there.

I heard the noises on and off every day. They would last a few minutes and then come back later that day. It was like rainfall in my head. They would distract me in class and sometimes when I was watching TV or playing video games. I wouldn’t be able to sense or hear my mom or dad. It bothered me, but I thought it was normal to hear them so I didn’t tell my parents.

One day in class I asked my friend if he was hearing any noises. He said no. That made me realize that I was the only one hearing them. It was frustrating because I could not talk to anyone about them because I was scared that people would find out and tease me or call me dumb.

In seventh grade, when I got to school in the morning I would walk around by myself, instead of hanging out with my friends. I also sometimes faked being sick to skip school so I wouldn’t have to be with the other students. I started to get depressed because being the only one hearing noises made me feel alone. I would think, “Should I kill myself?” Then I would get angry for thinking those thoughts and tell myself, “Calm down, Brian.”

I felt like I needed help so I went to the counselor at my middle school. We sat there for two minutes not talking to each other. She finally said, “What are you here for?” I told her, “I feel like I don’t belong in the world.” She asked me why and I told her, “Because I feel like no one loves me or cares for me.” Again she asked why. It was hard for me to get it out, but I finally said I was hearing noises. It felt good to get it out. She said, “I need to call your parents.”

The next day my parents took me to the doctor. He asked me what was wrong and I told him that I was feeling depressed and suicidal. Because he thought I might hurt myself, he decided to put me in the hospital for 72 hours.

The hospital was not a happy place to be. It smelled like gloves and medicine, and I was away from my family and friends. I was there for four weeks. I went to school at the hospital and hung out with the other kids in the day room. The doctors would see me for only five minutes a day. They’d ask me questions about how I was doing, like “Are you hearing noises today?” and “Do you feel like you’re ready to go home?” They gave me medication and gradually increased it. The medication worked a little because the noises came every other day. After four weeks the doctors said they thought I could handle it at home. I was excited to go home, but I was still hearing noises.

My scariest experience

The noises slowly got worse and progressed to voices. They told me to kill myself or kill others. One day two weeks after I left the hospital, I had my worst experience. I was in the kitchen when I spaced out for a few minutes—I was standing there like a zombie. When I came back to, I heard the voices. (I don’t remember what they were saying.) The next thing you know, I was holding a knife to my stomach! My mom came in and saw me and tried to persuade me to put it down, but I didn’t have control over what I was doing. My parents called the police, who came and told me to put the knife down. I got scared at that point. I realized what I was doing. So I put it down and kicked it toward them. I went to the hospital after that for a week.

I was in and out of the hospital over the next year. I would zone out for a long time listening to the voices. At first I’d think they were real, but after a few minutes I would realize they were in my head. It was scary because they were angry and would tell me to do things. My mom would say, “Brian, are you OK? Do you need to go to the hospital?” and I would say yes.

That is when I realized how serious it was. I looked at the other kids around me and I saw almost the same thing, other people with problems. Some would get angry really fast. Some would talk to themselves. There were people with drug problems getting restrained and yelling at staff. I asked a girl why she was there and she said she had schizophrenia. She said it was a disorder where you hear or see things that aren’t there and you get really depressed. I realized I might have schizophrenia. But the doctors didn’t tell me anything. They just put me on different medications but nothing was working. It felt like I was on a bus that was going somewhere, but not in the direction I wanted it to. I knew at the hospital I would be safe, but I felt like I needed more help.

The doctors recommended that I go to a group home, where I would live with adult staff members and five other boys who were in foster care or had emotional problems. I thought it would be better for me because I could get help 24/7. I could knock on the door and have a staff member to talk to.

I was 13 when I arrived at the group home. When I first got there, I didn’t like it at all. I missed my parents and there were a lot of rules, like “appearance,” which meant you had to be well groomed. If your shirt wasn’t clean or your hair wasn’t brushed, you would lose privileges, like talking on the phone.

At first I heard voices every day. It was really horrible because I was away from my parents. I would sit in my room and listen to music and rock back and forth. One time one of the staff members came up to me and asked if I was OK. She talked to me and said, “Don’t go straight to killing yourself. Think about what is around you like your parents, family and friends.” I thought about what she said for two days. Even though it was hard, I thought about all the people who loved me, like my parents and my grandpa. That helped me get through my depression. After that when I missed my parents, I would remember what she said.

Read the rest of this entry »

MAD AS HELL AND NOT GOING TO FUND IT ANY MORE

For past months, federal law enforcement has aggressively gone after medical marijuana clinics, forcing the close of around 200 clinics in California, including two of the the best known (and reportedly best behaved) clinics in northern cal, Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana and the Berkeley Patients’ Care Collective.

Since Obama had pledged to lay off the clinics before he was elected, many in California and in other medical marijuana states like Colorado are feeling betrayed and increasingly pissed off.

Some of their representatives are getting the message. This week three Congressmen, Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, and Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y, have launched a bi-partisan effort to block the feds fiscally from going after medical marijuana in states where it is legal. The Rohrabacher-Hinchey-Farr Amendment it is called.

Even Nancy Pelosi put out a press release last week calling for “state’s rights.”.

Reacting to an ongoing crackdown on medical marijuana facilities in California, Pelosi said in a Wednesday statement, “I have strong concerns about the recent actions by the federal government that threaten the safe access of medicinal marijuana to alleviate the suffering of patients in California.”

The California Democrat said that medical marijuana is “both a medical and a states’ rights issue.”

California legalized the use of medical marijuana in a 1996 initiative vote. It’s comically easy for many residents to acquire the necessary medical diagnosis to legally purchase the drug.

In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama administration would “effectively end the Bush administration’s frequent raids on distributors of medical marijuana.”

In April, however, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Internal Revenue Service raided Oaksterdam University — a school that taught marijuana enthusiasts how to successfully cultivate plants.

The Daily Caller has more on Pelosi’s statements, and the issue in general

Jason Hoppin at the San Jose Mercury News has more on the nascent Congressional effort.

YEAH, THERE’S A MED MARIJUANA CLINIC DOWN THE STREET FROM MY KID’S PRE-SCHOOL, WHAT OF IT?

Meanwhile, Tamar Todd, Staff Attorney, Drug Policy Alliance, has a fierce and eloquent essay in the Huffington Post on why the fed-forced closure of the venerable Berkeley Patients Group, was so…well….stupid.

Here are some clips:

Last week, one of California’s oldest and most respected medical marijuana dispensaries, Berkeley Patients Group, closed its doors. It shut down because its landlord, like dozens across the state, received a letter from United States Attorney Melinda Haag threatening to seize the property for renting to a medical marijuana dispensary located within 1,000 feet of a school. My three children attend elementary school and preschool in West Berkeley, just blocks from Berkeley Patients Group. The notion that the closure of Berkeley Patients Group is going to somehow serve to protect my children is patently absurd.

Berkeley Patients Group served thousands of medical marijuana patients in the Berkeley area for 12 years. It was an industry leader and a model of compassion and legal integrity. It was in strict compliance with state and local law, and has long worked with the City of Berkeley and the local community to provide a safe and responsible service to patients in need. As a small business, it employed 75 people and was one of the top sales tax generators in the city.

Ms. Haag has claimed that one of her concerns about dispensaries that are in close proximity to schools and parks and playgrounds is the possibility they could be the target of violence or armed robbery. Banks and pharmacies are also targets of armed robberies and there are a number of them located in West Berkeley. Like Berkeley Patients Group, they have security. There is no evidence to suggest, and I have never felt, that it is dangerous to send my children to a school that happened to be near a bank, or a pharmacy.

West Berkeley is not crime-free. There have been a number of shootings in the blocks surrounding my children’s elementary school in past several years. There is also significant illicit drug traffic in the neighborhood. The two are likely connected. But thus far, Ms. Haag and the federal government have devoted few, if any, resources to protecting children from gun violence or other crime in West Berkeley.

Instead, Ms. Haag has chosen to use her presumably limited resources to deprive the thousands of patients who frequent Berkeley Patients Group a legal, regulated, secure place to purchase desperately needed medicine….

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Most offensive is the notion that legal access to medical marijuana sends the wrong message to kids. I find the existence of legal medical marijuana very easy to explain to my children. This is what I tell them: Research and science matter. The opinions of medical professionals matter. We should have compassion for those who are very sick, and even for those who are just a little sick; for those suffering the effects of chemotherapy or for returning veterans suffering from PTSD; that we should help meet people’s needs and ease pain as best we can (even if it goes against the conventional wisdom or drug war ideology). I tell my children that it is better for people to buy marijuana from a safe, well-regulated source, than on the street.

I tell my children that the lives of children in Mexico matter too, where United States drug policy has led to the narcotics-related murders of nearly 50,000 people over the last five years, including thousands of children. That is the harm to children caused by marijuana prohibition, and a drug market that Ms. Haag’s actions directly fuel. The “threat” posed by Berkeley Patients Group, and other dispensaries like it, pales in comparison.

WHAT’S OBAMA’S DEAL ANYWAY?

The Week has gathered together the three main theories being advanced about why the president and his AG have ramped up their medical marijuana enforcement.

AND IN OTHER NEWS….UPDATES ON THE KELLY THOMAS MURDER CASE

For those of you interested in following the, thus far, very painful Kelly Thomas murder case , the LA Times Richard Winton is covering the Orange County proceedings very well. Here are two of his latest stories having to do with the preliminary hearing here and here.

(Thomas, just to remind you, was the homeless man who was beaten to death, allegedly by a group of Fullerton police officers, while he called out for his father.)

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty.