DRUNK AND STONED

In case you missed it, there's been a fascinating little war of words
over marijuana, prohibition and murder playing itself out in the
pages of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat over the last few days.

On June 10, the Press Democrat carried a long feature by Ukiah-based
reporter Glenda Anderson about a region-wide upswing in marijuana
cultivation and marijuana busts. There was a sidebar accompanying the
story; it was headlined "Marijuana industry blamed for jump in
killings, robberies." In fact, this headline was misleading. Most of
the article was about environmental damage wreaked by North Coast
growers, the specter of foreign cartels and families "torn apart" by
consumption of the demon weed.

Violence was cited only twice. Mention was made of a double murder
near the eastern Mendocino town of Covelo last year. But the bulk of
the story -- the only thing that served to justify the headline --
was an unsubstantiated quote from Humboldt County's own Sergeant
Wayne Hanson, of the sheriff's Drug Enforcement Unit.

"If we average five homicides, four will be marijuana-related,"
Hanson told the reporter. "People are killing people because it's the
same price as gold."

Really? Four out of five homicides in Humboldt County are marijuana
related? To put it kindly, this seemed like utter nonsense to Ellen
Komp of SoHum's Civil Liberties Monitoring Project, who responded
with an understated yet fiery letter in Tuesday's PD. Hanson's
statistics, Komp wrote, "...had no basis in fact." She added that she
had spoken to County Coroner Frank Jager, and that Jager had reported
that none of the three homicides the county has tallied so far this
year had been marijuana-related in any way.

Reached Monday, Hanson said that his figures were off-the-cuff, but
that he basically believed them to be correct. "That was just an
approximate guesstimate," he said. "It may be lower. It's not an
exact quote, because I have not studied all the stats in the last five years."

Well, to be fair to Hanson, it could be that he was thinking only of
homicides in the county's unincorporated areas -- homicides handled
by his department, the Sheriff's Office. Six of the eight homicides
in Humboldt County last year occurred within the Eureka city limits;
none of them had anything to do with weed. There's a couple of
unsolved cases -- including the disappearance of SoHum marijuana
advocate Chris Giauque -- that may well have had something to do with
weed. But the last cut-and-dried case anyone can remember that
definitely did have something to do with weed was the murder of
Whitethorn teen Sean Akselsen in 2003.

So it's safe to say that countywide, at least, Hanson's off-the-cuff
numbers were badly wrong. Considering the Sheriff's Office alone,
they were probably wrong. That's what Jager thinks: "They may have a
lot of crimes related to marijuana, but we don't have a lot of
homicides related to marijuana," he said Tuesday.

The backdrop of all this, of course, is the recent move by the
Mendocino County Board of Supervisors to call for the legalization of
marijuana, a move that SoHum Supervisor Roger Rodoni has endorsed.
Legalization would have two near-immediate consequences. It would all
but put an end to any violence the illicit marijuana trade does
engender, and it would see Sgt. Hanson assigned to other duties.

Comes now Gordon Kaupp, he of the San Francisco law firm representing
the estate of one of last year's eight homicide victims, Cheri Lyn
Moore. Kaupp called Tuesday after returning from vacation to say that
his firm had now served papers on the Eureka Police Department and
several individual officers involved in the events that led to
Moore's death at the hands of the EPD. (See last week's "Town Dandy.")

What else did Kaupp have to say? Well, that he believed the
defendants in the case -- the EPD, its officers and the City of
Eureka -- were not that far apart, actually, and that he believed a
settlement was eminently possible. He said that he was encouraged by
the fact that the Eureka Police Department seems to have taken the
matter seriously, and has made steps to get its officers trained in
dealing with mentally ill individuals (as evidenced by new Chief Garr
Nielsen's comments in this space last week).

It's not that financial compensation is off the table completely, but
Kaupp said that his clients are very interested in ensuring the
department undergo some structural reform. "There are two things
about the case that our clients are interested in," he said. "One is
to be sure that this will never happen again. But also a compensation
for loss. One is the public interest, and the other is family harm,
and the harm to Ms. Moore."

As regards the first part of the equation, Kaupp said, perhaps the
EPD has already undertaken the work he and his clients would like to
see. As regards the second, he said, the city could very likely put
the matter to bed inexpensively with a settlement. The last time
Kaupp's firm sued local law enforcement, in the Pepper Spray 8 case,
the city and Humboldt County together (or their insurance brokers)
ended up paying out upwards of $1.5 million in attorney's fees to
both sides of the case.

It's an idea. Eureka City Attorney Sheryl Schaffner couldn't be
reached for comment.

Now it's on to media news. First: Many congrats to Mike Dronkers,
John Matthews and the rest of our confreres at radio station KHUM for
taking home an Edward R. Murrow Award for the nation's best radio
documentary in a small market. The award was for last year's special
program on methamphetamine use and abuse on the North Coast and was
done in cooperation with public television station KEET-TV. It had
previously taken the regional Murrow; Monday's news was that it had
bagged the national Murrow as well.

Second: We got a call Tuesday from Mendo county homegirl Beth Bosk,
who let us know that a new issue of the New Settler Interview had hit
the stands. We haven't seen it yet, but the new issue sounds like
classic NSI -- a special issue on "medical marijuana lore," so named
in the inimitable Boskian fashion. There's an interview with a Mendo
pot doc who apparently doubles as a researcher; a "biodynamic farmer"
(of course) in Comptche (naturally) who was raided by an
out-of-county SWAT team; and a former Mendonesian who was once busted
for smuggling weed but now designs weird science gear for U.S. Navy
special ops forces. Awesome. The NSI, in case you've never seen it,
is a living piece of North Coast history. You can get it for $2.50 at
the Eureka Co-op, Northtown Books or Solutions.

Third: Yours truly was left to hold down the fort last week while the
rest of the staff decamped to Portland for days of drunken revelry
with our peers from across North America. So when I got the telephone
call Saturday evening, I was inclined to take the news with several
grains of salt -- in other words, in much the same way that the
colleague slurring words into my ear had already taken several margaritas.