Siskiyou County’s mental health court

The California Report Magazine recently reported on how one woman’s cycle of incarceration and mental illness encouraged a rural county to change it’s system. A resident of Siskiyou County, Marlene Baker’s untreated mental illness led her to have frequent contact with law enforcement for minor offenses associated with homelessness, and be repeatedly booked into and released from their overcrowded jail.

Siskiyou County is in far Northern California and spans 6,000 square miles, but is home to just 44,000 people. Many common rural disadvantages intersect for the residents there, such as a lack of public transportation or community healthcare resources.

According to the California Report,

Mental illness plays a role in a high number of criminal cases here. What to do once those people enter the system, said Siskiyou County District Attorney Kirk Andrus, is a vexing question.

“You've got a community that wants to be protected,” he said. “But you also have a person who needs intervention and not necessarily the kind of intervention that we have to offer. It's a massive problem.”

In Baker’s case, though, despite those rural challenges — in some ways because of them — a number of key people took some risks and bent some rules to help her heal in the community, with her freedom intact. And her success is helping to bring about some bold changes in the way Siskiyou County confronts its mental health crisis.

When Baker was charged with a felony, she became a test case for a new way of addressing the intersection of crime and mental illness in the county. The judge, the public defender, county mental health officials, and prosecutor, came to an agreement that instead of returning her to jail or sending her to a state hospital, they would try to help her on the outside. Her case worker found her housing, which she credits as the key to her success. She was able to continue showing up to her court dates, a challenge without public transportation, and ultimately had her record cleared and legal competence restored.

Siskiyou County now has what they call a behavioral health court. It wipes the criminal charges off the records of participants who complete mental health treatment, and keeps them in the community while they do it.

Siskiyou County’s approach to a mental health court can potentially be a model for other counties in California, rural or urban. Studies have proven that mental health courts are effective. Specifically, “participants are significantly more likely to utilize treatment services, less likely to be rearrested, and spent fewer days in jail as opposed to nonparticipants.”

People with mental health disabilities are overrepresented in jail and prison. In a moment where much of our national conversation is centering on how to move away from our carceral system and integrate a nuanced understanding of mental health, it seems appropriate to include in our community court systems. Perhaps Siskiyou County can be one model for keeping people in their rural communities while also finding a way to get them the mental health supports they need.

An extreme statement of frustration, lack of voice in rural California

The Siskiyou County (California) Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 yesterday afternoon to support the county's secession from the State of California.  The Times-Standard (of neighboring Mendocino County) reports:

More than 100 people packed the supervisors' chambers late this morning for a discussion on whether the county should issue a declaration that it wants to secede from the state. Nearly all those in attendance appeared to be for the move. 

Among those in attendance was Erin Ryan, field representative for Rep. Doug LaMalfa. She said that she and other LaMalfa staff members supported the effort to secede, but she did not know LaMalfa's thoughts on it. 

Board Chair Ed Valenzuela was the sole vote against the declaration today. He said he was elected to solve problems within the system. 

In August, county residents lobbied the board to consider separating from the state over a laundry list of complaints including a lack of representation in Sacramento for the Republican-majority county, issues pertaining to water rights and the rural fire prevention fee.

The fire prevention fee is $150 annual assessment to "offset the costs of providing fire service to people who live far from services." Needless to say, that means folks in rural California.  The California Legislature approved it in 2011, and it affects more than 825,000 homeowners.
The story is reported by Sean Longoria of the Redding Record Searchlight.  Longoria notes that the vote is the first step "in a long process that would require approval" from both state and federal legislative bodies.

Some rich quotes in favor of the vote can be found online, including this one from Gabe Garrison, a resident of Happy Camp in the northwest part of the county:

Many proposed laws are unconstitutional and deny us our God-given rights.  We need our own state so we can make laws that fit our way of life.

Supervisor Michael Kobseff said not a single person had contacted him to oppose the declaration supporting secession.

Read more here (from Shasta and Mendocino counties), here (from the AP), here (San Francisco) and here (Humboldt County). Siskiyou County's population is 44,154, and its poverty rate is 18.4%.  

Siskiyou County would like other rural counties in northern California and southern Oregon to join it in forming the 51st state, Jefferson, a proposal that has been around for many decades. A book about the proposed State of Jefferson was published in 2007. Read more about the Jefferson statehood project here. The wikipedia entry is here. I note the slogan for that project:

Free people - Free Markets - Limited Government
Representation for people of rural California

This story notes that several counties in northern Colorado will vote this fall on seceding from that state, a fact also mentioned in several stories covering the Siskiyou County vote.

A 2011 post about a secession movement in southern California, in the so-called Inland Empire, is here.

Rural California wins one (a rarity) in special election

Bieber, California (Lassen County) (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

California's most rural politician has just defeated an urban (or, at best, suburban) politician for State Senate District 1.  The winner is not college educated.  The loser has a Bachelors degree from Harvard and a J.D. from Yale Law School.  Brian Dahle, the winner, has been mentioned in five prior blog posts here, one of them mentioning the occasion of his visit to my Law and Rural Livelihoods class several years ago.   Dahle garnered 53.4 % of the vote, and  his Ivy-educated opponent just 46.6%  One striking fact is that Dahle carried every nonmtro county by a considerable margin, while Kiley carried every metropolitian county--except Shasta County, the least metro of the metros, in the would-be State of Jefferson, which I'll discuss below.

As I have written elsewhere, it's hard to gain traction on rural issues in California because only about 2% of the state's population live in rural places, at least as "rural" is defined (admittedly, narrowly) by the U.S. Census Bureau (population clusters of less than 2,500 or open territory).  That trend was defied a few days ago when Brian Dahle of Lassen County (population 34,895, population density 7.39/square mile) defeated Kevin Kiley of Placer County (population 348,432, population density 230/square mile) to become California's newest State Senator.  Just as telling in terms of where these candidates come from spatially and culturally, Dahle is a seed farmer from Bieber, California, population 312.  (While Bieber is in Lassen County, it is on State Hwy 299, in the corner that connects Shasta County to very sparsely populated Modoc County, which may say something about the Shasta County vote; see below).  Kiley lives in the Placer County suburb of Rocklin.

Tavern in Bieber, California (Lassen County)
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

District 1 includes all or part of 11 California counties and stretches from north Lake Tahoe to the Oregon state line.  Among the counties included in the district are all or parts of four metropolitan counties, including Sacramento County (1.4 million), Placer County (population 348.432), El Dorado County (population 181,058), and (much farther north), Shasta County, (population 177,223).

The California Secretary of State's page about this special election is here.  The Sacramento Bee's minimal coverage of the election is here.  The Redding Record Searchlight's coverage is here.  The Lassen County Times is here, though I was unable to click through to a story about the election, which might have been interesting since Dahle served on the Lassen County Board of Supervisors for 16 years before he was elected to the California General Assembly.

Here are the (approximate) votes (and population counts) for the Senate District's nonmetropolitan counties:

Lassen County, population 34,895: Dahle got 81.5% of the 4,000 votes.
Alpine County, population 1,175:  Dahle got 73.5% of the 223 votes.
Sierra County, population 3,240: Dahle got 67.2% of the 860 votes.
Plumas County, population 20,007: Dahle got 65.7% of the 4,400 votes.
Modoc County, population 9,686:  Dahle got 87.1% of the 1,857 votes.
Siskiyou County, population 44,900: Dahle got 69.7% of the 7,331 votes.
Nevada County, population 98,764:  Dahle got 67.1% of the 15,000 votes.

And here are the votes for the metropolitan counties--well, parts of some of those counties:

Sacramento County (partial 10.2%, including where I live):  Kiley got 71.8% of about 21,000 votes.
Placer County (partial, 62.9%): Kiley got 60.8% of 38,000 votes
El Dorado County (all):  Kiley got 56% of about 31,000 votes.
Shasta County (all):  Dahle got 82.2% of about 28,000 votes.

Seen at pubic school in Bieber, California
Advertisement for Lassen Community College
(c) 2018 Lisa R. Pruitt 

The prior State Senator for this district was Ted Gaines, who lives in El Dorado Hills, a posh suburb/exurb of Sacramento, just over the Sacramento/El Dorado County line.  Thus, the election of Dahle, the seed farmer with a high school education, is quite a shift culturally and experientially.

In the run up to this run off, some controversies about the Senate District 1 election were reported in the Bee here and here.  Regarding the former, I can't help wonder if the lack of anonymity associated with rural people and places played a role in its possible efficacy (leaving aside, for now, the very dodgy ethics) of the mailer threatening to disclose folks' voting records.  The latter story describes how these two Republicans (Dahle and Kiley) were the top two vote getters in the primary, while the Democrat, a woman from the Truckee/Lake Tahoe area, came in third. Needless to say, it's a conservative district.

In fact, that reminds me of another controversy--and a rather significant one that arguably implicates race:  Dahle sent a campaign flyer to voters in his district (or at least some of them; I don't recall getting it here in suburban Sacramento) that photo-shopped an image of Kiley next to Kamala Harris, currently U.S. Senator for California but previously the state's Attorney General.  The mailer said Kiley was a "former staffer" to Harris.  In fact, Kiley at one point worked for the California Dept of Justice, but as a civil servant.  He says he has never even met Harris.  Here's an excerpt from the Bee's report on the matter, quoting Kiley:

The desperation you’ve seen from Brian raises questions about why he’s willing to exceed all boundaries of fair play just to run for this seat.

This has racial implications because Harris is not only liberal, she is also mixed race--South Asian and Black.  Thus Kiley's association with Harris might be seen as negative in the more rural and conservative parts of the Senate district.

A Republican lawyer who previously worked with Kiley and donated to his campaign wrote this in the California Globe about Dahle's campaign strategy (or shenanigans, depending on your perspective):

Kiley ran on his record; that is, when he wasn’t refuting Dahle’s misinformation about that record. Dahle’s candidacy was less a textbook example of retail politics than a master class in demagogic propaganda.

 Cross-posted to Working Class Whites and the Law.

McClatchy feature on policing in rural California echoes my theorizing of law's relation to rurality

Most Wanted Poster
Trinity County, California, Courthouse, July 2018
Photos by Lisa R. Pruitt 

The headline is "Calling 911 in rural California?  Danger might be close, but the law can be hours away," and four Sacramento Bee journalists contributed to this major feature, which has been in the works since December, 2017.

I was gratified to see the story--which documents the reality (and consequences) of lack of effective law enforcement and high per capita violent crime rates in California's nonmetro counties.  To be clear, the news is bad, but I was gratified in that the story confirms work I have been doing for more than a decade now (some of it documented in this blog since September, 2007, 11 years ago this month).  That work has been theorizing the difference that rurality makes to law's operation and people's attitudes about law.  In other words, what is the legal relevance of rurality and, thus, why should legal scholars attend to rural difference?  why should "rural" be a category of analysis in the implicitly urbanormative field of law?

Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office, Yreka, California, July 2018
photos by Lisa R. Pruitt (c) 2018

Just a few years ago, I published a chapter on this issue in a volume of legal geography essays.  Mine was titled, "The Rural Lawscape: Space Tames Law Tames Space."  My argument was that rural spatiality is in tension with law.  That is, the distance between homes and the distances that legal actors must traverse in order to exert law's authority--to make law meaningful--practically disables law.  Technology can help (that is, time can trump space), but it's costly and cannot always be a substitute for the presence of human law enforcement.  Further, rural residents' sense that they must be self sufficient is reinforced by this lived reality.  As academics express it, society, spatiality and law and all mutually constituting or co-constitutive.  If people know that legal actors such as law enforcement are effectively not present, then they know they must take care of themselves.  In a sense, the lack of efficacy of law promotes a sort of frontier justice or informal order.   

Now, the empirical work of these Bee journalists confirms my theorizing with hard data about the number of sheriffs deputies per 100 square miles in California counties--including those all across the state, not just in the northern third on which Sac Bee usually focuses.  These journalists also look at  violent crime rates, confirming that  many of the highest crime counties are "rural" according to the metric used by the reporters:  Alpine (with a population of just 1,175, the state's least populous county, in the eastern Sierra) and Lassen (in the northern Sierra) lead the pack.  Third is metropolitan San Joaquin County, home to Stockton.

Seal of Plumas County, Quincy, California

Plumas (again, northern Sierra) is next, followed by the state's most urban county, San Francisco, then nonmetro Inyo, Shasta, Lake and Modoc.  Of course with populations as low as those of many of these nonmetro counties, the violent crime count doesn't have to be very high to rise to the top of the per capita heap.  Indeed, it would be interesting to see data on deputy sheriff per 1000 residents vs deputy sheriff per 100 square miles.  How different would the map and rankings look then?  And which is the more salient metric?

The Bee story begins with information about a 2011 double murder in the Trinity County community of Kettenpom, nearer to Mendocino County than to Weaverville, the Trinity County seat.  In that case, Trinity County law enforcement asked the neighbors of a couple who called 911 to check in on that couple because sheriffs deputies coming from Weaverville were several hours away.  The incident ended badly, with the responding neighbors severely wounded and the assailant, who had killed the couple who initially called 911 by the time the responding neighbors arrived, also dead after a car chase.  The responding neighbors, Norma and Jim Gund, are suing the Trinity County Sheriff (in a case now going to the Supreme Court of California) and in the related story by journalist Ryan Sabalow observe, "Over here, we have to take care of ourselves."  Any trust they had in the sheriff's office has disappeared, the story reports.  (The separate story about this law suit is well worth a read, especially for legal eagles who will be interested in the arguments of the respective parties, including the assertion that the Gunds were effectively Posse Comitatus).

Another quote from this McClatchy feature similarly speaks powerfully to informal order.  The man quoted is one whom Modoc County Sheriff's deputies knew was growing marijuana illegally.  Yet when they stopped him in a remote locale, they made an effort to calm his anger rather than confront him with the marijuana infraction.  The story reports that the deputies planned to return later with reinforcements rather than risk the consequences of his ire when they stopped him in a vulnerable location.  The man who was stopped, identified as Roberts, told the reporter who was on a "ride along" with the deputies:

We have freedom with responsibility out here.  We can do a lot of stuff. These guys [sheriffs deputies] referee.

near North San Juan, Nevada County, July 2017 

Wow, law enforcement as referees for what residents want to do?  This is sounding like the wild west, indeed.  (As it happens, I am in the midst of reading about the wild west in Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize winning Angle of Repose, which features vignettes where vigilante justice takes over, much to the dismay of eastern transplants to places like Leadville, Colorado in the 19th century).

Bieber, California (Lassen County), July, 2018

These somewhat harrowing vignettes from Trinity and Modoc County aside, what I consider to be the story's lede contrasts rural with urban:

As urban areas such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Fresno grapple with discussions about use of force and the over-policing of minority communities, the state’s rural counties face a growing and no-less-serious law enforcement crisis: a severe shortage of staff that puts the public — and deputies — in danger. 

A McClatchy investigation found that large stretches of rural California — where county sheriffs are the predominant law enforcement agencies and towns often run only a few blocks — do not have enough sworn deputies to provide adequate public safety for the communities they serve.

Elsewhere the story provides this illustration, again contrasting rural and urban:

Del Norte Courthouse, Crescent City, July 2018  

While the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department employs nearly 160 deputies for every 100 square miles it covers, the tiny sheriff’s departments in Madera, Mariposa and Mendocino counties employ about four deputies for the same amount of turf. In Del Norte and Alpine, the counties make do with two deputies per 100 square miles.

Those figures include non-patrol personnel and those who work in county jails. 

Also, consider the role that the phenomena of distance and personnel shortage played in this tragic story out of Tehama County last fall.  Perhaps these Rancho Tehama events gave the Bee journalists the idea for this story.

Tehama County Sheriff's Office, Red Bluff, California, July 2018

The McClatchy story features a color-coded map that shows the number of law enforcement officers per 100 square miles (again, what would it look like if deputies per 1000 residents?).  It reminds me of maps I have helped to produce here showing lawyers per capita in California counties.  Guess what? As with law enforcement officials, nonmetro counties have shortages of lawyers.

Another interesting theme/revelation in the story is that no deputy actively patrols in some counties, e.g., Mendocino, for some parts of the night, though deputies are on call from their homes.  When I wrote something similar on Legal Ruralism about my home town in Arkansas a few years ago (see here, here and here), students in my Law and Rural Livelihoods class were shocked to imagine a place with no law enforcement on duty 24-7, yet it is happening here in California, too.

A third interesting theme:  population churn in rural areas, partly driven by low cost of living, has had an impact on how rural communities are policed:

Tex Dowdy, the sheriff-elect of Modoc County, said an influx of transient residents drawn to the low cost of living has made identifying suspects harder for Modoc’s deputies. 

The story quotes Dowdy: 

It isn’t the same place where we used to live.  You used to recognize the bad guy walking around the street because he was in the paper every week.

Alturas, California (Modoc County) July 2018

Note the lack of anonymity theme, about which I have written a great deal in the last decade, including here and here.  The sheriff basically confirmed what I have argued:  in rural counties, the "usual suspects" is as powerful a type of profiling as racial profiling, if not more so (and, of course, the two can overlap).

A fourth interesting theme--one also  articulated in my academic writing--is that some people seek our rurality for the privacy and effective seclusion from law that it provides.  (Think Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, in rural Montana).  These folks are unlikely to call on law enforcement even when they need it.  Regarding this proposition, the story quotes Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal in relation to this phenomenon:

Things go on in the hills all around us that go unreported.  We know that. Daily. It happens. It’s something that we’ve just gotten used to. There are shootings that occur in the middle of the night. ... We know that there’s kidnappings, we know there are people getting brutalized out in the hills, we know there are people getting robbed.

Honsal's quote reminded me of this feature by Reveal last fall, which I blogged about here, regarding wage theft and sexual abuse of "trimmigrants" in places like Humboldt and Trinity County.  Of course, immigration status can also make people reluctant to report a crime, a particular concern in places like the San Joaquin Valley.  The Chief Justice of California has, for that reason, criticized ICE for any presence in California courthouses.

A fifth theme relates to budgets, cuts to which have undermined a prior practice of deputizing people who lived in the remote reaches of a given county:

Until recent years, many rural departments had regional substations and hired “resident deputies” who lived in the remote areas they served. Those resident deputies knew their territories and most of the locals by name, making it harder for crime to go unnoticed, said multiple sheriffs. Resident deputies also allowed for quicker response times. 

Those in need “just come and knock on your door,” said Modoc’s Poindexter. “You just grab your gun belt and go out the door and try to fix it.”

July 2018, Bieber, California (far northern Lassen County),
a sheriff station at the local school, which is closer to Alturas, in Modoc 
County,  than to Susanville, the Lassen County seat.

Indeed, in my recent drive up California 299 from Burney (Shasta County) to Alturas (Modoc County), I saw a sign indicating such a remote outpost of the Lassen County Sheriff's office in Bieber, which is near the Modoc County line and also not far from Shasta County.   Yet it is technically in Lassen County, and how interesting that the Lassen Sheriff's substation should be at the school, of all places. (More photos from that journey are here and here with more to come in future posts on access to justice in rural California).  A few years ago, I also photographed a Siskiyou County Sheriff's substation in Dunsmuir.  Though it is at the southern edge of the county, it is hardly remote given its locale on I-5.

Siskiyou County Sheriff's
Substation, Dunsmuir July 2016

Another aspect of the economic situation is the inability of counties to tax public lands, both federal and state.  The story explains:

The state compensates counties for protected lands, too, but that funding has been controversial and even less predictable. Since the 2015-2016 budget cycle, the state has given rural counties $644,000 for payments in total each year to be divided among them, said state Sen. Mike McGuire, whose coastal district spans seven counties from Marin to the Oregon border.

 * * *  

“You can’t sustain an operating budget not knowing what is coming,” said Justin Caporusso, vice president of external affairs at the Rural County Representatives of California, an advocacy group. 

I have written previously here and here of the constraints that lack of tax revenue on federal lands place on local governments in rural areas, especially in the West, which has a much greater percentage of public lands than the rest of the country.  The impact of shrinking federal dollars on law enforcement in Southern Oregon has attracted media attention in recent years.  As for that state contribution, less than $700K/year spread among seven counties is pretty pitiful,  even in the context of a paltry rural budget. 

Sign on Sierra County Courthouse,
Downieville, California, July 2017

A sixth theme is that the state practice of re-alignment (re: prisons and local jails) has not served nonmetro counties well.  The Bee story includes a few interesting quotes to illustrate the conundrum re-alignment has created for county law enforcement.

Sierra County Courthouse and Jail, Downieveille, July 2017

A seventh theme is the lack of mental health support.

Rural counties have 0.9 psychiatrists for every 10,000 residents, about half the statewide average, according to California Medical Board data. Mariposa has been experimenting with “tele-doc” video technology to connect jail inmates with mental-health professionals in other counties.

Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article215453050.html#storylink=cpy

Of course, telemedicine is being used to provide mental health and other services in rural counties generally, and not only to incarcerated populations.

Weaverville, California (Trinity County) CHP headquarters
is adjacent to the Dept. of Motor Vehicles.  Perhaps this sign
responds to the reality that rural residents are known to
report crime at lower rates than urban residents,
even when the perpetrator is a stranger.

An eighth theme regards reliance on other law enforcement agencies, including not just California Highway Patrol, but also both federal and state game and fish officers.

USDA Forest Service vehicle, Weaverville, California, July 2018 

Back to the budget/economics note, I'll close with this stunning data point:  rookie deputies in Modoc County earn $13/hour!  I assume baristas in Los Angeles are paid better than that, especially if you take into account tips.

Cross-posted to UC Davis Faculty Blog.

Big feature on (would-be) State of Jefferson in Sacramento's alternative newspaper

The Sacramento News and Review, my city's "alternative newspaper," recently published a big feature on the State of Jefferson secessionist movement.  Freelance journalist Steve Magagnini writes:

Almost anywhere you drive through Northern California, you’ll see green and gold signs, flags and banners heralding the arrival of the State of Jefferson, a separatist movement that nearly succeeded in 1941 and, more recently, has grown like a grass fire in the era of Trump. 

The signs feature “The Great Seal of the State of Jefferson,” a gold pan emblazoned with two X’s—Jeffersonians have long believed they’ve been double-crossed by big city politicians in Sacramento who take their money but ignore their concerns. 

Over the last two years, the signs have popped up on billboards, front yards, and haystacks, sometimes next to Confederate flags and anti-immigrant slogans. 

This blog has featured lots of posts about the State of Jefferson over the years, and a few of those posts (and other stories about the State of Jefferson) have speculated about the racist motives behind the Jefferson movement.   One thing I especially appreciated about Magagnini's story is that he calculates the racial/ethnic demography of the would-be State of Jefferson:

Here’s what Jefferson would look like based on census records from the 23 counties that have signed on and two others on the fence, either through referendum or a vote of their board of supervisors: 2.5 million people, 69 percent Caucasian, 21 percent Hispanic, 4 percent Asian, about 3 percent multi-racial, 1.6 percent American Indian and 1.6 percent African-American. Nineteen counties voted for Trump, four (Mendocino, Lake, Nevada and Stanislaus) went for Clinton.

Magagnini also quotes me regarding the spread of Jefferson ideology--or at least the geographic spread of its marketing effort:

Lisa Pruitt, a UC Davis law professor specializing in rural and urban differences, said she has seen Jefferson signs in El Dorado, Amador and Calaveras Counties. 

“I saw a Jefferson decal on a Prius in Fair Oaks, and on I-80 near Davis,” she said. “It’s all over rural California and creeping into urban California. I’ve seen their stickers on cars in Target parking lots.” 

The further north you go, the bigger the signs, Pruitt said. 

“There’s a lot of agitation on the part of rural Californians who feel their interests are not being heard or taken seriously in Sacramento,” Pruitt said. “The example is the state gas tax: people in rural areas who drive long distance don’t feel they get anything for their buck.” 

Mark Baird argues that there’s a historic precedent for Jefferson: Vermont left New York and New Hampshire in 1791, Kentucky left Virginia in 1792, Maine bolted from Massachusetts in 1820 and West Virginia—which argued that Virginia committed sedition by breaking away from the union to join the confederacy—got its independence in 1863.

Pruitt, however, disagrees. 

“It’s not a winning analogy,” she said, adding that West Virginia’s split happened more than 150 years ago. 

“People are intrigued by it, but peeling themselves into a separate state would not solve their economic woes, and might make them worse,” she said. “I’m not convinced they would be in a better situation if they got more representatives, rural interests would still be greatly outnumbered by urban interests in Jefferson. Legislators represent people, not cows and trees.”

That last bit of the quote is a reference to Reynolds v. Sims, a 1964 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.  As for the part about rural interests still being outnumbered by urban interests "in Jefferson," I think he misquoted me.  I don't think we know how the rural-urban split would shake out within what would be Jefferson, but I do note that the largest city on the California side of the line is Redding, at about 90,000.  To say it's not a very urbanized region is perhaps an understatement.  (Of course, on the Oregon side of would-be Jefferson are the mid-sized cities of Medford, Roseburg and Klamath Falls).

As for those decals and signs around the region, I'm including some photos below.  (Sadly, I failed to capture, before it was removed, a photo of the Jefferson decal on the guardrail by the I-80 exit at UC Davis)

Birdcage Shopping Center, Citrus Heights, California, 2018

I'm guessing this Prius I photographed in the Birdcage Shopping Center in Citrus Heights California (suburban Sacramento) may belong to one of the women Magagnini interviewed for his story, Jean Colgrove, 64, of Citrus Heights.  He describes her as a libertarian who "confessed she lives in Sacramento County, behind enemy lines."  Colgrove says she sees support for Jefferson growing in her suburb and in neighboring Folsom and Orangevale. 

Birdcage Shopping Ctr. Citrus Heights,
Sacramento County,
California, 2018 

Pleasant Valley Road, El Dorado County, California, July 2018

Magagnini mentions Mark Baird, a rancher and reserve deputy sheriff for Siskiyou County who leads the State of Jefferson movement from his ranch in Scott Valley.  I happened to travel through Scott Valley this summer as I drove from Weaverville (Trinity County) to Yreka.  (Read more here)  I passed through Callahan, just north of the Trinity County-Siskiyou County line, at the south end of the Scott Valley.  I've never seen as much State of Jefferson swag as was on sale at the Callahan Emporium, with complementary signs in the surrounding area, including in Etna and Fort Jones, where several businesses (like the Cemetery Memorials below) are branded "Jefferson."

Callahan Emporium, Scott Valley,
Siskiyou County, California, July 2018

California Hwy 3, between Coffee Creek and Callahan

Map of the Oregon Trail and depictions of historical structures, Callahan Emporium 

Callahan Emporium, Scott Valley,
Siskiyou County, California, July 2018

Jefferson Flag at Callahan Emporium

Jefferson swag on sale at the Callahan Emporium, Scott Valley, July 2018

Jefferson Memorials, Fort Jones,
California, July 2018

Signs at the entrance to Weaverville, Trinity County, July 2018

Hmong pot farmer shot and killed by Siskiyou County law enforcement amidst fire evacuation

I blogged yesterday about the "officer involved shooting" of a white teen in Arkansas.  Another incident of law enforcement killing a person in a rural setting is in the headlines today, this one out of Siskiyou County, California, population 44,900.  The Siskiyou sheriff's department said the man pointed a gun at officers.  Here's an excerpt from the Sacramento Bee's coverage:    

Four officers shot and killed a man after he fired a gun at them as they tried to stop a vehicle at the entrance to a large complex of cannabis farms under evacuation Monday evening from the 13,330-acre Lava Fire in Siskiyou County, the sheriff said Tuesday.

The officers tried to stop a man at the Mount Shasta Vista subdivision after the fire crossed Highway 97 north of Weed, Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue said. The 1,641-lot subdivision has been converted into a massive network of marijuana grows run primarily by Hmong families.  [The man shot and killed by officers was Hmong]

“They made contact with the driver. And at some point, the driver exhibited a firearm, a handgun, and pointed it at the officers,” LaRue told The Sacramento Bee.

The eyewitness report of a firefighter at the scene seems to contradict the law enforcement account. A resident who lived near the shooting said he heard about 60 rounds fired.  And here's more context from the Bee report:

The shooting comes in the wake of the sheriff’s office aggressively enforcing local ordinances seeking to eliminate the massive proliferation of marijuana farms in the rural county along the Oregon border. Siskiyou County has banned large-scale cannabis cultivation.

* * *

The growers, most of them of Hmong and Chinese descent, have accused local authorities of racial discrimination, and they’re pursuing a federal civil rights lawsuit.

The county disputes that their crackdown has been racially motivated, citing a rise of violent crime and unsafe living conditions inside the grows.

A recent post about the marijuana business in the area is here, based on a New York Times feature on nearby Weed, California.    

The Etna Police Department has reported that its officers were involved in the incident.  Etna, population 737, is west of !-5, but their officers had been east of I-5--an hour's drive from home--assisting with fire evacuation and other related public safety needs.   

Federal judge intervenes in county's effort to starve pot farms of water

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday from Siskiyou County, California, where local officials had taken steps to cut off water to cannabis grows of Hmong farmers. The reasoning behind a federal judge's intervention in the local government decision:  the county had not taken such steps when the illegal pot grows were by white folks.  

Here's an excerpt from the story Alex Wigglesworth and Anh Do: 

In the spring of this year, county supervisors effectively outlawed the transportation of water into a rural tract that had become known for its prolific cultivation of pot, squalid living conditions and large population of Hmong farmers.

The measure was just the latest attempt by local officials to shut down the pot farms, which authorities blamed for a spike in violent crime and environmental degradation.

This time however, as the Lava fire tore through the countryside, Siskiyou County’s crackdown would erupt in violence and draw national attention to a bitter conflict involving race, water and the legalization of marijuana. It would also cause a federal court judge to openly question the county’s motives for implementing such harsh measures, coming as they were at a time of severe drought, record heat and extreme risk of wildfires.

“The dehydration and de facto expulsion of a disfavored minority community cannot be the price paid in an effort to stop illegal cannabis cultivation and any attendant harms,” wrote Judge Kimberly J. Mueller of the Eastern District of California.

More on California's water crisis and the black market for water sales that the crisis has spawned is here.  Earlier posts about Siskiyou County's Hmong pot farmers are here and here.  

Pot-grower in far northern California pleads guilty to trying to bribe local sheriff

The Sacramento Bee reported yesterday from Siskiyou County, California, population 44,076,. on the Oregon state line: 

One of two marijuana growers charged with offering the Siskiyou County sheriff a $1 million bribe in 2017 pleaded guilty in federal court in Sacramento Tuesday in a plea deal that allows her to escape trial.

Gaosheng Laitinen, 41, of Cottage Grove, Minnesota, pleaded guilty in a Zoom hearing before U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez to conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to manufacture marijuana, felony counts that could have netted her up to 20 years in prison.

Laitinen was charged along with her brother, Chi Meng Yang, 36, in an audacious scheme to bribe then-Sheriff Jon Lopey for to buy protection for marijuana grows in the county, prosecutors say.

The U.S. Attorneys Office in Sacramento said Yang offered Lopey $1 million during a meeting in the sheriff’s Yreka office on May 17, 2017, “in exchange for his assistance with an interstate marijuana distribution business that Yang and others were in the process of organizing in Siskiyou County.”

Immediately after the meeting, Lopey called the FBI and agents began recording subsequent meetings.

Other posts about pot growing in Siskiyou County and the Hmong community are here and here, and other links are embedded in those posts.  

"Rural" sheriffs are scofflaws on gun control legislation

That's the gist of this story by Erica Goode in yesterday's New York Times under the headline "Sheriffs Refuse to Enforce Laws on Gun Control."  The dateline is Greeley, Colorado, population 95,357, and the county seat of metropolitan Weld County, population 263,691.  Never mind that Greeley is a city in a metropolitan county… early in the story, Goode evokes the connection between gun rights advocates and rurality, suggesting that this disobedience by public officials is a rural phenomenon (maybe she is thinking "frontier mentality" as "rural culture").

Colorado’s package of gun laws, enacted this year after mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., has been hailed as a victory by advocates of gun control. But if Sheriff Cooke [of Weld County] and a majority of the other county sheriffs in Colorado offer any indication, the new laws — which mandate background checks for private gun transfers and outlaw magazines over 15 rounds — may prove nearly irrelevant across much of the state’s rural regions.

Goode reports that 55 of Colorado's 62 elected sheriffs have signed onto a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state's new statutes.  (And many of them no doubt are from nonmetropolitan counties). Some sheriffs explain that the laws are too vague, and others--even those who have not signed onto the lawsuit--say that enforcing them is "a very low priority."  Among the latter category is Sheriff Pete W. Palmer of Chaffee County, population 16,242, in central Colorado, who notes the "huge practical difficulties" in enforcing the laws, violations of which are misdemeanors.  Palmer states:

All law enforcement agencies consider the community standards — what is it that our community wishes us to focus on — and I can tell you our community is not worried one whit about background checks or high-capacity magazines.

Regarding the law suit, a federal district judge has ruled that the sheriffs can sue as individuals, but that they have no standing in their official capacity.  The judge also ruled that one part of the law regarding magazines was not unconstitutionally vague.

As for the sheriffs' decision to buck the laws, Goode quotes Lance Clem, spokesperson for the Colorado Dept. of Public Safety:

We’re not in the position of telling sheriffs and chiefs what to do or not to do.  We have people calling us all the time, thinking they’ve got an issue with their sheriff, and we tell them we don’t have the authority to intervene.

Goode continues, with a more opaque reference to rurality--"heartland": 

The resistance of sheriffs in Colorado is playing out in other states, raising questions about whether tougher rules passed since Newtown will have a muted effect in parts of the American heartland, where gun ownership is common and grass-roots opposition to tighter restrictions is high.

She goes on to details similar issues in Florida, New York, and California. For example, Goode reports that a delegation of California sheriffs met with Governor Jerry Brown this fall to try to influence his action on new gun control laws passed by the California legislature.  Goode quotes Jon E. Lopey, the sheriff of Siskiyou County, who was among those meeting with Brown:  

Our way of life means nothing to these politicians, and our interests are not being promoted in the legislative halls of Sacramento or Washington, D.C.

Goode paraphrased Lopey's other comments, including that "residents of his rural region near the Oregon border are equally frustrated by regulations imposed by the federal Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency."  Brown did veto a law that would have banned semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines.  Another California law, one banning lead ammunition for hunting, he signed into law.

Note that Weld County, Colorado and Siskiyou County, California, are two places where secession activism has recently garnered national attention.  Read more here and here.  Weld County residents voted against secession on the November ballot, though six other counties favored secession.  

P.S.  This was one of the five most emailed stories on nytimes.com for the week ending Dec. 18, 2013.  

New (sub)-California secession movement rises in exurban Sacramento

Eric Ting reports for the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline,  'This state is under tyranny': Scenes from California's latest secession movement.  Some excerpts follow:  

Sharon Durst, leader of the secessionist El Dorado state movement, knows people don't take attempts like hers seriously. Past efforts to split rural California counties off from the rest of the state have accomplished little beyond inspiring ridicule — which the former rancher, now in her 80s, experienced directly as an early supporter of the infamous state of Jefferson.

But Durst also knows that something has to change, if rural counties like El Dorado are going to have a fair say in how they’re governed. On July 10, she and former county Supervisor Ray Nutting co-hosted a town hall to explain to their neighbors why the solution is peeling the county off from California and forming a new state.

It’s true that California has a unique problem of representation in state government. No state in the country has fewer state legislators per capita; the problem is especially stark in rural areas like El Dorado County, population 192,000. In the state Senate, El Dorado is represented by a legislator who also represents voters in 12 other counties; in the state Assembly, the county is split between two legislators, each responsible for voters across several counties, with widely diverging industries and demographics. Not one of the three legislators responsible for representing El Dorado County actually lives there.

The story features a long quote from Professor Isaac Hale of Occidental College, who teaches politics: 

This has long been an ongoing problem in California politics.  There are nearly 500,000 Californians per assemblymember and a million Californians per state senator, and that’s pretty out of whack.

You could double the size of the Assembly, and we’d still have the highest number of people represented by district.  And there are serious consequences to this.

Ting explains the consequences for rural folks in the Golden State:  they feel disenfranched--disenfranchised enough to show up at long town halls to talk about secession.  That said, Ting reports that 25 people showed up for a July 10 gathering held by Durst and Nutting.  And that doesn't sound like a very robust group in the context of a county with nearly 200K residents.  Also, interestingly, the meeting was held at a Raley's Supermarket in El Dorado Hills--the posh planned community at the western edge of the county, just over the Sacramento County line.  In other words, El Dorado Hills is the part of the county one would expect to be least amenable to a secession movement.  (Here is a prior post about El Dorado Hills as magnet for Bay Area migrants during the pandemic.)  Still, here is Ting's description of the crowd: 

The political leanings of those in attendance were on full display. One attendee wore a shirt that helpfully defined the word “patriot.” Another wore a shirt reading “Save the Children” on the front and “WE RIDE AT DAWN” in all caps on the back. Durst’s introduction was punctuated by audience member comments, including “California is red, we all know it,” and “Trump won.” When she mentioned that a reporter was in the audience, the room broke out into groans, like someone had just offered the restive crowd Bud Light from the supermarket outside the meeting room.

Here's what Ting has to say about the current movement's approach to change, including its legal theory: 

Durst and Nutting concede California lawmakers would never go along with it, so Durst is gambling on what she described as a “backdoor” maneuver to go to Congress directly.

In a 7,000-word Substack post published in May, Durst argues that El Dorado County is technically not a legitimate piece of California and is instead “other property” of Congress (though she cites no legal scholars or historians who have promulgated this view). Therefore, she wrote, Congress alone could vote to turn El Dorado County into El Dorado state, without California’s approval.

Durst refused to discuss procedural steps at the meeting. Ting quotes her:

To try to speculate, ‘What if this? What if that? Blah blah blah?’ No. You know what? We’re going to just move forward, do our thing, hope for the best and see where the people take it.

Durst was also uninterested in alternative paths to improve rural representation, including those that might garner bipartisan support because they also afflict metropolitan areas.  Professor Hale provided this illustration as an urban counterpart to what is annoying this small band of folks in El Dorado County: 

Consider Mia Bonta’s East Bay Assembly district.  Why are wealthy homeowners in Piedmont linked with renters in east and west Oakland? They have wildly different interests, and you could make the argument that they each should have their own form of representation. This is a systemic problem.

The story closes with this quote from Durst:  

I’m not going to petition anyone in California. I’m going to absolutely ignore California, as if there’s a barrier between our border and California.

Don't miss this entire, deeply reported San Francisco Chronicle story, not least for its rich descriptions of some other El Dorado County residents who attended the meeting, as well as a bit of backstory on Nutting. (Read more here from a 2014 court adjudication against him).  

Prior posts about secession from California are here, here, here (featuring many photos, including one taken in El Dorado County), here, here (speaking specifically to representation issues, from 2015), here (based on a story in Harper's Magazine), here (comparing the State of Jefferson movement to the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia), and here (reporting on a 2018 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that rejected a legal theory that Californians are underrepresented because of the too-small size of the late legislative body).  Another post regarding frustration over lack of representation, this one out of Siskiyou County in the traditional State of Jefferson territory, is here.

Other posts featuring El Dorado County more generally are here (coronavirus pandemic), here (a food sovereignty movement post from 2012), here (suburban sprawl), and here (resisting the siting of a Dollar General Store).   This is about a Tea Party Meeting in the county in 2012.  This, also from 2012, features a campaign sign for a member of the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors that uses the slogan "Protecting Rural Values."). Another 2012 photo from El Dorado County is here--this one of a sign advertising a Gold Prospecting Summit at the county fairgrounds. 

Posts about other proposals to divide California are here and here.  

My Rural Travelogue (Part XX): The courthouses of (far) northern California

I took a multi-day journey through far-northern California a few weeks ago with the purpose of visiting as many county courthouses as I feasibly could in the time that I had.  I wanted to check out their self-help centers and law libraries (mandatory by state statute), as well as to touch base with as many UC Davis law alums and other "rural" lawyers as I could find.  I took lots of photos both inside and outside the courthouses in these counties (in this order):  Butte, Trinity, Siskiyou, Modoc, Del Norte and Mendocino.  (I missed out on Lake County only because my navigator steered me toward a Foster's Freeze and away from county seat Lakeport, and I discovered this diversion only after it was too late to recover the lost time and still make our next commitment).

Those of you familiar with California geography will realize that I covered some territory now under siege by deadly fires--including the stretch of California 299 between Redding and Weaverville and the stretch of California 20 between Ukiah and Upper Lake.

What follows are photos of the exterior of these county courthouses:

Butte County Superior Court, Chico branch, built 2015

Trinity County Courthouse, Weaverville, built 1856

Annex to Trinity County Courthouse, including security screening entrance

Siskiyou County Courthouse, Yreka.  A new Courthouse is
currently under construction. 

Modoc County Courthouse, Alturas, built in 1914.

Landscaping at the Modoc County Courthouse
was the most attractive (and water conservationist)
I saw on this trip.  

Del Norte County Courthouse, Crescent City.  I cannot find the history of this
courthouse online and wondered if the prior one (built in 1958, as best I can tell)
was destroyed by the 1964 tsunami. 

Mendocino County Courthouse, Ukiah, built 1950