Ryan Sabalow and Jason Pohl report in today's Sacramento Bee, out of Del Norte County, California, population 28,610, about malfeasance--or perhaps just negligence--on the part of the sheriff's office there. Here's a quote from the lengthy, front-page story:
There’s a motto among locals in this coastal corner of Northern California, a rugged place where tourists ambling among the redwoods outnumber residents living in Crescent City.
“There’s no law north of the Klamath,” a nod to the river at the county’s southern border with Humboldt County.
Locals still mention the saying — which dates back to the unruly 19th-century Gold Rush — when they talk about the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office.
The office has been struggling with a series of departures and scandals that have some in the community questioning whether the department is so dysfunctional that it cannot safely perform its duties and protect the public. At least two dozen sheriff’s office employees have left the department since January 2020, an average of more than one a month. It’s a disproportionate number for the department that currently employs just 60 people.
This framing in terms of rural lawlessness reminds me of my theorization of these issues in relation to rural spatiality, inability to achieve economies of scale and general lack of resources, as discussed here.
Earlier posts featuring or mentioning Del Norte County are here.
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