BY CRESCENT CITY-DEL NORTE COUNTY TAXPAYERS ASSOCIATION
Officers and Directors of the Crescent City-Del Norte County Taxpayers Association have received numerous complaints and allegations from members of the public on a variety of subjects.
The Taxpayers Association is handing in those complaints to the Del Norte County Grand Jury. Anything having to do with abuse, fraud, etc., of our government agencies funded by taxpayer dollars will be the focus of the association in an effort to fix things that are broken.
The first complaint points out the broken claims system which has cost the taxpayers of our town hundreds of thousands of dollars in civil rights lawsuits against the county.
Here’s an example of how that works. Let’s say an officer of the Sheriff’s department obtains a search warrant from a Judge based on false information. Then the officer orchestrates a SWAT type operation and raids the person’s house and in the process violates civil rights put into place to protect individuals from renegade law enforcements types, including: reading one their Miranda rights; proper search and seizure; placing confiscated guns in an evidence locker for safekeeping; returning property from the evidence locker in good condition; giving the individual a phone call in a timely manner after their arrest; getting them medical attention after being beaten by law enforcement.
It’s bad enough to have your home and person violated by an intruder intent on doing you harm. It’s even worse when those paid to protect and defend you are the perpetrators of crimes against you. But now that a crime has been committed against you by these renegades, (usually the same 4 or 5 are named repeatedly) what are your options? What are your next steps? The first step is to file a claim against Del Norte County. What does the County do? Routinely, they deny the claim.
What do you do next? You hire the biggest baddest attorney you can afford, or one that is willing to take your case on contingency, who knows about all the corruption in Del Norte County. One that also knows how the judges are in this county and still isn’t afraid to take your case. But more often, these attorney’s take your case and you’re money and then leave you high and dry, usually after you run out of money to pay them.
What does the County do? They turn the lawsuit over to their legal bulldogs to fight you tooth and nail, adding insult to injury. They will discredit you. They will try to wear you down. It doesn’t seem to matter to them that they are destroying your life. Historically, the County would rather pay huge amounts to their legal beagles than pay the victim a dime.
The Board of Supervisors may or may not be aware of the claim. They become aware of claims via potential lawsuits or actual filed lawsuits usually behind closed doors during closed session. They have received over 25 civil rights lawsuits in the last six years. The amounts paid out to attorneys to fight these lawsuits are well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not the millions of dollars. And, it’s not only legal fees. Also take into account the time spent by the District Attorney’s office and County Council’s office. And then there’s the Public Defender’s paid to represent you once a charge or charges have been leveled against you.
The County must institute a policy of non-tolerance of rogue officers. If any officers are violating the laws by stealing property or abusing drugs, or violating individual’s civil rights then it is the responsibility of the Sheriff, the leader of the department, to investigate these allegations. If the Sheriff is unwilling to do so, then the taxpayers have a legitimate gripe against the system, the Sheriff’s department and the County.
It’s our money. If they’re not spending it wisely, we have every right to demand that things change. And, the CC-DN County Taxpayers Association is intent on leading the charge to help those changes take place.
If you’d like to become a member of the Taxpayers Association, please leave a comment below and you will be contacted.
Last week I filed a complaint with the ACLU regarding the continuing violation of the 8th amendment cruel and unusual punishment in the del norte county jail for failure to provide adequate medical treatment. This was after I had discovered inmates were not getting physical examinations as well as tb testing done. And it was stated in an email that the county does not have the funding for adequate medical care in the del norte county jail so they have a male nurse available once a week for two hours in the morning…the prisons lost several lawsuits in regards to these behaviors and the county will also lose hundreds of thousands of dollars for the future lawsuits regarding inadequate medical, psychiatric and dental care…
The attorney general office protects the sheriffs department…unfortunately unless we get rid of the Wilson posse, people will live in constant fear of the sheriff department. I have seen cases where the sheriff department gets a call from Klamath and instead of contacting the reservation police the Wilson posse shows up and creates problems in regards to the natives….I was particularly disgusted by one case where officer gill who has a reputation of filing pc 422 and pc 69 which is threatening an officer, just because he can. then he calls for 1199 which is serious cry out for back up, gets the rest of the posse down there, places people in handcuffs, tasers them and points guns to their heads…and then people wonder why there is animosity between the tribes and the sheriff office….the tribes need to get together and defeat the public law 280 which is governed by this state. it can be done, but they all need to come together. what is worse is you have a new district attorney on board with the Wilson posse regime…
An excellent article. Its about time an organization of taxpayers is learning about and acting on fraudulent waste. If local law enforcement is responsible for millions in legal fees due to rogue officers then a grand jury needs to conduct a probe.
What I don’t understand is why the board of supervisors didn’t conduct their own inquiry after the second or third lawsuit ? why did it take 6 years and 25 separate incidents ? This is ridiculous for a county of only 27,000. This shows that something is very wrong when there are that many complaints per capita. Probably 10 times the average for any county in the state.
Isn’t it the State Attorney General’s job to monitor Sheriff’s Departments ? particularly if they don’t have an internal affairs division ?