Gal notes,

These days, networking is synonymous with a successful business. Networking is also the key to a good social life. No matter how big our office, how colourful our flyers, how powerful our computers or how many degrees we have, it is the quality of relationships we establish with ourselves, our family, our friends, our customers, our suppliers and, more than anything else, with people we don’t know, that will determine our success in our personal life or in business.

And as a story in yesterday’s Fresno Bee demonstrates, what’s true in business and our personal life is also true in law.

The story — and there have actually been several in the Bee over a few days — tells of allegations of physical abuse.  Paul and Alex Grenier, sons of a Visalia pastor, filed a criminal complaint with the Visalia Police Department this past February.  The complaint alleged that when they were children, their father repeatedly abused them, beating them, punching them in the face with his closed fist, slapping them upside the head and even “beating one son repeatedly with a tree branch.”

Apparently, however, nothing is being done about the allegations because the statute of limitations has allegedly passed on all the crimes reported.  Oh, and when the boys asked for a copy of the report — the report the police created of the complaints the boys made — they were told they couldn’t have a copy because the investigation was ongoing.  However, the boys were also told that no investigation would be done because the statute of limitations has passed.

Hmmm….I wonder what else is going on. After all, something has to help us make sense of this “ongoing investigation/no investigation will be done” situation.

As it turns out, networking isn’t just synonymous with a successful business: it’s synonymous with helping out when you do bad stuff.  Most of the time.

The elder Grenier’s connections to law enforcement run deep in Visalia. The introduction of his self-published book “A Common Miracle,” telling his life story, includes praise from former Visalia Police Chief Bob Carden, Sheriff Bill Wittman and District Attorney Phil Cline. And the staff at Calvary Church includes a retired sheriff’s lieutenant. (Lewis Griswold, “Sons of Visalia preacher allege abuse” (July 17, 2010) The Fresno Bee.)

Now it’s entirely possible that every crime reported by the boys is time-barred.  California has — not without some difficulty — attempted to extend the statute of limitations on certain types of abuse almost indefinitely.  In the 2001 case of Stogner v. Superior Court, for example, they held that sex crimes which had been previously time-barred — that is, the statute of limitations had run; the time to prosecute had expired and the accused person could not be persecuted prosecuted — could, after all, be persecuted prosecuted.

The United States Supreme Court, imbued at that time with slightly more sense than today — I’d hate to see what the Roberts Court would do with this now — reversed California.  The Court did this because of two concerns: first, that the specific statute addressed in Stogner violated the ex post facto restriction; second, that the passage of time “has eroded memories or made witnesses or other evidence unavailable.”  (Stogner v. California (2003) 539 U.S. 607, 615 [123 S.Ct. 2446, 156 L.Ed.2d 544].)

Both those issues are interesting enough and involved enough that further discussion will have to await another day.

In any event, while California continues to believe that the absence of evidence in allegations of long-forgotten, suddenly “recovered” memories of sexual abuse (see Trear v. Sills (1999) 69 Cal.App.4th 1341, 1344 [82 Cal.Rptr.2d 281]; Code Civ. Proc. § 340.1) may be pursued in the absence of any real evidence, the same “courtesy” has not been extended to alleged victims of non-sexual abuse.

And so, as I said, it may very well be that the statute of limitations has run on all the allegations of the minister’s children.

What caught my attention about this story, however, was this:

The brothers spoke with investigators for more than an hour, but were disheartened that the finished report left out what they say is crucial information.

“The report did not include the brutal nature of the many beatings,” Alex Grenier wrote in an e-mail. “It was a seriously watered-down version of what we reported and left out the most serious allegations of abuse.”

And this:

Visalia Police Chief Colleen Mestas defended the report, saying police reports are summarized to get cases started in the court process. “You don’t put in every detail,” she said.

The time lapse between the beatings — in the 1980s and 1990s — and when the charges were made affected how the report was written, Mestas said.

The statute of limitations expires after three years for felony physical abuse and after one year for misdemeanors. “If the statute of limitations has passed, it doesn’t matter how much you say,” Mestas said.

Then why take a report at all?  Why not just say, “Sorry, kids, but there’s nothing we can do.  The statute of limitations has run.”  And why say, later, that the report is unavailable because the investigation is ongoing?

The likely truth of the matter here is that the report is watered down — regardless of the question of the statute of limitations — out of deference to the allegedly-abusive father with close ties to the police department.  The bogus explanation that the amount of time which had passed colored how the report was written is just that: bogus.  The point of police reports is, among other things, to provide information necessary for future handling of any case by providing a record of what has come out of the investigation thus far.

What colored the police reports wasn’t the passage of time; the report hasn’t yellowed with age.  The coloring of the report here comes from the close relationship of the boys’ father and the police department: it seems to me someone edited these reports with a thin blue pencil.

Related posts:

• Clowning Around With Justice
• Nothing to Fear
• Shooting Holes in the U.S. Constitution

Fresno County Sheriff Mims provides her own example.

The Fresno Bee reports today that Mims has decided to join the growing list of California cops who say, “Fuck what the voters want.  This is my county!”

Mims trots out the old “pot dispensaries are magnets for crime” stories.  Makes sense…to those who already feel that regardless of the fact that modern medicine has finally started to catch up with what people have known for over 5000 years, they want none of it.  Medical marijuana is, for those who rely on it, a godsend.  But the mythology that started the War on Drugs doesn’t care about that.  And Mims, who almost certainly has a money motive in keeping the War alive, will have none of that, either.

This post is not about the medicinal qualities of marijuana.  Frankly, I don’t want to write an article long enough to cover all the benefits of natural remedies over the more-profitable, more-dangerous, artificial ones drug companies insist upon.  Besides, while I do defend medical marijuana growers and therefore read quite a lot of marijuana law, I don’t use it.  So I can’t speak about the benefits from my own experience.  I only know that an increasing number of studies show that marijuana has for decades now been cloaked in so many lies that it’s hard for uneducated people to know about the thousands of years of positive history humanity has had with the plant.

The potroversy, though, does provide further insight into the way cops think.

Sheriff Mims — as she has done so many times before — reminds us that getting her way is much more important than doing her job.  Her job, of course, is to enforce the law.  Mims wants none of that.  California voters approved medical marijuana?  Over her dead body!, she tell us.  Why, they’re goddamn “magnets for crime.”

Frankly, if that were true, I’d think her and her donut-chomping lackeys would appreciate them more.  They already refuse to respond to crimes on the basis that they just don’t have time for that.  So, if pot dispensaries are such crime magnets, why not just set up a few county-run dispensaries, park a cruiser out front and then hold press conferences each week to pat yourself on the back when you arrest all the magnetized criminals irresistibly drawn to your location?

Of course, it’s not really that easy.

Because Sheriff Mims is lying.

Dispensaries are no more magnets for crime than are stores that sell alcohol.  Or groceries.  The story in which Mims was quoted notes that there have been two crimes committed involving dispensaries in the last month.  Two whole crimes!  (Well, one wasn’t 100% “whole” since the attempted robbery failed when the dispensary owner ducked into a closet.)

How many convenience stores have been robbed in that same time period?  How many grocery stores?  As I recall, someone tried to rob a SaveMart about a week or so ago.  That’s a large chain store!  Banks?  Now there are some magnets for crime!  ATM thefts, bank robberies, you name it.  Is Sheriff Mims lobbying to shut any of them down?

Nope.

But that’s not the only reason I know Sheriff Mims is lying.  And it’s also not just because her lips are moving.  I know Sheriff Mims is lying because she admitted as much herself:

Mims said her office has not examined how much crime has been reported at and around dispensaries. But she said she also is troubled by law-enforcement reports that marijuana grown illegally on public land has been bought by dispensaries.

Sheriff Mims doesn’t know how much crime has been reported at or around dispensaries. But don’t pay attention to that.  She’s troubled by “law-enforcement reports.”

So am I.  I’m troubled by law-enforcement reports — including those to the ever-gullible Fresno Police Cheerleaders Gazette Bee, which wouldn’t know an investigative reporter, or a critical thinker, if one walked in and bit the editor on the ass.  I’m troubled by law enforcement reports which contain more lies than truth.  Even the ones that don’t exist, like those Sheriff Mims made up for the Bee.

Did a law enforcement officer find a dispensary that bought pot that was grown illegally?

Then why didn’t they arrest the people — at least the owners — at the dispensary?  Why didn’t they trot them out in front of reporters, instead of made-up stories about invisible magnets?

California has two primary sets of laws controlling the growth, transportation, distribution and use of medical marijuana.  The Compassionate Use Act and California Senate Bill 420, known as the Medical Marijuana Program Act. Neither allows medical marijuana dispensaries to possess or distribute marijuana grown illegally.  Medical marijuana law in California allows certain individuals and collectives to grow marijuana legally.  Dispensaries can — and do — obtain their marijuana from such sources.

But that won’t satisfy the likes of Sheriff Mims.  She doesn’t like pot.  She won’t support the laws of the State of California.  She doesn’t give a damn whether they’re passed by the voters, or the California legislature. And she doesn’t care if she has to lie to convince you how terrible marijuana dispensaries are, because she just “knows.”

That’s how cops think.

Comments

• June 10, 2011, ajtree writes: I feel that Fresno Sheriff ROBBED a pharmacy. It is only a state law so it seems there will be no real recourse. The feds are not invilved, but they should be even if it is just a state law that is not fed sanction law. I feel a lot less safe from so called law enforcement, and fearful of vigelante with state funds.

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