Author Archives: huffsantacruz

75 River Street Case Completely Tainted

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Becky Johnson: One Woman Talking

April 6, 2012

Original Post


NOTE TO READER: Thanks to my friend, Bob Lamonica, for this letter that succinctly sums up the nature of this highly political prosecution of eleven local activists and alternative-media journalists. Bob opposed the occupation last November (I praised it) but he believes that DA Bob Lee is over-charging. — Becky Johnson, Ed.


FROM: SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL

MARCH 29, 2012

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Found Online Here.

75 River St. case completely tainted

I never agreed with the 75 River St. activity, but I will stand up for the indicted’s right to equal treatment before the law. The indictments are like losing something in the dark, but looking for it in the light where you can see.

Proximity has become cause for jail and shackling in Santa Cruz, as happened to Becky Johnson, who, by all accounts, wasn’t even in the building. If such consequences are justified, they should be applied equally to anyone in or near the building at the time in question.

Eleven out of hundreds present have been indicted, arguably for political reasons. Felony conspiracy to commit a crime. Misdemeanor trespass. Felony vandalism. Prosecuted as charged, they would be deprived the right to vote, even drive a car.

The entire case is tainted beyond recovery by law enforcement’s sloppy work. All charges against everyone must be dropped, in the name of prosecutorial misconduct.

Bob Lamonica, Santa Cruz

Stop the federal pot raids

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Editorial

SF Chronicle, April 5, 2012

A months-long crackdown on medical marijuana by federal prosecutors has reached new heights with this week’s raids on Oakland dispensaries. It’s time to call off the overboard tactics and deal sensibly with regulating a drug that increasing numbers of Americans feel poses little harm.

The latest incident only furthers the tone-deaf image of the U.S. Department of Justice, whose agents stormed well-known medical pot dispensaries in Oakland, the de facto center of efforts to expand marijuana cultivation and use. Since last fall, federal officials have sent warning letters to landlords of outlets and served notice that Washington won’t tolerate medical marijuana sales.

It’s a ridiculous stance that mocks a serious issue. Last fall, federal prosecutors said the therapeutic use of pot had led to abuses, crime and profiteering. Spend 15 minutes outside a dispensary and it’s easy to see their point: a steady stream of customers who hardly resemble the sick and suffering intended to benefit under a “compassionate use” initiative passed by California voters in 1996.

But Prohibition Era-style sweeps won’t work. First, it’s a confusing message coming from the Obama administration, which telegraphed three years ago that a crackdown was a low priority. Since then, the policy has gone in the opposite direction: Stop all sales now.

Second, easing the availability of medical marijuana also has lowered the public’s fear factor of the drug. The result? Washington is losing all credibility by pursing efforts to shut down dispensaries. One of this week’s targets – the Oaksterdam University that teaches pot cultivation and legal rules – suggests that Department of Justice officials make no distinction among operators.

Finally, the federal raids ignore the core of the issue: bridging the gap between unbending federal controls and growing numbers of states, including California, that want updated consideration of the drug.

To be sure, court rulings and legal obstacles make change difficult. In California’s case, there needs to be more debate and study on clarifying a confused picture. The voter-passed initiative didn’t spell out rules on supplying marijuana to dispensaries, quality control, medical standards or financial operations, so there is plenty California can do to clean up its act.

Yet this confusion doesn’t excuse this week’s raids. This state has moved beyond a total ban on marijuana to a new phase: finding a workable way to allow the compassionate use of a drug. Washington should wake up to reality.

Man stabbed in Santa Cruz early Tuesday morning

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Stephen Baxter – Santa Cruz Sentinel
Posted:   04/03/2012

SANTA CRUZ – A 43-year-old transient man was stabbed in the back during a fight with another transient early Tuesday morning.

Santa Cruz police spokesman Zach Friend said the victim was staying at an illegal campsite behind a building on the 500 block of Front Street.

Randolph Vaden Tolley, 44, went to the campsite and got into a fight with him about 4:30 a.m., Friend said. The victim grabbed a golf club and chased Tolley to Cathcart Street.

Tolley tackled him and stabbed him in the back, police said.

Police found the victim on his side with a stab wound. Tolley stood about 15 feet away holding a folding knife.

The victim was transported to an out-of-county trauma center. He was released from the hospital on Tuesday, according to police.

Tolley was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, Friend said. Tolley is being held in County Jail in lieu of $25,000 bail, according to jail records.

“Investigators are working to interview additional witnesses today to build a better picture of what occurred before the stabbing,” Friend said Tuesday.

Santa Cruz police ask anyone with information to call the anonymous tip line at 420-5995 or leave a tip at www.santacruzpolice.com or by the mobile application at http://m.santacruzpolice.com.

S.F. Occupy activists evicted from building

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Ellen Huet and Erin Allday
SF Chronicle, April 3, 2012

Police on Monday evicted and arrested nearly 80 Occupy activists who had taken over an empty San Francisco building the night before and had stockpiled bricks and supplies with the apparent intention of staying long-term.

Officers in riot gear stormed the two-story building at 888 Turk St. at about 1:15 p.m. after tearing down a barricade protesters built to block the main entrance, said police spokesman Sgt. Michael Andraychak.

The building, which is owned by the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, has been used as a music education facility by the archdiocese-associated nearby Sacred Heart Cathedral High School.

Occupy protester Beth Seligman said Monday morning that a few hundred people came into the building and stayed the night, but police said they believed that only about 80 people were inside Monday afternoon.

Activists said they chose to take over the building because they believed it has been vacant for five years and should be used as a center for health services and education instead of standing empty.

George Wesolek, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the activists were wrong about the building’s vacant status. The building was used for regular music classes until as recently as 18 months ago, Wesolek said. The archdiocese was also considering leasing out the building and using the revenue to help with financial aid for low-income Sacred Heart students, he said.

“This is definitely not a vacant building,” Wesolek said. “It’s not forgotten. It has a purpose.”

Late Sunday night, the archdiocese signed a citizens’ arrest for the occupiers on charges of trespassing and graffiti. By Monday afternoon, police said it had become clear the protesters were planning to stay in the building for quite a while, Andraychak said.

Demonstrators had “stockpiled” bricks and cans of paint on the roof of the building, he said, and they blocked windows and doors with plywood and stacks of chairs.

After police broke through the main door, protesters fled deeper into the building, barricading doors and stairways along the way, Andraychak said. One man jumped from a second-floor window to avoid police, but was caught soon after, he said.

There were no injuries during the arrests, Andraychak said.

The interior of the building on Monday afternoon, after the protesters had been removed, was covered in spray-painted graffiti and posters and photographs from previous Occupy events. There were signs on the walls to designate sleeping areas, “media free zones” and smoking rooms.

Protesters left behind sleeping bags and backpacks, guitars and a tambourine. A half-eaten sandwich sat on a crate in one room, and in the kitchen were boxes full of fresh fruits and vegetables. In one large room on the second floor, a bowl of dog food sat next to an empty bottle of tequila.

“They had no intention of leaving,” Andraychak said.

Mayor Ed Lee, who has been criticized for being indecisive in his handling of the Occupy encampment at Justin Herman Plaza in late 2011, said before the arrests Monday that he was deferring to Police Chief Greg Suhr on plans to oust the protesters.

The mayor said he sympathized with the Occupy protesters’ concerns over vacant buildings, but suggested they compile a list of vacant properties and share it with city officials rather than going the attention-grabbing route and taking them over.

“Identifying a building is one thing,” Lee said. “When you occupy it and it’s not in a condition of livability, it could be a danger for everybody.

“I personally would love to see every vacancy in the whole city have some plan and activity going on in it,” Lee added. “I hate seeing vacancies in storefronts.”

High court upholds jailhouse strip searches

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Associated Press
Santa Cruz Sentinel, April 3, 2012

(NOTE: The Sentinel published an edited version of this article. The following is the complete article.)

WASHINGTON (AP) – Jailers may perform invasive strip searches on people arrested even for minor offenses, an ideologically divided Supreme Court ruled Monday, the conservative majority declaring that security trumps privacy in an often dangerous environment.

In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled against a New Jersey man who was strip searched in two county jails following his arrest on a warrant for an unpaid fine that he had, in reality, paid.

The decision resolved a conflict among lower courts about how to balance security and privacy. Prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, lower courts generally prohibited routine strip searches for minor offenses. In recent years, however, courts have allowed jailers more discretion to maintain security, and the high court ruling ratified those decisions.

In this case, Albert Florence’s nightmare began when the sport utility vehicle driven by his pregnant wife was pulled over for speeding. He was a passenger; his 4-year-old son was in the backseat.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said the circumstances of the arrest were of little importance. Instead, Kennedy said, Florence’s entry into the general jail population gave guards the authorization to force him to strip naked and expose his mouth, nose, ears and genitals to a visual search in case he was hiding anything.

“Courts must defer to the judgment of correctional officials unless the record contains substantial evidence showing their policies are an unnecessary or unjustified response to problems of jail security,” Kennedy said.

In a dissenting opinion joined by the court’s liberals, Justice Stephen Breyer said strip searches improperly “subject those arrested for minor offenses to serious invasions of their personal privacy.” Breyer said jailers ought to have a reasonable suspicion someone may be hiding something before conducting a strip search.

Breyer said people like Florence “are often stopped and arrested unexpectedly. And they consequently will have had little opportunity to hide things in their body cavities.”

Florence made the same point in his arguments: He said he was headed to dinner at his mother-in-law’s house when he was stopped in March 2005. He also said that even if the warrant had been valid, failure to pay a fine is not a crime in New Jersey.

But Kennedy focused on the fact that Florence was held with other inmates in the general population. In concurring opinions, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito said the decision left open the possibility of an exception to the rule and might not apply to someone held apart from other inmates.

Kennedy gave three reasons to justify routine searches — detecting lice and contagious infections, looking for tattoos and other evidence of gang membership and preventing smuggling of drugs and weapons.

Kennedy also said people arrested for minor offenses can turn out to be “the most devious and dangerous criminals.” Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh initially was stopped by a state trooper who noticed McVeigh was driving without a license plate, Kennedy said.

In his dissent, Breyer said inmates in the two New Jersey jails already have to submit to pat-down searches, pass through metal detectors, shower with delousing agents and have their clothing searched.

Many jails, several states and associations of corrections officials say strip searches should be done only when there is reasonable suspicion, which could include arrest on drug charges or for violent crimes, Breyer said.

Susan Chana Lask, Florence’s lawyer, said, “The 5-4 decision was as close as we could get … in this political climate with recent law for indefinite detention of citizens without trial that shaves away our constitutional rights every day.”

The first strip search of Florence took place in the Burlington County Jail in southern New Jersey. Six days later, Florence had not received a hearing and remained in custody. Transferred to another county jail in Newark, he was strip-searched again.

The next day, a judge dismissed all charges. Florence’s lawsuit soon followed.

He still may pursue other claims, including that he never should have been arrested.

Florence, who is African-American, had been stopped several times before, and he carried a letter to the effect that the fine, for fleeing a traffic stop several years earlier, had been paid.

His protest was in vain, however, and the trooper handcuffed him and took him to jail. At the time, the State Police were operating under a court order, because of allegations of past racial discrimination, that provided federal monitors to assess stops of minority drivers. But the propriety of the stop is not at issue, and Florence is not alleging racial discrimination.

In 1979, the Supreme Court upheld a blanket policy of conducting body cavity searches of prisoners who had had contact with visitors on the basis that the interaction with outsiders created the possibility that some prisoners had obtained something they shouldn’t have.

For the next 30 or so years, appeals courts applying the high court ruling held uniformly that strip searches without suspicion violated the Constitution.

But since 2008 — in the first appellate rulings on the issue since the Sept. 11 attacks — appeals courts in Atlanta, Philadelphia and San Francisco have decided that a need by authorities to maintain security justified a wide-ranging search policy, no matter the reason for someone’s detention.

The high court upheld the ruling from the Philadelphia court, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The case is Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, 10-945.

The Times They Are A’Changing

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Spike Murphy; UCSC Student Guide Mar 29 (Spring), 2012

UCSC activism through the years

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” – Mario Savio, political activist & key member of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Dec. 3, 1964

If anything captures the spirit and sentiment of the decades of activism at UCSC, it’s the above quote. For more than 40 years, members of the UCSC community, students, staff and faculty, have fought to make their University and Santa Cruz itself more equal and egalitarian, to forge a community that puts people above profits and encourages anything and everything that’s “outside-the-box. “ Let’s hop in the way-back machine and look at how UCSC was first transformed into a melting pot of ideas and cultures.

Like all good activism stories, it starts in the ‘60s. A few years after UCSC opened its doors in 1965, then-governor Ronald Reagan came for the Regents meeting. He was greeted by three days of protest with students and citizens from around the county in an uproar about, well, everything Reagan was doing. At the front of this movement was the Santa Cruz Black Liberation Front, demanding that College VII be named after El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcom X) and that the College be a black college, not just in curriculum and focus, but in the makeup of everybody living, learning and working there.

Enter Herman Blake, at the time the sole black faculty member at UCSC and someone with a personal relationship with El-Shabazz. He pointed out that all kinds of people were being oppressed in California and convinced the SCBLF to endorse a plan to make College VII an Ethnic Studies college.

The first gay male teacher in the history of the nation came out at UCSC, as well as the first gay woman professor to come out.

The remainder of the sixties was relatively quiet, aside from a graduation ceremony being interrupted to give an honorary diploma to the imprisoned Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton; a little more than a decade later he would come to UCSC to get his PhD. The Academic Senate would also approve the Ethnic Studies program (though not the re-naming of College VII).

Then come the ‘70s and shit gets real. The U.S. invades Cambodia, and students across the country drop everything and rally against the national war machine. This is the beginning of an anti-war movement at UCSC that continues to this day. Highway 1 and 17 are shut down multiple times throughout the ‘70s by student protestors. After Nixon resumes bombing in Vietnam, thousands march on the county building and demand the Board of Supervisors sign a resolution disapproving of the war – which they do. We also see the first protests against the UC’s weapons labs at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos; these would continue for decades, with the protestors sometimes numbering as high as 10,000 people.

This is also the decade when UCSC entered the gay rights and women’s rights fight, and during the ‘70s, an explosion of gay rights groups and clubs start on campus. The first gay male teacher in the history of the nation came out at UCSC, Sociology professor Alan Sable, as well as the first gay woman professor to come out, Nancy Shaw; The Women’s Studies major is fought for and added to the curriculum, and the Santa Cruz Women’s Health Collective is formed on campus (this eventually becomes the Women’s Health Center downtown). In 1971, thanks to the thriving L

GBT movement at UCSC and the lowering of the voting age to 18 from 21, there’s a dramatic change in the political makeup of Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz has its first Pride Parade, and it becomes the first county to prohibit discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual orientation. When the anti-LGBT Briggs initiative is voted down in ’78, Santa Cruz has the highest percentage of “no” votes in the state. Sadly, only weeks later, San Francisco Supervisor and Gay Rights Superhero Harvey Milk is assassinated; 40,000 people, including many members of UCSC’s LGBT community, hold a vigil for him outside of San Francisco City Hall. When his murderer is let off with ‘voluntary manslaughter’ saying he ate too many Twinkies the night before (I wish I were kidding about that, I really do), UCSC students and even a professor join hundreds in SF in what will become known as the White Night Riots.

In 1976, the Third World and Native American Coalition forms, to unite students from various minority communities and advocate for their educational rights (TWANAC is now known as the Ethnic Student Organization Council). A year later, more than 1,000 students, organized by TWANAC and CAIR (Coalition Against Institutionalized Racism), occupy the central services (Hahn) building and demand that UC divest from South Africa, reject the Bakke decision outlawing Affirmative Action, support the Third World Teaching Resource Center and undo an increased SAT score requirement for admittance. The administration’s response was to acquiesce to their demands. Ha! Just kidding! Four hundred protesting students were arrested.

In 1980, UCSC fired Ed Castillo, the only instructor teaching Native American studies. Nearly 600 people from TWANAS and other groups marched on the Chancellor’s office and made five demands to be met in five days. When the administration issued an unsatisfactory response, 25 students from TWANAS volunteered to go on a hunger strike until their demands – aimed at creating and maintaining Native American and Third World studies at UCSC – were met. After five days, the university agreed to the students’ demands in writing. (Unfortunately, according to TWANAS, the administration failed to make good on what they’d agreed to.)

Meanwhile, gay rights and women’s rights would continue to advance steadily throughout the ‘80s. The county and the UC would continue to grant more rights for same-sex couples, and Santa Cruz would elect the first gay mayor in the country, UCSC Alum and eventual Santa Cruz AIDS Project founder John Laird. The number of LGBT groups on campus and in the city would continue to grow. The LGBT movement capped off the decade with the grand opening of the GLBN Community Resource Center in the Merrill recreation room.

The first Take Back the Night! March started at UCSC in response to a string of murders of female students by multiple serial killers, and the first Women’s Studies tenure track position was created at UCSC, as well as a feminist Studies grad program. Later that same year, women’s rights activists from the campus and all over the country staged major protests at the Miss California pageant that had been held in Santa Cruz since the 1920s. Former Sports Illustrated model Ann Simonton famously wore a dress made of meat while protesting the pageant, and the entire protest was documented in the film Miss . . . or Myth? The Miss California pageant would never return to Santa Cruz, moving to San Diego the next year.

During this whole time, the anti-nuke efforts at UCSC had been growing exponentially. Groups staged demonstrations on campus, rallied support and staged larger and larger protests at the UC weapon labs. In 1983, the UCSC Academic Senate voted overwhelmingly to sever ties with the UC’s nuclear weapons labs. At one point, 6,000 protestors encircled the Lawrence Livermore lab completely while holding hands, prompting the Department of Energy to buy a new 196-acre “buffer zone” around the property.

The ‘90s were a milder decade by comparison, with Highway 1 only being shut down once in protest of Desert Storm. After more than 25 years of students demanding it, Women’s Studies finally became a Department.

In 1990, the Coalition on Democratic Education took over McHenry Library and by doing so managed to get ethnic studies courses listed in the Schedule of Classes and the creation of a Dean of African-American Student Life position. Starting in the mid-‘90s, the Affirmative Action Coalition would work to keep Prop 209, which would end Affirmative Action in the UC system, from passing on the ballot, even at one point shutting down the campus with protestors for seven hours. Although their efforts would not defeat the proposition, they won an agreement from the Chancellor (after surrounding the Hahn building with protestors) for a seven-point plan to preserve the campus’ diversity in the wake of Prop 209.

In 1991, during holiday break, logging begins at Elfland, an Ohlone Indian sacred site on campus. A day-long student protest follows, but the area is logged and Colleges Nine and Ten are built nonetheless.

The early part of the decade sees multiple large anti-war protests take place on campus in response to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with well over 1,000 people at many events. Anti-war coalitions form on campus and begin working on getting military recruiters OFF campus. One of the main organizations to come out of this period would be Students Against War (SAW) who would finally succeed, in 2006, in driving military recruiters off campus.

This period also marks the beginning of labor groups organizing the students on their behalf. Numerous days of action and protest on behalf of UC workers and employees dominated the last decade on campus, with numerous concessions made to UCSC workers.

During the mid- to late-2000s, student protests escalated. A striking example was when students protested a regents meeting on campus in the mid-2000s. This became the first time UC police pepper-sprayed students, with one student, a young black woman, suspended from the UC for three years; only through persistent protests over the next few months is she allowed to return. Then, the national media reveals that the Pentagon had been spying on UCSC activist groups, SAW in particular, with the help of the administration and members of local law enforcement. An international uproar follows – along with many student and community protests – and the Chancellor eventually convinces the Pentagon to take SAW off their credible threat list.

When the economy took a screaming nose-dive in 2008, tuition skyrocketed and the largest program and resource cuts yet would happen and are continuing. The language program was gutted; community studies was nearly obliterated and social sciences, the arts and humanities bore the brunt of the rest; 120 faculty positions were eliminated in 2008-2011 with an equal number of TAs axed; the Rape Prevention Education program is closed.

These massive cuts spark the beginning of the Occupy movement, one that would eventually spread in sentiment and execution across the country and around the world. Protests, hunger strikes and even a shutdown of campus all occur, as well as the pepper-spray and police brutality sent around the world by the international media (and thousands of cell phones).

Every step of progress, every right gained and equality recognized at UCSC came about because of the people, the community and organizations there; many of those organizations are still around, waiting for you to show up so that you can all take a brave stand and be heard again.

We can make this machine cease to function, shut it down, until they listen, until they have to listen. Neither violence nor diplomacy speak to the machine; in fact, violence feeds it. But when you stop the machine from working, when we use our bodies and our minds, our voices and our love to stop its gears and mechanisms, it will hear us. And we can say, in one voice as a community united by our differences: “Unless we’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

LA marijuana dispensary workers join labor union

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Associated Press, 3-24-2012

LOS ANGELES — Marijuana dispensary workers in Los Angeles have joined a labor union to fight for their jobs in an industry that the federal government considers illegal.

Workers at 14 pot shops have formed the “medical cannabis and hemp division” of the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 770. The 35,000-member union also represents grocery clerks, pharmacists and health care workers.

“This is the next step in professionalizing and stabilizing this new sector of the health care industry,” Local 770 President Rick Icaza said at a news conference Thursday. “This is a positive step towards successfully integrating compassionate care into our system of health care.”

Los Angeles currently caps the number of medical marijuana dispensaries, but the City Council is considering a full ban in light of a court decision that limits its ability to regulate them.

Icaza said the union would use its considerable political weight to pressure officials to find an alternative to a total ban.

That help will be welcome, said Yamileth Bolanos, president of the Greater Los Angeles Collectives Alliance, which represents dispensaries.

“It’s time to bring in some big guns,” she told the Los Angeles Times ( http://lat.ms/GQqPfS ). “Not only are they threatening access for patients, they’re also trying to take jobs away from our employees.”

Pot clinics flourished in California after voters in 1996 voted to permit people to cultivate and possess marijuana for what became nearly any medical reason. As hundreds of dispensaries opened, cities and counties struggled to interpret the state law, which was light on specifics.

Some communities sought to outlaw the pot clinics under existing zoning and other ordinances, while others tried to regulate them.

Court rulings have further muddied the waters. Last month, a state appellate court ruled that cities cannot use nuisance ordinances to ban medical marijuana dispensaries.

A Los Angeles-based appellate court last year struck down Long Beach’s attempt to license marijuana stores, ruling the local ordinance conflicted with federal law. And another appellate court upheld Riverside’s right to close and prohibit dispensaries despite the state’s medical marijuana law.

Early on in the Obama administration, the U.S. Justice Department said prosecutors wouldn’t focus on pot dispensaries that were following state medical marijuana laws even though the entire industry was considered illegal under federal statutes.

But that attitude has changed, with federal prosecutors arguing that many ostensibly nonprofit clinics are raking in money by supplying marijuana to people without a medical need.

Since last year, federal prosecutors have warned California clinics that they are illegal, filed criminal and civil charges against some owners, and threatened to seize properties that are leased to pot growers. About 140 dispensaries in more than 20 Southern California cities have been told to shut down since October when federal authorities began their statewide effort.

The crackdown hasn’t dissuaded some communities from welcoming pot shops. Earlier this month, Oakland officials granted approval for four new medical marijuana dispensaries in the city, bringing the total to eight. Officials said the four dispensaries would generate $1.7 million in annual tax revenue for the city.

How Many Pot Patients Calif. Has Is Anyone’s Guess

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Lisa Leff

Associated Press, Mar 24, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California has seven times as many residents as Colorado, but nearly nine times fewer medical marijuana users, at least on paper.

And as far as record-keepers know, the most populous state, home to the nation’s first and most liberal medical marijuana laws, also has a smaller number of pot patients than Arizona, Hawaii, Michigan, Montana and Oregon.

If those statistics look off-kilter, they should. The reality is that no one knows how many people are legally using marijuana in California because the state — with hundreds of pot stores and clinics that issue medical marijuana recommendations — does not require residents to register as patients. Of the 16 states that allow the medicinal use of cannabis, it is one of only three without such a requirement.

Now, with California’s medical marijuana industry laboring under a renewed federal crackdown that has forced many storefront dispensaries to close, a state lawmaker has recently introduced legislation that, if passed, would give authorities a much clearer count of the drug’s bona fide consumer base.

Sponsored by Assemblywoman Nora Campos, a San Jose Democrat, the bill would require anyone who wants to claim a legal right to use marijuana for health reasons to apply for a county-issued identification card. Marijuana patients also would have to say if they plan to grow their own pot or to purchase it from a patient collective, and name the collective.

The changes are designed to make it easier for police and sheriff’s deputies to identify who can legally consume and grow marijuana and who is using medical marijuana laws as a cover for illegal drug possession or dealing, said Randy Perry, the Peace Officers Research Association of California lobbyist who wrote the bill.

“We are not saying people shouldn’t be smoking it or eating it. The people have spoken, and that’s legal,” Perry said. “We are simply trying to organize it a little bit so our law enforcement officers won’t have to arrest people who can legally have it and won’t have to confiscate their legally grown marijuana plants when there is a lot of crime and a lot of criminals they need to be going after.”

California already has a state-run medical marijuana patient database and program under which counties are required to issue ID cards to eligible patients. The program was adopted by lawmakers in 2003 as a way to protect legitimate medical patients from arrest when caught with marijuana in their cars. The registry system was seen as a way to add a measure of control to California’s voter-approved law seven years earlier decriminalizing marijuana for medical use.

The registry was made voluntary, however, and relatively few patients have signed up. The California Department of Public Health reports that during the fiscal year that ended last June, the state had only 9,637 valid card holders.

In Colorado, by contrast, the state with a medical marijuana regime most similar to California’s but where patient registration and annual renewal is mandatory, the total number of patients holding valid ID cards as of December was 82,089. If California’s patients were registering at that rate, there would be more than 615,000 of them.

Medical marijuana-related businesses are ubiquitous in parts of California. But just three cards were issued for every 100,000 residents last year, putting the state below every state with a mandatory patient registry. New Mexico, with one of the most stringent medical marijuana laws, issued 21 cards for every 100,000.

In California, records show the pot growing region known as Emerald Triangle— Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties— had among the highest rates of registrations in the state.,

Health department officials declined to discuss the registry’s unpopularity, but the reasons for it are hardly a mystery. Although the system was set up with extensive privacy protections, such as identifying patients by numbers instead of names, many people are reluctant to enter personal information on a government database since marijuana still is illegal under federal law.

Medical marijuana advocacy groups have done little to dispel the fears, and some doctors who specialize in writing marijuana recommendations have fueled confusion by providing plastic ID cards that many users mistakenly assume offer the same protections as the county-issued ones until they are in a traffic stop, said San Diego criminal defense lawyer Melissa Bobrow.

“I can understand the reluctance of patients to go on this list, but at the end of the day you want to think of the reality and what the worst-case scenario is,” said Bobrow, who represents pot patients facing drug charges. “The world doesn’t have the budget to go after everybody smoking marijuana in California, even in an economic boom. Is it possible the database could be breached? Anything is possible, but it is so unlikely why not give yourself that extra level of protection?”

The bill requiring California’s pot patients to register is likely to meet fierce opposition from medical marijuana advocates, who have gone to court to block state and local laws limiting how many plants people can legally grow and regulations dictating where and how pot shops can operate.

Retired state Sen. John Vasconcellos, who sponsored the legislation creating the voluntary marijuana patient registry, predicted current lawmakers would be pre-empted from making the program mandatory, even if they approve the bill. The Legislature in his view cannot override voters who established at the ballot box that eligible patients only need a doctor’s recommendation to be legal.

Vasconcellos — himself on the marijuana registry— said he opposes making it mandatory. But he expressed surprise that so few Californians have availed themselves voluntarily of the “free pass” the system was supposed to provide. He was incredulous that in his own Santa Clara County there were at least 150 pot shops a year ago but only 198 residents with current registrations.

“I’m proud to have my card,” he said, “and I’m saddened people don’t feel like they can trust the integrity of the governmental process.”

Santa Cruz County unemployment at 13.6 percent despite the addition of 1,300 jobs

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JONDI GUMZSanta Cruz Sentinel:   03/23/2012

SANTA CRUZ — Another 1,300 jobs were added in Santa Cruz County in February, but the labor force grew as well, putting unemployment at 13.6 percent compared to 13.5 percent in January, according to figures posted Friday by the state Employment Development Department.

Unemployment is higher, 15.3 percent, in Monterey County, and lower, 8.8 percent in Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley tech companies.

Santa Clara County is ahead of California, which has a jobless rate of 11.4 percent and nearly matches the nation at 8.7 percent.

Locally the jobs picture is improved from a year ago, when unemployment was 14.8 percent, and two years ago, when it was 15.5 percent.

Santa Cruz County reported 92,300 jobs in February, up 1,300 from January.

All of the increase came in nonfarm jobs, with 500 in private education and health services, 200 in business and professional services and 200 in retail and wholesale trade.

Construction, devastated by the collapse of the real estate market, increased from 2,600 to 2,700. Since the numbers are rounded up to the next 100, the increase could be smaller but even so it’s the first gain since March 2011.

The industry was consistently at 2,800 jobs from April to November of 2011, dropping back to 2,700 in December and 2,600 in January.

The last time this sector saw more than 3,000 jobs was in October 2010.

“Looking at month over, all but the farm jobs are either zero or positive,” said state labor analyst Jorge Villalobos.

All of the numbers were similar to 10-year averages, except in private education and health services, which added 200 more jobs than usual.

Compared to a year ago, Santa Cruz County has added 3,100 jobs, up 3.5 percent.

The leisure and hospitality sector is much healthier compared to a year ago, adding 1,300 jobs including 800 in food service and drinking places. The rebound is smaller in Monterey County, which has a strong tourism component but over the year added only 600 leisure and hospitality jobs including 300 in food and drinking places.

Other gains were in professional and business services, private education and health services, retail and manufacturing.

The reason unemployment inched upward despite an increase in people working in Santa Cruz County and commuting elsewhere is the size of the labor force.

The February labor force was reported as 151,200, up from 149,100 in January. Villalobos said one possibility is that previously discouraged workers when surveyed said they are looking for work and thus are counted in the labor force.

Jury convicts Santa Cruz man of four counts of illegal lodging

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by Jessica M. Pasko
Santa Cruz Sentinel 03/22/2012

SANTA CRUZ – A Santa Cruz County jury has convicted Gary Johnson of four counts of illegal lodging for sleeping on a bench outside the courthouse.

Johnson, 47, was sleeping next to a sign proclaiming that sleeping is not a crime, a reference to the state law against lodging outside. He and his supporters argue that the state is infringing upon his constitutional to protest the law, which they believe persecutes the county’s homeless population.

After a two-day trial, a jury on Thursday morning found Johnson guilty on all counts. He could face as much as six months in jail per charge when he is sentenced next week.

Johnson was arrested four times in December and January after refusing sheriff deputies’ orders to pick up his sleeping bag and move along. Deputy Daniel Robbins testified during trial that Johnson was arrested twice during one deputy’s shift, first about 10 p.m. and then after being released from jail about four hours later.

Johnson was convicted of the same charge last year, a misdemeanor violation of a state law against lodging outside, after the Peace Camp 2010 demonstrations. The conviction is being appealed.

The county in November instituted a curfew prohibiting anyone not on county business from being at the County Governmental Center from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. The county’s principal administrative analyst, Dinah Phillips, testified that the action was taken after safety and sanitation problems during the Occupy Santa Cruz demonstrations.

“Poverty continues to be crime,” Ed Frey, Johnson’s attorney, said after the verdict. “The judge narrowed the issues that the jury could consider so severely.”

Frey was precluded from using the necessity defense, a legal defense that under state law argues that criminal conduct took place to avoid an even greater harm. Johnson was protesting the law to protect the rights of homeless who have nowhere else to sleep, he argued. Prosecutors rejected that argument and Frey was not allowed to use it in the trial.

“There is nowhere you can sleep legally if you don’t have a property right, so poverty is a crime,” Frey said.

Judge John Gallagher denied Frey’s request to allow Johnson released from custody pending his sentencing on March 29. Prosecutor Shannon Murphy had argued against Frey’s request, citing Johnson’s history of disobeying the law.

“I’ve been angry for a long time about the way you treat homeless people,” Frey told the judge Thursday.