Code Enforcement Unit inspections temporarily suspended

Setting aside for a moment the issues of warrantless searches and the evident misconduct of law enforcement- Why on earth is a county with serious budget problems spending perfectly good money to bother people about building codes? If there is a health and safety problem reported, by all means, it should be checked out... if the property is put on the market, certainly a code inspection is in the best interests of the prospective buyer and should be available if the buyer or the lender so desires, but to do "code enforcement sweeps" is a reckless waste of taxpayer money.

The behavior of the Sheriff's Deputies in this mess sounds chillingly reminescent of the early years of CAMP- I was 12 and lived in HoneyDew when CAMP started... I'm almost 40 now and still have nightmares every now and then.

AHHHH MOMMY.... the gas mask wearing, bud pile burning nazi sheriffs are here!!! RUNNNNN for YOUR Pot plants!

Come on people, NIGHTMARES??

I feel bad for you at 12 and any other kid whos parents risk their kids safety for POT MONEY!

Really my friend... if you are going to be a party to growing bud then you should be tough enough to handle a sheriff and his old deputys right?

If your going to prop your gas guzzling circa 70s school bus up on some blocks, make sure you at least empty the gas tank... empty out the oil from the block and by all means dont let any radiator fluid leak onto mother nature!

I always laugh at the peeps whom drive around in the CRAPPY old busses and cars that get a 10 gallon per mile fuel economy. NOTE: uses 10 gallons per mile!

Should burn all tweaking criminals whether vomiting on 4th street in You-reeka or sitting behind their shed on Titlow Hill Road.

JUNKIES OUT!

Actually, Parents- My family were not growers- there was no dope on our property, but that did not prevent my yard from being circled at dawn by helicopters flying low enough that the rotor wash blew clothes off the line... And Yes, growing pot is illegal, but so are warrantless searches of homes and abuses of power like rousting people out of their beds at gunpoint...Unless you were there the first couple of seasons, there's just no way to explain the strain it put on the nerves of everyone, growers or not.... and I love the way you jumped to conclusions about my background based solely on my childhood address.... and somehow managed not to address the main thrust of my comments, which concerned the flagrant waste of taxpayer money.

no one said they were growing pot, but the knucklehead above assumes that everyone who lives in the woods must be growing pot. Should we assume because you live in eureka that you are a tweeker? I hope you see my point. you shouldn't make assumptions simply based upon where someone lives. I think that this parent afk has a lot of hatred and predjudice toward rural residents, especially those that might be a little hippier than themselves. Stick to the facts. Keep your bias to yourself and please make intelligent comments that help not hurt.

I've followed this issue and have found it quite interesting. The Code Enforcement Unit brass, who are civil attorneys, have done a poor job supervising and directing their investigators. It's funny I never saw or heard any of them take a beating like Mr. Conner did. On the other hand I was amazed at how easily the board of supervisors was swayed by nothing less than an angry mob. I was waiting for someone to get tarred and feathered.

During one of the recent meetings, one of the speakers mentioned that most of the Couny ordinances are misdemeanor crimes, not civil administrative laws. Nobody really brought that up very much after one of them mentioned it. Also, Mr. Transplanted, code enforcement in this county is funded by a franchise fee paid by local garbage companies. The unit is funded via the general fund, but the franchise fee money is ear-marked for code enforcement. I had similar questions about the funding.

Wahhhh, wahhhh. I live in the woods, too. And it's amusing to see the biggest crybabies usually have the trashiest places. And vehicles. And non-working (or missing) septic.

My fathers side of the family walked behind covered wagons from the east coast to Humboldt.. There's so freaking many middlemen in life to wade through now
a person can't even live anymore.

6 out of every 7 jobs in this country are service related. They don't make a thing, products are just being moved around. The other 1 actually makes/constructs something. They're being serviced to death now.

It is a shame that after two high school seniors died in a car accident because their was no code enforcement to make sure trailers weren't left on the road, we got this, the priorities of the code enforcement unit should have always been health and safety first, not bolstering the Sheriff departments plant count for their federal grants. I am ashamed of their actions and honestly believe that their really was no oversight of them. Now that their activities are suspended the code enforcement officers should be spending their time picking up trash off the streets and beaches, and making our county less of a blight.

Idiots. If you are not doing anything illegal you would not be worried. Criminals! If your lame azz dog was beaten and bloodied then you should train it to not attack the code enforcement officer or the deputies. This is America and we want the criminals punished.

This Board of Supervisors action just goes to show, Mob Rule is alive and well in Humboldt County. Damn!

Dognutz, your a fool. Alot of these properties didn't have anything going on. Do you think anyone wants armed officers harassing them? Beating their dog? Your good with that....really? It's illegal too. Didn't your mommy tell you, "two wrongs, don't make a right"?
Now you know who REALLY runs the county. All politics and BS aside. Don't like it, move somewhere else. There are plenty of places to go. You can fight it all you want, but that's how it is. Savvy?

Selective and arbitrary law/code enforcement was a main complaint of the Jewish people in Germany during the 1930s, how did that work out?

Wow, mess with their pot and you get dumped fast. Supervisors should follow the law and punish those that are doing things that are against the law and the only way to determine if they are breaking the law is to inspect. Most ( not all) of the folks living in the woods are doing it because they can live their lives without interference from anyone else. Well, the world is too small for that any longer. Join the community, clean up your mess, or go somewhere else.

from the beginning, some of us have advocated three over-arching “process” steps to dealing with the problems posed by these code raids. those three points were:(1) stop the violence.(2) hear the people.(3) find the solutions.

it looks like part (1) has been achieved, at least during the moratorium. we have made a good start on part (2) with last friday’s forum, today’s hearing, and the prospect of a more full hearing of concerns and ideas through the task force that was approved today. i am confident that now that the violence (and implied threat of violence against others) has been stopped, that it will be far easier to find those solutions. negotiating with someone with a (metaphorical) gun to their head doesn’t produce real agreement. it only produces, either fear-based compliance, or anger-based retaliation.

i look forward to adding my input to the upcoming task force, and i hope other folks posting here - even those who disagree with me - also make themselves heard as we move into this next phase of trying to actually find solutions that work for our rural residents, as well as meet the legitimate fire safety, environmental, and public health concerns of their fellow-citizens throughout the county.

there was a great deal of very moving testimony today, and whether it was that, or just the raw political momentum that was starting to build, the supervisors appear to have listened to the pleas and demands of the speakers.

this was just a first step, and we have a long way to go in terms of getting our building code to be more user-friendly for rural homeowners, and more accomodating to sensible alternatives such as greywater systems and composting toilets. it is reassuring to see that, at least here at the local level, people can still have a swift and decisive impact on their representatives by force of argument and organizing.

i love humboldt county.

I believe we need some code enforcement. I believe we need persecution of larger than medical grows both generators and greenhouse. I believe in responsible use of firearms for personal security. However,once again,irresponsible personnel in uniform have confused and abused. I believe the reason the sheriff's department drives around without warrants and invades peoples' privacy is because they are too lazy or stupid to investigate properly. Sneaking around under the guise of code enforcement is unacceptable. It should be real easy to figure out a bunch of bad grows-just listen to conversations in public places by stupid growers. Or check out the huge greenhouses on Google Earth. It should be easy to bust a bunch of scenes within lawful procedure. This "strategy" was a big waste of tax money,abusive to rural folks, counter to an effective program and now we have NO code enforcement. BAD COP- NO DONUT! Whoever put this idea into play should be held accountable-probably fired. We need some code enforcement AND we need to push out the big grows. This mean-spirited attempt to combine these two missions was stupid from the beginning and only served to set both necessary programs backwards. Oh,and beating a good dog...grounds for termination.

The Board of Supes has surrenedered to the druggies. Again! The law is for those of us that follow it, not those who refuse to.

The early days of CAMP were pretty bad. The officers, many of whom were from the south of the state, behaved as an occupying army in a foreign hostile land.

The treatment was evidently universal, and anyone, including what would be termed as "soccer moms" today (and their kids) could suddenly find themselves looking up the barrel of a M-16 or a shotgun.

Lest we forget.

However, it appears that the code enforcement folks are now afraid of stumbling onto grow operations. That can be extremely dangerous due to booby traps and just plain trigger happy folks hired to guard the grows.

With that kind of concern, I can see sheriff officers and code enforcement folks going over the top.

Finally, a condition of probation is being subject to search any time anywhere. But, while executing such searches, they should be mindful and respectful of neighbors.

Would any one of you, in the role of a civil servant, want to go deep into the backwoods of Humboldt without a uniform in tow? Sure nine out of ten places are going to be just fine but that tenth one is the "killer".

So what we have is a stalemate. Southern Humboldt wants to the county to follow the rules even though many (and I do mean many) in Southern Humboldt actively and frequently disregard any respect for any rules of any kind.

Perhaps something should have been done before this point. Now that the situation is out of hand, and we all have a good idea just how much pot is being grown around here, someone wants to reign it all back in.

Good luck. I'd hate to be the one in charge. In my humble opinion it is why, regardless of what your personal and private values are, people need to do their jobs all the time regardless of those wonderful $$$ bribes. Not just when they are forced to do it.

And by the way our jobs as individuals are to participate in the democratic structures and support the people we elect to office or get them out of there.

in case anyone's wondering why all this cdoe-cops-gone-wild stuff has happened, here's a possible clue:

aside from the warrantless “open-field” pot searches facilitated by the code raids, and the potential to seize and auction off the land, there’s another very simple and very potent incentive that may be at work in this situation: the “code enforcement trust fund” set up in 2004 to allow increases in code fines to be retained by the code enforcement unit to increase its budget.

I got this from eric v. kirk’s blog (sohum parlance), he got it from c.l.m.p.

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BOARD OF SUPERVISORS Humboldt County SUMMARY OF PROCEEDINGS Tuesday, October 12, 2004 REGULAR SESSION Humboldt County Courthouse Supervisors’ Chamber, First Floor 825 Fifth Street, Eureka 9:10 AM

F. DEPARTMENT REPORTS County Counsel 1. Code Enforcement Trust Fund ACTION: Direct the Auditor-Controller to establish a trust a fund entitled “Code Enforcement Trust Fund” for the purposes of depositing administrative penalties received by the County as a result of the activities of the Code Enforcement Unit in enforcing violations of the County Code, for the continuation of the Code Enforcement Unit and other code enforcement activities, with the following provisions: a) The administrative penalties that are to be deposited into the newly-established Code Enforcement Trust Fund each fiscal year will be those administrative penalties which exceed the amount of administrative penalties which are budgeted each fiscal year in the County Counsel budget as anticipated revenue for the Code Enforcement Unit; and b) If there are funds in the Code Enforcement Trust Fund in excess of the amount necessary to cover revenues budgeted to offset the Code Enforcement Unit of the County Counsel Office, then with the Board of Supervisors’ approval, those excess funds can be used for the continuation of the Code Enforcement Unit, as well as other code enforcement activities.

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i just quoted the most relevant section here - you can see more on eric’s blog.

http://redwoodreality.blogspot.com/