Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos said he has rescinded the Code Enforcement Unit officers’ police powers granted under his authority, but county staff said the move doesn’t stick.
The county’s Code Enforcement Unit controversy has been broiling publicly since April 4 when the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project held a town hall meeting in Garberville to hear rural residents’ allegations of excessive police force to remedy building code violations.
While it is not directly in response to that meeting, Gallegos said Wednesday that he doesn’t want the “life-and-death” responsibility to deputize those officers who could shoot someone or may be shot if he has no authority over them.
“To ask me to deputize someone with those responsibilities and to have no oversight over them is wrong,” Gallegos said. “I refuse to participate in that.”
As he told hundreds of angry residents at the CLMP meeting, Gallegos said he’s been concerned for a long time about the arrangement he inherited when elected and has been in discussions for months with the County Counsel’s Office to find a solution.
Interim County Counsel Wendy Chaitin, whose office oversees the Code Enforcement Unit’s two armed officers, said Wednesday that Gallegos’ action isn’t so simple.
She and other county administrators don’t believe the officers’ police powers have been stripped because of Gallegos’ action to rescind his authority.
However, because the DA doesn’t want to participate in the current structure where he deputizes her employees, Chaitin said she voluntarily agreed last week to disarm Code Enforcement officers Jeff Conner and John Desadier while everything is being sorted out.
“We are all in discussions and are working on ways to best structure the unit,” Chaitin said.
Also in agreement that the DA’s action doesn’t rescind the officer’s deputized status is County Administrative Officer Loretta Nickolaus, who said she learned of Gallegos’ announcement in an e-mail circulated Wednesday.
Nickolaus said the DA can’t direct personnel actions for employees not under his control.
That’s not how Gallegos sees it and he said the intent of his action was to remove the Code Enforcement Unit officers’ weapons and badges under his authority, which he said he believes he’s effectively done.
Despite the apparent inter-department conflict, Gallegos said he supports Chaitin, the Code Enforcement Unit and the work they are trying to do, although he might not necessarily support everything they have done.
While he listened to residents’ complaints during the CLMP meeting, Gallegos said his reversal has nothing to do with the officers.
“I am not saying they have done anything wrong,” Gallegos said.
Code Enforcement Unit activity is under a limited 45-day moratorium and its officers cannot engage in actions where search warrants are needed.
The Board of Supervisors ordered the moratorium and directed a Code Enforcement Unit Task Force to be formed to investigate the unit’s use-of-force policies and procedures following a meeting April 8 where hundreds of residents turned out to repeat the concerns raised during the Garberville meeting the previous week.
Reached Wednesday in Redding, Board of Supervisors Chairperson Jill Geist said she was learning about the DA’s decision from media.
“To the best of my knowledge, there has been no formal request from the District Attorney’s Office to the board or the CAO’s Office regarding the code enforcement officers,” Geist said.
Geist said these were the issues she hoped would be the topics discussed by the task force, of which she and Supervisor Roger Rodoni are both members.
During their meeting Tuesday, the supervisors picked three at-large members to complete the nine-member task force, although no meetings have yet been held.
The code enforcement officers are moving forward with the more routine nuisance and cleanup abatement cases, which county officials say represent the majority of the code enforcement workload and don’t require armed officers.
All the county officials reached for this article agree the Code Enforcement Unit’s current cross-deputization structure between the DA and the County Counsel’s Office needs to be examined, which is expected to be done both internally and in the parallel process under the task force.
Just how the issue will be resolved is uncertain, but Gallegos offered his preference for where the code enforcement officers should end up.
Because the officers are armed and due to the nature of their work, Gallegos said he believes code enforcement might better fall under his direction.
“It’s a natural fit in this office,” Gallegos said.
If they were assigned to work under him as investigators, Gallegos said he would deputize them.
“But as it stands right now, the arrangement isn’t good for anyone,” Gallegos said.
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This is one of the few things this idiot we have for a DA has done right
Good work Paul, but this isn't the only good thing you have done. You are the nations best DA.
A little insight into the mess we call county government.
It seems that the pressure that the pot growers have put on the board and the DA is working.
Thank you the last thing we need is code enforcement causing more homeless in are county . We try to play by the book as it comes to building codes we even own property but the cost to build is to high so all we can do is pray that code enforcement will not find us .
So does county council think they have the authority to give these folks guns?
Good for Paul.
You can bet Worth Dikeman would not be taking guns away from anyone willing to help him bust pot growers, no matter what false premise is used to gain access to their property.
Let's legalize Tar & Feathers for tax collectors the biggest slime on the planet, next to banker scum.
Finally our "deer in the headlights" D.A. has done something right. Geez, took long enough.
PAUL IS THE STUPIDEST DA EVER! HE JUST WANTS TO BURN ALL COPS, BE BUDDY-BUDDY WITH HIS POT GROWING/SELLING FRIENDS IN SO. HUM, AND TRY TO MAKE A NAME FOR HIMSELF AS THE FIRST DA TO BRING ANARCHY INTO HUMBOLDT COUNTY SOCIETY!
Another good move by DA Gallegos. 60% of Humboldt County has your back Paul!
60%??? WHERE DID YOU POP THAT FIGURE FROM?
Lets see, some pot growers got busted and the DA's reaction is to take away the power of one of the agencies involved. Hmmmm I see what side he is on.
Pot growers weren't busted. A mom with her baby and boy were herded out of their home at gunpoint. A dog was beaten. A man was told to burn down his son's house. No busts. No pot. Just abuse of power having a fun day in the hills. Couldn't find any pot so they made their own fun. No prob, right?
This post removed due to personal attack.
Code schmode ...trespass and get shot, thats the way this country has always been and it is what we should go back to.
Anonymous 4:28 PM
I suggest you read the facts again. No one was herded out at gunpoint. Code enforcement did not beat a dog. No one told anyone to burn his or her house down. The BS has been put out by a bunch of idiots. The record shows during the service of inspection warrants code violations were found, diesel spills, garbage, and structures. They also found commercial Marijuana cultivation grows which were dismantled. People were arrested, and if you checked the court records, you would see that one person was convicted.
Get your facts correct before you post. I have been at all the meetings and have seen no one present facts, only the same old, we are not pot growers we should not have to get our buildings permitted, as we can not afford it. Well, the people who paid to have their structures built, and septic systems installed, really feel for you.
So when your neighbor pipes his sewage into your well and spills a couple thousand gallons of red dye diesel upstream from you, it's just him exercising his property rights. Heaven forbid any agency might try to hold people accountable for some sort of standards for health, sanitation and safety.
I reckon Mr Arkley ought to just go ahead and put up that Home Depot, maybe a WalMArt while he's at it. And just ignore anyone who tries to come on his property (HIS PRIVATE PROPERTY) and tell him what to do. While we're at it, let's chase off the Baykeeper folks who (with no authority from anyone) try to keep the Balloon trac(k or t, you choose) cleanup efforts honest.
I won't bother to post again, but everything two posts up is piping hot BS. I wasn't at all the meetings. I was at the abuse of power that led to people standing up and saying no more. Maybe we need urban code reform, I don't know. But we need rural code enforcement reform for sure, and rural code reform next. Read the North Coast Journal this week to see why. It's about one of the reasons why people stood up.
Anonymous — Apr 24 2008, 9:34 PM, I have read that article, more of the same BS that people have been shouting about. No facts in that story, just someone retelling a story and a reporter continuing to write about the BS in order to keep the story going.
I live in SoHum and could go on for hours about what goes on around this part of the county. The truth is people don’t want to spend their illegal gotten money on paying for building permits, and feel that the law doesn’t apply to them.
And some people are just living by the best means they can. You really aren't the only one not growing weed!
During the Revolutionary War-One of the main complaints was private property rights and unwillingness to "house" British.
Until tax collectors and slimeball government leeches are made AFRAID of the People, things like this are only going to get worse.
We must shrink down the government to ensure FREEDOM.
Taxation is slavery- if you are forced to work for no wages and give the fruits of your labor to someone under threat of harm- that is SLAVERY.
Tax Collectors are slime and deserve to burn in Hell for their crimes against HUMANITY.
No one really likes to pay taxes BUT; taxes pay for our roads, our highway system, fire & police protection, education, welfare, SSI, military and so on. Of course most of the pot growers will not appreciate the police or military but the military has kept the bad governments from invading and the police protect and serve everyone, including pot growers. I am certain the previous poster has benefited from those nasty evil taxes.
It's ammusing to me, in a sad way, that Gallegos is referred to by one poster as the best DA in the nation. Gallegos rolls over for the pot growers and that makes him the best? What a farce. I can think of another word that would apply to Gallegos and it starts with a "C".
Codes are good for evil corporations but not me!
Don't forget... for the ones paying taxes those taxes are going to fight the war on drugs instead of going to your children to teach them how to read, write, and hide their income.
Being from sohum I must say that it makes me warm all over this toasty BS which flows so eloquently from Eureka, lets face it if you want to catch the commercial pot farmers you must do it legally because when all you do is take their stuff away they will rebuild. And all the code enforcement busts are going to be thrown out of court as illegal searches, if they ever make it to court at all. Gallegos knows this and he is going to look foolish to the 40% who don't support him because he couldn't get a conviction with the half assed attempts at law enforcement we are seeing. Seriously the whole idea of inspection warrants makes the founding fathers of this nation roll over in their graves. So Wendy Chaitain can sit behind her desk and think that she is the law of the land, but we the people will not stand idly by while our rights are trampled upon, We will be heard and the government will bend. And most importantly remember that the voice of dissent is very important in a democracy even if it is considerably the largest steamiest pile of bovine excrement imaginable.