The Futility of Pursuing Justice within a Corrupt Bureaucracy.

This missive is directed to the following: the city prosecutor, everyone in the juvenile division that I've seen operate (except for one very nice secretary), the district attorney, the chief of police, a deputy or two (for the most part they've actually been pretty good to deal with) the city manager, the city attorney, and the mayor (I've never actually had any direct interaction with the mayor, but she was supposed to be informed of the issues, and she never got in contact with me to seek a resolution). 

Some of the major points and background of the situation were addressed in the previous two blog posts so I won't rehash them here, but there has been a recent development that has completely shattered any remaining faith I had in the system, which I'll discuss in detail below. The previous post primarily addresses the failures of the civil court system, whereas this will address the ineffectiveness of our law enforcement, much of which is derived from extreme political correctness, flawed legal theory, policy that is primarily aimed at revenue generation, and most likely a city prosecutor that isn't disclosing a connection to my criminal neighbors.

 In the previous post I stated that "most of the officers and police department  staff in our small town understand the situation and sympathize with our plight." I still believe this to be true, however, over the course of the last year during which I've had to voice my dissatisfaction with how the legal system has failed to enforce the orders put in place against the neighbors, I've felt a palpable change in how some of the deputies address me; still courteous in most cases, but far less engaging.

During the first couple of months of this ordeal I actually had a very cordial rapport with a majority of the deputies that serve the town, despite (or perhaps because of) my criminal neighbor's countless false claims against me. There was one specific incident after which I felt the previous cordiality quickly switch over to a much more impersonal tone. One morning I was coming home and by chance one of the local deputies was talking with an acquaintance of mine in front of the house. After inquiring what was going on and learning that it was a complete random encounter with nothing to do with the neighbor we exchanged a few laughs and parted with warm handshakes. Apparently the neighbor was watching this from her room that looks down onto the street and was infuriated. 

I don't recall how I found out, but I later heard that she called the chief of police after this incident and demanded that they find out and disclose exactly what we were talking about. I have no idea what went on behind the scenes in the days following that incident, but I definitely sensed that the cordial relationships that I'd developed with many of the deputies and the staff at the police station had a different feel. There's little doubt in my mind that the change I sensed was due to influence from above.

And although still friendly, there was another event after which I felt another deterioration of our once cordial rapport. After a few months of observing the previously stated ineptitude and arrogance of the city prosecutor I took my concerns up the ladder of city government, but to no avail. That's where the nepotism and complete lack of integrity comes into play. As with my dealings over the last year with the civil court system, a small book could be written on my attempts to resolve this matter in a reasonable and respectful manner through the channels of city government, but instead I was ironically greeted with the only example of efficiency that I've ever seen in dealing with anyone above the street level: the rapid erection of their impenetrable (to this point) wall of nepotism and corruption. More on that in future posts.

The hackneyed narrative coming from the prosecutor's office is to use "your remedy of the civil court system," which, as I stated in my previous post, at least vis a vis the three civil court cases that I won against the defendant, only proved to be a huge waste of my time. The few thousand dollars I've received in damages from the defendant far from compensates me for her crimes against me, and when calculated in relation to the time dedicated to obtain the judgments becomes much more of a ruse.The legal system is in place for the most part to justify (no pun intended) its own existence. Delivering justice is at best a minor, rare, and coincidental byproduct.

That's my conclusion after a full year of seeking justice through the "proper" channels.

On the other hand, although, the restraining orders that were granted to me against the criminal mother and son neighbors (as seen in the video from the previous entry) are supposed to be enforced by the district attorney or city prosecutor.

 And that leads us to the current situation. After having restraining orders in place against both neighbors for the better part of the last year, and having filed several complaints with law enforcement for violations, absolutely nothing has been enforced.

Here are some of the violations:

• Taunting and threatening me as I rode my bike by the house with my daughter in tow. No action was taken as there were no witnesses.
• Banging on the walls and playing excessively loud music after hours. This has happened on a few occasions. On two of the occasions the deputies were actually able to get here in time to hear the beating on the walls inside of our place (it's a townhouse with a common wall). One of those times when the deputy went to inquire about the banging on the walls the mother actually lied to him and said that the son "had just left" to go to his grandmother's house because he was upset. Me and another neighbor told the deputy in no uncertain terms that no one had left that house (we have eyes everywhere). It was apparent that he concurred, and after staking out the place for close to an hour he came to the conclusion that the son was in fact in the house. He called for backup and then extracted the son from the house. They spent close to another hour out in front of the house interrogating the son and the mother. Since it was all happening in front of our neighbors house I was getting real time updates on what was being said, and it was the same thing the police has been hearing from these two for years: profanity laden lies, accusations and insults. The deputy later told me that he had to plead with juvenile hall to let him arrest and bring in the son, but for some unknown reason was denied. As far as I know at this point there were no consequences for either of them. He got away with being an under age drunk banging on the walls to annoy us and our children, and she got away with enabling them both to violate their restraining orders, allowing her minor son to be drunk, and bald- face lying to the police about her son not being in the house.
• Although we thankfully see her rather infrequently, on almost every occasion that we do see her out in the front of her house she takes out her camera and points it at me and my children as if she's recording us. This is harassment, and it has been witnessed by several different neighbors. On most occasions we just laugh it off, but it is annoying, and at times my oldest daughter (7 years old)  has expressed feelings of anguish from the harassment. Most of the times this happens it's while she's on her own property, which we're content to just ignore, but on a few occasions she has done this from the sidewalk and the street in front of our house. This is unacceptable. One of the times she was sitting in her car on the street for an extended period of time and was apparently watching and recording our three year old as he played in our driveway with my wife watching him from inside the garage. This was witnessed by one of our neighbors, but my wife wasn't aware that she was watching and recording him due to the fact that her car was hidden behind an illegal fence that she had erected (now gone) after the restraining order was granted. After an extended period of watching and recording from the street she exited her car and walked into her garage. Shortly after that my son walked around the side of the fence and stepped onto her driveway  by a foot or so. At that time my wife ran out of the garage and around the fence to retrieve our son to find the neighbor recording him stepping foot onto her property. In her customarily nasty tone she told my wife to keep our kid off of her property. When I was told this story by my wife, and by the other witnesses, I called the police. Although I see it all as harassment, the part where she was in her own driveway and was recording my son as he walked around the corner didn't bother me too much, but the account from our neighbors of her sitting in her car (on a public street, and in a location where she never parks)for an extended period watching and recording my son was definitely a violation in my opinion, and if nothing else it's just plain creepy. But again, no action taken by the police or prosecutor to enforce the restraining order.

The new development

Last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, after a few months with little police interaction (basically because we'd just given up on them enforcing the restraining orders in any way), I was pulled into an incident between the neighbors and some other neighbors that were having a dispute involving four deputies. I actually don't know all of the details of the incident because I wasn't directly involved, but here's the gist of it. 

• The neighbors directly behind our place had family over for the holidays that were all unaware of the problems the neighborhood has had with my immediate neighbors, and their anti-social and aggressive behavior. 
• A father and son were playing football in the yard and it went over the fence and landed in the neighbor's yard. They originally thought that it was in my neighbor's back yard, but in fact it was in my yard. We were not home at the time and didn't notice the ball.
• The father went to the door of my neighbor's house to ask if he could retrieve the ball, and instead of getting a response that almost any civilized human being would expect from any other civilized human being in that situation, he got a dose of the vitriol and utter absence of civility that this savage has bestowed upon this entire community, and town, for well over a decade: maniacal screaming of profanities and threats.
• The police were called. I'm not sure exactly by who, or the exact reason for the call, but they were called.
• We arrived home just before the police arrived at the scene, but they were parked on the intersecting street out of my sight. After unloading the Christmas tree and taking it into the house I returned to my driveway and could hear some commotion coming from around the corner. 
• At this time I had no idea of what had taken place while we were away so I just walked down the sidewalk to get to a place where I could see what was going on. What I saw as soon as I could see around the side of her house was the two police vehicles, four deputies, and my irate neighbors swearing and berating the police. 
• As soon as she saw me her vitriol instantly shifted from them to me and she went off on an incomprehensible  profanity laden diatribe, which was very similar to the one that kicked off our ordeal a year ago. This was directly witnessed by one of my neighbors, and heard by one of the neighbors that live in the house behind us.
• I never made eye contact with her or said a word. I just stood there holding my hands up in disbelief while making eye contact with my other passing neighbor and the four deputies.
• Within a few seconds of that the officers escorted her back to her front door and asked me if I was the neighbor. I acknowledged that I was, and then one of the deputies started to explain the situation to me. I'm pretty sure that in most situations they wouldn't have told me exactly what was going on, but since the ball was still in my backyard I was indirectly involved.
• As soon as I heard the ridiculous and trivial motive for the disturbance I immediately changed the discussion from retrieving the ball in my yard to making it clear that I wanted everyone to acknowledge what had just happened vis a vis her verbal attack on me, that that was a clear violation of her restraining order, and that I wanted them to take the appropriate action (see attached RO).
• I had never seen these four deputies before, which is a big part of the problem, and they had no real understanding of the situation in the neighborhood. In fact initially one of them mistakenly thought that she had a restraining order against me, and that I may have been in violation by walking out to see what was going on, which of course is the complete opposite of the actual circumstances.
• At that point emotions were flaring with everyone involved. The four deputies were apparently a little worked up by having been verbally assaulted and berated by her and the son, and I was also quite irritated for the same reasons. I don't remember everything that was said in those few minutes while the deputies and I were trying to work out what had just happened, but the one thing that set me off was when one of the deputies, that I've never seen before, remarked to me in a disrespectful tone something along the line of "I've been dealing with you people for over six years."

That was it for me. As soon as he took that tone with me, and then lumped me in with them, I lost my composure, which I've maintained throughout countless encounters with law enforcement and with the civil court system over the past year. All that are aware of all that I've been through concur that that in itself is quite a feat. I'd also heard that line before, of course not in such a disrespectful tone, that "we've been dealing with you guys for years." No, they've been dealing with her and her son for years. The first time I heard someone say that we'd only lived here for a few months, and at this point we've only been here a little over a year. But this smartass has all of a sudden been dealing with me for six years, and I've never even seen him before.

Of course this is a bigger part of the problem that I'm not going to get into here. The whole Sonoma PD is completely dysfunctional. If there wasn't constant turnover, and had deputies that were aware of the situation, which many are, been present on that day I wouldn't be wasting my time writing about this right now.

Unfortunately this deputy couldn't compose himself and get a handle on the situation so everything went downhill from there, and within a minute or two our interaction concluded with me telling them all to "get the fuck out of here because they were useless anyway". I regret saying that because it was a general statement directed at guys I didn't know, and it was most likely unwarranted for the other three deputies. To them I apologize.

Later that night I called dispatch to report the incident because I did want a complaint filed against the neighbor. One of the deputies that was present earlier, I think his name was Short, tried to explain to me that they believed that because the neighbor was "distraught" that her actions in their opinion didn't qualify as a violation of her restraining order. I respectfully disagreed with his assessment and asked that my complaint be formally taken. He then passed the phone over to another deputy, I believe his name was Rodriguez, who took a similar tone with me as the deputy had at the incident earlier in the day. I very well could have been the same guy. That ended with him hanging up on me.

On Monday morning I went to the police station and informed Darcy that I wanted to have a meeting with the chief of police. Later that day I received a call back from a new sergeant named Michelle (I believe), and when I told her that I didn't want to speak with her I was hung up on again.

And that's where things stand today.

I've pursued many of my legal "remedies" over the last year. I've presented my cases in a professional and diligent manner while respecting those with whom I've interacted commensurately with the amount of due respect afforded to me. I've also won every case that I've pursued, and therefore have been vindicated by the very construct of the system in which we operate. But despite all of that I am now apparently ostracized from law enforcement. I'm now treated as a criminal, while the proven criminals are protected by the dysfunctional system.

From this point forward I will cease my pursuit of justice through a system where little is to be found. Up until now this story has only been known by a handful of people; most from this neighborhood, and a few others from around town. They all concur that how the system has handled all of this is absolutely unacceptable, and many share the feelings of disgust that I've experienced in the past year plus.

The ineptitude, nepotism, arrogance, and complete lack of integrity displayed by many mentioned above has endangered the good citizens of our small town neighborhood for over a decade, and has wasted countless hours of several different families that have tried to seek  reasonable resolutions. But we've found, due to the characteristics listed above, that seeking a resolution within this system is futile. So we will now work together to spread the word and raise awareness of how the system actually operates.

Here are a few anonymous comments from other members of the community that are aware of our plight.

"That's a lot of info. I hope someone in the department and city can make good with it. "

"Very well written, but as you mention, unfortunately, I don't think it will change anything..."

"Your ordeal is nothing but frustrating, disappointing, enlightening (in a non positive way), disheartening, and a stark reality reminder of of how our paid civil servants execute their powers with extreme bias, unfairness, and a subjectiveness that has decreased my faith in our legal system and its intended remedies.  It is unfortunate that in your attempt to solve this issue through proper legal channels, the system has only converted the true victim (you) to the antagonist in this situation. This reversal is the direct result and consequence of the obvious politics and corruptness that exists within our civil servants. Your story is nothing but the unequal application of the law by our civil servants and their single interest in themselves and their cohorts."

“Who in the hell do these people think they are?”

“THE ONLY WAY THIS IS GOING TO GET FIXED IS FOR THE MEDIA TO BE AWARE OF

THE SYSTEM.

MEDIA .....

1-GO LOCAL SOME HOW (TO CITY COUNCIL MEETING)

2-NEWSPAPERS, ARTICLE IN SUN, IT MIGHT

3-FORMAL COMPLAINT

4-THINK OUT SIDE OF BOX, TV?

THIS IS CRAP!!!”

This was sent to all listed above and other members of the community on 12/2/2016.

Our Legal System is Rotten to the Core.

Our government has three branches: executive, legislative, and legal.

We could arguably survive just fine without the first two, but even among my dearest friends with anarchical persuasions,  there is consensus that for society to function there must be adherence to a common law. The story I'm going to tell you in this entry is about our current legal system, and how it is a cancer of corruption and cronyism, which permeates our system from small town America, throughout the entire criminal and civil systems, and all the way to the White House.

The legal system favors criminals...

because it is predominantly composed of criminals.

There's plenty of incriminating  documentation and video out there from Wikileaks and Project Veritas that clearly shows (to those that are willing to look at things objectively) the appalling corruption that's running rampant at the highest levels of our government, and that is supported by the modern day Pravda that we refer to as the mainstream media. But my story is from small town America, a small town of less around 10,000, nestled in the California wine country. My story is about a family. Two parents, and three children ages 3, 4 and 7, that got sucked into a year long legal battle with a crazy, criminal neighbor, and her adopted wannabe gangster teenage son.

If you'd like a little more background on how we ended up living next door to these cretins, and more specific details on what has taken place over the last year you can find it in the post below this one.

But for the sake of keeping this concise I'll just share this video with you.




And for a little more background, here's a list of things that these two have done to many of the families that live close by in the last decade or so.

• Countless threats, using gross profanity, to parents and children passing in front of her house that may have stepped a foot on her lawn, or just gotten too close.
• Swerving her car toward children and their parents riding their bikes on the street.
• Personal verbal attacks and threats.
• Threatening numerous neighbors stating that "I have a gun and I know how to use it!"
• Making countless false claims against several neighbors with the police department (she has over 100 calls for service going back to 2010, and presumably another 100 going back to 2004 which is around the time her reign of terror began) and with other city government offices.
• Suspected theft and vandalism.

The accounts listed above came from people that have previously lived in the house in which we currently reside, several other immediate neighbors, other people from the greater neighborhood, and others in town.

My neighbors have been dealing with these criminals for over a decade, and do you know what they've been told when they call to report actual crimes that have been committed?

We're sorry, there's nothing we can do. Your best "legal remedy" is dealing with this in civil court. This is straight from the mouth of the city prosecutor. More on that later.

The tenants that lived in the place where we currently reside actually got together with a few of the neighbors and attempted to get a restraining order against her about a year before we moved in, but they barely got through the front door before the corrupt, bureaucratic system slammed the door in their faces. They gave up, and moved out.

My interactions with these two started about six weeks after we moved in, which was in mid September 2015. Again, more detail is available in the post below. But here's a quick chronological summary of the most significant events:

• October 25th 2015- She calls police and demands that I'm arrested for assault & battery. Result :No action taken.
• October 26th 2015- the little thug son is arrested for Assault and Battery against me. 
• October 27th through late December 2015- multiple false allegations against me called in to the police. Result: No action taken.
• January 4th 2016- I was served with a restraining order protecting her and the son from me. That restraining order was dissolved immediately upon receipt of my response at a hearing several days later.
• February 2nd 2016- A restraining order that I filed against her was granted for the period of 1 year.
• March and April 2016- I sued her and her son in Small Claims Court for Assault and Battery, Defamation of Character, and Malicious Prosecution. All three cases were decided in my favor in front of three different judges. I was awarded almost $13,000 in damages. Less than the limit of $30,000 that I sued for, but still okay.
• June 2016- I obtained an abstract of judgement from the county clerk's office and filed a lien against her house. This action can only be taken 30 days after the judgment is granted, which is the appeal period in the state for small claims cases.
• Late June 2016- I was notified that the cases had been appealed to the Superior Court. I don't understand how this was possible because they weren't supposed to grant me an Abstract of Judgment or let me file the lien against her property if an appeal was filed within 30 days. Nonetheless the appeal was granted, and the three cases were scheduled for a final hearing in Superior Court on 10/26/2016.
• October 26th 2016- I had to argue my cases in front of a new judge, her, and two sleazy hit man lawyers that she hired. Although I still won the cases, my monetary damages were reduced to $2500.

This was my justice? After an entire year of kicking her butt within the only legal avenue available to me- that was it?

$2500.

There is no justice in our system!

I must say that most of the officers and police department staff in our small town understand the situation and sympathize with our plight. They've seen this going on up close and personal for over a decade. But they have no power. Remember the city prosecutor I mentioned earlier? He's the first flunky in the lower echelon of the corrupt county legal system that could have easily put an end to this years ago. But he didn't. Why? 

Two explanations that I can come up with:

1. He's the type of lawyer, and pathetic human being, that is a scourge to humanity. His main objective is to perversely complicate the law to the point where law enforcement is so ineffective that it justifies his existence. It's apparent to me that if his work doesn't involve expropriating revenue from his subjects then it's not worth his time.
2. He has a personal connection to these two, and he goes out of his way to protect them, at the expense of everyone else. This is a speculation on my part, but I've seen too many things happen over the last year that just plain don't add up, and therefore I cannot dismiss the notion. I'll elaborate on this point as more things come to light in the future,

Think of the impact that two people like this can have on an entire neighborhood of families. I know that it's hard to imagine unless you've seen it first hand, but please let me tell you that just two bad apples can take a tremendous toll on the quality of life of the people that surround them. Several families throughout the neighborhood have been terrorized by these two for over a decade!

Many of them thank me for all the effort I've put in to deal with her, but it's not a long term fix. Yes, she's been holed up in her house for the last several months and almost never even goes into her front yard. The neighborhood loves that. But it won't last! She has not learned her lesson, and as soon as we're gone, which won't be long, I'm pretty sure that she'll resume her reign of  terror.

The problem is that the legal system, like much of the rest of government, has lost its way. It's far to big and complicated to function properly.

The only fix is a return to a simpler system. But before that happens the current system has to be blown to pieces.

I don't think that Trump can pull that off, but I'm willing to watch with amusement to see if he can.

Instead of sitting out this election out like I have the last few cycles, I may very well go down to a local voting station and contribute one more great big X to the TRUMP movement.




My X will represent a big F U to the two criminals that plague our neighborhood, the city prosecutor who's inaction has enabled their actions, the two hitmen attorneys she hired that were able to transfer my due restitution from my account to theirs, to the  Obamas, to the Clintons, and to every other parasitical crooked lawyer, and others of their ilk, that has taken part in degrading the fabric of  what America once was into the banana republic which it is on its way to becoming.


One can only imagine how much better the world would be if the amount of lawyers in this world was cut by about 99%. And we just returned to a system where there were only two common laws.

The Two Laws

Do all you have agreed to do.

Do not encroach on other people or their property.

Here's a quote from a book, What Happened to Justice, written by a man that is a champion of truth through simplicity, Richard Maybury.

        "Suppose one person harmed another. The judge would instruct the offender to make restitution to the victim. If the offender refused, the judge could then use a procedure called outlawry. 
         Under outlawry the judge was saying to the perpetrator, "We will not force the law on to you. You have decided to be outside the law, so be it. And since you do not accept the responsibilities of the law, neither shall you have its protections. From now on your legal status shall be no different from that of a rat or any other wild animal outside the law."             The description of this person who had decided to be an outlaw would be publicized. Then anyone, let me emphasize, anyone- could hunt him (or her :-)) down and enslave him, kill him, or perhaps cook and eat him like a rabbit (we won't be taking that route). It was none of the court's business, the outlaw had made his choice. The victim may even might even hire a bounty hunter to track the criminal down and sell him as a beast of burden (this option sounds just fine).
          It's difficult to believe there were many cases in which judges found it necessary to use outlawry."

In a just world the people I referenced above would all be subject to this kind of justice.

       

Rotten... details

Here's a little prologue before I get into my dealings with " The Law."

We left our long time home in the southern part of the San francisco bay area to experience the lifestyle of a smaller, more rural, town. I have roots in this town going back to my childhood when I attended first through third grade here, and I still have family here including my mom, my aunt and uncle, and my closest cousin. We're not sure if this is going to be home for us so we decided to rent a place very close to the center of town, walking distance to the three schools that our children attend, and from my mom's house.

Although the place isn't an ideal place for us for the long term it couldn't be any better for us geographically for the time being. And since the town we live in is among the most desirable places to live in this part of the state (and arguably the entire country) the inventory is often very slim. That's especially prevalent now in an era when the wealth effect from the fed's QE and ZIRP policies is driving a boom of epic proportions. Let's just say that though not ideal, we were very happy to find something that checked most of our boxes.

As I said, we live in a townhouse, but these are the homes directly across the street from us in either direction. It's a pretty nice neighborhood. Not what one would suspect from what I'll describe and show below.

                                                                           

Back to the neighbors. We were warned by the agent listing the rental that the immediate neighbor, with whom we share a common wall (it's like a large townhouse in the middle of a neighborhood of mostly single family homes. She owns one side of the townhouse, and the people that we're renting from own the other), had a history with most of the prior tenants as being problematic. After disclosing some of the details we figured it couldn't be too bad if we just stayed clear, plus we were looking into an opportunity that could have taken us out of the country at the time, and didn't really have any intentions of staying too long. We moved in with a moth to month rental agreement, which is pretty much unheard of in this area. Especially now.

Although the old witch (she's about 60, and if you died her hair black and handed her a broom she could serve as the image of the quintessential wicked witch) did introduce herself with feigned welcomeness, during the days while we were moving in in mid September of 2015, it was abundantly evident,  after a brief introduction, to STEER CLEAR. Which we did.

Within days of moving in we were meeting a lot of our other neighbors at the local park, which is a half a block from our house. We were very familiar with the park, as we had been to it several times in the past, but we knew very few people from the neighborhood. These people are great! All of them. And many have become good friends over the last year.

Our kids play at the park with all of the other kids on almost a daily basis, they ride their bikes all over the place, swing on swings, and, to the dismay of all of the parents- play in the sand. We often have meals in the park all together  on warm evenings, and several times during the summer and early fall we st up a large screen and projector in the middle of the lawn and watch a kid's movie. One of the times earlier this summer, on a beautiful warm night, I counted over forty parents and kids out on the lawn, eating popcorn and cookies and sipping their beverage of choice. The only concerning thought in the back of all of the parent's mind probably was: how painlessly can we get the kids to bed when this is over? It's truly a special little place.

Back to the witch. When we initially met most of our new friends at the park and told them which place we moved into, their collective jaws literally dropped in many cases. You moved in next to them? Weren't you warned? How could they possibly have rented that place out after what happened to the last tenants!!

What? Please tell us more. Or do we want to know?

Yes, were warned, but they didn't tell us THAT! And that, and that, and the other story!!!

I'm not going to elaborate on all of that in this article because I want to get to summarize my legal battles, its conclusion, and how I believe it's so relative to the current state of our country, and the upcoming election.

But just for a little background, I will say that among the documented offenses, which include countless police reports (at least 30) and incidents recorded from many of the surrounding neighbors going back over ten years, committed  by the witch and her adopted criminal, include the following:

• Countless threats, using gross profanity, to parents and children passing in front of her house that may have stepped a foot on her lawn, or just gotten too close.
• Swerving her car toward children and their parents riding their bikes on the street.
• Personal verbal attacks and threats.
• Threatening numerous neighbors stating that "I have a gun and I know how to use it!"
• Making countless false claims against several neighbors with the police department (she has over 100 calls for service going back to 2010, and presumably another 100 going back to 2004 which is around the time her reign of terror began) and with other city government offices. All but one of her claims that I'm aware of have never been acted upon. The one instance I know that was enforced was when she complained that a resident down the street was operating a home business without a permit from the city, which probably had little to no impact on her whatsoever.
• Suspected theft and vandalism
• There's more, I'm just drawing a blank at the moment. But watch the video below and see what you think.

The accounts listed above came from people that have previously lived in the house in which we currently reside, several other immediate neighbors, other people from the greater neighborhood, and others in town.

Although, I'd since heard many of the stories bulleted above, I had only experienced one brief instance of the witch's antisocial behavior. And although it was offensive, it was something I was able to quickly shrug off , and I did not feel the need to address it with her directly.

That is until that day, October 25th 2015, that put an unwarranted damper on our lives for most of the past year. It would take dozens of pages (or perhaps a short book) to document and explain all that we've been through in the last year, and that's not the point of what I'm writing about today, so I'm going to briefly summarize the major events of the last year.

I'll preface this with a reminder that we have three children, who at the time were two, three, and six. They are admittedly loud at times, but no more than any other family with three young children that age. Our two year old was going through a stage where he was throwing fits where he'd scream pretty loudly, and sometimes for up to a few minutes at at time. These episodes weren't happening daily, but it did go on pretty frequently for several weeks. With that said, we have two other neighbors, who are much more in the trajectory of where the laughing, crying and screaming originates, that weren't bothered at all. In fact, although we didn't know them very well at the time, they told us that they really didn't even remember any instances of excessive noise coming from the house, or from the front or back yards.

On the morning of October 25th 2015, at about 8:30 a.m. I headed out for a walk with my then two year old youngest son, in his stroller. The witch confronted me in the sidewalk as soon as I rounded the corner out of our driveway and stepped into the sidewalk that's directly in front of her house. She verbally assaulted me very loudly and used expletives to describe her view (she didn't know us at all) of who we were. I really don't remember exactly what she said, but some of the words I recall were: spoiled, brats, unfit parents, no control of your little brats, child protective services, etc.

I don't respond well to these types of false claims, especially from people like her. My response was equally as loud and full of expletives that I'm not especially proud of using (especially in public and in front of my family). The gist of my words for her were very simple: "your reputation precedes you, and if you think that you're gonna get away with the things you've done in the past with me- you've got another thing coming. Watch your steps very closely from this point forward." that's paraphrasing, I don't remember exactly what I said.  We were very close to each other, but there was no physical contact.

When I turned away from her and started to proceed down the sidewalk toward the park she placed herself uncomfortably close to my son in his stroller. I then pushed ahead, and by her as she was standing on the edge of the sidewalk. There was incidental contact as my shoulder brushed against her as I passed; contact that she could have easily avoided by getting out of my way. Due to the contact she had to step off of the edge of the sidewalk and into the street. That's when she claimed that I had assaulted her. I didn't respond and proceeded to walk to the park. She followed me about half way down the street to the park calling me all kinds of names and telling me what a loser I was, as well as berating the person that I apparently was in her mind. She was making assumptions about our character and financial status that she had absolutely no idea about.

Basically, in her eyes I was a middle age white unemployed loser that couldn't afford a decent house for his snivelling, loud, spoiled brats and trailer trash foreigner wife.

When she finished her tirade she told me again that I assaulted her, and that she was going to call the police. I encouraged her to, and told her that I'd even call for her.

A sheriff deputy was out shortly after. He took her statement, and then came over to get mine. He told me that she wanted me arrested, but he wasn't inclined to do that because he had dealt with her in the past and didn't  necessarily believe her account. He did say that he had to conduct an investigation by looking for witnesses in several of the surrounding houses. He was thorough, and in the end only found one witness, from the house directly across the street from us. She saw and heard almost all of the confrontation, and pretty much completely  described the confrontation as I had in my account. After completing his investigation the deputy apologized for the inconvenience, encouraged me to submit a statement of what happened in the next few days so that my side of the story was documented in their records, and left. That was the beginning of what evolved into the following events over the course of one year.

Later that day her juvenile adopted son stormed out of the house as I approached the sidewalk in front of their house as I was returning from the park, again with my youngest son. He verbally assaulted me and a neighbor who came to my defense from his porch for a couple of minutes. Eventually he stormed out onto the sidewalk in front of his house and shoved me as hard as he could. We have a video of the event that my wife recorded from our driveway that she began recording  after hearing all of the yelling coming from next door. He had been drinking, and most likely smoking pot.

The event led to his arrest (they didn't actually arrest him, they just cited him. Nowadays they don't arrest people for most misdemeanors- too expensive). He was charged with assault and battery.

From that point forward taking revenge on me was her sole purpose in life. They had somehow

Over the following couple of months she made several calls to the police making false allegations against me ranging from threatening her, to vandalizing her property, and then to stalking her. All were investigated and dismissed. By this time I knew almost all of the officers in the local sheriff's department, and when she'd make an allegation against me they'd just call me on my cell and ask me what was up. I'd tell them, and then they just started blowing her off.

When she exhausted the avenues for exploiting the system in our small town she turned to the county and filed an illegal restraining order against me. Illegal of course because it was completely made up.

I was served with the order on Monday afternoon, January 4th 2016, just after coming home from picking up my daughter at school. I was at that point in time ordered to stay at least 30 feet away from her and her son until my hearing date, which was scheduled for the following Tuesday. I was also ordered to turn in my guns to the local police department within 24 hours. That  of course didn't happen, and that's all I'll say about that right now.

I was in shock. I couldn't believe that as corrupt, inefficient, and perverted as I already knew our legal system  had become, that a judge could actually grant a temporary restraining order against a citizen with an immaculate record, based solely on several unsubstantiated claims.

The paperwork was actually filed with the county on December 21st,  and apparently was in the delivery basket of the of the local police department just before Christmas. I was later told by one of the deputies that he'd seen it there and just didn't have the heart to ruin our holidays by delivering the order during the season. I really appreciated that, because it definitely would have. Most of the deputies that I've dealt with over the last year are genuinely good guys, and I really have a lot of respect for many of them. They still haven't been corrupted by their surroundings, but that fate is inevitable. More on that later.

The events of the last year are by far the most interaction I've ever had with our legal system, and I've only had two other direct (I've had one or two others in some business dealings, but nothing I ever had to deal with directly) tastes of our system in my life, both of which were very foul.

I almost completely lost faith with our legal system almost twenty years ago. After breaking off a long term relationship with a long term girlfriend in early 1998 she made up a story that I had assaulted her. The police came and arrested me, and banged me up pretty well in the process. I was very surprised to see police coming to my door as I had absolutely no idea that they were coming for me. I answered the door thinking they'd made a mistake and before I knew it both guys were on top of me and my face was being forced into the ground.

She was a very pretty girl, and apparently pretty convincing.

The only problem was that her story was that of a disgruntled ex that had just been broken up with by the man that she  presumably thought that she was going to marry. Of course there's much more to the story than that, but the bottom line was that her story was false. I was charged with a battery domestic violence and resisting arrest. Neither of which I was even close to being guilty of.

I hired a lawyer and vowed to go to trial. I was never going to consider bargaining on charges that were absolutely false. I later heard it through the grapevine that her story wasn't adding up with the prosecutor and that she did not want to take the matter to trial. But the crooked Marin County DA's office had a problem on their hands. They had roughed up an innocent man while arresting him for a crime that he didn't commit.

What to do now? My naive young ass thought that I'd get an apology and the case would be dropped. That's the idealistic view held by young Americans that haven't yet been exposed to the cronyism, thuggery, and blatant dishonesty that makes up our legal system, and many other government agencies and institutions.

Of course not, dropping the case would be an admission of guilt on the part of the gun toting wannabe real men, that plague the ranks of  law enforcement throughout the country, and world. These are of course the guys that give the good ones, like the many that I've dealt with over the last year, a very bad name. So the corrupt, crony, dishonest DA, whose main goal is to justify their existence and protect the cavalry, dragged the case out for well over a year. This cost me well over $10k in attorney's fees, which was a hell of a lot of money for me at the time. A good chunk of it was paid for by credit cards that I eventually paid off, in full.

Finally, after scaring me with the costs and potential consequences of losing at trial, I plead People vs. West, which is tantamount to No Contest, which of course  is, in the eyes of the legal system,  GUILTY to one count of resisting arrest. The only charge they needed a verdict on to save their asses from a lawsuit, and that's all they cared about. That was one of the hardest years of my life. I lost 15 pounds going from 165 down to under 150 at times, and I caved to the pressure. The domestic violence charge was of course dropped. I walked away with some very small fines and a slap on the hand. I regret the decision of not going to trial to this day!

My second interaction with the system came more recently. After fifteen years in business for myself I was sued by a subcontractor that I fired. It was a firm from outside my network that purportedly claimed to specialize in the unconventional installation of window frames and sash. They sued me and the homeowner seeking the balance of the contract which was about $25k. We agreed to fire them after witnessing the substandard work they were performing on a highly critical and complex installation. They had been paid a deposit of about $7500 on a contract of about $32500. Most of the work that they'd performed up to that point needed to be redone.

Again I was shocked that we could be sued by these clowns. Any legal clerk at the superior court with minimal intelligence should have denied the petition for the civil suit based on the chicken scratch documentation they submitted to support their case. Of course that's not how our system works, the system is in the business of creating a backlog in the courts that ultimately justifies their existence, at least in their eyes, and of those that profit from the whole charade.

We "won" that case after a year of greasing the slimy hands of the "professionals" that support the industry. It cost us over $20k of legal fees and a ton of my time. We had the opportunity to proceed with our countersuit of about $70k, plus attorney's fees, but my client had had enough and just wanted it to be over with. We definitely would have won this one had we taken it all the way to trial, but it would have taken at least another six months or so, and another $40k- $50k in attorney's fees, and he definitely wasn't worth it. He was just another ground soldier of the legal mafia. I also regret not having taken that all the way, but I couldn't do it on my own.

Now that you're up to speed on my previous encounters with our lovely legal system, let me get back to my crazy witch neighbor. After the restraining order was served to me I was in shock for a couple of days. I had no idea what to do or how the process worked. I spent hours reading through every word of the boiler plate restraining order documents (about 6 pages) and the accompanying 5 pages of chicken scratch that summarized her allegations against me. After going to the county courthouse, which was a two hour round trip drive from our house, and getting the forms I needed to respond to the complaint, I got to work. Little did I know at that time that I'd have to make that trip over 15 times in the following several months to deal with what was in front of me.

I spent dozens of hours during the week leading up to the hearing date constructing my defense. This was pretty serious, if a restraining order is granted against someone it's close to having been found guilty of a crime. You're name comes up in the system as a potential danger to society, you're not allowed to own guns for the duration of the order, you're susceptible to many other restrictions listed in the order, and the possibility of the person falsely claiming that the order was violated.

By the way, during the week that I was subject to the restrictions of the temporary restraining order (TRO), the witch made two false claims to the police department saying that I'd violated the order. They called me to get my side of the story before even responding to her directly, and in both cases wrote up reports that helped me out a lot in future court hearings.

Are you asking yourself yet how the police can let her get away with al of these lies and false allegations? How is it that she and her hoodlum son don't already have a criminal record? The fact is that many of the street cops and several of the employees at the police station know exactly what's going on, and would love to have the opportunity to see her in jail, (several have personally told me this off the record) but they have absolutely no power. The power, and corruption, begins at the higher levels. I'll get back to this in a bit.

My response to her 5 pages of chicken scratch false allegations consisted of a complete and thorough response to each of her allegations; documents from our local police department summarizing all of her prior interactions with the police department, most of which were false claims she had made against others over the years, which totaled about 40 pages of redacted documents. I was initially told by the clerks at the PD that getting those types of documents in less than a matter of weeks was almost unheard of, but they sympathized with my plight, and gathered them all up in two days; the rest of my documents consisted of declarations from about nine of my closest neighbors, I could have had more, but some people just didn't want to get involved, some fearing future revenge from the witch. In the end my response was an unprecedented 80 pages of substantive and immaculately organized documentation, pictures,  and a disk including some video evidence. I don't think the presiding judge had ever seen anything quite like it.

Oh, and while I was putting in all of this effort I figured that it would take a marginal amount of extra effort to just go ahead and file a restraining order against her. So I did. When we arrived at the hearing the bailiff came out into the hallway outside of the courtroom to have us sign some papers. We (my wife, some neighbors, and a couple other witnesses) were a little ways a way when the bailiff asked her to sign a document as the plaintiff in the case. After that he pulled up another document and asked her to sign. We could hear her say "I'm not the defendant." It was great, we all had a good laugh.

And from that point forward I never saw that smug look on her face again. But I suspect that I may, change, at least for a short while, in the immediate future.

Due to the extensive size of my response and all of the witnesses that I had the hearing was continued several times over the next few weeks, but the TRO that she had against me was dissolved immediately, much to her further dismay. And in the sprit of maintaining efficiency I figured that since I'm here I may as well sue her in Small Claims Court for Assault and Battery (against her and her son), Malicious Prosecution, and Defamation of Character.

On February 2nd 2016, just before entering the courtroom to hear the verdicts for the the restraining orders, my wife Erika served her with the papers for the three small claims cases. About an hour later we exited the courtroom.

I was at that point completely free and clear. She walked out under the restrictions of a restraining order, and with three civil suits on her hands.

In the months that followed we were in and out of court several times due to her lies and manipulation of the system of which I won't elaborate on here. But after several trials in small claims court in front of three different judges, motions to vacate, trials de novo, and trips up to the courthouse where the system just plain screwed up and wasted a day of my time I was eventually awarded about $13,000 in damages. I was seeking $30k, so I wasn't too thrilled with the outcome, but it was better than nothing, and it was a lot to her. I always knew she wouldn't pay so I just filed a lien against her house and would be happy to collect 10% annual interest until she had to pay up. If she didn't pay up until the day she died it was fine with me. Game over.

Or not?

You see, in the great People's Republic of California, if you lose a case in Small Claims Court you have the right to appeal that case to Superior Court and be represented by a lawyer, at your expense of course. But what about the person that filed suit in Small Claims Court? That person most likely did that because they didn't want to deal with the complexities and expenses of dealing with a lawyer.

Too bad.

But wait, any appeal in the PRoC, must be based on a legal mistake made in the course of the trials, and ONLY if that mistake affected the outcome of the trial. An appeal may NOT be granted for the sole purpose of having one's case heard by another judge. But those rules don't apply to Small Claims cases. Why? Got me! No explanation given on the .CA website, and good luck getting an explanation from anyone else.

Now I had to make my case in front of a judge that knows absolutely nothing about my cases, in a rushed environment, by myself, and against two attorneys. The proceedings took almost 4 hours, and I just simply wasn't prepared for that. I  thought driving up there that day that the request for appeal would have been denied, and that I'd have been out of there in less than half an hour with with the judgements that I'd already won in front of three other judges.


In the end I still won, but the amount I was awarded got cut from $13,000 down to $2500. I believe that the judge treated me fairly throughout the proceedings, but I also feel that he had absolutely no appreciation for what she had put me through over the last year, and that he had at least partially succumbed to her feigned crying on the stand, playing the part of the innocent victim, and the disgraceful efforts of the two attorneys to take everything that they could dig up on me, including the irrelevant issues that I've noted previously, in their attempts to berate and belittle me on issues completely irrelevant to the cases on hand.

But even though I still technically walked out of there with wins; the system, the criminal, and her two hired hitmen got the last laughs. And I got to make the final drive home a beaten man.

This ended up way longer than I'd ever anticipated. It was therapeutic to get everything into words, and for anyone that has taken the time to hear my story, thank you very much.