A patient defends Pathways

By Christian Burkin | Published: March 10, 2010 | 0 Comments

A regular customer of Pathways, the medical marijuana dispensary whose business license the city has revoked, called today to defend the co-operative.

Jermaine Manuel-Wilson, 29, said he has severe scoliosis and the very rare Antley-Bixler syndrome, and has had a total of 27 surgeries, including one for a tumor in his forehead. He said he had been taking medication for pain since he was a child, but they had begun to have little or no effect on him.

“I took every medication in the PDR, all the way to OxyContin,” he said.

Since 2000 he has been using marijuana, instead. It’s not addictive and its effect is not diluted by continued use, he said.

If Pathways is forced to close, Manuel-Wilson said, he will have to go to Sacramento or the Bay Area to get what he needs to relieve his pain. (Antley-Bixler, by the way, sounds really nasty. Manuel-Wilson says his case is relatively mild.) Pathways, he said, was clean, legitimate and well-run.

“I’ve been to a couple of other places. They’re OK, but they’re just not friendly,” he said. “I know everybody at Pathways on a first name basis.”

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Daily Chaos: The EXGF and the NYPD

By Christian Burkin | Published: March 10, 2010 | 0 Comments

First impression
According to the Stockton Police Department, on Monday night Samantha Williams, 30, stopped by her ex-boyfriend’s home in the 9500 block of Cody Way to pick up their child. At the door, she met the new girlfriend, and “immediately began stabbing” her. Then, police said, Williams drove away in a black Camaro.

Williams was arrested on Tuesday and booked into the County Jail. The new girlfriend, a 26-year-old woman, was treated at St. Joseph’s Medical Center for her injuries, which police said were not life-threatening.

Police said it was the first time the two had met.

And elsewhere
Pretty much the entire world is reporting that three New York Police officers have been arrested for trying to steal $1 million worth of perfume from a warehouse in New Jersey. They allegedly hired day laborers to load the stuff into trucks one officer rented with HIS DEBIT CARD and ran into the warehouse shouting “N.Y.P.D.! Hands up!”

I can’t decide whether I would want to cover a police department like this or not. Wait, what am I talking about? Of course I would.

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Daniel Dominguez, 25

By Christian Burkin | Published: March 9, 2010 | 0 Comments

The man shot to death Friday night in the 900 block of Greensboro Court was Daniel Dominguez, 25, and is by my count the victim of the sixth homicide in Stockton this year.

Dominguez, of Stockton, was shot just before midnight Friday, and after he was shot crashed his car into the garage of a Greensboro Court home. A passenger, a 19-year-old man, was injured in the crash but was not shot. Dominguez died at the scene.

Officer Pete Smith, a police spokesman, said Dominguez was a documented gang member.

In August last year, 23-year-old Bannchhiy Lun was shot to death at Hillsboro Way and Bianchi Road, about a block west of where Dominguez was shot. Lun was also driving, and his car was found stopped on the sidewalk on Hillsboro.

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Daily Chaos: Snitches and Cows

By Christian Burkin | Published: March 9, 2010 | 0 Comments

I don’t even want to think about puns
Around 2 p.m. Monday a truck hauling dead cattle to a rendering plant in Sacramento slowed too quickly and rolled its trailer on northbound Highway 99 just south of Farmington Road. The driver told me there were about 30 carcasses in the bed, and they all came out. The wind there was southwesterly and when we arrived photographer Mike McCollum picked a spot northeast of the crash. What luck. Northbound 99 was stuck for hours.

Strange loyalties
A man called the Fire Department from the 300 block of East Market Street around 3:50 a.m. Monday to report he had been stabbed. When emergency responders arrived they discovered the man had a little cut on his hand. Of course, it being a stabbing, police showed up, too, but the man told them he was no snitch. He did tell them, however, he’d been in some kind of argument in the 300 block of South El Dorado Street.

That stuff will kill you
The Sheriff’s Office said that around 9 a.m. Sunday, deputies stopped a driver at East Section and South Oro avenues for a traffic violation and the driver, 20-year-old Jesus Rogers, had 27 heroin-filled balloons in his mouth. Deputies figured Rogers was either trying to swallow them or was just hiding them until they left. Rogers was arrested on suspicion of possession of heroin for sale, transportation of heroin, resisting arrest and destruction of evidence.

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Medical Marijuana Dispensaries: The PD’s Needs

By Christian Burkin | Published: March 4, 2010 | 0 Comments

Deputy Police Chief Mark Helms spoke to the Planning Commission Thursday night, and said medical marijuana dispensaries would be a burden on an already-strained Police Department.

To start, Helms said the Police Department was neutral on whether the city should allow medical marijuana dispensaries.

“We clearly recognize the voters of California have spoken; the legislature has spoken,” he said.

But, he added, “If use is allowed, we do ask that you consider the excess burden this is going to have on the Police Department and take some measure to mitigate that.”

Helms said the Police Department has been asked to cut its budget by another 15 percent in the next fiscal year, the equivalent of about 40 police officers.

“On the chopping block is the narcotics section,” he said. “In the worst case, we’ll cut it; we won’t have a narcotics section.”

Helms recommended that the employees of any permitted medical marijuana dispensary should be subject to a criminal background investigation by the Police Department, and attend police-led training.

Helms said that to monitor and handle medical marijuana dispensaries would require:

One to two police officers at a total cost of $155,000 to $310,000
One code enforcement officer at $110,000
One analyst or clerical worker at $100,000
Overtime costs of $50,000
Training costs of $25,000
Investigation costs, if necessary, of $100,000

Total: $540,000 to $695,000

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California Opathics Patient Association: Cutting Room Floor

By Christian Burkin | Published: February 27, 2010 | 0 Comments

Some of the material from my interview with members of the California Opathics Patient Association’s co-op board didn’t make it into a story printed in the newspaper today.

Sammy Trujillo, COPA board’s vice-president, on the possibility the city will deny COPA a permit to operate precisely because they opened before regulation settled: “Good things happen to good people who do things the right way. If it doesn’t work we can look in the mirror and know we did the right thing.”

COPA director Ruben Venegas, on why COPA chose Stockton: “Stockton is a place you can really seize the moment. It would be nice to pave the way.”

Both Venegas and Trujillo said the dispensary is not a source of income not their primary source of income. (Edited on 3/1/2010 at 1:45 p.m.) And all their current employees are volunteers.

They want to put in a door to better separate the lobby from the rest of the dispensary, but their application for a building permit has been suspended.

Venegas said he first approached the city and asked to apply for a permit to operate a medical marijuana dispensary. He said a deputy city attorney told him he couldn’t.

“They told me I can’t apply for a use they don’t have,” he said.

Posted in Marijuana, Uncategorized | Tagged | 0 Comments

Daily Chaos: Side benefits, and the Internet is dangerous

By Christian Burkin | Published: February 26, 2010 | 0 Comments

Spittoons to be standard equipment on patrol cars

At a traffic stop near midnight Wednesday at 5th and Sutter streets police found a drunk driver, 9.15 grams of cocaine and two of the most pleasant young people one might ever arrest. The driver, 19-year-old Henry Alvarez, was arrested without any apparent complication. But it was the passengers! The passengers! They were spitting! Allegedly!

One, a 16-year-old boy, drunk, was expectorating all over the place and bit one officer’s arm. So they put him in a WRAP and dropped a Spit Net over his head. And this other, also drunk, but 17 years old, with another year of maturity guiding his behavior, was spitting too. And there’s a nasty bug going around! However, he wasn’t biting. He was also WRAP-ped and Spit Netted.

The last passenger was a 17-year-old boy wanted on a no-bail warrant. He didn’t spit on anybody. He deserves a plaque or something.

Craigslisted

The Police Department said some guy selling a pair of iPhones on Craigslist met two prospective buyers contacted through Craigslist in the parking lot of Craigslist, I mean the Wal-Mart Supercenter on Hammer Lane. But instead of paying for the phones the buyers robbed the guy and took off. So, not actually buyers.

Early the next morning two 16-year-old boys selling an iPhone (mom is going to be so mad) went to a parking lot in the 1400 block of West March Lane to meet a man who had contacted them about buying the phone. Instead, he drew a gun and told the boys to give him their wallets and the iPhone. They did.

Using the cell phone number the man had used to contact the boys, police tracked him down and arrested him. He is Myron Patterson, 20, and was arrested on suspicion of robbery, grand theft and using a handgun while committing a felony.

And this is why you should buy classified ads, which are hypoallergenic, tame, fire retardant, foolproof, vitamin-enriched, zero-carb and protected by Smith and Wesson. Craiglist will take all your stuff.

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“If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”

By Christian Burkin | Published: February 25, 2010 | 0 Comments

On the same night Officer Robin Harrison was named the Stockton Police Department’s 2009 Officer of the Year, Janet Lee Rodrigues-Caltharp was celebrating her 15th year as an employee of Sutter Tracy Community Hospital.

“If it wasn’t for her, I would never have reached 15 years at the hospital,” Rodrigues-Coltharp, a phlebotomist, said Thursday.

On June 13, a Sunday, Rodrigues-Coltharp, 50, was headed to Woodward Reservoir to meet her boyfriend and some friends when she lost control of her car rounding a corner and went into the water, where her car overturned. She had just come off an early shift after little sleep and thinks she just stepped on the wrong pedal.

She remembers holding her breath underwater, reaching at debris and trying to find the surface. But she was disoriented, didn’t know up from down. And then nothing.

There were witnesses. They jumped in and flipped the car, broke a window and dragged Rodrigues-Coltharp free. But she was hard to handle. Later, she was told she was like a slimy fish. But Rodrigues-Coltharp said Harrison was there on the bank and grabbed her ponytail and dragged her to land, then started CPR. That’s when she remembers again — a paramedic shouting at her and then the hospital.

“My chest hurt like the Dickens but she didn’t crack any bones or anything,” she said.

A story in the Tracy Press was headlined “Tracy woman survives drowning.”

This week a friend clipped a newspaper story announcing Harrison’s award and gave it to Rodrigues-Coltharp. She read it and wondered, at first, why the name sounded so familiar. Then she remembered.

“I was so excited to see the person who actually helped me. It was like a happy, excited sad moment,” Rodrigues-Coltharp said. “I know she’s very modest but if it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”

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Kathryn Flanagan, 24

By Christian Burkin | Published: February 18, 2010 | 0 Comments

On Tuesday night police responding to a “disturbance” at a home in the 2200 block of Dario Circle found Kathryn Flanagan, 24, dead.

By Wednesday morning they had arrested Flanagan’s boyfriend, 42-year-old Michael Simmelkjer Inman.

Officer Pete Smith said Inman had a history of domestic violence against Flanagan. The two did not live together — Inman lives on Dave Brubeck Way — but Smith said he did not believe there was an existing protective order between the two.

Inman will be in court in Stockton on Friday.

There’s more in the paper today.

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Daily Chaos: Leaves, Signs, an Ice Cream Man

By Christian Burkin | Published: February 18, 2010 | 0 Comments

To every thing there is a season

The Sheriff’s Office said that a little after midnight Tuesday deputies were sent to a “disturbance” in the first block of North Adelbert Avenue. What they found was 41-year-old Lisa Marie Scroggins screaming, flailing her arms and rolling around in a pile of leaves. It turned out Scroggins was wanted for parole violation, and was carrying a heroin-loaded syringe and a broken glass pipe. She’s in jail now. The only question I had was who has a pile of leaves on his front lawn in February? I didn’t think it would be fruitful to ask the Sheriff’s Office.

Bad sign

A 15-year-old girl told police she was attacked Tuesday afternoon after she flashed a gang sign at a passing car. Imagine that. She told police that after she threw the unspecified gang sign the car — a red four-door sedan — abruptly stopped and its occupants, all female, climbed out. They had one of those verbal confrontations and then one grabbed a tire iron and hit the teenager over the head. She was treated at St. Joseph’s Medical Center for a laceration.

Oh, yeah, people have those

Some guy with a gun walked up to an ice cream truck stopped at the intersection of Rayanna Drive and Jayden Way on Tuesday afternoon and demanded money from the 73-year-old ice cream man driving it. Instead, the ice cream man dialed 911 on his cell phone and the would-be robber ran away.

Posted in Daily Chaos, San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office, Stockton Police Department | Tagged , | 0 Comments