one small corner of the country. If you choose to: Send a couple of emails to let the watchers know that someone is watching them.
Justice Louis Brandeis-
'Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.' Other People's Money-and How Bankers Use It. 1914
'Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.' Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)
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What I would like to ask is simple. Could at least a few people fire off an email or two? Nothing involved, just maybe use Justice Brandeis' 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant' in the subject line and a city and state, (presumably yours, but anything outside of Lincoln County, OR would do), in the body. Just to let them know that they aren't so far out in the boonies that nobody can see them. The background is below the fold, in as much detail as you care to wade through.
Thank you.
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Contact Info & Addresses
LC Sheriff Dennis Dotson ddotson@co.lincoln.or.us, LCSheriff@co.lincoln.or.us
(541) 265-0652 Asst Kathy Manning
Lincoln County DA
Rob Bovett (541) 265-4145
rbovett@co.lincoln.or.us
Oregon Attorney General's office
Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum (503) 378-4400
ellen.f.rosenblum@doj.state.or.us
Dan Wendel -He prosecuted this jerk. So he's at least familiar with the county and some of its bad actors. (503) 378-6347 dan.p.wendel@doj.state.or.us
Other Lincoln County Officers
Animal Control Deputy Kerri Tyler- (541)265-4277 ktyler@co.lincoln.or.us
Deputy Anthony Lorange " " " alorange@co.lincoln.or.us
He's the one who acted as affiant for the warrant and misled the court about the informants' status of 'concerned citizen' vs their actual status of 'criminally involved informant'.
Sgt Brian Cameron- (541) 265-0682 bcameron@co.lincoln.or.us He's the one supposed to be investigating the multiple complaints filed against Tyler for ORS 164.265 -Trespass while in possession of a firearm, ORS 133.379- not pursuing investigations of animals in genuine need and ORS 162.415(1)(a)(b) Official misconduct.
His first year in competition with his new mom.
In the totally reasonable circumstance that you don't know me from Adam's off ox:
Almost two years ago Lincoln County, Oregon and some local fundraisers
stole my horses, (long read), lock, stock and barrel. All my breeding stock, all the youngsters, all the pensioners and rescues that hadn't been placeable. Some of them the 5th generation descendants of my first rescued horse from 1972.
Every single damned thing Lincoln County did was illegal. The animal control person trespassed and did illegal searches for a couple of years, but couldn't find anything illegal. So they apparently decided that since no one outside the county ever pays any attention to the various scams that happen within it that they would just go ahead and bluff and intimidate their way through and take them anyway. They'd done the same to two other small family-owned animal related businesses that year and gotten away with those. So, in October, 2011 they swooped in and seized every animal they could catch. Barely three weeks after I sold the above pictured colt to a lady in Michigan, (thank FSM I got him out in time). And because of what they did, there won't be any more like him.
Some of the champions and babies there will be no more of
Excerpts from my letter to the local DA
Lincoln County's actions toward me have been, from the beginning, either grossly improper or frankly illegal.
Since I felt I had to go pro se mid trial to defend my rights and interests, I have the right to view the evidence locker and logs pertaining to my case and see for myself whether or not the financial records taken from my office are still in the county's possession....
Mistakes were made, but that's not nearly the whole of it. Adding a sentence in the last paragraph of a warrant that accidentally excludes two of the three properties the warrant is intended to cover is mistake. A stupid, careless mistake that is certainly worthy of Judge Branford's comments, on the record, last November, that this case had been handled in a thoroughly 'sloppy and unprofessional' manner by the District Attorney's office and staff up to that point. But the material misrepresentation to the Court of two criminally involved informants as mere concerned citizens, taking advantage of the differing levels of credibility between those two categories in order to obtain the warrant, that is not a mistake. And the LCSD allowing the unusual circumstance of using a separate affiant to apply for the warrant, an officer who has admitted that he had only acted as such a couple of times in twenty years, was not a mistake. That officer had no contact with either of the informants and did no due diligence to find that one of them had a grudge against me and the other, (who had given no written or independently corroborated statements), was being coerced with threats against her own animals. Use of the separate affiant allowed a curtain of deniability for Deputy Tyler to hide her misconduct. Those aren't mistakes. Those are purposeful, premeditated actions taken with full knowledge and intent.
There has been plenty of premeditation and bad faith on display. My computers and the private registration records for the horses were both specifically named in the warrant and neither had anything to do with the welfare of the animals or evidence of alleged negligence.
My computers were were specifically named in the warrant and seized, but never examined for the purported evidence. They were seized to inconvenience me and impair my ability to earn a living. Does it still count as tortious interference when the perpetrators are State actors?
In November of 2012, then Chief Deputy DA Marcia Buckley cited potential evidence on the computers as part of her rationale for the second six month continuance requested by the State, saying that some exculpatory evidence may have been in her custody, unexamined, for something over a year at that time. And yet, when I finally retrieved my computers, the original evidence seals were intact. They had never been examined.
Registration papers for horses are private documents issued by private, incorporated breed clubs and associations for their own internal use in tracking pedigrees, show records and club members. They are not a title, as a vehicle has, that is issued by a government agency. They are merely personal ID which increases the chance that a buyer is getting the individual they think they're buying. Myriad horses over the decades have lost registration papers and breed privileges in ownership disputes via divorces, sales, etc because the courts have no power over those private documents to order their transfer. They are the property of and subject solely to the rules of the issuing entities. They certainly have no bearing on the welfare of the animals, their only functional effect is to make the animals more marketable and increase their monetary value. So demanding them in a warrant had nothing to do with the horses' welfare. It was unprecedented and done only to increase their marketability and resale value.
Approximately $75,000 worth of horses were taken from me via the improperly acquired warrant and personal policies and actions of Deputy Kerri Tyler. Some of those horses had pedigrees that spanned three continents and over a hundred years. Some of their offspring are champions with points in national competitions and are scattered all over the US and, in at least one case, Canada. They represented thirty-five years and five generations worth of work. And care and skill. I had delivered and raised most of them. And their parents and grandparents. They were taken from me and distributed to cronies and various others in direct contravention of ORS 167.348, which states that placement preference shall be given to those having had prior contact with the animals, including but not limited to relatives and friends of the owner. Only one of the seventeen horses were placed with respect to that statute. Friends and others who had had previous contact, some of it extensive, were flatly denied the opportunity to adopt them. At least two of them were used surreptitiously for breeding before the ruling on the forfeiture hearing and none of that compensation was passed on to me as owner at the time. Some of them have since come up for sale, or been 're-homed' again, in violation of the 'adoption contract' signed by those having taken my horses.
Tyler has admitted under oath, on two separate occasions, that she acted on her own personal policies, not the county's policies, in seizing all of my animals. She has further admitted that the condition of the four horses taken from the two properties not covered by the warrant were not evaluated by either her as the investigating officer or by the vet before being seized. She seized numerous animals, including chickens, two other goats and a number of barn cats, without probable cause. Animals that no allegation of wrongdoing was ever made concerning and were nonetheless never returned. Animals that were distributed to various other cronies without due process and without respect to Oregon or US law. Tally those in the theft column. In the illegal taking and lack of due process column. Tally also several hundred dollars worth of equipment seized, including halters and various specialized pieces of horse equipment, not inventoried and also not returned.
I have filed complaints against Deputy Tyler for ORS 162.415, official misconduct in the first degree, 133.379, duty to investigate and prosecute (genuine) animal neglect and three instances of ORS 164.265, trespass in possession of a firearm, (those documented in her own narrative reports). In the intervening half year none of those complaints have been addressed and no disciplinary action taken. She is also culpable in violating ORS 133.595 by not submitting a full and accurate list of items and animals taken during the execution of a warrant.
Almost half of the animals seized from me have since died, at least some of them from incompetence and actual neglect, including my stepmother's aged lap dog, Scrappy, who died essentially of hypothermia. The county's own vet testified that by the time Lincoln County employees noticed she was in trouble and brought her in to him, her body temperature was 85 degrees Fahrenheit and she was barely breathing. This was allowed to happen in spite of Deputy Tyler having been repeatedly reminded of Scrappy's need for an external heat source due to her age and infirmity. She had spent 13 years under the covers next to my stepmother and she died of exposure; cold, alone and terrified, among strangers. In the custody of Lincoln County. By the order of Kerri Tyler. I have no doubt that there is a very special place in Hell reserved for Deputy Tyler for that particular act of wanton and reckless negligence. Then there were the chickens, half of whom were slaughtered in the first 12 hours after seizure because Dep Tyler is apparently so ignorant that she assumed chicken coops were decorative and not functional to protect the birds from nocturnal predators. So it appears that all of the animals were actually a good deal safer with me, weren't they?
My financial records and receipts were seized from my office and not properly catalogued, ('misc papers' is grossly inadequate for a professional, legal inventory, isn't it?), and now your office has claimed they were not taken and refused me access to them during trial to show my regular and consistent feed purchases prior to and during the time in question.
Within hours of when I first noted the procedural irregularities in the warrant and handling of evidence and mentioned to Deputy Tyler the possibility of bringing such irregularities to the attention of the Attorney General's office, Lincoln County initiated an illegal traffic stop, abused their discretion at every decision point and held me in jail, incommunicado, for 36 hours. I was not allowed access to a phone to inform my family why I hadn't shown up or to make arrangements to cover my responsibilities. For 36 hours. I was not allowed to contact an attorney. For 36 hours. Along with a number of other hazing tactics like withholding the generic Advil I take in some quantity for the arthritis in my knees. Withholding that over-the-counter medication for 24 hours while I was having to sleep on the cement floor because the other woman took medication necessitating she sleep on the lower bunk for safety. There was no ladder or other access to the upper bunk. Basic hazing tactics.
I don't doubt that those responsible assumed that a 51 year old RN who had never spent a night in jail might be frightened and intimidated by the hazing and arbitrary displays and abuse of power. What they didn't know was that I grew up with a mean drunk and that I did my psych rotations at the maximum security wing of Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, CA. And that as a critical care nurse, starting at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, I had worked with, trained and faced down, for many years, cardiac surgeons and other physicians who could make Guy Greco cry.
I was in the middle of the woods, quietly minding my own business when Dep Tyler and her associates were allowed to overstep, sidestep and flatly ignore state and federal law in service to their own personal and idealogical agendas. Then they were backed up and their wrongdoing covered up by the Lincoln County Sheriff's Dept and later people within the DA's office. I was the third small, family-owned, animal-related business in Lincoln County that Tyler and her associates destroyed that year, 2011. And used for headlines and fundraising fodder. Apparently upwards of $30,000 was raised based on my case alone. None of which has been documented to have been used to assist with the care of my horses or other animals. Are you old enough to remember the biggest lesson of Watergate? That it's not the original crime that comes back to bite, it's the cover up that buries everyone involved.
I worked for your election in 2008 partly because I thought you seemed like an honest man. And partly because I felt that Bernice Barnett was both not honest and actively dangerous. And you did respond honestly and appropriately when Rand Overton's misconduct was brought to your attention. I was encouraged, even though you were the one who wrote the law about DUII drivers forfeiting their vehicles, (why is that no longer being enforced, by the way? Did the words 'forfeiture corridor' come up somewhere along the line?) and the manipulation of grand juries was being allowed to continue under your administration. I guess we find out now how honest you really are based on how you respond to this gross misconduct and various illegal actions of the law enforcement and criminal justice actors.
I offered to have a quiet, private conversation about this. You stated you were unwilling to accept that offer and said to put it on your desk and on the record. Fine. So here we are. Clean your damned house, counselor.
Who watches the watchers? We do. And the only way to reintroduce the rule of law is to dig in, duke it out and demand it.