for background go here and search "Jeremiah Chass". For an historical context check here and here and here. Don't forget the annual police riot on Cinco de Mayo, roving check points to impound vehicles from folks too poor to keep up registration and insurance, rumors of pending ICE raids...
Sonoma County has a self-image as a bucolic refuge from the urban centers of Oakland, San Jose, and San Francisco. It's close enough to enjoy the cultural benefits, distant enough to ignore the social problems. This county's perception of itself is built on a lot of pseudo-religious feel-good new-age bullshit. People hope to shop their way to better tomorrow at Whole Foods and the Harmony Festival. People hope to meditate their way to a better tomorrow, by visualizing world peace. People expect "community" to spring up fully formed from nothing more than a good idea.
Unfortunately the only way that things actually happen is if they get done. For this to happen someone has to do them.
Our society gives unquestioned authority to police. Police can kill kids who are freaking out because their parents want to lock them up, and get away with it.
If we are going to change this we have to change it. We have to take the right that cops have to legitimately use violence without question or repercussion away from them.
In 2005 cops killed more residents of Sonoma County than criminals did.
The local media doesn't even print police call logs.
In fact early reports of Jeremiah's murder make it clear that local reporters had no idea how to get public records.
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