Roads in eastern Humboldt County remain open, but officials suggest that people traveling in those area should consider carrying chains just in case. 

The following road condition updates come from the Humboldt County Department of Public Works:

• Titlow Hill has 5 inches of snow, the road is open to the towers, everyone carry chains. 
• Bald Hills has 4 inches of snow, road is open, everyone carry chains. 
• Bair Road has 4 inches of snow, road is open between Hoopa Valley and Redwood Valley, everyone carry chains. 

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Drug overdoses fueled by increased use of fentanyl killed more than 100,000 Americans in 2021. 

Local drug overdose deaths have increased by 40 percent in the last two years, from 32 in 2020 to 53 in 2021, according to data from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office. Fentanyl overdose deaths alone have increased by 377 percent, jumping from nine in 2020 to 34 in 2021.

It is unclear how many overdose deaths have occurred in 2022 as toxicology reports take up to three months to get back, according to the sheriff’s office.

“We can safely say that we’re seeing this now more than ever,” Sheriff William Honsal told the Outpost. “Our drug task force has seen this spike over the last three years and we are seeing unprecedented numbers of fentanyl in our community. …The opioid crisis is just that, a crisis, and it is directly tied to fentanyl.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the United States – 10,065 of which occurred in California – during a 12-month period ending in April 2021, an increase of 28.5 percent from the 78,056 deaths during the same period the year before, according to the most recent data available from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. 

Overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl rose by 55.6 percent during the same time period and appear to be the primary driver of increasing overdose deaths across the nation.

The Humboldt County Drug Task Force seized nearly 14 pounds of fentanyl in 2021 in comparison to only three grams the year before. The Drug Task Force seized 10.6 pounds of opioid prescription pills in 2021, up from approximately 9.6 pounds in 2020. However, heroin seizures dropped dramatically from 48.55 pounds in 2020 to 12.39 pounds in 2021.

“We’ve seen a jump from heroin abuse to fentanyl abuse,” Honsal said, noting that the drug has been found in heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine. “People aren’t using heroin anymore, like black tar heroin, they’re just using fentanyl. As we know, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid and it is 100 times more potent than morphine. Even just a small amount is fatal and we are extremely concerned because it is so cheap and readily available. It’s just a very, very scary time right now in regards to the drug epidemic.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency in 2017 in response to widespread opioid abuse and unveiled a five-point strategy to combat the opioid crisis – including improved access to prevention and recovery support services, increased availability of overdose-reversing drugs like naloxone, commonly referred to by the brand name Narcan, and advanced research on addiction – but data suggests overdose deaths have only increased.

“Overall addiction also went up during the pandemic,” Honsal said. “The stress of dealing with a pandemic and what was just going on in society, I think – whether it’s alcohol or drugs – that people became more addicted during that time. But what we see now with a highly volatile substance like fentanyl, which was very hard to get three or four years ago and only came in the form of medical-grade patches, it’s now readily available.”

Increasing awareness is key, Honsal said.

“Number one, do not take any pill that’s not prescribed to you. I know it sounds like a ‘say no to drugs’ type of situation, but you really cannot trust anything that you do not buy at a pharmacy,” he said. “The pill could look exactly like something you would find at the pharmacy, but unless you know for sure, you have absolutely no idea what could be in there. It could literally take one pill to kill you.”

The Humboldt County Drug Task Force has increased its focus on fentanyl sales and has taken “an aggressive stance in going after dealers,” Honsal added.

“We’re also working with the District Attorney’s Office to get anyone who is convicted of trafficking or selling fentanyl to be provided with what’s called a Watson advisement,” he said. “A Watson advisement is particularly given to people who have received chronic DUI convictions and it basically says if you carry on with this behavior that you could kill someone. …Now we can safely say that they’ve been advised that they can be charged with second-degree murder. It is the same thing with fentanyl. If a dealer ends up killing someone then we can charge them with second-degree murder.”

Jasmine Guerra, executive director of the Humboldt Area Center for Harm Reduction (HACHR), argued that increased criminalization of opioids and the people who use them “has historically backfired.”

“More criminalization means more deaths, more restricted options for people being criminalized, more disrupted families and more risky patterns on drug trends,” Guerra wrote in an email to the Outpost. “The issue has been played out by the War on Drugs since the early 1970s. The real issue is that people are facing homelessness, food insecurity, and barriers to health care at unprecedented rates in the nation and locally. …This isn’t even touching the surface of the rates of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Humboldt, which we know to be linked to chaotic patterns of substance use.”

Guerra preferred to refer to the opioid crisis as the “overdose crisis” because it shifts the focus “on people’s lives that have been lost unnecessarily and moves away from blaming people who use drugs for the increased rates of overdose.” Following that line of thinking, she said the answer to ending the overdose crisis begins with changing the language around it. 

“Stigma reduction helps to prevent overdose because it breaks down a barrier that someone otherwise would have faced when considering seeking help,” she said. “Next, overdose prevention sites, like the pilot project that recently opened on the East Coast, is another measure that will significantly reduce overdoses, if it is led by community-based organizations. Lastly, and most importantly, our country needs to decriminalize and provide a safe supply of substances.”

Raena West, Substance Use Disorder (SUD) administrator and senior program manager for SUD outpatient and treatment programs for the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Behavioral Health division, said increased access to medication-assisted treatment is “the best way to combat the opioid crisis.”

“The county opted into the Drug Medi-Cal Organized Delivery System which makes it possible for people on Medi-Cal to access residential treatment facilities and medication-assisted treatment with Aegis Treatment Center,” she said. “We have also increased our outpatient substance use disorder services to include individual services, case management and field services.”

West noted that fentanyl overdose deaths were likely exacerbated by the pandemic as more individuals were using alone, thus increasing their chance of overdosing.

While perspectives may differ on how to end the opioid crisis, the individuals interviewed for this story agreed that access to Narcan is critical.

“We’ve had a ton of overdoses that have been saved through the use of Narcan,” Honsal said. “The data is anecdotal because there are different organizations that hand out Narcan… but it happens every day that someone is given a dose of naloxone to save them from an overdose.”

Both HACHR and Humboldt County DHHS provide free Narcan and training. More information can be found here.

Prepare thyself for a chilly evening, Humboldt. 

Our local arm of the National Weather Service alerts us that “[h]ard freeze conditions are possible near the coast Wednesday morning. Low temperatures at or below 29F may damage unprotected outdoor plumbing and kill crops.”

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PREVIOUSLY

• MISSING: Family Seeks 32-Year-Old Native American Woman Missing For Over a Week
• Search for Missing Hupa Mother Continues as Intertribal, Interagency Team Expands Efforts
• Yurok Tribe Declares Emergency Following a Series of Human Trafficking Attempts

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A story published by the Associated Press on Monday takes a closer look at the nationwide crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW), with a focus on the Yurok Tribe.

Reporter Gillian Flaccus examines the disturbing trend via the case of Emmilee Risling, whose disappearance last fall was just one of five instances in the past 18 months where Indigenous women have gone missing or been killed on the North Coast.

The Yurok Tribe declared a state of emergency in December, with Yurok Tribal Chairman Joseph James asking local, state and federal officials to take a stronger stand against the trafficking of Native women and girls.

The AP story points to this 2021 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which found that “the true number of missing and murdered Indigenous women is unknown due to reporting problems, distrust of law enforcement and jurisdictional conflicts.”

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the country’s first Native American cabinet secretary, recently spoke out about how missing white girls often generate a flurry of media attention while missing Native girls get ignored. This despite the fact, as reported by the AP, that Native American women face murder rates almost triple that of white women, and more than 80 percent have experienced violence.

Emmilee Risling, a 33-year-old Hoopa Valley Tribe member with Yurok and Karuk ancestry, was last seen near Weitchpec in mid-October. The Yurok and Hoopa Valley Tribes are offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to her safe return.

The AP story notes how the cultural erasure and assimilation campaigns endured by local indigenous students who were forced to attend boarding schools created a legacy of pain:

“That trauma echoes in the form of drug abuse and domestic violence that sends a disproportionate number of children to foster care, said Judge Abby Abinanti, chief judge of the Yurok Tribal Court.”

You can read the full story at this link. Below is a video report that accompanied the piece:

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Seven months after sparking protests with an anti-LGBTQ message, the pastor of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Ferndale is again courting controversy, this time with an incendiary “Community Comment” — broadcast on local radio station KINS — wherein he calls Black Lives Matter an “evil organization promoting a movement built on sin.’

On the occasion of Black History Month, Reverend Tyrell Bramwell recorded a two-minute, 47-second message lambasting the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc., a Delaware-based charity organization, for its stances on various political issues, including LGBTQ inclusion, immigration and the makeup of the Supreme Court.

In his commentary, Bramwell conflates the organization with the larger #BlackLivesMatter movement, which is a leaderless and decentralized protest movement that gained traction worldwide amid an epidemic of violence against Black people by police officers and vigilantes.

Bramwell argues that by focusing on race, BLM supporters are “recklessly implanting racism into many hearts as they go.” 

Rev. Bramwell stands outside St. Mark’s amid a protest last June. | File photo by Andrew Goff.

“Now, I recognize that in today’s cultural climate, a white man isn’t supposed to be able to say these sorts of things,” he declares. “Because of my pale complexion, many leftists would call me a racist for being honest about the BLM organization.”

As with his gay-shame crusade last summer, Bramwell seems most concerned about sexuality and gender. 

“The [BLM] foundation claims to affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks,” Bramwell says, adding, “Now, certainly, being Black isn’t evil.” 

Bramwell may be willing to look past people’s skin, but he will not tolerate homosexuals or trans folks.

“Holy Scripture is very clear about the evils of sexual immorality,” he reminds us. 

Late last week a reader sent the Outpost a photo of the sign outside St. Mark’s with its current message. Confused, we wrote to ask Bramwell if he could explain the message. He emailed back on Monday, pointing us to the KINS webpage with his Community Comment.

The diatribe is brief, but Bramwell finds time to complain that the BLM charity affirms the lives of undocumented folks. This, he says, means the group supports “the lawlessness of illegal immigration.”

On its website, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc., declares its support for a wide variety of people, including “folks with [criminal] records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum.”

Bramwell interprets that last part for us: “Which is to say that BLM affirms the godless and harmful scientism that promotes gender dysphoria, thereby rejecting God’s created order of male and female.”

The last straw for Bramwell appears to have been this post discussing the hashtag #BlackWomenAreDivine, which says, in part, “The Creator speaks and works through us.”

Bramwell calls this claim — that God speaks and works through Black women — “very bold” and condemns these particular Black women for their audacity. 

“Scripture says a lot about false prophets who claim to speak in the name of God,” the reverend says. “What are they called again? Oh yeah: Antichrists.”

You can listen to the whole thing on the KINS website.

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PREVIOUSLY:

• Dueling Church Signs in Ferndale Spark Controversy Over LGBTQ Inclusion
• (PHOTOS/VIDEO) St. Mark’s Pastor, Pride Marchers Meet Face-to-Face Before Ferndale’s First Pride Demonstration

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Brr, it’s chilly out!

Brisk winds overnight have given way to overcast skies and light precipitation on Monday, and according to the National Weather Service’s Eureka office, snow is expected to accumulate at higher elevations this afternoon through Tuesday morning.

It’s almost hard to believe that Eureka broke a daily high-temperature record just 11 days ago, hitting 71 degrees, but climate scientists say such “temperature roller coasters” are a hallmark of human-caused climate change. 

So are droughts, and the vast majority of both Humboldt County and the whole state are experiencing moderate to severe drought conditions. So in that regard, today’s showers and snowfall are quite welcome.

But be careful if you’re doing any traveling. The National Weather Service warned folks Monday morning, “The trickiest travel is expected around Berry Summit on Highway 299 and the Collier Tunnel on Highway 199, especially late today and tonight.”

Snow levels are expected to fall in the 2,000-2,500-foot range this afternoon, dropping down to 1,500 feet or even lower overnight. More than six inches may fall at Berry Summit, according to the report.

“Some slushy accumulations may even occur late tonight at lower spots like Highway 101 Summits above 1500 feet, before shower activity diminishes Tuesday morning,” the NWS says. “Consider delaying your travel plans in these areas, but if you do go, remember to carry chains.”

Conditions should be “clear and crisp” by mid-week, with frigid temps in the mornings, but things ought to start warming up a bit by the weekend.

The 29-year-old woman was rushed to a Central Valley hospital on Dec. 30, 2017. Seven of her nine children had been born high on methamphetamine. This one, her 10th, was coming two weeks early.

Doctors detected no fetal heartbeat at 9:30 p.m. At 10:14 p.m., she tested positive for methamphetamine. Eight minutes later, Adora Perez of Hanford delivered a stillborn boy she named Hades, according to medical records shared with CalMatters by a member of Perez’s legal team.

“Affect appropriate for situation,” her medical chart noted. “Teary off and on.”

And then — on the morning of Jan. 1, 2018 — Perez was released from Adventist Medical Center in Hanford and arrested. Charged with murder, she eventually pleaded guilty to “manslaughter of a fetus” and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Perez has served nearly four years of her sentence, but this week, she returns to court. On Tuesday, a Kings County judge will weigh whether to reopen the case. Perez’s attorneys argue that she didn’t understand the crime to which she was pleading and received ineffective counsel from her trial and appellate attorneys.

Since her guilty plea, Perez’s story has drawn national attention for her rare plea to manslaughter of a fetus – a charge that doesn’t exist in California law. Abortion rights advocates believe her case has broad implications for abortion access in California, potentially opening the door to criminal prosecutions of people seeking to terminate pregnancies.

“With the possibility that Roe (v. Wade) might fall this year, ​​letting this stand could increase these types of prosecutions,” said Samantha Lee, staff attorney at National Advocates for Pregnant Women. “Those cases happen everywhere in the country.

“I would just emphasize that I felt that shock when I heard these cases happened in California.”

The four-year-old case also has pitted California’s attorney general against a long-time rural prosecutor.

In January, with Perez’s new court date looming in Kings County, Attorney General Rob Bonta issued an admonition to prosecutors statewide: Don’t file charges against mothers who miscarry or deliver a stillbirth.

“In California, we do not criminalize pregnancy loss, we do not criminalize miscarriages, we do not criminalize stillbirths,” Bonta, appointed last March, said in a press conference.

Bonta described his guidance as a “legal alert” to every county prosecutor.

Across the entire state in the last three decades, only one prosecutor has charged women who miscarry with murder: Kings County District Attorney Keith Fagundes.

Twenty-two months after he charged Perez, Fagundes filed a murder charge against 26-year-old Chelsea Becker of Hanford, who also tested positive for methamphetamine and delivered a stillbirth at the same hospital.

Becker was released in March after 16 months in jail. A Kings County judge dismissed the murder charge against her in May.

Perez’s legal team takes that as a good sign — even knowing that they have challenged the conduct of the local prosecutors, defense attorneys, trial court and law enforcement system that closed quickly around Perez on the night of her delivery.

They say they’re also encouraged by a June 2021 decision by a state appellate court, which ruled that a trial court cannot accept a defendant’s plea that isn’t based in fact – exactly what Perez’s pro bono attorney, Mary McNamara, argues is happening in Kings County.

“You can’t just plead to something you couldn’t have done,” McNamara said.

The New Year’s arrest

In the hospital, according to her nursing chart, Perez and the father of her baby were distraught.

Perez “was emotional, tearful and mixed emotions,” a nurse wrote. “(Father of the baby) appeared to have been crying and was solemn.”

Perez was given numbers to call for substance abuse and counseling for postpartum depression. Both parents were handed a brochure about grief and loss called Angel Babies.

“Pt anticipates d/c home,” a nurse wrote in hospital shorthand: Patient anticipates discharge to home.

In his discharge summary, Dr. Thomas Enloe recommended that Perez be put on one to two weeks of “pelvic rest,” and recommended a follow-up appointment.

But the hospital had already put Perez’s legal case into motion. At 11:30 p.m. on Dec. 30, 2017, a nurse at the hospital called Child Protective Services. Police were at Perez’s bedside within three hours and ten minutes of her delivery.

“Adventist (Medical Center) was taking a very proactive role in contacting law enforcement,” McNamara said.

A doctor told a detective that the baby died of a placental abruption “due to extensive drug use by the mother,” according to Perez’s medical records, a statement which formed the foundation of the case against her.

“I would just emphasize that I felt that shock when I heard these cases happened in California.”

Samantha Lee, National Advocates for Pregnant Women

After she was charged, Perez was assigned an attorney who worked on a contract basis – Kings County, population 153,000, doesn’t have a public defender’s office. Perez argues now that the attorney failed to provide her with effective assistance, and led her to plead to a charge she didn’t understand.

She attempted to withdraw the plea, and argued her first attorney didn’t investigate the possibility that something other than methamphetamine might have led to the stillbirth. The judge denied her motion to withdraw the plea and, on June 15, 2018, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Perez appealed, but her appellate attorney filed what’s called a Wende brief, which tells the appeals court that the attorney found no issue upon which to appeal the case.

“It was basically putting up the white flag,” McNamara said.

The appellate court upheld the lower court’s ruling. The California Supreme Court declined to hear her petition for review.

Perez is now asking the Kings County Superior Court to reopen her case.

District attorney defiant

The tallest building in Hanford is the courthouse, four stories of neo-classical revival in the seat of Kings County. It’s nearly as old as the county itself, built just three years after the county’s incorporation in 1893.

The history of the state is inscribed in this rural county’s history: Bloodied by 1880s gun battles between railroad bulls and squatters, it was briefly made rich by a 1928 oil strike and provided the backdrop for the 1933 cotton pickers’ protest.

But there, Kings County’s history begins to diverge from California’s more recent prosperity.

The ​​oil strike uncovered the Kettleman North Dome Oil Field, but the site is nearly exhausted. More people are leaving here than arriving – the county has lost more than 2,800 residents to out-migration in the last five years, according to the California Department of Finance. An estimated 2,000 births each year is the only thing keeping the county’s total population from shrinking.

A significant number of the adult population has voted for Fagundes.

In the last decade, Fagundes, the district attorney, has enjoyed a healthy mandate. After a 12-year career as a deputy district attorney in Tulare and Kings counties, he won the race for Kings County District Attorney in 2014 and 2018 with more than 68% of the vote, and he’s running for reelection this year.

When Bonta held his Jan. 6 press conference on the Becker and Perez cases, joined by abortion rights groups, a representative of Planned Parenthood decried “rogue district attorneys.”

Fagundes was listening.

“The AG of the state has no business being asked by political groups to give such statements,” Fagundes said.

“He took an oath to uphold the law and enforce the law, not interpret it for his own political ways.”

Fagundes’ neatly combed hair and ready smile belie a puncher’s mentality. Raised in a working class Catholic family of seven, Fagundes said abortion was never a topic his family discussed. His father, Richard Fagundes, has been on the Kings County Board of Supervisors since 2008.

“Through the college years and I still maintain today, I don’t have a uterus. I’m not going to make decisions for women in that regard,” Fagundes said. “I’m not going to tell them what’s best for their baby or themselves.”

A Democrat for much of his life, Fagundes switched to the Republican Party in 2014 as he prepared to run for office in this heavily Republican county, where 64% of registered voters wanted to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom in September.

But the decisions to charge the mothers, he said, came not from his own political leanings but from the opinions of the doctors who treated them and the pathologists who examined the fetuses.

“It’s like, look, under what circumstances can we do something?” Fagundes said. “These women are coming in and they are high on drugs.

“If they had come in beaten up and their fetuses were suffering from being beaten up, we would be charging the fathers. Why aren’t we charging folks for this?”

The staredown with state AGs

In nearly every instance, the California attorney general’s office supports the work of county district attorneys.

The Perez and Becker cases have reversed that dynamic.

Bonta and his predecessor, Xavier Becerra, now the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, have consistently called for the women to be freed.

“I think our position is very clear,” Bonta told CalMatters. Trial courts and attorneys “should know there’s no legal standing for such a charge,” he said.

Becerra said in a 2020 friend of the court brief that Fagundes misinterpreted the law and that a Kings County Superior Court judge was incorrect in deciding not to dismiss the charge against her.

More recently, Bonta filed a petition to the state Supreme Court, asking the justices to review Perez’s case. His office has also joined coalitions of state attorneys general opposing restrictions to abortion access in Texas, Mississippi, Arizona and Indiana.

California law regarding deaths of a fetus dates back to 1970. A man was convicted of murder for severely beating his estranged pregnant wife, who lost her baby. His conviction was overturned by the California Supreme Court, which ruled that a fetus is not a human being under the law.

In response, the Legislature added language to California’s murder statute: The killing of a fetus was punishable. But they added a condition: The murder statute didn’t apply if the act was “solicited, aided, abetted, or consented to by the mother of the fetus.”

Perez’s attorneys argue that her charges are therefore invalid because, under California law, a fetus cannot be the victim of a criminal act if the act is committed by the mother, or with her consent. They say the prosecutor erred in charging Perez, and the judge wrongfully allowed Perez to plead to something legally impossible. They contend the original attorney assigned to Perez failed her by allowing her to plead to a lesser charge, manslaughter of a fetus, that doesn’t exist in California law.

“Ms. Perez pled guilty (to manslaughter) because she had been led to believe that she could be convicted of murder, which was not true,” her attorneys wrote in a brief asking the state Supreme Court to review the case.

Medical experts introduced by Perez’s new legal team also have testified that there is no science supporting the idea that methamphetamine causes stillbirths.

Tuesday’s hearing will take up the question of whether Perez was denied her constitutional rights to due process by the actions and inaction of her original attorneys. If a judge agrees with Perez, her manslaughter plea will be vacated, and she could be released on bail. She would still face the original charge of murder.

Fagundes believes he’s done the best thing possible for the residents of his county, including Becker and Perez.

“This may be way out of line to say, but I credit our practice to (Becker’s) recovery if she stays recovered,” Fagundes said.

He argues that jail for Becker – and prison for Perez – provided them their longest periods of sobriety.

“How do you disagree that our practice worked for her in this moment? You can’t. No other practice helped her.”

The mothers today

Today, Perez is inmate number WG0595 at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. Since she’s in prison for killing her infant, McNamara said she’s been assaulted.

“When you go into a prison with the moniker ‘baby killer,’ it’s similar to a man going to prison for pedophilia,” McNamara said. “You’re marked. She’s been beaten up, she’s been ostracized, she’s been in and out of the mental health ward.”

Drugs are readily available in the women’s prison, McNamara said, though she declined to say whether Perez, now 34, has maintained her sobriety during her incarceration.

“Prisons are filled with drugs, and to be able to survive in a situation like that as a sober individual is extraordinarily difficult,” McNamara said.

Becker, the other woman charged with manslaughter of a fetus, declined to comment through her attorney, Dan Arshack.

“(Becker) is a brilliant young woman with a troubled past and a bright future,” Arshack said. “Even though she didn’t know what the law was, in her heart she knew she shouldn’t have been criminalized.”

Arshack said Becker, now 27, is working full time and taking college courses. When she graduates, he said, she plans to apply to law school.

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CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.