California CCW - concealed carry forum

This is an EMail that came in today - I won't give out the EMail addy as that would be too much, but it matches up with who this guy claims to be.

I think he's for real:

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Glen Craig wrote:

Searching the intrnet I came upon an open letter, written by you, regarding the issuance of CCW permits. I am not sure of the date so this may be old hat and out of date in responding, but I feel compelled to write since you got so many things wrong in your letter.

First Mr. Collafrancesco (sp) was NOT a major contributor to my campaign no matter what he says and two, I have never met the man let alone cautioned him to behave. Campaign contributions are a matter of public record and that can be checked.

The City of Sacramento and Sacramento County for most of my terms of office by agreement had the Sheriffs Department issue all concealed weapons permits in both the City and the County of Sacramento. There was a concealed weapons committee with the police department having representatiopn on that committee. Neither Lou Blanas nor I participated on that committee. I did, in fact, set the policy that the committee was guided by. That policy was the product of a citizens group I put together that had a cross section of those who supported the NRA position and those who wanted tighter gun control. The policy I adopted was a compromise of their respective positions. Since the Chief of Police in the City has the legal Authority to set policy within the city and to issue CCW permits, Chief Venegas chose to separate from the County and set his own policy. He then took over the issuance of all permits within the city. This is an arrangement that is in place in most metropolitan areas in the state. It is neither illegal nor discriminatory. If anyone in the City told you otherwise they are mistaken or uninformed.

It would have been nice if you had checked these facts before testifying before the legislature or before writing the open letter that is posted on the Internet.

Glen Craig

Retired Sheriff, Sacramento County
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My response (and attached you'll find the same thing I attached to him):

Sheriff Craig, thank you for writing to me.

You state that Art Vanegas instituted this policy of "town discrimination" against SacCity residents, and I believe you. I have a low opinion of Vanegas. I suspect this was borrowed from Contra Costa County, as that county has a formal unified agreement across all agencies known as the "Contra Costa Police Chief's Model CCW Protocol". The net result was that high minority population areas such as Richmond, Pittsburg, El Cerrito and the like become "redlined" where the wealthier areas such as Alamo, Blackhawk (both unincorporated), Danville, San Ramon, Orinda (sheriff's patrol contract) and the like.

Naturally, this didn't smell so good and it appeared to have been carried over to Sacramento.

Sheriff, California's CCW system as you know is "discretionary" as to the matter of "good cause for issuance". But I recommend you take a look at Penal Code 12050 again, in the opening paragraphs, either as it exists today or as it was drafted in your tenure.

Either way, the matter of jurisdiction isn't discretionary. People living in Sacramento City had the right to apply with your agency and not Vanegas if they so chose, and God himself had no right to block that, nor anyone else lacking legislative authority, yourself included.

Worse, the demographics of Sacramento city and county are quite clear: a very high percentage of that county's African-American population is piled up within Sac City.

I don't know whether or not racial discrimination was the goal here, on either your part or Vanegas'. It was most certainly the result of your illegal policies, and had the same effect in Contra Costa and Los Angeles counties and for a while, Alameda - until Oakland backed out of the CCW process when the sole permitholder (Jerry Brown's personal Zen guru I kid you not) had a complete meltdown.

If patterns of racial discrimination of this sort were rare, I wouldn't be so suspicious. I'm going to show you one other thing related to race and CCW…sort of a "big picture". According to county-by-county CCW issuance data provided by Cal-DOJ, if you live in a county with less than the state average black population, (6.7%), your raw odds of having CCW is six times higher than if you live in a county with more than the state average black population:

http://www.equalccw.com/CCWDATA2003.html

So I have to ask you: do California's sheriffs and chiefs live in fear of issuing CCW to African-Americans?

Did you? Did Vanegas?

Did you even think about how this appeared?

Sir, I've researched CCW policies in Contra Costa and Sacramento in some detail. Maybe you can fill in a few gaps in other areas.

In Contra Costa the "Sheriff's Posse" is no longer associated with the sheriff's office officially. But it has a lot of the trappings of law enforcement, including seven-pointed stars labeled "Contra Costa Sheriff's Posse". There are known incidents of these being passed off as law enforcement ID, in one case unsuccessfully as documented in their own newsletter…the guy was drunk and couldn't keep his story straight. Some of the Contra Costa Posse have uniforms and all are asked whether or not they can donate the use of a "horse, boat or airplane" for the sheriff's office's use. There are about 380 members as of 2003 and they appear to hold the majority of the 250ish CCW permits issued by the sheriff's department. Once I got ahold of the Contra Costa CCW roster and started contacting permitholders, the first six I talked to were Posse and I believe I only spoke to one non-Posse permitholder the whole time I was digging.

Obviously, this too didn't smell very good.

One permitholder I spoke to was pointed out to me as being deeply connected to the Contra Costa Posse, and had a number of family members both in the Posse and with CCW permits.

His name was Frank Pereira. I heard he was ill a couple years ago, I suspect he's dead now. I spoke to him in 2001.

I'm told you knew Frank. In fact, my understanding is that Frank was a major political fundraiser (mostly for Democrats) and at one point paid the then-largest Fair Political Practices Act fine in California history, working on your campaign?

Maybe you can clarify something else? A lot of the permitholders in both Sacramento and Contra Costa appear to be connected to real estate, development, major contracting/building and heavy engineering…the sorts of people likely to need signoffs on environmental impact reports. Now…why is that? According to the Sacramento News'n'Review later in your term of office, you were selling your signoffs on EIRs to these sorts of people. Now maybe I'm wrong, but the appearance is that people like Colafrancesco were snuggling up to you to get easy access to EIR signoffs on the crime impact and traffic impact portions, and then once in close financial contact, if they happened to be interested in self defense then a CCW was easy.

That's the appearance at least.

Let me tell you about some other appearances.

According to a former Sacramento deputy I spoke with, the guy who took Colafrancesco's statements was brutally punished for doing so. 10 years or more in "Siberia" is what he heard – that would be department slang for the Rio Cosumnes regional jail because at some point it became a dumping ground for screwups or politically tainted deputies.

If Colafrancesco was so "full of it", why punish the deputy who recorded him?

Another odd thing. When I tried to obtain the list of Sacramento CCW holders under public records law, the sheriff's office would only give me the "non law enforcement" list. According to the agency the names of "law enforcement CCW holders" was to be withheld for privacy reasons. Yet when you look at the statutes, it's the addresses and other personal data for those permitholders that is confidential, not their names. Shall I quote Government Code 6254(u)?

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(1) Information contained in applications for licenses to carry firearms issued pursuant to Section 12050 of the Penal Code by the sheriff of a county or the chief or other head of a municipal police department that indicates when or where the applicant is vulnerable to attack or that concerns the applicant's medical or psychological history or that of members of his or her family.
(2) The home address and telephone number of peace officers, judges, court commissioners, and magistrates that are set forth in applications for licenses to carry firearms issued pursuant to Section 12050 of the Penal Code by the sheriff of a county or the chief or other head of a municipal police department.
(3) The home address and telephone number of peace officers, judges, court commissioners, and magistrates that are set forth in licenses to carry firearms issued pursuant to Section 12050 of the Penal Code by the sheriff of a county or the chief or other head of a municipal police department.
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When I took the names of the permitholders the department would release, I ran them past campaign contribution data and found over $100,000 in correlation. My notes on that are attached as a PDF file. This doesn't include the reservist/Sacramento Mounted Posse money.

Finally, let's talk about that Sacramento "Posse".

According to the Lt. I talked to within the department, he has the roster of L1/L2 reservists but not the L3. Nobody in the department building has the L3 list – it's kept in the law offices of the head of the Sacramento Posse, Robert Lorbeer.

You say I should have checked my facts? Sir, when I tried I found evidence directly from department staff that there was a literal "secret police" organization operating separately from the deparment, with an illegally secret roster. What sort of conclusion was I supposed to come up with? The names I did have led to over $100,000 in campaign finance links between CCW and Blanas.

Wasn't Blanas your handpicked successor? Was I supposed to think Blanas came up with all this weirdness on his own?

OK. I'll shut up now and listen. I don't want to believe that major law enforcement agencies in California are outright corrupt. But that's the appearance. In Sacramento, the appearance is that the chaos started during your administration or for all I know even earlier. It looks like there's a consistent pattern involving violating civil rights for profit.

Can you explain to me how Gene Byrd had 1,500 permitholders at a time at peak, all issued on an egalitarian basis with training and objective standards and none of 'em ever screwed up, and then you issue FAR fewer permits on an elitist basis and you had Colafrancesco clearly act as if he was above the law, maybe because your permit policies told him exactly that, that he was part of an armed aristocracy?

How is it that when Sheriff Baca of LA set up an "executive reserves program" stocked with 20 major campaign contributors, and within a year one had chased a neighbor down the street in his underwear and another "upstanding citizen" laundered a quarter mil through Israel of all places and ran guns into Mexico.

How did the sole CCW holder in the city of Oakland end up being a serial sexual molester with personal connections to the mayor? That's a 100% failure rate.

Or how about the latest from Orange County? Sheriff Carona has a sweet little program arming rich Los Angeles folks (now that Baca dumped 'em?) by issuing them a joke reservist status and one of same such "cops" was found connected to (and supplying guns for) the scam artist that wrecked the stolen Ferrari doing 160mph DUI.

Sheriff Craig, can you explain all this madness? Is any of this professional law enforcement? Because it looks like arming wealthy cronies is a bad idea. They get crazy ideas, like the sheriff/chief/whatever that issued to 'em will try and cover up when they fuck up, and they act like it? Whereas under an egalitarian issuance system as found now in 38 states, there's no political connections involved. If somebody like me (now in the Seattle area with a WA state CCW) screws up with a gun I *know* somebody with a badge will come down on me like the wrath of God. And I'm fine with that.

Sheriff Craig, I think you're a crook. I think you're an elitist bastard for that matter. Now if you can show me any evidence otherwise, I'm all ears. Show me any evidence you're willing to speak out about this garbage, hey, it'd be a hair late but what the hell. What's going on now is a freakshow. What kind of morale problem does this send through a department, when the whole staff figures the boss is on the take? Can I as a citizen trust a cop/deputy who is willing to work for such an agency, or do I have to look at every single member of such a department as a potential gang member with a badge?

Should I respect the right of a process, a law, an agency this screwed up to disarm me?

I don't know, maybe I've hit you with too much here. I don't know if you've got answers for the appearances in this mess. But I'm genuinely interested in what you have to say.

Thank you for at least listening,

Jim March

PS: Granted, Rupf in Contra Costa did issue a permit to an African-American gent…but he was a wealthy rancher, drove a 4x4 truck, wore a cowboy hat and boots and listened to Garth Brooks <grin>. One might well ask: "who's "blacker", this guy or Eminem?" In other words, is American racism really linked to race or culture? No, I don't expect you to have answers for THAT, I'm sure it gives sociologists migraines.

very interesting reading. you bring up some great points in your counter letter. as a resident of sacramento county, i'm am very interested to see where this leads.

Take a look at the "permitholder money" document. It's uuuugly.

Wow...that PDF is a real eye opener.

Jim...It is so great to have you contributing here. Thank you!

It was based loosely on the "Contra Costa Cronies Roster":

http://www.equalccw.com/cccr.pdf

This was written...oh dear God, 4/24/2000? I've been chasing this crap down THAT LONG!?

Siiiiigh. I've got stuff laying around that even I haven't touched in years.