A jury intimately found the three officers, Tim Martin, David Trujillo and Burt Milliken had in fact violated Micheal Schmidlin’s constitutional rights awarding Mr. Schmidlin $24,000.00 plus attorney fees.

None of the officers remain currently employed by the Palo Alto police department and the circumstances surrounding their departure remains unclear.  However, the battle continued to rage on in an effort to collect on the attorney fee’s having gone right up to the California Supreme Court.  A battle where attorney Mark Martel thought would have ended sooner.

All attorney fees in a prior favorable decision were left awarded by the California Supreme Court having resulted in their refusal to hear the case on appeal. Prior to this ruling, and in a statement to the press back in 1997, attorney Martel had this to say, ”It would be a really bad use a taxpayers’ money to pursue it further, but we will fight this to the end”.

The attorney fees are the only remaining issues in this case.  City attorney Donald Larkin continues to argue that the court failed to use the, “required methodology” in calculating Mr. Martel’s attorney fees.

It looks like the only legal recourse left for the city of Palo Alto in paying out legal fees that will now soon topple over a million dollars, is for the city of Palo Alto to continue the legal battle, on the dime of Palo Alto taxpayers and to petition the United States Supreme Court for injunctive relief.

Palo Alto city attorney Molly Stump will confer with council members behind closed doors this coming Tuesday in a special meeting at city council chambers on February 21, 2012 at 6:00 PM on whether or not to pursue this case any further.

Schmidlin v. City of Palo Alto Sixth District Court of Appeal, Case No. H034169

The police, namely Lt. April Wagner aka Chan/Wagner in full uniform with her loaded sidearm clearly stood ready to enforce whatever draconian ordinance is decided upon.

I personally know Ms. April Wagner and she is a text book example of a detective known to be aggressive and deceptive.  In my opinion she’s a bad cop.

How quickly we have forgotten that Lt. April Wagner was found by a court of law to have violated the constitutional rights of longtime resident Tony Ciampi and it is alleged she fabricated police reports and evidence.

This in itself, should give rise and alarm us all to the potentiality of Lt. April Wagner and her enforce team falsifying evidence collected during massage business raids.

In the Ciampi case, the city of Palo Alto paid out a 35 thousand dollar settlement for her mistakes and those of her colleagues.  What I also found alarming and disturbing among other things in her report to city council was that she made it a point of having readily available and accessible massage therapy client lists for unannounced police raids for any potential violations. Here’s how a portion of the newly created ordinance reads….

4.54.120 Inspection by official

“Any and all investigating officials of the city shall have the right to enter massage establishments from to  time during regular business hours to make reasonable inspection to observe and enforce compliance with building, fire, electrical, plumbing or health regulations.  A warrant shall be obtained whenever required by law.”

It was also evident from last night’s discussion that Wagner was ill prepared and unable to produce any real hard data or for that matter, unable to address any issues or complaints (sexual assaults or activities) evolving massage therapy businesses or otherwise within Palo Alto or in attracting the criminal clientele. This data was non-existent prompting several council members to wonder and suggest if we even have a problem at all.

What’s the big deal?  Why do anything as councilman Larry Klien mentioned. One thing is for sure there’s an obvious divide between reflexology, massage therapy and a simple foot rub.  The reflexology professionals are asking for an exemption to the city’s proposed ordinance along with the foot massage therapists.

But wait, what about the foot massage business. Why should they be forced to comply and compete right alongside the massage therapists and reflexologist professionals with expensive training and licensing as mandated by the State of California?

Again, why is the police and the city’s attorney’s office pushing for state compliance and why are the police involving itself in the administration of an occupation some claim is equal to doctors and lawyers.

Essentially, Wagner’s response was, she worries about Happy Feet causing injury by putting a client in a strangling toe hold. This whole process seems absurd in my opinion.

If there are complaints with the level of service or for that matter health issues, get the health department involved and not the police in all non-criminal activities or behavior.  It just seems like the police and our lawmakers are attempting to criminalize the entire massage therapy profession by placing a strangle hold on legitimate businesses.

City of Palo Alto Purposed Massage Ordinance

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Blog post up-dated.

“Section 9.06.010 (Human Habitation of Vehicles) serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of homeless people in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of Housed people,” said Judge R in the majority opinion.

In citing two other cases from 1973 and 1996 the high court said the government violates equal protection when it withdraws rights in order to harm a politically unpopular group or express disapproval of a vulnerable minority.

Like the Colorado initiative, Section 9.06.010 stripped rights from a minority group – rights the group held under the earlier California court ruling – for no apparent reason other than moral disapproval.

Judge R also said evidence at the trial showed that the Section 9.06.010 campaign appealed to voters’ irrational fears of the homeless.

With no demonstrated “legitimate purpose,” Judge R said, the court must conclude that the Municipal Code was rooted in “disapproval of Homeless people as a class.”

“Censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body.”

Data source and related story links:

By some estimates there are now 1.1 million Californians who find themselves unemployed or underemployed.

As it stands, over 613,000 Californians have lost all unemployment benefits and it may in fact be years before we see the light of day on any real job recovery on a state or national level.

Our present day economy has forced many families to live on our streets across America in their vehicles and the city of Palo Alto is no exception.  This has given rise to some in the community of Palo Alto to voice their concerns of vehicles parked overnight in their neighborhoods prompting city officials to consider an outright ban on overnight vehicle habitation.

The city of Palo Alto in a shared community outreach effort has engage all city vehicle habitation dwellers and their major stake holders to come up with plan or ordinance which satisfies the needs of all concerned.  However, the city Palo Alto has admitted they have no concrete data on the actual number of complaints received.

This fact alone has many vehicle dwellers claiming fool play to the existence of any real problems at all.  They feel it’s the affluent vs. disenfranchised or not in my neighborhood mentality or attitude.

Some have even gone as far as to believe that cards are already stacked against the vehicle dwellers by moving ahead behind the scenes without the benefit of transparency and open government by enacting a new city ordinance designed to purge the disenfranchised off the streets of Palo Alto prompting one civic watchdog and civil rights attorney Aram James to release the following statement:

“I don’t want the city jamming this draconian ordinance down the throats of the unsheltered community–and at this point this is how they are using the Eugene ordinance–as a threat i.e., either develop and take responsibility for a Eugene like program–or we will force through this oppressive ordinance. Given my limited time and particular skill set –I will continue to focus my energies on educating CCT members (community cooperation team)–and others in the unsheltered Community–on possible legal strategies to consider–necessity, nullification–and maybe constitutional challenges.”

The history of America is enshrined in acts of civil disobedience.  From the civil rights movement of the 60′s to the modern day Occupy Movement that has taken the U.S. by storm by highlighting the many social injustices impacting the working class.

For this reason we have decided to launch and establish a Necessity Defense Vehicle Habitation Legal Fund designed to defend vehicle dwellers against the city of Palo Alto through legal representation should the city of Palo Alto enact a specially designed ordinance to rid its’ disenfranchised vehicle dweller off the city streets of Palo Alto.

“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?. . . . . . If the injustice [of the machine of government] has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.” -Henry David Thoreau-

If you wish, you may contribute to the Necessity Defense Vehicle Habitation Legal Fund any amount will be welcomed by utilizing the “Donate” feature located on the front page of Palo Alto Free Press allowing your contributions to civilly stop this seemingly unjust city planned ordnance.  You will receive an email acknowledgement of your contribution in addition to a quarterly statement of all monies held in trust.

To assist our readers to understand why the need for “Necessity Defense” and it’s history, the following is being provided……..

A Brief Case Look at necessity defense.

‘Freedom of expression in a free society includes freewheeling public dissent on controversial political issues of the day. Civil disobedience is a form of protest that, while usually peaceful, involves violating the law—usually by trespassing on government property, blocking access to buildings, or engaging in disorderly conduct.

Civil disobedience has been called “the deliberate violation of law for a vital social purpose.”1 In their day in court, civil disobedients have at times sought to interpose the necessity defense to justify their conduct.

The necessity defense asserts that breaking the law was justified in order to avert a greater harm that would occur as a result of the government policy the offender was protesting. Protestors will seek to invoke the necessity defense not so much to gain acquittal from the relatively minor charges, but to advance the more important objective of publicly airing the moral and political issues that inspired their act of civil disobedience.

There is the hope of gaining notoriety for a cause by discussing it in court, and “educating” the jury about political grievances or other social harms. The strategy is meant to appeal to a higher principle than the law being violated—the necessity of stopping objectionable government policies—and to let the jury have an opportunity to weigh their technically illegal actions on the scales of justice.

Acquittal is of course hoped for in the end but may be quite low on the protestors’ list of priorities. The necessity defense is attractive to reformers who practice civil disobedience because it allows them to deny guilt without renouncing their socially driven acts. It offers a means to discuss political issues in the courtroom, a forum in which reformers can demand equal time and, perhaps, respect. Moreover, its elements allow civil disobedients to describe their political motivations. In proving the imminence of the harm, they can demonstrate the urgency of the social problem.

In showing the relative severity of the harms, they can show the seriousness of the social evil they seek to avert. In establishing the lack of reasonable alternatives, they can assault the unresponsiveness of those in power in dealing with the problem and prod them to action. And in presenting evidence of a causal relationship, they can argue the importance of individual action in reforming society. Thus, the elements of the necessity defense provide an excellent structure for publicizing and debating political issues in the judicial forum.

The goal of describing their political motivations to the jury, and implicitly to the media, is subject to numerous hurdles inherent in the necessity defense. In most instances, as we will see, courts will rule as a matter of law that the actors have failed in the offer of proof regarding the elements of the necessity defense so that the jury rarely is given the chance to weigh in on the matter.

On the other hand, if the defense is allowed, the jury is called upon to weigh controversial political issues and to function as the “conscience of the community.” “Reflected in the jury’s decision is a judgment of whether, under all the circumstances of the event and in the light of all known about the defendant, the prohibited act, if committed, deserves condemnation by the law.”

In cases where judges have been persuaded to allow the necessity defense, juries have, often enough, delivered not guilty verdicts. This article will first examine the nature of civil disobedience, and distinguish between direct and indirect civil disobedience. Part II highlights some historical examples of civil disobedience.

Part IV then examines the principles of the necessity defense, analyzing each of the elements that make up the defense, illustrated with cases on point. Next, Part V will turn to an analysis of several abortion-protest cases that raise issues different from other types of civil disobedience cases. Part VI then will examine Viet Nam era civil disobedience cases. Following that, Part VIII will explore a unique defense known as the Nuremberg Principles defense.’

Civil Disobedience and the Necessity Defense

Draconian Pending City Ordinance

Dave Stellman of Palo Alto Glass has publicly announced supporting a completely voluntary program to have those living out of their cars being able to park their cars on business parking lots at night.

I know of no other business owner who has bothered to publicly speak out on this important issue. If you are a vehicle dweller living out of your car, and are afraid to sleep on the street at night, you should stop by Palo Alto Glass at 4085 Transport Street, where you can park your vehicle at night in security and without fear of harassment.

If you are homeless, and will be traveling to the Palo Alto area by vehicle, you should can call at 650-4949-7000, Palo Alto Glass, and make arrangements to have a free place to park and sleep at night, or email him at dave@paloaltoglass.com. Or just stop by when passing through town.

Notice of this fine effort by Palo Alto Glass, and this free place to stay in Palo Alto has now gone out to local homelessness advocacy groups in the greater Bay Area, and will be going out statewide. You should help out, and publicize this and other such local places to stay, by posting the address of any other business leaders who trying to help out like this, so vehicle dwellers can know of other safe places besides Palo Alto Glass where they can park at night.

Dave Stellman deserves some kind of a medal as an example of the finest in Palo Alto business leadership. That’s the plain truth.

I work as a General Building Contractor in California.  And I would like to hire you if you’re a skilled worker.  But if I do,  I could go to jail.

Why?

The IRS can imprison or levy Payroll Tax Penalties and take collection actions against employers and their personal assets if unpaid ‘trust fund recovery penalties’ or ‘employment taxes’ themselves – cannot be immediately collected .

How hard is it to calculate and pay the Payroll Taxes?

There are quite a few things to pay, track and file for Social Security, Unemployment, FICA, Disability, Hospital Insurance, IRS and the Due Dates, forms, programs and amounts vary and change.

Here are just a few examples:

The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Re-authorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 – reduced Social Security withholding from 6.2 to 4.2 percent for 2011.  It may be extended. Maybe not.

*Failure to pay correct & timely amount results in civil – criminal penalties.

The Wage base for  computing the Social Security Tax OASDI increases in 2012 to $ 110,000 from $ 106,800.

The Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) imposes -2- taxes on employers, employees and the self employed. Employer pays Half. 50 %

1. Old Age, Survivors – Disability Insurance – the Social Security Tax.
2. Hospital Insurance (Medicare Tax or HI)

OASDI maximum is $ 110,100 but there is No maximum on HI *Failure to pay correct & timely amount results in civil – criminal penalties

Plus the employer is also responsible for:

Federal Unemployment UE Tax FUTA. FUTA rate is now 6 percent on the first $ 7,500 of wages. May Change. State UE Tax – Varies, based on location &; number of employees *Failure to pay correct & timely amount results in civil – criminal penalties

Supplemental Wages, Commissions, draws, signing bonuses, severance pay, vacation and sick pay, all pay tax at ‘different rates.’

Since 1/1/11  IRS requires all federal tax deposits be Electronic. IRS e-file system includes forms 94x, 940, 941, and 944. But Payments by US Mail will be returned. If payments are then late, penalties will apply.

In the event of errors, Employers must file IRS Form  13460. But  Form 13460 is NOT available from the IRS electronically.

Each Quarter – IRS Forms must be filed promptly with correct Tax. By February 28 – Social Security Forms W-2, 1099R, W-3 must be filed.

By January 31 every employee must receive Form W-2. Before I hire anyone, I need to hire a Payroll Processor. If the payroll processor makes a mistake, I am still the ‘responsible party.’

As a small business, Do I really want to hire anyone?