burblestein
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- Jul 13, 2016
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Welcome to outlaw country.
To understand the policing problems of the Triangle, you must understand its special conditions. Its sweeping beautiful remoteness draws visitors from outside the Triangle—indeed, from out of state, from out of country, even from out of continent. Tourists flock here to see the majestic redwood trees, the rugged shoreline, the trackless mountains. Some visitors are troubled. Many are inattentive; they may rely on cell phones and GPS out here on the funky fringes of the grid. If they get lost/stuck/broken down on one of our backcountry dirt roads, they abandon their vehicle and go missing. When on the shore, they play in or near the surf until a rip tide or rogue wave sweeps them off toward Japan. Or they crash off one of the Triangle's twisting two-lane roads, toppling over the bank unnoticed. Add the constant churn of students through Humboldt U in Arcata and the transient marijuana farmers, and there are plenty of candidates for disappearances.
Besides the tide of tourists and students, there is a large transient population involved with marijuana growing. The mom and pop hippies of the 1970s began cultivating marijuana to pay off their homesteads—thus the nickname of Emerald Triangle. Over the decades, marijuana growing has exploded from those early small patches to enormous illegal plantations run by criminal syndicates from as far away as Eastern Europe. With huge amounts of black market money involved, and no legal way to settle disputes, there is ample incentive for disappearances and murder, and a lot of negative incentive to cooperate with the law. The young “trimmigrant” laborers hired to work these plantations are often victims or perpetrators of homicide, and/or go missing. About forty percent of the Emerald Triangle murders are related to the “love drug”. Much of this is tied to aggressive meth consumption by “trimmigrants” while tending the plants.
While small stretches of the Triangle are policed by small municipal departments and tribal police forces, and there is an assigned detachment of California Highway Patrol, most of the Triangle's 11,000 square miles depend on the lightly manned Sheriff's Offices of Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity Counties for their public safety. While the deputies receive missing persons reports on pretty much a daily basis, and carry out immediate searches for missing persons, long term cases fall upon sheriff's detectives. Ofttimes, the missing turn up dead. And homicides are always a detective's duty.
The plight of a homicide detective in the Emerald Triangle is not an enviable one. While the axiom is that a homicide case is either solved in the first 48 hours after death, few homicide cases in the Triangle start that soon. When a detective does investigate a case, he runs up against the Green Wall of Silence observed by the majority of the populace. He works on a short budget and long hopes.
Obviously, there are considerable obstacles to investigating the murders of local residents. It's no surprise then that the detectives' cold cases against persons are even harder to pursue. Any informants a detective might have are local, and of no use in tracking “outsiders”. A detective working an out-of-county case is at an obvious disadvantage. He lacks the close association with the victim's background that could yield information, and may have to depend on other agencies. His bosses want him to serve and protect local residents. For that matter, so do most of the residents. Is it any wonder then that about half the Triangle's cold cases, whether long missing or known dead, are of nonresidents of the Emerald Triangle?
Whether dead or missing, there are too many people unaccounted for in the Emerald Triangle. This forum is dedicated to resolving those cases.
To understand the policing problems of the Triangle, you must understand its special conditions. Its sweeping beautiful remoteness draws visitors from outside the Triangle—indeed, from out of state, from out of country, even from out of continent. Tourists flock here to see the majestic redwood trees, the rugged shoreline, the trackless mountains. Some visitors are troubled. Many are inattentive; they may rely on cell phones and GPS out here on the funky fringes of the grid. If they get lost/stuck/broken down on one of our backcountry dirt roads, they abandon their vehicle and go missing. When on the shore, they play in or near the surf until a rip tide or rogue wave sweeps them off toward Japan. Or they crash off one of the Triangle's twisting two-lane roads, toppling over the bank unnoticed. Add the constant churn of students through Humboldt U in Arcata and the transient marijuana farmers, and there are plenty of candidates for disappearances.
Besides the tide of tourists and students, there is a large transient population involved with marijuana growing. The mom and pop hippies of the 1970s began cultivating marijuana to pay off their homesteads—thus the nickname of Emerald Triangle. Over the decades, marijuana growing has exploded from those early small patches to enormous illegal plantations run by criminal syndicates from as far away as Eastern Europe. With huge amounts of black market money involved, and no legal way to settle disputes, there is ample incentive for disappearances and murder, and a lot of negative incentive to cooperate with the law. The young “trimmigrant” laborers hired to work these plantations are often victims or perpetrators of homicide, and/or go missing. About forty percent of the Emerald Triangle murders are related to the “love drug”. Much of this is tied to aggressive meth consumption by “trimmigrants” while tending the plants.
While small stretches of the Triangle are policed by small municipal departments and tribal police forces, and there is an assigned detachment of California Highway Patrol, most of the Triangle's 11,000 square miles depend on the lightly manned Sheriff's Offices of Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity Counties for their public safety. While the deputies receive missing persons reports on pretty much a daily basis, and carry out immediate searches for missing persons, long term cases fall upon sheriff's detectives. Ofttimes, the missing turn up dead. And homicides are always a detective's duty.
The plight of a homicide detective in the Emerald Triangle is not an enviable one. While the axiom is that a homicide case is either solved in the first 48 hours after death, few homicide cases in the Triangle start that soon. When a detective does investigate a case, he runs up against the Green Wall of Silence observed by the majority of the populace. He works on a short budget and long hopes.
Obviously, there are considerable obstacles to investigating the murders of local residents. It's no surprise then that the detectives' cold cases against persons are even harder to pursue. Any informants a detective might have are local, and of no use in tracking “outsiders”. A detective working an out-of-county case is at an obvious disadvantage. He lacks the close association with the victim's background that could yield information, and may have to depend on other agencies. His bosses want him to serve and protect local residents. For that matter, so do most of the residents. Is it any wonder then that about half the Triangle's cold cases, whether long missing or known dead, are of nonresidents of the Emerald Triangle?
Whether dead or missing, there are too many people unaccounted for in the Emerald Triangle. This forum is dedicated to resolving those cases.