SQUID FRY 09.04.14 - Punching Bag…

PUNCHING BAG… Squid is a sensitive cephalopod. Just being brushed by a fellow passenger on a crowded MST trolley makes Squid go fetal. So Squid empathizes with Seaside/Pacific Grove Police Chief Vicki Myers, who’s been smacked around in public a lot lately. First there was the Seaside Police Officers’ Association’s no-confidence vote. Then former Seaside cop Ron Guth’s bid for City Council, built on an anti-Myers platform. Now the Seaside POA is alleging Myers punched employee Betty Lauritsen on the arm, leaving a little bruise.

Myers has denied it. But former P.G. Mayor Carmelita Garcia is piling on. Garcia tells Squid she spoke up at the Aug. 6 P.G. council meeting to flag a Happy Girl Kitchen van using the handicap parking space by the restaurant. Later, “Chief Myers came up from behind me and poked her finger into my right shoulder blade,” Garcia emailed P.G. City Manager Tom Frutchey. “It was a hard poke.”

Squid has been the victim of a hard poke or two, and Squid didn’t like them either. But Squid recognizes not all incidents of unwelcome touching are abuse. Let the POA complaint be duly investigated. But Squid would appreciate a little less wolf-crying. Especially if what Squid hears is true: that the union cops don’t like Myers because she holds them accountable.

ROYAL WHAT?… If Squid ever had ambitions of being a judge, those dreams died Sept. 2, the day Monterey County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wills nullified former Marina mayoral candidateKevin Saunders’ hopes for a 2014 campaign. How Wills kept a straight face through the theatrics of the hour-long proceeding, Squid will never know.

The case was brought by Marina resident Denise Turley, who was represented by attorney David Brown, also a Marina councilman. Saunders, a staunch pot activist, represented himself. He’s a former law student, but Squid’s not sure he would have made much of an attorney. (“I got kicked out of school before I took ‘evidence,’” he told Wills after being reprimanded for continually citing evidence not before the court.)

Saunders, who is in custody for violating multiple restraining orders against former Monterey College of Law faculty and classmates, kept seeing his questions stricken. But his circuitous arguments couldn’t obscure the evidence: He registered to vote in Seaside in 2011 and didn’t register to vote in Marina until Aug. 6, 2014, nine days after he pulled papers to run for mayor. According to election code, one must register to vote in the city they intend to hold office before they pull papers. As the hearing came to an end, Saunders interrupted Wills and offered one final statement: “This is just another example of a royal assf***ing by Monterey County.”

Wills didn’t even blink. He might be an alien.