Squidfry 03.31.22: Super Tropper

SUPER TROOPER… Squid usually eschews the Concours D’Elegance during Car Week since the Concours D’Lemons in Seaside is more befitting Squid’s old jalopy. Squid now wishes Squid had been at the swanky Pebble Beach affair in 2019, if only to capture the madcap police action that went down, resulting in the arrest of a former correctional officer. On March 28, two-and-a-half years later, Robert Willis Davis, 61, was convicted by a jury in Monterey County Superior Court of assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer, among other charges.

The Monterey County District Attorney’s press release issued the day of his conviction reads like the script of a screwball cop comedy: Davis, working as a chauffeur at the Concours, drove the wrong way down a one-way street. The police officers and volunteer teen police explorers on duty repeatedly told him to stop. One explorer in a golf cart tried blocking Davis’ path, but Davis accelerated directly at the cart, forcing it off the road. Then Davis accelerated toward a Merced police officer who had drawn his weapon. Davis clipped that officer as he drove by.

After Monterey County Sheriff’s commanders caught up with Davis and put him in handcuffs, Davis managed to escape the back of a cruiser, rolling across a fairway before he was recaptured.

Squid is considering a Hollywood pitch for a new comedy, Pebble Beach 911!, with the tagline: “That’s how we roll.”

UP THE LADDER… One thing Squid loves about the California Public Records Act is that it applies to all members of the public, humans and cephalopods alike. You don’t need to have a fancy degree or be a journalist or lawyer to use the law to obtain public records, and you don’t need a reason.

So it was that Andrew Sandoval, director of the Salinas-based chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, sent a CPRA request to the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office on Feb. 2. He was asking for something simple enough: “guidelines, protocols, evaluation forms and scoring sheets for the promotion of deputies at each level in the sheriff’s department.”

The next day, he got an email from the Professional Standards Division in response: “I also have a few questions. Are you a lawyer? And if so, what law firm is requesting these documents? If not, are you requesting for an organization? And what is the purpose for this request?”

What followed was an apology (appropriately), and then one delay letter after another. Finally, on March 28, the Sheriff’s Office produced the records – a questionnaire for job applicants and a scoring rubric, nothing fancy. Certainly nothing to get prickly about.