www.montereycountyweekly.com june 8-14, 2023 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 19 Some terrible things happen seemingly out of the blue—consider the story of Lucía Godínez Martínez, who on Saturday, May 20, was making breakfast for her kids in her Salinas apartment when errant gunfire came through her window and struck her, leaving her paralyzed and her family’s economic future also uncertain; Martínez’s work as a farmworker requires physicality. But the events are not just out of the blue. They started somewhere upstream, and many fit into a bigger context of problems our policymakers are trying to solve, too slowly for the people whose lives are caught in the crossfire. In this incident, there is of course the widespread presence of guns and the use of guns by members of criminal street gangs, in the case of these two alleged shooters. There’s a family’s need to rely on a GoFundMe campaign (bit.ly/luciagodinez2023) to pay for medical bills in our messy system of health insurance. Less than two weeks later, gun violence struck again. The morning of Wednesday, May 31 seems to have begun like a pretty typical day for Monterey County Sheriff’s Deputy Jesse Grant, who at 7:49am went to serve a court-authorized eviction notice on a 67-year-old man named Erin Howard Fischer in an apartment in Salinas. When nobody answered the door, Grant requested non-emergency backup; at 8:46am, officials say Fischer fired at officers, striking Grant twice. It quickly became an emergency, one that drew hundreds of law enforcement officers to the neighborhood and resulted in shelter-in-place orders; as a standoff ensued throughout the day, SWAT vehicles escorted some residents safely to outside of the area on lockdown. After nearly nine hours of negotiations and repeated exchanges of gunfire, an officer’s bullet struck Fischer in the head, killing him. But I’d argue that the emergency that unfolded at Apartment 201 of Interim, Inc.’s apartment complex on Sun Street was years in the making. It only starts to feel like a public emergency, red lights flashing, when a shot is fired. But the essential ingredients for tragedy—heavy weaponry, mental illness, tenuous affordable housing options—are all emergencies unto themselves. Nonprofit Interim, Inc. is one of the only entities that is providing critically needed housing to people with mental illness in Monterey County, serving as a safety net to catch people like Fischer (though of course tenants have to meet their end of the deal to stay housed). Interim properties include 50 beds in Monterey, 101 beds in Marina and 115 in Salinas, among them the apartment where Fischer was living—and where, authorities say, he stashed an arsenal of weapons: Officials report he had a total of three semi-automatic assault rifles, two bolt action rifles and two handguns, and he wore tactical attire, including a helmet. (For more about the sequence of events on May 31, as well Fischer’s history, read staff writer Rey Mashayekhi’s reporting on p. 10.) Sometime after he served time at Atascadero State Hospital, a maximum-security psychiatric hospital in San Luis Obispo County, Fischer found his way to an organization that could serve him. But of course, mental illness is complicated— and coupled with a society in which it’s far too easy to acquire firearms, that became a dangerous combination. What the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office could have and should have done differently when serving this eviction notice will undoubtedly become the subject of future stories; as Mashayekhi reports, Interim officials notified the law enforcement agency in advance of pertinent information. But Sheriff Tina Nieto also sees this standoff and deadly confrontation in context. “Mental health is a huge problem and we keep doing the same things and it’s not working,” she says. “I have always been a proponent of evidence-based practices, and I believe we as law enforcement should not be in the business of mental illness—we’re not the experts, we’re not trained psychologists, we’re not trained clinicians…As a society, we’ve got to look at how we care for our mentally ill.” Even if deputies had successfully served an eviction notice on Fischer that day, I’m not sure where he would have gone— another unsolved problem. Sara Rubin is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com. Tragic Ending Housing, mental illness and guns all converge for a horrible meeting. By Sara Rubin Safety First…Squid is a homebody, but that doesn’t stop Squid from daydreaming about the long list of places Squid would visit if airlines someday make cephalopod travel more comfortable. One place that’s not currently on Squid’s list of dream destinations is Russia, given President Vladimir Putin’s anti-democratic politics and the cruel war his army is waging against Ukraine. But for some people, those appear not to be concerns. Consider Tara Reade—a former Monterey County resident—who went public in 2020 with allegations that then-candidate Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993 when he was a senator. Biden denied the allegations, and went on to win the presidential election. Meanwhile, doubts about Reade’s credibility became a national news story. Reade is again in national headlines, based on a report in Russian-government-run outlet Sputnik. “I feel very surrounded by protection and safety,” she said. “I felt that while this election is gearing up and there’s so much at stake, I’m almost better off here and just being safe.” Is this a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Or is Reade a Russian asset, and was she all along? “I am not nor have I ever been a Russian asset of any kind,” Reade tells Squid’s colleague. “I was overseeing the translation of my book to be released in several languages.” Squid will be ready to read it as soon as it’s released, expecting something that would fit right in with the Russian literary canon: lots of melodrama. Off the map…In Squid’s local travels, Squid has spent a lot of time this year in Pajaro, a community that has been through the wringer with flooding and displacement. In both Squid’s time on the ground and scrolling through social media for updates about Pajaro, one constant presence has been County Supervisor Luis Alejo, who’s easy to spot in his signature hat. Of course Alejo, the current chair of the board, has business to do in Pajaro. But he represents District 1, which includes much of the city of Salinas—not North County, and therefore not Pajaro. That falls within District 2, which is currently represented by Supervisor Glenn Church, who’s also been a constant presence in Pajaro, but certainly less present in social media feeds. That’s left some North County constituents confused, occasionally referring to Squid’s colleagues as if Alejo is their representative on the Board of Supervisors. Squid doesn’t expect most people to spend their leisure time studying up on the district maps, so Squid wasn’t surprised. But then Squid saw that social media feeds had come to feel like reality even to local newspapers when the Monterey Herald stated last week that Alejo’s “district includes Pajaro.” Nope, even if Instagram sure makes it seem like it does. the local spin SQUID FRY THE MISSION OF MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY IS TO INSPIRE INDEPENDENT THINKING AND CONSCIOUS ACTION, ETC. “We’ve got to look at how we care for our mentally ill.” Send Squid a tip: squid@mcweekly.com
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