California - Competing Considerations on Strategy to Overcome the CA helmet law.

Hi SCREWDRIVER
I admire your creativity down in the San Diego area. Some of our best BOLT members were from your area, including Steve Bianco and Red. Steve, of course, made extraordinary appellate gains, working closely with Quig, obtaining the early Bianco decision, and then, with Quig again, parlaying that into the federal court decision in Easyriders. He an Quig didn't get the public credit, but all knew that it was Quig and Bianco who prepared that Easyriders litigation for trial. Easyriders just came in at the last minute with the bucks, a lawyer was hired, and fucking lawyers, they always want to claim the credit! And then Red did a lot of the types of stuff that you are doing, including with his interaction with law enforcement down there, eventually getting them to back off their helmet law enforcement at our 4th of July fuck-the-helmet-law rides and rallies. I gave speeches at several San Diego area rallies and then all the 4th of July rallies, and then others up north, including at Quig's memorial, during the time we were attempting to do fund raising for Quig's injunction/declaratory relief trial. I had seen that trial as the most important opportunity we had to overcome the helmet law, as one way or another it would give us the opportunity to go up to the California Court of Appeals again. Unfortunately, the trial didn't go as Quig and I would have hoped, and I think everyone else was equally sorely disappointed with the record made on that trial, including the lack of all but one CHP ticket, laying a poor trial court record to take up on appeal. Although there was one very important "gift" that the AG gave us in that trial, to wit the testimony of Sgt. Valdez, the CHP officer whom the AG designated at the "person at CHP most knowledgeable about the enforcement of the California helmet law." The dick was completely unaware of the constitutional authority in California, to wit, Buhl and Bianco, restricting the means of enforcement of the law, and ignorant also of the Easyriders decision, upholding the federal district court's injunction against the CHP specifically, ordering it not to issue any more helmet tickets without probable cause to believe that the particular helmet model has been determined by NHTSA to be noncompliant with FMVSS 218, and that the rider has actual knowledge of the determination of noncompliance.

With Bianco and Red more or less on sabbatical, you fill a void in the southern part of our state, in particular reminiscent of Red's role in your recent overtures to rein in the cops down there. I don't know whether you were included on the e-mail discussion between Mark and me over what our BOLT strategy should be here in California, but from my perspective, both strategies are important, indeed, ideally interconnected, just as Red's approach and Steve Bianco's approach were interconnected.

Since you had referred to the help that you received from me awhile back, perhaps you might find something in an interchange between Mark and me on BOLT of CA strategy that could be useful to you, as an insight into the overview, the overlying goals that we may wish to consider as we arrive at our broader strategies, from my perspective, that we must concentrate on those that will ultimately overturn the California helmet law. What I will do is reprint the correspondence, but you have to start with the one at the bottom and then work up from the bottom to the top for it to make sense. Please don't be alarmed by some of the language. I will sometimes state my positions in particular with some rather outrageous and profane language, following it with my more dry reasoning, and then sometimes ending with some more outrageous language, but I think everyone knows that I am just being an asshole, tongue in cheek, so again, don't take it as some great rift between Mark and me. I consider Mark a friend, I admire his work, we just differ on our perspectives with regard to what should be BOLT's goals here in California, and then irrespective of our differences I see Mark's contributions as wonderful, and also complimentary to the goals that were instilled in me by Quig primarily when I served as his consignlieri and legal sounding board during the last year of his life. But if you read the specifics of my strategies for overcoming the helmet law you will see particular recommendations with regard to the CHP tickets that we need to obtain and the types of evidence that we need to gather, the courts in which we might bring out next declaratory relief or injunction case, etc., that may serve you in your thinking about the ultimate goals of our work and the methods we will need to employ to accomplish them -- from my humble perspective.

And yeah, I had a great time meeting up with Kit and it group of hard drinking (and smoking) friends. It was actually Mark's idea that we try to get together our BOLT guys from the Southern half of California, hence my suggestion that you join us. I also think it would have been a kick for us all to get together, if only to put faces to our e-mails, share a beer or a doobee, and just hang out shooting the shit. Unfortunately even our other local LA area BOLT guys copped out after Kit sent around a not saying that it might be a cold night! What a bunch of wusses!

Take care, and keep up the good work,
Ray