Ventura County was also one of the USA's most corrupt counties and regularly ranked in the top-ten most corrupt law enforcement jurisdictions (it has even been ranked number one).http://ahealedplanet.net/cover-up.htm#wean
Those judges in Ventura County were members of what Gary called the Mishpucka, as they were Jewish. Harry Pregerson was a kingpin mobster judge who sat on a federal bench for nearly forty years, who made Gary’s life miserable, but the judges in Ventura County tried to have Gary killed when he thwarted their plans. But I get ahead of myself. Now, I will begin to show how Gary’s path and mine overlapped long before we met.
http://ahealedplanet.net/forum/threads/123-Gary-Wean-Me-and-the-JFK-Hit?p=1399&viewfull=1
Hi:
I am going to begin to leave Gary’s LA days behind now and focus on Ventura County, which is the primary setting of Gary’s book. Gary’s career took him back and forth between LA and Ventura County. Ventura County is adjacent to LA, and is in a different world. LA was a big, ugly slab of asphalt, with air so thick with pollution that you could cut it with a knife, while Ventura County was largely rural, with some small and growing towns, famed beaches, and Ventura was the crown jewel of Ventura County and where I was raised from age 8 (when my father returned from his misadventure at NASA) until I left home at 21. Ventura is the last mission town that Junípero Serra established in his lifetime, and I attended an elementary school named after him. Serra was sainted in 2015, and in a way, his sainthood is emblematic of how our system operates. Serra was the Hitler of California, as his missions were actually concentration camps that resulted in the complete genocide of the coastal tribes of California, from San Francisco to San Diego. The only tribes with any survival fled to California’s interior.
As a teenager, even I could see what was going to happen to Ventura County. The groves were mowed down to put up housing tracts and the fields were paved over, as the hordes from LA spilled outward. I recall seeing a newspaper article that predicted that California’s coast would one day be a big city, stretching from San Diego to San Francisco, and called San San. That is well on its way to happening. My first job was salvaging the lumber from a walnut fam that was mowed down, and the local post office and an office building were among the structures erected on that land. I was the janitor of that office building several years later, as I studied business. The man who took my janitor job (I tried to give it to my retired father) when I left for the university was an Asian immigrant, and while he was the janitor at that office building, he became a millionaire by speculating in real estate. A janitor becoming a millionaire was a sign of the times in Ventura.
A few miles from my home was Wagon Wheel Junction, and I grew up at the bowling alley there, where my mother worked for many years. At Wagon Wheel was a restaurant where a local developer held court, named Martin Smith, called Bud Smith. He built the only office towers in Ventura County, near Wagon Wheel. Even before I left home, my father told me that people who crossed Smith simply disappeared. He was well-known to be a gangster. One of the funnier anecdotes in Gary’s book, at least to me, was when Gary was surveilling some of Mick Cohen’s hoods and in walked Bud Smith, who sat down with them. Gary looked across the room and saw two people whom he recognized as DEA narcotics agents, and his partner talked with them. While Gary and his partner had been tailing Cohen’s men, the DEA agents were tailing Smith, who was a prime suspect for bringing in drug shipments through a local port, where my father worked during his career. Smith was too clever to be caught, however, and I never saw any newspaper coverage of him that wasn’t fawning and calling him a “philanthropist,” like that Wikipedia article does.
I live near Seattle today, and it is getting “Californicated” today, big time, as entire neighborhoods are getting bulldozed and high-density condos and the like are being put up, as we get to experience the “success” of Amazon and Microsoft, two predatory corporations. Seattle will be in compete gridlock soon, and I won’t be retiring here. I saw it happen to Ventura County, and now it is happening to the Seattle area, and California developers are leading the effort.
During the dot.com boom of the late 1990s, which was a mere prelude to what is happening today, as Seattle becomes unrecognizable, Bud Smith was up here, getting in on the action, building skyscrapers. I worked in one of them in Bellevue, when I worked for a software company, and the woman in the office next to mine had a husband who built skyscrapers (and they soon moved to Shanghai, where the big action was). I asked her one day if she knew who Bud Smith was, and she did: he had a glistening reputation as a straight-shooting businessman and philanthropist. I had to laugh. I am all too familiar with those kinds of “philanthropists.” Being a “philanthropist,” or “liberal” judge whose conscience guided him, is a great cover for gangsters.
A major theme in Gary’s book from his Ventura days was the real estate activity. The judges of Ventura County’s Superior Court ultimately controlled the situation, as many millions could be made on their rulings, and the gangster judges in Ventura County were Gary’s primary antagonists who ruined his life.
Another funny anecdote in Gary’s book was when he was contacted by a retired mobster from Chicago, and they had lunch together. In Gary’s book, you easily get the sense of the relationship between cops like Gary and mobsters. It is like a game of cat and mouse, and even almost one of mutual respect. Gary knew plenty of mobsters, and his job was putting them behind bars if he could, but he had to play by the rules of the game. He watched a mobster bludgeon another once, but Gary knew that with their code of omertá, the bludgeoned mobster would never testify, so Gary could only watch. The mobster from Chicago retired to the fun and sun of California, and planned to dabble in real estate. As he began to get into the real estate game, he saw how the judges and others had the game completely rigged and under their control. The mobster marveled to Gary. The mob in Chicago never had it as sweet as the gangsters in Ventura County did.
Those judges in Ventura County were members of what Gary called the Mishpucka, as they were Jewish. Harry Pregerson was a kingpin mobster judge who sat on a federal bench for nearly forty years, who made Gary’s life miserable, but the judges in Ventura County tried to have Gary killed when he thwarted their plans. But I get ahead of myself. Now, I will begin to show how Gary’s path and mine overlapped long before we met.
Best,
Wade
Those judges in Ventura County were members of what Gary called the Mishpucka, as they were Jewish. Harry Pregerson was a kingpin mobster judge who sat on a federal bench for nearly forty years, who made Gary’s life miserable, but the judges in Ventura County tried to have Gary killed when he thwarted their plans. But I get ahead of myself. Now, I will begin to show how Gary’s path and mine overlapped long before we met.
http://ahealedplanet.net/forum/threads/123-Gary-Wean-Me-and-the-JFK-Hit?p=1399&viewfull=1
Hi:
I am going to begin to leave Gary’s LA days behind now and focus on Ventura County, which is the primary setting of Gary’s book. Gary’s career took him back and forth between LA and Ventura County. Ventura County is adjacent to LA, and is in a different world. LA was a big, ugly slab of asphalt, with air so thick with pollution that you could cut it with a knife, while Ventura County was largely rural, with some small and growing towns, famed beaches, and Ventura was the crown jewel of Ventura County and where I was raised from age 8 (when my father returned from his misadventure at NASA) until I left home at 21. Ventura is the last mission town that Junípero Serra established in his lifetime, and I attended an elementary school named after him. Serra was sainted in 2015, and in a way, his sainthood is emblematic of how our system operates. Serra was the Hitler of California, as his missions were actually concentration camps that resulted in the complete genocide of the coastal tribes of California, from San Francisco to San Diego. The only tribes with any survival fled to California’s interior.
As a teenager, even I could see what was going to happen to Ventura County. The groves were mowed down to put up housing tracts and the fields were paved over, as the hordes from LA spilled outward. I recall seeing a newspaper article that predicted that California’s coast would one day be a big city, stretching from San Diego to San Francisco, and called San San. That is well on its way to happening. My first job was salvaging the lumber from a walnut fam that was mowed down, and the local post office and an office building were among the structures erected on that land. I was the janitor of that office building several years later, as I studied business. The man who took my janitor job (I tried to give it to my retired father) when I left for the university was an Asian immigrant, and while he was the janitor at that office building, he became a millionaire by speculating in real estate. A janitor becoming a millionaire was a sign of the times in Ventura.
A few miles from my home was Wagon Wheel Junction, and I grew up at the bowling alley there, where my mother worked for many years. At Wagon Wheel was a restaurant where a local developer held court, named Martin Smith, called Bud Smith. He built the only office towers in Ventura County, near Wagon Wheel. Even before I left home, my father told me that people who crossed Smith simply disappeared. He was well-known to be a gangster. One of the funnier anecdotes in Gary’s book, at least to me, was when Gary was surveilling some of Mick Cohen’s hoods and in walked Bud Smith, who sat down with them. Gary looked across the room and saw two people whom he recognized as DEA narcotics agents, and his partner talked with them. While Gary and his partner had been tailing Cohen’s men, the DEA agents were tailing Smith, who was a prime suspect for bringing in drug shipments through a local port, where my father worked during his career. Smith was too clever to be caught, however, and I never saw any newspaper coverage of him that wasn’t fawning and calling him a “philanthropist,” like that Wikipedia article does.
I live near Seattle today, and it is getting “Californicated” today, big time, as entire neighborhoods are getting bulldozed and high-density condos and the like are being put up, as we get to experience the “success” of Amazon and Microsoft, two predatory corporations. Seattle will be in compete gridlock soon, and I won’t be retiring here. I saw it happen to Ventura County, and now it is happening to the Seattle area, and California developers are leading the effort.
During the dot.com boom of the late 1990s, which was a mere prelude to what is happening today, as Seattle becomes unrecognizable, Bud Smith was up here, getting in on the action, building skyscrapers. I worked in one of them in Bellevue, when I worked for a software company, and the woman in the office next to mine had a husband who built skyscrapers (and they soon moved to Shanghai, where the big action was). I asked her one day if she knew who Bud Smith was, and she did: he had a glistening reputation as a straight-shooting businessman and philanthropist. I had to laugh. I am all too familiar with those kinds of “philanthropists.” Being a “philanthropist,” or “liberal” judge whose conscience guided him, is a great cover for gangsters.
A major theme in Gary’s book from his Ventura days was the real estate activity. The judges of Ventura County’s Superior Court ultimately controlled the situation, as many millions could be made on their rulings, and the gangster judges in Ventura County were Gary’s primary antagonists who ruined his life.
Another funny anecdote in Gary’s book was when he was contacted by a retired mobster from Chicago, and they had lunch together. In Gary’s book, you easily get the sense of the relationship between cops like Gary and mobsters. It is like a game of cat and mouse, and even almost one of mutual respect. Gary knew plenty of mobsters, and his job was putting them behind bars if he could, but he had to play by the rules of the game. He watched a mobster bludgeon another once, but Gary knew that with their code of omertá, the bludgeoned mobster would never testify, so Gary could only watch. The mobster from Chicago retired to the fun and sun of California, and planned to dabble in real estate. As he began to get into the real estate game, he saw how the judges and others had the game completely rigged and under their control. The mobster marveled to Gary. The mob in Chicago never had it as sweet as the gangsters in Ventura County did.
Those judges in Ventura County were members of what Gary called the Mishpucka, as they were Jewish. Harry Pregerson was a kingpin mobster judge who sat on a federal bench for nearly forty years, who made Gary’s life miserable, but the judges in Ventura County tried to have Gary killed when he thwarted their plans. But I get ahead of myself. Now, I will begin to show how Gary’s path and mine overlapped long before we met.
Best,
Wade
No comments:
Post a Comment