the town dandy / By Hank Sims

Thanks and No Thanks

Elsewhere in this paperyou’ll find a story about bigotry in Ferndale, which should serve as a reminder that Humboldt County’s great love affair with “small-town living” isn’t necessarily without its downsides. Yes, with its razzamatazz theater company and fabulous gingerbread Victorians, Cream City is undoubtedly the queerest town north of Guerneville. On paper, anyway. Psychological repression can present in strange forms, as any competent therapist will tell you.

There’s a story behind the story, though, and if the first doesn’t disturb you the second might. It involves outgoing Ferndale Police Chief Lonnie Lawson — a person we once took the trouble to admire, but who has since proved himself an embarrassment to the public he purports to serve. His latest escapade is a fitting capper.

Last week, our reporter called Lawson to verify that Ferndale Enterprise editor Caroline Titus had indeed filed a complaint against former Fire Chief Rich Leonardo, alleging that Leonardo had called her on the phone and verbally harassed her over her coverage of the Altschuler affair. This would be information contained in the department’s police blotter, and would therefore qualify as public information according to the terms of the California Public Records Act. However, Lawson refused to give the information to our reporter. He would only repeat that he “refused to comment.” When told that “comment” was not what we were after, he hung up.

That evening, Leonardo left a phone message and e-mailed us out of the blue, asking to comment on the story we were working on. This puzzled us in an academic sort of way, as there didn’t seem to be any immediate way Leonardo would have known we were working on a story. We were happy to call him back. We were less happy when he told us that Chief Lawson had called to give him a heads-up that we were working on a story.

So we learned that Chief Lawson declined to provide basic public information to a newspaper, but that he was eager to call up and warn someone who had allegedly threatened a newspaper editor — the subject of a complaint being handled by his office — that another newspaper was working on a story. So we called Chief Lawson to register our disapproval of this shocking behavior. First he denied having called Leonardo. Then, when asked if he was calling Leonardo a liar, he said that he would neither confirm nor deny that he had called Leonardo — in a phrase, he “refused to comment.” Then he said that even if he had called Leonardo, there was nothing wrong with that.

Would he at least provide the simple information we requested in the first place? “The law doesn’t say that I have to bow and scrape to you,” the Chief retorted. Nevertheless, after conferring with the city attorney, Lawson called back on Monday with the information we were seeking.

Chief Lonnie Lawson is set to retire in the coming weeks. When he was first hired, we ran a small story about a clever piece of policework he had done immediately after taking the job (“Ferndale Chief Finds His Man,” Jan. 13, 2005). But a year ago he erased whatever goodwill he had developed with the community by arresting and harassing an innocent father on trumped-up child endangerment charges, when it was clear to everyone that the man was guilty only of failing to “bow and scrape” to Lawson’s petty tyranny. A jury cleared the man of all wrongdoing after 10 minutes of deliberation.

The case seems to have been the rule, not the exception. On that note, the man leaves office. And whatever bad press the good people of Ferndale have suffered with this latest incident, the town can at least consider itself blessed that it will soon be rid of the biggest blotch on its reputation, this cruel parody of a public servant.

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