Well, the police state's most certainly alive and well in Walnut Creek, California!
Recently I received a voicemail message requesting contact from one Creek cop, Greg Thompson, whose call I promptly returned out of compelling curiosity more than anything, as I'm no law-breaker and couldn't conceivably imagine what any cop would be doing calling me.
Most mistakenly, I thought that no local police state canton could surpass El Cerrito's theatre-of-the-absurd police antics of rousting pedestrians pushing shopping carts on the Ohlone Greenwayjust as I never thought it even thinkable that you could get rousted by penny ante cops right at home without ever stepping outside of your apartment but in this petty case the Creek not only excelled but exceeded all conceivable bounds of absurdity before my relocation theres aged even two years!
Thompson was calling on behalf of one S. Chan, a female Creek endodontist, whose office police dispatch had summoned him to handle a threatening letter complaint. Chan, Thompson claimed, asked him to relay the message to me that she wanted nothing to do with me, and wanted to receive neither letters nor telephone calls from me, and further, should I ever appear on her office property at La Casa Via in the Muir medical complex, that she herself would execute my citizen's arrest for trespassing. Now there's a pretty preposterous picture, seeing how this presumably powerfully paranoid woman and I have never, ever even met much less exchanged either in person, over the telephone or otherwise the first utterances of human communication with one another! Nor had she ever received the first letter from me, threatening or otherwise.
Chan had however just received from me via first class mail a simple flat parcel containing nothing but a copy of a memo attached to a combined two-part, six-page report composed by me referencing what I've termed Shyster Dentistry Practices in the San Francisco East Bay Area. The memo and its accompanying report were addressed not to Chan but to both the Delta Dental of California insurance company and the state Dental Board of California, for their information, for strictly regulatory purposes. As the memo itself clearly indicates, the report mentions multiple dental offices and strictly as a COURTESY copies of the report were posted to all those dental offices named. In effect, then, this document is a quite legitimate piece of purely business correspondence posted to multiple business offices. Chan freaked out, apparently, as her office was one of those ever so briefly and exactly mentioned thusin its entirety:
Then I referred myself due to close proximity to one S. Chan, whose snooty-fruity Latina receptionist only grudgingly made me an endodontist appointment after confirming that my dental plan insurance coverage allowed for not just one but two specialist consultations per year the first having just been royally wasted with Dr. Bruns. When I promptly arrived right on that time for that particular appointment I found the solid, unwelcoming wooden door to Chan's office soundly locked! I knocked lightly and, receiving no response, commenced walking away when the snooty-fruity Latina receptionist, having leisurely sauntered out from behind her desk, belatedly opened up the office door.
Conspicuously expecting to see a more elderly and perhaps even decrepit patient, Chan's snooty-fruity Latina receptionist stood aghast, looking down her nose at me from head to toe since I look roughly ten years younger than my actual chronological age from being an exceptionally fit and healthy practitioner of classic physical culture. Do you have an appointment? she haughtily asked. Once I confirmed my name she led the way into the waiting room, sauntered leisurely back behind her desk and handed me a clipboard with forms to fill out. There's three pages, she took profound pains to point out.
Another patient directly departed from the office and the snooty-fruity Latina receptionist herself presently disappeared to someplace in the rear to audibly chit-chat with Chan, who'd poked her head out to take a quick peek at me filling out the forms the third page of which contained obnoxious clauses as avaricious as anything her fellow endodontist, F. Bashiri, could've ever conceived: outrageous charges for cancelled or missed appointments and upwards of $1500 in estimated fees for a single root canal for which Dr. M. Min had charged a mere $870 less than a decade earlier. Miffed that I'd already wasted an inordinate amount of time filling out the first two pages of forms before getting to the third most obnoxious page and since Chan's absent snooty-fruity Latina receptionist acted altogether indifferent to my presence in that office I just got to my feet and promptly left.
Now the sole phrase out of these three compact paragraphs that Creek cop Thompson could specifically quote as even remotely threatening was my rather unflattering depiction of Chans receptionist as snooty-fruity. Well, that's a descriptive adjective, not a threat, and I'll repeat it here once more with emphasis SNOOTY-FRUITY as that's precisely how she conducted herself. So charge me with assault-to-commit-intentional-bodily-harm-with-a-deadly-descriptive-adjective!
That single, solitary legitimate visit to Chan's office took place last August at which time I never even met much less communicated with Chanverbally or in writing by letter or telephone before or since! Here my ominous memo copy arrives in mid-October.
Obviously Chan was miffed my report named her office and figured she'd indulge in a splashy display of retaliatory harassment by making a patently bogus complaint to the cops about me, and I told Thompson as much. Now it never ceases to amuse me when ever-defensive, ever-in denial cops lamely attempt to get pseudo-intellectual latent pseudo-intellectuals as most invariably are but Thompson then launched into this powerfully ludicrous and laughable lecture about how people's perceptions of what's threatening or harassment could so vastly differ.
Right! Now I'm prepared to submit the above aforementioned paragraphs concerning Chan's office to any court, any mass media outlet or for that matter any conceivable public forum whatever, and daresay challenge any rational and reasonably sane person of even exceptionally inferior intelligence to adjudge the first phrase contained therein as threatening.
Well, as I told Thompson, I've got news: whilst I have absolutely no desire whatever to disrespect self-flattering Chan's preference to have no form of contact with me the feeling's mutual though there was never any threat of that to start with, trust me! I reserve the right to post any private business correspondence whenever I want to whomever I want. So long as it's not inappropriate or illegal, Thompson cautioned me further. Who then decides that him? Well, I've got even more news: I'm promptly posting a follow-up report now to the Dental Board of California recounting exclusively Chan's lame attempt to exploit the local cops to harass me in response to the previous report posted only this time, per her demand, I won't post any courtesy copy to her.
Clearly then Chan filed a patently false police report. And in Great Britain if we're to believe certain Britcoms shown on PBS she'd be rightly charged and arrested for the offense of wasting police time. Why else couldn't she relay her own admonishments and warnings then rather than exploiting the cops to run her errands for her? And hadn't Thompson better things to do or just too much time on his hands? Swamped with weeks old cases, he admitted.
So, I questioned Thompson outright, is it the function of police to be the runners of complaining citizens? That's your interpretation, he answered evasively, attempting lamely to be pseudo-intellectual again. It was a clear-cut question, not an interpretation. So taken aback about the entire matter I couldn't help but ask him outright: why the heck was he calling me in the first place? To relay the message for Chan he kept on repeating ridiculously. At his behest, not hers, I'd wager.
We're a public service-oriented department, Thompson finally confided upon being pressed, boasting about all this much time he was granting me so generously in response to my questions, claiming he'd called me because the powers-that-be issuing his paycheck expected him to otherwise had it been up to him he would've done nothing. As well he should've done just that, most absolutely: nothing!
No crime was committed here. No probable cause even to suspect any crime committed existed here. Not even any rational perception of any crime committed conceivably existed here. Yet Thompson saw fit to contact me in his officious capacity as a Creek cop to relay the message of Chan's direct threat of arrest for trespassing upon her business property. Watch out, boy, Big Brother's watching you!
Well, quite frankly, my legitimate private business correspondence is none of the Creek's police freakin business. And what with so many progressive police-avoided Bay Area neighborhoods being virtual ultra-violent war zones of rampant crime and mayhem due primarily to criminally negligent deterrent police patrol and vigilance this rather warped and unbelievably bizarre police priority, so obsessively preoccupied with my private legitimate business correspondence, rates its own report to the California Attorney General! And so it shall get it.
Joseph Jr
Walnut Creek, California
U.S.A.
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