Dresow Answers Questions About Largely Unreported Portje V. Sausalito Settlement. And In Unveiling A Much-Needed Flood Control Project, Rep. Huffman Says Marin City Qualifies for Reparations.
A big win for Marin City’s most patient organizers. Meanwhile, when an initially much-publicized lawsuit quietly settles, local media skips the story.
Editor’s Note: I held off on publishing this last weekend as I was awaiting responses from attorney Charles Dresow regarding Novato photographer Jeremy Portje’s largely unreported settlement with the City of Sausalito. Dresow graciously responded early this week.
I admit that it has been difficult to view Portje’s case outside of the history of notable incidents of law enforcement abuses in Marin, specifically those targeting Black men from Marin City: Arrest-referred-to-prosecution data covering 1989 through 2020 indicates that Marin City has historically been the most overpoliced community in the County. And yet Marin City residents have long struggled to gain the attention of prominent attorneys and legal rights organizations based in Marin, whether it was for law enforcement abuses, housing protections, or even securing proper lights in the walkway of the underpass tunnel that is the only entry/exit point for Marin City.
It is also difficult to see Portje’s case outside of the context of the County’s secretive Sheriff Civilian Oversight Working Group (SCOWG), on which Portje and his attorney Charles Dresow both served. No Black residents of Marin City were permitted to serve on the SCOWG, and only one Latino resident, a wealthy former Chief of Staff to Gavin Newsom, was permitted entrée to the group, which was composed almost entirely of property owners, most of whom had significant ties to County power.
Which is to say that the county chooses insiders and outsiders, and the vast majority of Marin City has never had insider status conferred on them by the County.
Dresow’s responses to my questions about the case and the settlement are included below.
I. A Hard-Earned Celebration In Marin City
November 7, 2024 saw the historic launch of an Army Corps of Engineers flood control project for the long-cheated, historically Black district of Marin City, now the most racially diverse neighborhood in Marin. Environmental activist and Marin City Community Services District (MCCSD) Board member Terrie Green, with the assistance of former MCCSD President Damian Morgan, had managed the impossible: securing an initial $14 million for flood control for Marin City, an area that has long been ill-treated by the County's powerful Board of Supervisors.
This was a major accomplishment among many others achieved by Green, as Marin City is one of only 12 projects chosen nationally for the funding. Green is the head of Marin City Climate Resilence, and had first applied for the grant back in 2021. Several prominent news organizations were either present at the event, or have subsequently met with Marin City leaders with plans for in-depth reports on the project – and its progress in a County that is at best lukewarm on seeing Marin City receive this sort of direct federal assistance.
It's hard to tell whether this is due to the County's reflexive desire to maintain control, or its longstanding antipathy toward Marin City. Either way, Marin City can't wait another eighty years for flood control.
Discussion of who showed up (and who didn’t) at the Marin City launch revealed something about the power structure in Marin, and led to further discovery.
Marin City's Pro-Democracy Tradition Does Not Fear Protest:
Even Congressman Jared Huffman appeared at the November 7 Marin City launch in person, despite concerns about the possibility of protests over his support for Israel. When I asked Morgan about this, he told me matter-of-factly that the community in Marin City had acknowleged Huffman's concerns about the possibility of protest, "but we still wanted him to show up." In other words, they expected Huffman to be able to handle protest if it arrived, but they trusted that attendees' focus would remain on the much-needed flood project.
This seems to be a pro-democracy theme in Marin City that is not as evident elsewhere in the county: the notion that dissent and close scrutiny does not constitute a lack of respect, but is part of the mix. (Unlike in Fairfax, Sausalito, or at the County's now-shuttered "Human Rights" Commission, no official in Marin City has ever told me to stop filming, or that I couldn't speak, or ask questions.)
Under the bright sun, it struck me how much happens under the radar in Marin City. Two days after the election, most hadn’t expected Congressman Huffman to say that Marin City qualified for reparations, but there it was:
(There is more, better-quality video of the event that I hope to upload later this week, including statements from Terrie Green and Royce McLemore.)
Separately, I hadn't expected a casual review of the no-shows would lead to finding the one article that reported Jeremy Portje's settlement this past summer with the City of Sausalito over his $21 million lawsuit for civil rights violations.
The No-Shows:
Most of the people favored by the County for various boards and commissions, as well as the County's equity director Jamillah Jordan, were no-shows at the historic Marin City event.
Mill Valley's Dr. Curtis Robinson, who serves on the not-terribly-transparent board of the Marin County Office of Education (MCOE), and who has often been praised for advances at the Marin City Health and Wellness Center that were initiated by Terrie Green, did not attend, either. (I recorded the entirety of the MCOE’s most recent board meeting with a GoPro, and was told it was the first time there had been any recording. More on that meeting and the critical issues on the agenda in an upcoming article.)
Marin County Cooperation Team's Jahmeer Reynolds, whose nonprofit has recently received monies that would normally go to Marin City groups, was also a no-show.
Also notably absent were the most prominent members of the supposedly "equity"-focused AB 1185 "Sheriff Civilian Oversight Working Group" (SCOWG), a group which had willfully excluded any Black residents of Marin City, but which included multiple middle-class Black residents of Novato, many with funding and employment ties to the County.
This exclusion of Black Marin City residents from the SCOWG occurred despite at least one prominent Black Marin City applicant who managed to find out about the selectively announced application process, and applied on time only to be rejected with no explanation.
Why SCOWG's No-Show Mattered And The Discussion That Followed
The SCOWG members' overall "no-show" at the Marin City event was noteworthy for two reasons:
1) SCOWG members and its principals on the now-shuttered Human Rights Commission consistently refused to acknowledge or include the 32 years of arrest demographics that indicate Marin City has been the most impacted by racial targeting in the County; and
2) SCOWG members have again, predictably, sided with the County as recently as October 29, 2024, in an even more watered-down of the already weak oversight package they helped engineer.
Chief among the supporters at the October 29, 2024 Sheriff Oversight meeting were SCOWG's Heidi Merchen, who has still not disclosed her past as a Marin County and Sonoma County Sheriff Deputy, or her marriage to Mike Merchen, who is now the Assistant Sheriff of Sonoma County. (SCOWG member Stephen Bingham has repeatedly refused even to acknowledge the relevance of this obvious conflict of interest, or any of the other significant conflicts of interest on the SCOWG.)
Another prominent supporter of the weakened package was SCOWG's Jeremy Portje, one of multiple Black Novato residents selected for the SCOWG, which barred Black Marin City residents. Portje formerly chaired the County's historically dysfunctional Human Rights Commission, and was so fierce a defender of ex-Sheriff Deputy Heidi Merchen that he once pushed me into a doorframe to successfully block me from asking Merchen any questions about her lack of disclosure about her law enforcement background.
II. The Lawsuit
Portje's much-publicized $21 million lawsuit in 2022 against the City of Sausalito for civil rights violations claimed that he had been a photojournalist in Marin County for 25 years when he was wrongly abused and arrested by Sausalito Police. But among many questions that local media declined to ask was whether Portje was the only victim of the incident in Sausalito from which the $21 million lawsuit originated.
Secondary victims might include the vulnerable subjects whose identities and private details were compromised because of the data that Portje (whose warm relationships with other law enforcement officers and with law enforcement boosters in Marin went unreported) effectively transferred to the Sausalito Police and then to the County's District Attorney, Lori Frugoli, after his equipment and data storage cards were seized by police.
If you as a reporter or as an activist were one of the many who had been actively courted by Jeremy Portje to upload your recorded video and documents to his dropbox for reasons that made absolutely zero sense, or if you watched as Portje angrily shut down criticism of his relationships with law enforcement during HRC meetings, or if you were troubled by the media focus shifting from the larger needs of the anchorouts whose plight Portje was supposedly covering, you might start to view the suit and its settlement in another way:
You might reasonably question whether Portje, intentionally or otherwise, had not been more effective as an informant than he had ever been as a photojournalist. Even the absurd amount of the damages in the suit – $21 million – seemed designed to discredit reporters, activists, and victims as predatory and/or opportunistic.
And on the most immediate level, the lawsuit forced the City of Sausalito to transfer its attention from the issue Portje claimed to be covering – the needs of unhoused anchorouts who had been dumped onto its shores by BCDC's enforcement – to fighting a highly publicized $21 million lawsuit backed by one of the most powerful and best-connected attorneys in the county, Charles Dresow.
I asked Dresow about the consideration of secondary victims, and he replied that he had not analyzed the possibility.
Why $21 Million in Damages?
Prior lawsuits for actual shootings of Black men by law enforcement in Marin County appear to have claimed far lower damages than $21 million (even adjusted for inflation), but in those cases the victims were not from Novato, but from Marin City:
Chaka Grayson, shot at 16 times by a Marin County Sheriff Deputy in Marin City in 2013, with three bullets entering his body, filed for less than half of the damages claimed by Portje, and won a settlement that would cover barely more than his medical costs. Travis White, who at 19 had a police dog sicc'd on him and was then shot in the leg by Sausalito Police for the alleged theft of a fifty-cent Nestle Crunch bar, also sued for far less.
That same Travis White, who had in 2021 been remanded to the police-run homeless camp under the freeway in San Rafael after a dispute with the County Supervisor-directed Marin Housing Authority, passed away 15 days ago, as announced by his survivors and confirmed by the County Coroner's office.
(Below is an excerpt of a document submitted to court in defense of Travis White by his unhoused friends, after he was wrongly arrested for defending himself and others. I attended two of Travis White’s hearings in that case, and was surprised that even the police officer called to testify against Travis spoke favorably of Travis’ concern for others in the camp.)
Neither Grayson nor White were represented by attorneys in Marin County in their civil cases stemming from the shootings, but had to go beyond the County’s borders for representation.
III. The Settlement: Only US Press Freedom Tracker Reported The Settlement; City Attorney Discloses CPRA was filed by Adam Rose
It was in a later discussion of Portje's absence at the November 7 Marin City event that the subject of his lawsuit against the City of Sausalito came up. Someone suggested it had settled. A quick search turned up nothing in local media about any settlement, but a brief mention in something called US Press Freedom Tracker (PFT) which reported that the suit had been settled last summer for $395,000; plus litigation costs of $10,445. In total, approximately 1.9% of the $21 million in damages initially claimed.
When I contacted Sophie Hagen at US Press Freedom Tracker, she told me that she obtained the copy of the settlement through another journalist who ran a CPRA, but she did not name the journalist. (Subsequently, Sausalito City Attorney Sergio Rudin informed me that it was Adam Rose of the Los Angeles Press Club who ran the CPRA.)
PFT had also reported nominally on Portje's lawsuit, largely through the lens of Portje and his legal team, but omitting consideration of harm done to those whose identities/privacy were likely compromised by the hundreds of gigabytes of data that police seized from Portje during his arrest.
Nikki Silverstein, a confidante within Jeremy Portje’s circle, had written a series of articles on Portje's arrest and lawsuit for the Pacific Sun at approximately the same time a sizable Twitter/X account helped video of the incident go viral. But neither Silverstein nor anyone at the Marin Independent-Journal ever considered the secondary victims, or reported on the settlement, which appears to have been signed this past May/early June.
Why Didn't The Pacific Sun Report On The Settlement?
Had Portje failed to disclose the settlement to Silverstein? Or had she known and chosen not to report on it? Either scenario would be unfortunate given that the terms of the settlement extend beyond Jeremy Portje, binding Sausalito to what appears to be a performative "education program" modeled on an agreement Mill Valley Police has with "MV Free", a group to which Portje reportedly now belongs.
The education program is designed to discourage residents of Mill Valley not to racially profile. But this is akin to politely “asking” rabbits not to breed. Video evidence of an October 15, 2024 event, at which at least one MV Free member was present, may indicate that the Mill Valley program is not terribly effective. And given that the demographics of Mill Valley residents are not that different from Sausalito, how is this program anything more than window-dressing?
Dresow Responds Re: Lack of Local Reporting on Settlement
In response to a question about the lack of reporting on the settlement, Dresow agreed that it “should have received more publicity as it is an important public issue.” But it is difficult to imagine that a man as powerful and well-connected as Dresow would not be able to summon reporters; prior cases that he has championed have received significant print, online, and television coverage.
Is Sausalito Complying With The Terms of the Settlement?
It is clear from the September 26, 2024 incident in Sausalito that either the City of Sausalito has not held itself to the settlement, or that the "education" program that the City was required to implement is not working. Bodyworn camera shows multiple elderly white residents either demanding the arrest of this biracial reporter for speaking up about Israel’s war on Gaza, and/or congratulating police for having violently and unlawfully ejected me from the event venue.
I asked Dresow about this, and he said he did not know about the September 26 incident with Sausalito Police. I then provided him information about the incident, but he did not respond.
IV. Portje's Claim At The Recent Board of Supervisors Meeting On Sheriff Oversight
In his recent October 29 appearance at the Board of Supervisors, Portje, in supporting the weakened sheriff oversight package, made the extraordinary claim that he felt like the only person "with actual lived/survived experience with police".
And thus it appeared that Portje was fulfilling the role that the County had assigned to him from the beginning: the man whose ties to police are never acknowledged by local media, and who can use his racial identity to promote policies (such as the toothless "sheriff oversight") that are steeply unfavorable to a larger group of Black, Latino, and other vulnerable residents of the County.
MV Free is unwilling to admit it, but even robust civilian oversight programs have proven not only to be ineffective, and in too many cases steeply counterproductive. Sadly, oversight has amounted to window-dressing to distract from the larger problem of overfunding and a lack of prosecution of law enforcement abuses by the District Attorney. Remember the DA? That’s the person with the actual power and responsibility to prosecute law enforcement, the person who possesses the “absolute immunity” to facilitate that.
Further, civilian oversight often delays those abused by law enforcement to seek actual redress through the courts, and it transfers vital information from potential plaintiffs to people in the employ of the County. Not the best idea, it turns out.
Portje's claim that he was "the only person with actual lived/survived experience with police" ignored that the online audience included several prior victims of the police and sheriff, even though the meeting itself had not been properly noticed to the Canal District or to Marin City.
And it reminded those who were paying attention that, in his own capacity as head of the survey process for SCOWG, Portje had tanked the process because he had been incapable or unwilling to reach out to Black and Latino communities in Marin City and in the Canal. (In fairness to Portje, if the County had desired input from those vulnerable communities, they would have selected residents of those communities for the working group; Portje was merely fulfilling the task he was assigned.)
V. The County's Game, and Huffman’s Statement About Reparations
I can't help but think that on issues like this, there's still an iron curtain separating those people with the power to effect change (the powerful Charles Dresow being an obvious example) from the dwindling but still vital Black population in Marin City. Because if you want any small part of the power conferred by the County, you have to play the County's game.
And the County's game has always been enforcing policies that have effectively constituted a slow but certain ethnic cleansing of the majority Black population from Marin City, land that is ripe for development.
Marin City is distinct in the County not only for its historic Marinship roots, but for its dissident roots, whether you start counting that from pastors and labor organizers in Marin City who opposed the loyalty oath in the 1950s, or Black Panthers' involvement a decade later. It is a group that bore witness to the County's decision to burn its hundreds of cottages from 1960-1962, an act of severe displacement that today's Board of Supervisors have yet to acknowledge. It is without question the part of the County that suffered most during the nation’s so-called “War on Drugs”, a massive, deadly, extended violation of an entire community’s civil rights that is still not acknowledged by the County.
Marin City is a group with memory, but not the kind the County wishes to have enshrined anywhere. Which is why we shouldn’t forget that if Huffman achieved one thing by not falling into the “no-show” category on November 7, it was stating publicly that Marin City is due reparations.
What would reparations be based on? I have long argued that a little-acknowledged November 10, 1958 letter sent by one Bruce Risley of House 593 in Marin City not only makes the case for reparations, but lays out the potential scope of a land claim for the Black descendants of Marin City. I have been working on that story that for several years now, and hope to produce an article by year’s end.
Meanwhile, much more is going on in the County, including video of recent MCOE meetings and new lawsuits filed just south of us. I should be able to catch up on posting that over the upcoming break. Please note that these “thanksgiving” break articles will not be sent via email, but they will remain free and accessible on the substack as a public service.
Thanks as always to readers for your insights about local issues.
©️2024 Eva Chrysanthe