CASSOPOLIS - Woodlands Behavioral Healthcare Network serves as a "safety net" for Cass County citizens. Seventy percent of its consumers are unemployed or employed part-time. Males outnumber females 2:1. Consumers' median income is $16,000. Their median age is 33, Steve Lehman reported to the Board of Commissioners Thursday night. Lehman, who has been addiction services supervisor for 24 years during a 37-year career which also includes Kalamazoo and St. Joseph counties, told Commissioner Ron Francis, R-Cassopolis, he believes Michigan voters made a "big mistake" in approving medical marijuana Nov. 4. [continues 484 words]
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is up in heaven now. That's his favorite joke, he wrote in "A Man Without a Country." He also wrote, "If I should die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: 'The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.' " Thanks to Vonnegut, who died April 11 at 84, every Dogwood Fine Arts Festival since the first one in 1993 has been anti-climactic. That's because the first visiting author happened to be my literary John Lennon. [continues 1173 words]
Mattawan native Dean Kuipers June 13 published "Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke." His book attempts to tell the stories of marijuana activists Tom Crosslin and Rolland Rohm, shot and killed by the FBI and state police during a standoff at their 34-acre Newberg Township campground on Labor Day weekend 2001. [end]
CASSOPOLIS - Alcohol and marijuana continue to rank first and second among drugs Cass County residents abuse, with methamphetamine and cocaine third and fourth. That's what Jennifer Lester of Woodlands Addiction Center, county Meth Task Force coordinator, reported Thursday afternoon to the Board of Commissioners. Asked by Commissioner David Taylor, D-Edwardsburg, to estimate how many individuals in the county might be addicted to meth, Lester and her colleague Steve Lehman said it's difficult. The main figure they have to go by is a "lagging indicator" - those who have reached an addiction level where they are willing to receive treatment. [continues 531 words]
Cass County's Meth Task Force is in the midst of distributing a quantity of public education materials. The rollout continues through September. Meth Watch materials aim at educating retailers, who received training in June. During road patrols, the Sheriff's Office is distributing Meth Watch retailer packets containing customer information sheets, door signs, shelf signs and an employee poster altering workers to "pre-cursor" material methamphetamine "cooks" might buy, such as cold pills containing ephedrine or pseudophedrine, acetone, rubbing and isopropyl alcohol, starter fluid (ether), gasoline additives (methanol), drain cleaner (sulfuric acid), lithium batteries, rock salt, matchbooks (red phosphorous), lye, paint thinner, aluminum foil, glassware, coffee filters and propane tanks. [continues 875 words]
On Labor Day weekend 2001, a week before it would be obscured by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an American civil liberties battle brewed in a small, blue-collar town in his native southwest Michigan unbeknownst to Dean Kuipers. Kuipers grew up in Mattawan and remembers football scrimmages in Dowagiac. From Kalamazoo College, he went straight to New York and music journalism. Despite living in California, Kuipers subscribed to the Sunday Kalamazoo Gazette to keep connected with home. And when he opened his newspaper and began reading the Rainbow Farm account, he was "shocked. I kept scratching my head," although he found the two central figures "fascinating. I wanted to go back and look at who those guys were," so he did. For four years. [continues 1452 words]
NILES - On Labor Day weekend 2001, a week before it would be obscured by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an American civil liberties battle brewed in a small, blue-collar town in his native southwest Michigan unbeknownst to Dean Kuipers. Kuipers grew up in Mattawan and remembers football scrimmages in Dowagiac. From Kalamazoo College, he went straight to New York and music journalism. Despite living in California, Kuipers subscribed to the Sunday Kalamazoo Gazette to keep connected with home. And when he opened his newspaper and began reading the Rainbow Farm account, he was "shocked. I kept scratching my head," although he found the two central figures "fascinating. I wanted to go back and look at who those guys were," so he did - for four years. [continues 1451 words]
CASSOPOLIS - "Choosing Our Battle Plan Wisely" was the bottom line in a wide-ranging discussion Wednesday that ultimately focused on prevention and treatment because there's only so much space in the jails, and Cass County's is full. By focusing on remedying the problem, citizens hope to halt the problem instead of pushing it around the map. Methamphetamine already affects the larger community in a variety of ways, from putting children at risk to environmental damage and more crime. Each pound of meth produced generates five to six pounds of hazardous waste, posing immediate and long-term environmental health risks. [continues 1817 words]
Prosecutor Victor Fitz, Sheriff Joseph Underwood and Dowagiac Police Chief Tom Atkinson presented a unified front Tuesday in pressing for passage of a half-mill of property tax to combat Cass County's worsening drug problem. The four-year request approved by the county Board of Commissioners for the Aug. 3 primary ballot would generate $615,500 annually to support a team of five detectives, an assistant prosecutor and a clerical position, a capacity crowd heard July 20 at Community Policing's and Neighborhood Watch's forum organized by Ed and Jackie Goodman at Silver Creek Township Hall. [continues 1014 words]
CASSOPOLIS -- A downpour didn't deter friends of Rainbow Farm from gathering outside the old Cass County courthouse at 5:30 p. m. Monday on the second anniversary of the Labor Day weekend 2001 deaths of Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm. "A couple of people laughed, but there's been a positive reaction from most people," said a young man who identified himself only as Jacob and said he came from Mesick. "People around here just seem really scared," he said. "There aren't a lot of people standing out here from this area. A lot of these people are from other areas of Michigan." [continues 1172 words]
VANDALIA - Cass County Sheriff Joseph M. Underwood Jr. wasn't much of a tour guide for media escorted three miles Sept. 5 from the command post and staging area on Black Street to the blackened remains of Rainbow Farm. He admitted he'd never been to his county's most notorious campground before this late-summer day - gorgeous except for a charred smell lingering in the air and bits of ash fluttering on the breeze. "I've seen a couple of pictures of the front of the store," known as The Joint, "but I've tried to stay out of those investigations except to read some paperwork. [continues 1435 words]
VANDALIA - "We have found nothing at this point" to suggest Rainbow Farm campground had been salted with booby traps, Michigan State Police Capt. Richard Dragomer said Wednesday afternoon. Dragomer, former commander of the Niles state police post who is now the Paw Paw-based Fifth District leader, joined FBI Special Agent in Charge John E. Bell Jr. and Cass County Sheriff Joseph M. Underwood Jr. in leading a camera convoy to ground zero of the five-day standoff which ended Tuesday with two men dead. [continues 419 words]
VANDALIA - Cass County Sheriff Joseph M. Underwood Jr. wasn't much of a tour guide for media escorted three miles Sept. 5 from the command post and staging area on Black Street to the blackened remains of Rainbow Farm. He admitted he'd never been to his county's most notorious campground before this late-summer day - gorgeous except for a charred smell lingering in the air and bits of ash fluttering on the breeze. "I've seen a couple of pictures of the front of the store," known as The Joint, "but I've tried to stay out of those investigations except to read some paperwork. [continues 1434 words]
VANDALIA - There's nothing left at the end of the Rainbow but a chicken coop. All 10 Rainbow Farm buildings burned to the ground during the five-day standoff at the 34-acre Newberg Township campground. "I want to emphasize," said John E. Bell Jr., special agent in charge of the Detroit office, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), "all 10 of those buildings were burned as a result of actions taken by people there. Law enforcement started none of those fires. The only thing that's left is kind of a ratty old chicken coop. Thank goodness the chickens still have a roof over their heads." [continues 1133 words]
VANDALIA - Grover Thomas Crosslin's four-day showdown with law enforcement ended in his death on Labor Day. Crosslin, 46, who owned Rainbow Farm campground in Newberg Township, was shot and killed by an FBI agent Monday. In a joint statement issued late Sept. 3, FBI Special Agent in Charge John E. Bell Jr., Cass County Sheriff Joseph M. Underwood Jr. and Michigan State Police Capt. Richard Dragomer said efforts to negotiate with Crosslin began at 4:53 p.m. "with the introduction of a phone to him." [continues 1055 words]
VANDALIA - Grover Thomas Crosslin's four-day showdown with law enforcement ended in his death on Labor Day. Crosslin, 46, who owned Rainbow Farm campground in Newberg Township, was shot and killed by an FBI agent Monday. In a joint statement issued late Sept. 3, FBI Special Agent in Charge John E. Bell Jr., Cass County Sheriff Joseph M. Underwood Jr. and Michigan State Police Capt. Richard Dragomer said efforts to negotiate with Crosslin began at 4:53 p.m. "with the introduction of a phone to him." [continues 1056 words]