Beyond Cuckoo

According to GOOGLE, today would be John Steinbeck’s 112^th birthday. I like to think that the days of harassment, poverty and fear that Steinbeck describes in “The Grapes of Wrath” are history. Yet today I read about King City, in the beautiful Salinas Valley, where the acting police chief and several officers were charged with selling impounded cars of poor Hispanic residents.

Apparently, there have been on-going reports of complaints, mostly from the Hispanic community, that the police were taking their cars and money and there was nothing they could do. This week investigators finally had enough evidence to arrest six people for bribery and criminal threats.

Interviews with the Hispanic community unearthed the high level of mistrust of the local police. Cars were routinely and illegally towed and impounded. When the owners were unable to raise the storage fees, the cars were confiscated and either sold or given away.

The sad part of this story is that this type of treatment of immigrant communities, is not part of California’s sordid past, but continues throughout the state. We want safe, well-integrated and peaceful towns and the fact that authoritarian behavior is tolerated, is Beyond Cuckoo. I think John Steinbeck would agree. Do you?