RESIDENTS, UNABLE TO OPEN WINDOWS IN HEAT WAVE, HELD PRISONER BY A W.I. SIMONSON MERCEDES USED CAR LOT
A SANTA MONICA NEIGHBORHOOD FILES CHARGES AGAINST FORD AND MERCEDES DEALERSHIPS FOR ‘BLATANT, WILLFUL, WANTON AND SADISTIC’ NOISE AND LIGHT POLLUTION
MORE THAN A DOZEN RESIDENTS FILE FORMAL COMPLAINT WITH CITY ATTORNEY’S OFFICE AFTER YEARS OF INACTION AND ABUSE
LET THEM SLEEP IN THE DAYTIME, SAYS W.I. SIMONSON GENERAL MANAGER KAREN KATZ. ‘WE NEED OUR BRIGHT LIGHTS TO PROTECT THE TIRES ON OUR USED MERCEDES CARS.” HUMAN RIGHTS ARE SECONDARY.
BILLION DOLLAR AUTO DEALERS FIRST IN USA TO BE CHARGED WITH SADISTIC, BLATANT, WANTON, CRIMINAL ABUSE UNDER GENEVA CONVENTION
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SANTA MONICA CALIFORNIA
Monday, May 3, 20004
williamrichert.com
1223 Broadway Suite 101
Tel 394.4641
A group of residents on Euclid Street in Santa Monica have filed a formal complaint and petition to the City Attorney’s Office against Santa Monica Ford and W.I. Simonson Mercedes Benz for gross negligence and willful sleep deprivation, a criminal torture.
“We are demanding the same lawful rights granted to enemy combatants by the Geneva Convention,” says William Richert, one of the spokesmen for the angry group of neighbors along Euclid Street. “Somehow these car dealers feel that the City has given them immunity from prosecution for wrongdoing.
“More than a dozen of us have signed the demand. For years we have complained about loud deliveries by 18 wheeler trucks at 3 or 4 in the morning, slamming air brakes, belching diesel fumes, gunning loud engines, shaking the walls and windows of our apartments as drivers with raucous fork lift make deliveries to the Ford dealership while seniors and working folk try not to awaken from sleep. Again and again we wake up. I have gone twice in my robe, at 5AM, barefoot, to confront a driver twelve feet tall in his truck. Nothing has helped.
“Adding to the injury, on the opposite corner, right next to our bedroom windows, W.I. Simonson uses vapor lights that are bright as sunlight at 2AM to advertise their used Mercedes cars.
“We can’t open our curtains, even when the temperature hits 80 degrees. This is prison in paradise. On top of that, five nights a week we are startled from sleep by loud banging trucks which unload crates of auto parts on our small street at night, saving their corporations the extra cost of deliveries during normal business hours.”
When told that waking sleeping humans during the night was a form of torture, the W.I. Simonson General Manager Karen Katz asserted that the trillion watt lights helped prevent tires at the used car lot from being stolen, even though thousands of similar expensive cars are parked in the dark North of Montana Boulevard, where W.I. Simonson lights are forbidden.
“I pointed out to Ms. Katz that W.I. Simonson owners Judy Richards and Francie Rehwald often took part in community service, and didn’t seem like people who would want their neighbors to be kept awake at night by blinding lights shining in their windows. I also said that every night thousands of Mercedes Benz cars were parked on dark streets all over Santa Monica, and that Ms. Katz’ blinding lights had been in existence as long as the Mercedes car lot, and tires were still stolen, so her argument had no force. But her only response was that she would have her engineers “look into it.”
Meanwhile the lights stay on at W.I. Simonson, while apartment dwellers swelter as virtual prisoners in a city by the sea.
Santa Monica Ford Operations Chief John Anderson denied that the criminally-loud trucks belonged to Ford at all, when he was first shown the photos of the trucks being uloaded at 4:15 AM.
The following day Mr. Anderson admitted the trucks were controlled by Ford Motor dispatchers located in a distant city. He said that the trucks would stop as soon as they could be rerouted to other parts of the Santa Monica. But constant nighttime barrage and disruption continues unchecked.
“It is hardly satisfactory to know that the same Ford delivery trucks which presently torture us may soon be rerouted to other Santa Monica streets so others will suffer,” says William Richert. “These people operate with complete impunity from the community they offend. Why should they care? Mr. Anderson says he lives in Alhambra.”
Mr. Richert, who has produced investigative documentaries that have been shown on “60 Minutes” and in theaters, says that the City of Santa Monica itself is to blame.
“Santa Monica City Executives promote fear among the population that the City will somehow lose essential services if the sleazy car dealers are not given whatever they like. Telling the city it has no value unless it sells its ethical structure in a “balance” with known polluters, like oil drains and auto exhaust and light blight, is a stratagem used by pimps with hookers. In fact, the opposite is true.
“Used car lots make up the largest portion of Santa Monica’s tax base because they occupy the most acres of precious city land, with dozens of dealers controlling an average of ONE AND ONE HALF ACRES of land when a tiny apartment, the size of double SUVs, can fetch half a million dollars. The land blighted with dealerships may be far more valuable to moral owners who do not create long-term pollution from gas spills and diesel fumes.
“When the Mayor and Council brag about the huge tax revenues from the car dealers, they ignore the real promise of a different, highly educated affluent population base, along with the beautification that might exist on those oily acres if the sleazy car dealers were to get booted out, as they deserve.
“Santa Monica is one of the most desirable spots in the whole USA. But our city leaders and planners, one hundred of whom just ate filet mignon at a fratenizing“gala” served up by Ford Dealer Ron Davis, are now meeting in secret “planning” sessions to decide the fate of our city’s night breeze, our night sky, and our night’s peace.
“There is no longer a nighttime sky along Santa Monica Boulevard. It has been obliterated by Ford and Mercedes, lifeless autos which do not require sleep for health or well-being. What is the payback for taking our sky? Our peace of mind?
“The capitulation to corporate interests vs human rights in our city is a sellout for cash, even if it’s called a ‘tax.’
“Does the mayor and city council really doubt that the true wealth of Santa Monica lies in its atmosphere, and the peace and security of its people, those very attributes the used car dealers are debasing and mocking before our eyes?
“There is no real ‘balance’ -- a city planner’s word -- between the loss of health and peace of mind of citizens on the one hand, and large tax revenues on the other. It is an out-and-out loss for any community when its citizens are harmed by anyone, especially aggressive truck drivers and mocking used car salesmen. What good is a tax-rich locale if even a single one of its residents is subject to harmful and sadistic practices by auto salespeople living elsewhere?
“The threats from car dealers, printed in the local Daily News, show just how blatant the dealers can be. ‘Until we get parking, we are not going to be good neighbors,’ asserted Mike Sullivan, who owns three dealerships. He openly states that until the city gives him what he wants, he is a bad neighbor. He is more. In this astonishing admission, he shows he is a bully. His statements are not a veiled threat, but an active assault. Saying that “We are not going to be good neighbors” ought to get this man removed to the outside of city limits, as a possible menace to society. By trying to placate him and others like him, the city is toady to voracious and sleazy greed.
“Why the city fathers quake before out-and-out threats from used car dealers can only be explained by cronyism, or, more reprehensible, fear.
“The mayor should trust in the true, underlying wealth of the city.
“It is obvious that we legal residents don’t need their literally stinking car lots to survive and thrive in Santa Monica. We compete with nobody for the best climate in America. The 3.8 million tourists and our 86,000 residents did not come here just to buy a new 500 SL. Until they change their attitude, we ought to remove self-proclaimed bad neighbors from our beautiful landscape, along with the flagrant pollution of their cars. Until then, every single resident should get a cut of their billion-dollar action, as in the Permanent Fund of Alaska.
“Who are these billion-dollar-yearly auto dealers fooling when they threaten to go to Culver City and leave their profits behind. If they are fooling City Hall, I would be much surprised. Based on public comments, I bet that city hall is more scared than fooled, which is worse. One thing is for sure: these used care salesmen sure aren’t fooling me and the people who live on my street, and a lot of other streets just like mine, streets where voters live. Voters With Internet Access.
“By keeping us awake at all hours, these local bullies give us working folk extra time to investigate just why our city is so scared of them, and to gather additional evidence. Needless to say, I would rather be sleeping.
“When I delivered one of our written and videotaped protests to the manager of the W.I. Simonson car lot, telling him that we were all being denied the basic human right to open our curtains at night because of the lights in his car lot, he laughed at me and said ‘Life is hard for everyone.’
“It is imperative that we the people of Santa Monica stand up and defend our civil rights, take back our rightful night, breeze, peace, quiet.”
The struggle of more than a dozen of Euclid Street neighbors is currently being recorded at the author’s web site www.williamrichert.com. A videotaped documentary-in-progress is now on the site, and will be updated regularly. All responses from all parties will be published in full as space allows.
QUOTED FROM THE BBC: Psychosis
Going without sleep is intensely stressful, with unpredictable short and long-term effects. People lose the ability to act and think coherently. And as it leaves no physical mark on the victim, the interrogator can claim that they never laid a finger on those in their charge.
The above was written by John Schlapobersky, consultant psychotherapist to the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture, was himself tortured through sleep deprivation, in his case in apartheid South Africa in the 1960s.
Following is the substance of the complaint filed at Office of the Santa Monica City Attorney:
Almost six nights a week gigantic trucks deliver industrial goods to Santa Monica Ford on our residential street directly in front of apartments full of sleeping people between the hours of 3 and 5 AM . Night after night neighbors wake up and complain bitterly to Ford 18 wheeler truck drivers using banging fork lifts. Calls are made to police but nothing changes. Many of us are deprived of sleep for nights on end, causing medical health problems. These abuses are compounded by the Mercedes used car lot opposite the Ford Dealer, where W.I.Simonson has removed the dimmers on its lot so blinding lights shine directly into apartment windows only yards away. Thus to sleep at night the windows must be blocked by shades or curtains, depriving us of our right to ocean breezes, views of the night sky, and the right to rest. We are further victims of closed windows as we suffer from lack of circulation in sweltering summer heat.
The acknowledged abuses by car dealers Santa Monica Ford and W.I. Simonson constitute an ongoing public nuisance with criminal abuse under international law. We have told both John Anderson at Ford and Karen Katz at W.I. Simonson that they are depriving us of sleep as sleep deprivation is described in the Geneva Convention. We have declared that we are literally being tortured by having to close and shutter our windows against blinding lights even as the banging of the Ford trucks makes sleep impossible. The attitude of these corporations is “sue us.” They know how long the civil legal system takes, and thus we experience ongoing sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses against our person and our peace of mind. We pray that our city attorney can help us immediately. One more night like this is intolerable.
*
*
RESIDENTS, UNABLE TO OPEN WINDOWS IN HEAT WAVE, HELD PRISONER BY A W.I. SIMONSON MERCEDES USED CAR LOT
A SANTA MONICA NEIGHBORHOOD FILES CHARGES AGAINST FORD AND MERCEDES DEALERSHIPS FOR ‘BLATANT, WILLFUL, WANTON AND SADISTIC’ NOISE AND LIGHT POLLUTION
MORE THAN A DOZEN RESIDENTS FILE FORMAL COMPLAINT WITH CITY ATTORNEY’S OFFICE AFTER YEARS OF INACTION AND ABUSE
LET THEM SLEEP IN THE DAYTIME, SAYS W.I. SIMONSON GENERAL MANAGER KAREN KATZ. ‘WE NEED OUR BRIGHT LIGHTS TO PROTECT THE TIRES ON OUR USED MERCEDES CARS.” HUMAN RIGHTS ARE SECONDARY.
BILLION DOLLAR AUTO DEALERS FIRST IN USA TO BE CHARGED WITH SADISTIC, BLATANT, WANTON, CRIMINAL ABUSE UNDER GENEVA CONVENTION
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SANTA MONICA CALIFORNIA
Monday, May 3, 20004
williamrichert.com
1223 Broadway Suite 101
Tel 394.4641
A group of residents on Euclid Street in Santa Monica have filed a formal complaint and petition to the City Attorney’s Office against Santa Monica Ford and W.I. Simonson Mercedes Benz for gross negligence and willful sleep deprivation, a criminal torture.
“We are demanding the same lawful rights granted to enemy combatants by the Geneva Convention,” says William Richert, one of the spokesmen for the angry group of neighbors along Euclid Street. “Somehow these car dealers feel that the City has given them immunity from prosecution for wrongdoing.
“More than a dozen of us have signed the demand. For years we have complained about loud deliveries by 18 wheeler trucks at 3 or 4 in the morning, slamming air brakes, belching diesel fumes, gunning loud engines, shaking the walls and windows of our apartments as drivers with raucous fork lift make deliveries to the Ford dealership while seniors and working folk try not to awaken from sleep. Again and again we wake up. I have gone twice in my robe, at 5AM, barefoot, to confront a driver twelve feet tall in his truck. Nothing has helped.
“Adding to the injury, on the opposite corner, right next to our bedroom windows, W.I. Simonson uses vapor lights that are bright as sunlight at 2AM to advertise their used Mercedes cars.
“We can’t open our curtains, even when the temperature hits 80 degrees. This is prison in paradise. On top of that, five nights a week we are startled from sleep by loud banging trucks which unload crates of auto parts on our small street at night, saving their corporations the extra cost of deliveries during normal business hours.”
When told that waking sleeping humans during the night was a form of torture, the W.I. Simonson General Manager Karen Katz asserted that the trillion watt lights helped prevent tires at the used car lot from being stolen, even though thousands of similar expensive cars are parked in the dark North of Montana Boulevard, where W.I. Simonson lights are forbidden.
“I pointed out to Ms. Katz that W.I. Simonson owners Judy Richards and Francie Rehwald often took part in community service, and didn’t seem like people who would want their neighbors to be kept awake at night by blinding lights shining in their windows. I also said that every night thousands of Mercedes Benz cars were parked on dark streets all over Santa Monica, and that Ms. Katz’ blinding lights had been in existence as long as the Mercedes car lot, and tires were still stolen, so her argument had no force. But her only response was that she would have her engineers “look into it.”
Meanwhile the lights stay on at W.I. Simonson, while apartment dwellers swelter as virtual prisoners in a city by the sea.
Santa Monica Ford Operations Chief John Anderson denied that the criminally-loud trucks belonged to Ford at all, when he was first shown the photos of the trucks being uloaded at 4:15 AM.
The following day Mr. Anderson admitted the trucks were controlled by Ford Motor dispatchers located in a distant city. He said that the trucks would stop as soon as they could be rerouted to other parts of the Santa Monica. But constant nighttime barrage and disruption continues unchecked.
“It is hardly satisfactory to know that the same Ford delivery trucks which presently torture us may soon be rerouted to other Santa Monica streets so others will suffer,” says William Richert. “These people operate with complete impunity from the community they offend. Why should they care? Mr. Anderson says he lives in Alhambra.”
Mr. Richert, who has produced investigative documentaries that have been shown on “60 Minutes” and in theaters, says that the City of Santa Monica itself is to blame.
“Santa Monica City Executives promote fear among the population that the City will somehow lose essential services if the sleazy car dealers are not given whatever they like. Telling the city it has no value unless it sells its ethical structure in a “balance” with known polluters, like oil drains and auto exhaust and light blight, is a stratagem used by pimps with hookers. In fact, the opposite is true.
“Used car lots make up the largest portion of Santa Monica’s tax base because they occupy the most acres of precious city land, with dozens of dealers controlling an average of ONE AND ONE HALF ACRES of land when a tiny apartment, the size of double SUVs, can fetch half a million dollars. The land blighted with dealerships may be far more valuable to moral owners who do not create long-term pollution from gas spills and diesel fumes.
“When the Mayor and Council brag about the huge tax revenues from the car dealers, they ignore the real promise of a different, highly educated affluent population base, along with the beautification that might exist on those oily acres if the sleazy car dealers were to get booted out, as they deserve.
“Santa Monica is one of the most desirable spots in the whole USA. But our city leaders and planners, one hundred of whom just ate filet mignon at a fratenizing“gala” served up by Ford Dealer Ron Davis, are now meeting in secret “planning” sessions to decide the fate of our city’s night breeze, our night sky, and our night’s peace.
“There is no longer a nighttime sky along Santa Monica Boulevard. It has been obliterated by Ford and Mercedes, lifeless autos which do not require sleep for health or well-being. What is the payback for taking our sky? Our peace of mind?
“The capitulation to corporate interests vs human rights in our city is a sellout for cash, even if it’s called a ‘tax.’
“Does the mayor and city council really doubt that the true wealth of Santa Monica lies in its atmosphere, and the peace and security of its people, those very attributes the used car dealers are debasing and mocking before our eyes?
“There is no real ‘balance’ -- a city planner’s word -- between the loss of health and peace of mind of citizens on the one hand, and large tax revenues on the other. It is an out-and-out loss for any community when its citizens are harmed by anyone, especially aggressive truck drivers and mocking used car salesmen. What good is a tax-rich locale if even a single one of its residents is subject to harmful and sadistic practices by auto salespeople living elsewhere?
“The threats from car dealers, printed in the local Daily News, show just how blatant the dealers can be. ‘Until we get parking, we are not going to be good neighbors,’ asserted Mike Sullivan, who owns three dealerships. He openly states that until the city gives him what he wants, he is a bad neighbor. He is more. In this astonishing admission, he shows he is a bully. His statements are not a veiled threat, but an active assault. Saying that “We are not going to be good neighbors” ought to get this man removed to the outside of city limits, as a possible menace to society. By trying to placate him and others like him, the city is toady to voracious and sleazy greed.
“Why the city fathers quake before out-and-out threats from used car dealers can only be explained by cronyism, or, more reprehensible, fear.
“The mayor should trust in the true, underlying wealth of the city.
“It is obvious that we legal residents don’t need their literally stinking car lots to survive and thrive in Santa Monica. We compete with nobody for the best climate in America. The 3.8 million tourists and our 86,000 residents did not come here just to buy a new 500 SL. Until they change their attitude, we ought to remove self-proclaimed bad neighbors from our beautiful landscape, along with the flagrant pollution of their cars. Until then, every single resident should get a cut of their billion-dollar action, as in the Permanent Fund of Alaska.
“Who are these billion-dollar-yearly auto dealers fooling when they threaten to go to Culver City and leave their profits behind. If they are fooling City Hall, I would be much surprised. Based on public comments, I bet that city hall is more scared than fooled, which is worse. One thing is for sure: these used care salesmen sure aren’t fooling me and the people who live on my street, and a lot of other streets just like mine, streets where voters live. Voters With Internet Access.
“By keeping us awake at all hours, these local bullies give us working folk extra time to investigate just why our city is so scared of them, and to gather additional evidence. Needless to say, I would rather be sleeping.
“When I delivered one of our written and videotaped protests to the manager of the W.I. Simonson car lot, telling him that we were all being denied the basic human right to open our curtains at night because of the lights in his car lot, he laughed at me and said ‘Life is hard for everyone.’
“It is imperative that we the people of Santa Monica stand up and defend our civil rights, take back our rightful night, breeze, peace, quiet.”
The struggle of more than a dozen of Euclid Street neighbors is currently being recorded at the author’s web site www.williamrichert.com. A videotaped documentary-in-progress is now on the site, and will be updated regularly. All responses from all parties will be published in full as space allows.
QUOTED FROM THE BBC: Psychosis
Going without sleep is intensely stressful, with unpredictable short and long-term effects. People lose the ability to act and think coherently. And as it leaves no physical mark on the victim, the interrogator can claim that they never laid a finger on those in their charge.
The above was written by John Schlapobersky, consultant psychotherapist to the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture, was himself tortured through sleep deprivation, in his case in apartheid South Africa in the 1960s.
Following is the substance of the complaint filed at Office of the Santa Monica City Attorney:
Almost six nights a week gigantic trucks deliver industrial goods to Santa Monica Ford on our residential street directly in front of apartments full of sleeping people between the hours of 3 and 5 AM . Night after night neighbors wake up and complain bitterly to Ford 18 wheeler truck drivers using banging fork lifts. Calls are made to police but nothing changes. Many of us are deprived of sleep for nights on end, causing medical health problems. These abuses are compounded by the Mercedes used car lot opposite the Ford Dealer, where W.I.Simonson has removed the dimmers on its lot so blinding lights shine directly into apartment windows only yards away. Thus to sleep at night the windows must be blocked by shades or curtains, depriving us of our right to ocean breezes, views of the night sky, and the right to rest. We are further victims of closed windows as we suffer from lack of circulation in sweltering summer heat.
The acknowledged abuses by car dealers Santa Monica Ford and W.I. Simonson constitute an ongoing public nuisance with criminal abuse under international law. We have told both John Anderson at Ford and Karen Katz at W.I. Simonson that they are depriving us of sleep as sleep deprivation is described in the Geneva Convention. We have declared that we are literally being tortured by having to close and shutter our windows against blinding lights even as the banging of the Ford trucks makes sleep impossible. The attitude of these corporations is “sue us.” They know how long the civil legal system takes, and thus we experience ongoing sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses against our person and our peace of mind. We pray that our city attorney can help us immediately. One more night like this is intolerable.
*
Posted by: William Richert at May 3, 2004 09:04 PM*