By Carlos Miller
Jack and Mindy Ross were so fed up with their next-door neighbors’ continuous dirt bike activity that they called code enforcement officials seeking a solution.
But code officials in the California Coachella Valley, a rural desert area east of Los Angeles, mostly met them with indifference, suggesting they begin documenting the dirt bike activity with cameras.
The Rosses main complaint was that the dirt bikes were too loud and caused unhealthy fumes that drifted into their yard. Mindy’s doctor even had to prescribe her medication to help her breathe.
After shooting several photos and videos, the Rosses gathered their evidence and filed a restraining order against their neighbors.
A judge denied that request.
So the dirt biking continued and the Rosses began suspecting that things weren’t kosher within the Joshua Tree Court system, according to the Desert Valley Star.
“It was really odd, as if they had insider connections with the courts and the Sheriffs,” Mindy said, “We’ve had our calls to dispatch cancelled, not by us but by someone high up over there. The dispatcher even told us they don’t have to come out if we call – that someone told them not to go out.”
The Rosses eventually gave up, not even bothering to take photos or shoot video anymore.
But then their neighbors filed a restraining order against them, complaining about the photos and videos.
A judge granted that request.
The restraining order prohibited the Rosses from photographing or filming their neighbors while they are dirt biking. It is effective for three years.
The judge also confiscated the Rosses’ videos and photos, sealing them from the court records and locking them in a court safe.
How terrible were these pictures? Were they riding nude?
“They were dressed in motocross outfits,” said Mindy, “They had on normal clothes, off road gear and helmets. I can’t figure out why those pictures had to be locked up. Now I have no evidence. Our attorney dropped the ball, totally.
He didn’t fight for me. Looking back it seems he might have been in cahoots with those folks. We asked him to but he never brought up what our neighbors were doing that caused all this in the first place.”
The Rosses decided to appeal, so they asked their attorney to recommend them an appellate lawyer.
He referred them to the same attorney who had just represented their neighbors.
Can you say shake down?
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Fernandez, as I mentioned in a 
Woah, that’s a crazy story. There seems to be a lot of corruption in that county.
Ah, yes. Remote desert towns with officials that cannot be swayed by national media because the local officials have the town tied up like Roadhouse.
I hope the Rosses continue to fight AND videotape, despite the court order.
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Wonder if the Rosses can contract someone to come out and record the dirt biking activities. Or if someone who doesn’t personally know the Rosses, come out and do them the favor of gathering evidence.
Heh, Coachella.
Really, a restraining order is a bit much. they should violate it indirectly, like have a birdfeeder that looks like a tripod and videocamera. I’d love to know what grounds someone can restrain free press at a whim. I’m actually not that far from coachella…
Good grief. That sounds like the kind of town where ‘troublemakers’ end up having ‘accidents’. I used to think towns like that only existed in the movies and nothing like that could ever happen in America.
I did note that there is a house for sale at the rear of the back yard motor cross. If that house does not fetch fair market value due to the disclosure of this mess, that can be a whole new law suit. The victim’s next door property would naturally lose equity due to the other property selling short. The same would apply if your home was appraised lower because an adjoining property was in disrepair.
Its easier for the court to ’sit on’ a case where the claim is personal discomfort and zoning, its another thing to sit on a case that shows irrefutable financial loss.
I’d also be contacting the FBI, this is clearly irregular, as well as the state bar association. But then again, I’d be worried about having an ‘accident’ for blowing the whistle.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I like facts and sound theories that fit the facts well. But as Occam points out:
“Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”
Or even the tongue-in-cheek razor from Hanlon:
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”
The simplest explanation is that the town is corrupt, stupidity does not even begin to adequately explain that rather odd chain of events, though I’m sure it is a contributing factor.
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Rob’s “Roadhouse” reference is dead on. I mean, reality is usually a little more subtle and lot less violent, but sleepy rural fiefdoms get uglier than I think city folks can imagine. The everybody’s-an-in-law configuration makes for way better conspiracies than the urban-standard collection of strangers.
There was a case in Pittsburgh a few years ago where someone complaining about loud frat parties was told to take video of it. While taking video of the party, he was confronted by a group of them on his own property and a fight broke out. He ended up with a broken ankle, but he was the one arrested because he hit one of the guys with a shovel.
Wow that is lame…. I used to live around there. There is a lot of desert to hide a body.
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I am a photographer in southern California that has made a fair living for the last decade shooting off road events and practice sessions. The issues surrounding off road use on personal land are ongoing, extremely complex, and constantly in turmoil in Riverside County. I would not take a stance in this particular case based on the brevity of information given in this posting. The history between these two neighbors has not been deeply enough explored.
Surely you can take a stand on how the family is forbidden to photograph the activity.
Carlos, I have been closely involved in the legal fights here in Riverside County over private land use for motocross and off road vehicles for the past 6 years. The issues are extremely complex and emotional. People, on the record, have done very strange things regarding off road and private land use. There are no clear cut answers regarding rural neighbors and their land use conflicts.
Even as an off-road photographer I would not take a stance in this particular issue without a lot more research.
You can’t take a stance as to the absurd and unconstitutional restraining order? Really?
Just how yellow is your liver, anyway?
If I had to guess, I’d guess their neighbors are WPP
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While there might actually be corruption and cronyism here, my first thought upon reading that Mindy “had to be prescribed medication” because of the “fumes” from next door, is that what we have here is a crazy neighbor of the type that will sue someone who smokes on their own porch.
Quite possibly, the sheriff and the judge share that opinion.
Not sure why KBCraig has to use quotes around the word fumes. I take medication due to allergies to all sorts of things, including vehicle exhaust. Not all that unusual, or a sign of the crazy.
He used quotes around “fumes” because they are appropriate. I’ve got dirt bikes. I’ve got cameras. There really isn’t enough information here to make a call. Sometimes people riding dirt bikes make a lot of noise, sometimes they don’t. We don’t know how big the properties are. I’d guess they are more than an acre, but don’t know.
What I can say is that “Mindy” comes across in the few quotes that are attributed to her as a nut case. I’m sure that the Sheriff got tired of spending on manpower, the zoning guy got tired of spending on manpower and the judge got tired of having his time taken because the “dirt bikers” weren’t doing anything wrong and “Mindy” was complaining when there wasn’t anything for a “reasonable” person to complain about.
I’d love to see “Mindy’s” psych eval.
While I don’t agree with the judge issuing a restraining order to prevent “Mindy” from taking photos or video from her property there are times when I can understand why a judge might do that. If the judge believed that the photographing and video taping was escalating the situation between the neighbors and that it might lead to violence between them.
Yes they are now making electric motocross bikes.
Dear sir This activity is being done 60′ from our bedroom window, and we live on just over 1/2 acre parcels where are homes are 50′ apart. My wife is not a nut case, we used a db meter and had the noise register over 100db. I am also a former professional dirt bike rider and never road in circles in my backyard for hours and sometimes all day long into the night. I have raced all baja’s, frontier 500, vegas 400 you name it I’ve raced it if it was score.
We were told by County Code Enforcement to take these pictures for a third party investigation and we were the ones that got popped, doing what the County asked us to do along with the Sheriffs dept. Let me borrow a friends ATV park in front of your home at 7:00AM and start it up and rev it as loud as it will go for hours and you tell me if it doesn’t get old. Until you have walked a mile in someone elses shoes you should keep quiet.
Read SB County Code 28.046
The properties are 83 feet wide by about 330 feet.
The county code is clear about prohibiting OHV disturbing the peace even as they ride on private property of the owner — it is not allowed. It is also crystal clear that persons so affected are encouraged to create evidence in the form of photographs, etc.
What is not clear is why quotations are to be placed around a person’s proper name, nor why a BLOG reader thinks it can do psychological evaluation and make assertions simply from from a news story.
§ 28.0406 Disturbing the Peace and Quiet Prohibited.
Notwithstanding any other provision in this Chapter, no person shall operate any motor vehicle (including any off-highway motor vehicle), or the motor thereof, nor shall any person organize, conduct, or participate in staging (as defined herein), in a manner that disturbs the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person by noise, dust, smoke, or fumes caused by such motor vehicle or staging activity. The Code Enforcement Division of Land Use Services Department shall establish procedures for the investigation and enforcement of this Section, which shall be substantially similar to those contained in § 32.0119 of the County Code, except that if the offending activity occurs in the presence of a code enforcement officer or peace officer, the officer shall have the authority to issue a citation to the offending party pursuant to applicable provisions of this Code.
§ 32.0119 Animals Which Habitually Make Noise.
If there is more than one neighboring inhabitant, as defined above, evidence of a public nuisance may, upon application of a single complaining neighboring inhabitant, be established by that person by seeking a waiver from the Chief Officer of the two-complainant requirement. To obtain such a waiver, a single complainant shall provide to the Animal Control Officer additional credible evidence of a violation, which may include, but is not limited to, tape recordings, videotapes, sound monitoring logs, photographs, maps, or declarations of other persons.
Don’t they make electric motocross yet?
It’s like that Mitch Hedberg bit where he’s asking the question after the guy in the audience gives an answer.
I don’t think there is really much they can do about the dirt bike riding on private property, unless of course there are laws being broken.
But I do think they should make a stand to get their stuff back, and try to get the Judge fired for misuse of power. It all starts with the judge, if he upheld the laws correctly the law enforcement wouldn’t be breaking them.
Time for a new judge.
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Many of you folks are missing the point: they were banned from taking pictures of their neighbors by a legal system that, in their view, ignored their complaints. They got penalized for speaking out.
Thank you, Jay.
The important part of that is, “by a legal system that, in their view, ignored their complaints.”
After reading the Desert Valley Star on this and doing some research it’s kind of obvious what happened.
Remember to those that are psychotic their psychotic episodes are real, but to the rest of the wrold they aren’t.
@DuaneKerzic – “Remember to those that are psychotic their psychotic episodes are real, but to the rest of the wrold they aren’t.”
Why do people repeat lies? In the hopes that repetition will make them believable. (See Bush & Co, 2002-onward.)
Making the claim that Mindy Ross is a psychotic (for her legal pursuit of obvious quality-of-life-issues), defending her noisy dirt-biking neighbors, AND siding with the judge’s injunction against the Ross’s legal documentation activities because you think they might get violent with their neighbors??
Plainly you believe you’ve got a dog in the Ross’s fight, without being a party to it. With LEOs and other trolls on this site, their motivations are usually clear: defend the LEO.
It’s a mystery why you’ve gone on the attack, because there is nothing about the Rosses’ behavior that would lead me to think “crazy.”
I’ll go one further and say that if I had their problems, I’d have done much the same as they, and probably taken it up a notch with more notifications to the County (for building code, native life and noise violations), seeking an injunction against the neighbors, and retaining a lawyer worth her/his salt.
HI everyone out there this is yes you got it I am the one the story is talking about. My wife and myself have not given up we have taken it to the County, SB County Code Officer called our neighbor and told him we were the ones complaining and was making his job hard and then proceeded to ask the neighbor if he could put a camera on his garage to prove he’s in no violation of any code, wow put the perp on notice so he could curb his behavior and you guessed it he did until the camera went down. I ask that you e-mail San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors you can find them on the internet along with there e-mail addresses. We are trying to get this Code Enf. Officer fired. When we bring up Code 28.046 they look the other way. Well I could go on for a long time but there was more to this story in last weeks issue of the same newspaper, call Gahrilla Motorcycle warfare. I have to blog out.
Jack
jack-
you need some help taking pictures and video? i would love to help you out. i don’t have a restraining order against me so there shouldn’t be a problem.
There could easily be problems.
The area is not Los Angeles were Judges are taken to appeal when they step over the line. The area is poor so Judges are not held to account for their actions. They really can do whatever they want. Plus, contempt of court determination do not automatically obtain right to appeal unlike other actions. A writ of mandamus would be required and those are rarely considered much less granted. Jack and Mindy and their friends (especially city folk) must thus walk on egg shells.
If anyone else photographs the motocross activity, Mindy Ross could be blamed for “causing” the photography and the Plaintiffs could easily haul her into court on a contempt of court OSC. So, beware all you provocateurs, rash actions could hurt the situation rather than help.
A Little on the Judge. http://tinyurl.com/y9dq4pb
Here is the other write up. http://desertvalleystar.com/article.php?a=458
http://www.law2.byu.edu/news/7.16.2009HatchProgram2.pdf
Cortez participated in the far right wing zealot Senator Orrin G. Hatch Distinguished Trial Lawyer Lecture Series.
The frontispiece of the program shows a judge’s gavel resting on a bible. Cortez is a graduate of BYU — the Mormons. Does it matter? Yes it matters.
Time to buy peacocks and Guinea Fowl.