Sund: STATE Sunday, Feb. 16, 1997 FC The Star Murals depict town's history TWENTYNINE PALMS (AP) Residents of this desert community spruced up their downtown with a mural that celebrated a Depression-era cab driver with a heart of gold. The ninth historic mural adorning business walls was dedicated Saturday, with organizers happy to say not a penny of public funds went to the spruceup campaign. Town leaders raised $100,000 for the murals alone. One mural depicts a Pasadena doctor who sent World War I doughboys suffering from mustard-gas poisoning to Twentynine Palms to take advantage of the dry, clear air.
Another shows the big local welcome-back parade for area Marines who served in Operation Desert Storm. The latest mural is on the side of an auto repair shop. It's 15 feet high and 30 feet long along the one-story building. It depicts Johnnie Hastie, who founded a local bus and taxi service in the 1930s. Hastie brought homebound people their groceries from faraway towns, and he used to tell taxi customers: "The key is under the seat.
Please return the vehicle when your business is done." The mural shows Hastie alongside his bus, which had a wood-burning stove inside to ward off the winter chill in this high-desert town, 55 miles north -of Palm Springs. "A small group of merchants decided our little town was dying on the vine and needed some revitalization," said Beth Weiderholdt, wife of a retired Marine officer and operator of a combination gift shop, bookstore and art gallery. LAPD tries to abolish height rule LOS ANGELES (AP) Police Chief Willie Williams wants to lower LAPD standards SO to speak by eliminating a 5-foot height requirement. The civilian Police Commission is expected to consider the chief's request to abolish the department's height requirement, which has shrunk considerably since it was first created in the 1930s, on Tuesday. In a Feb.
7 memo to the commission, Williams says the city attorney's office recommended abolishing the height requirement to avoid a potential classaction lawsuit. The LAPD already is embroiled in one class-action suit by 80 current and former women officers who claimed they were victims of departmental discrimination. Williams' memo notes that federal law bars the use of height and weight requirements unless there is a "specific performancerelated reason," and says the LAPD has received appeals from several police candidates who were disqualified because they were too short. The LAPD surveyed 16 police agencies around the nation, and none has a height requirement, Williams said. LAPD Cmdr.
Dave Kalish said the department has been unable to find any evidence that height itself affects performance. "I think it's probably an indefensible position to take, to have any height rule," he said. "The bottom line isn't the height, but do they meet the requirements of the job?" Women and Asian-Americans would be most likely to benefit from the abolition of the height requirement, department observers said. Police Commissioner Edith Perez said abolishing the height requirement is long overdue. Agents question doctor about his pot prescriptions POLLOCK PINES (AP) A family doctor in the Sierra foothills is becoming a test case in the federal government's war on California's new medical-marijua- na law.
Narcotics agents questioned Dr. Robert Mastroianni last month because he has recommended marijuana to three patients since the November passage of Proposition 215. They also are investigating his practice, in what might be the first hard hit in the tug of war between the state's voters, doctors who advocate the use of the drug and the federal government, according to court affidavits and DEA agents. In addition, a local pharmacist told the doctor that DEA agents contacted him, too, and reviewed Mastroianni's prescription records, according to affidavits filed Friday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
"The pharmacist made clear to me that he felt intimidated by the encounter," Mastroianni said in the affidavit. Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights, a group of local doctors and AIDS patients, intervened Friday. They asked the District Court to stop White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey and other senior Clinton administration officials from punishing doctors who discuss or recommend the medical use of marijuana to their patients. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents questioned Mastroianni on Jan.
27 at his office in the small mountain community of Pollock Pines, some 120 miles northeast of San Francisco. Sacramento-based DEA agent Stephen Delgado confirmed that agents visited Mastroianni but refused to comment further. Mastroianni, who has been a family doctor for two decades, said in his affidavit that he arrived at his office that day to find "two men, casually dressed, waiting to speak to me." The agents questioned the doc- 1 STORE 25 takes a picture of artist Tim O'Connor a local bus and taxi service in the The mural is one of three in the The Associated Press signing his mural, which 1930s. Below, residents watch town. dent Millet En "The pharmacist made clear to me that he felt intimidated by the Dr.
Robert Mastrolanni, subject of probe tor, a graduate of Tufts University Medical School, about his medical education and showed him a copy of a "letter of recommendation" for marijuana that he had written for a patient. How the DEA got the letter was not known. They asked "whether I had studied literature on medical marijuana, whether I had attended any medical courses on medical marijuana (I know of no such courses), whether I offered marijuana for sale, whether I referred patients to sources for marijuana, and whether I had prescribed as opposed to recommended it," he said in the affidavit. The men then told Mastroianni it was illegal to recommend or prescribe marijuana and that it is a deadly drug for which there is no medical use. "This comment and the questions which preceded it were clearly meant to intimidate me and dissuade me from treating certain of my seriously ill patients in accordance with my medical experience and professional judgment," he said in his statement.
"I am now reticent and reluctant to recommend the use of medical marijuana even if it is my ethical duty to do so." Mastroianni serves 6,000 patients in the area. He estimates that during 20 years of practice, 50 have told him they used marijuana to ease the nausea and vomiting from cancer treatment or to ease chronic pain. He has recommended marina na only three times, he said. An three were after California's med -marijuana initiative passed. Oak Captain's Bed Maximum storage featuring solid oak construction at an incredible price.
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Tri-County's Largest Bedroom Super Store Locally Owned Operated Since 1979 STA' offer chai min SA young nia you. Th tax fil gram ing tax re utes. A 10,00 telep' DRUGS DESERT BUS: Tolly Waite, 8, above, shows Johnnie Hastie, who founded the unveiling of the work Saturday. The beautification efforts for the community of 30,000 also have included remodeling, painting and other beautification efforts. The murals, at costs ranging from $10,000 to $15,000, have employed local artists as well as talent from Los Angeles and Flagstaff, Ariz.
Some residents had seen news articles about similar murals in Chemaine, British Columbia, and they brought artist Karl Schutz from Canada for a seminar on getting their own mural program started. VENTURA COUNTY STAR John P. Timothy J. Gallagher. Editor Ken Business Manager Patrick Advertising Director Steven A.
Circulation Director Joan E. Human Resources Director William Operations Director John R. Director Thom Information Systems and Technology Manager Joe Editor Bob HOW TO REACH US EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT Asst. Managing Editor, Asst. Managing Editor, Ventura County Business Sports.
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