Tripping up the bad guys

Jessica Segee sat on her front porch as Corning police and Tehama County probation officers searched her Corning home this week.

Segee, 20, is on formal court-ordered probation after spending 120 days in jail for possession of drugs with intent to sell.

"I was caught with pills I had no prescription for," Segee explained. "I'm pregnant now, and trying really hard to stay clean and sober. I've got to do it for my baby."

One of the people conducting the search, Margy Clifford, is Segee's probation officer.

"I don't mind them coming and doing a search at all," Segee said. "I understand they are doing it to help me and keep me straight."

She feels being on probation and knowing she will be drug tested, must check in with probation on a regular basis, and open to random searches, has been a good catalyst for her to change the type of people she hangs around with and helped her to get into the predicament she is in now.

Clifford said Segee is a also participating in Passages, a county drug and alcohol program for mothers and pregnant women.

"She is also participating in the county's Drug Court Program which requires she undergo a urine test three times a week," Clifford said. "That test lets us know if she has been taking drugs. If she is caught dirty her probation could be revoked and she could go back to jail."

According to Segee that fact has helped a lot.

"When I was on probation once before I only did one urine test in an eight month period," she said.

While Segee was cooperative during Tuesday's surprise probation search, the same couldn't be said for the rest of the people contacted during the day.

All of the searches were conducted on adults and documented juvenile gang members throughout Corning and its surrounding areas.

The worst attitudes came from the juveniles.

One 17-year-old boy refused to talk to the police and probation officers as they tried to question him about gang-related clothing and a crescent-blade knife they located in his room.

"I won't talk to you about that," he said.

The juvenile's allegiance to his street gang is a common thread among gang members. It is also a curse to law enforcement trying solve gang-related crimes.

In another male juvenile gang member's home, the search revealed a sawed-off, gripped shotgun.

"That was a good find," said Corning police Officer Jeremy White, the department's gang specialist. "It's just one more gang-related weapon off the street and out of the hands of a gang member."

When the search team knocked at the door of Sergio Meza on Del Norte Avenue, they were met by two small boys weeping as their father, Meza, stood behind them.

"The boys have been taken into the custody of Tehama County Child Protective Services in the past because of their parents' drug addiction," said probation Officer Pam Gonzalez. "That makes it really hard sometimes when we come to do these searches and the children become so upset."

Meza admitted to having recently taken methamphetamine and marijuana and tested positive for both during an "on the spot" drug test. The officers also located a methamphetamine smoking device in his residence.

"When these people get hooked on methamphetamine, it is so incredibly addictive that even their little children aren't enough to keep them off it," Clifford said. "They will starve themselves and their kids so they can spend every penny on buying the drug."

In the South Avenue home of Curtis Lee Landingham, 30, who was granted formal probation after being convicted of possession of a controlled substance, the officers located a white powder in a small baggie which Landingham admitted was ecstasy.

Landingham seemed to be surprised when the officers arrested him.

"What, you're arresting me for that," he said. "I didn't even know it was there."

Corning police Officer Mel Allison said they hear that excuse a lot.

"That is why these random searches are so important," Clifford explained. "A person on probation may keep every scheduled appointment with their probation officer, test clean for drugs and appear in court when required. Because of that, they think they are going to be left alone."

She said it is the random probation searches that keeps people on probation on their toes, and helps the officers find out the truth about what is going on behind the clean front that is often presented to them.

Overall, Tuesday's searches ended up with four male juvenile gang members either being arrested or cited for violating their probation, and two arrests of adults for violating probation terms and one person arrested then cited and released.

"It was a good day," White said.