Posted on 03/06/2007 4:34:21 PM PST by ElkGroveDan
A Rosedale neighborhood's battle over Louis Montgomery's pig farm spilled over into a brawl Sunday.
Kern County deputies were called out to 2000 block of Dean Avenue to handle a dispute of a painted wall between neighbors. A Kern County deputy was hit over the head with a paint roller. Three people were arrested.
Montgomery ended up in jail. Kern County sheriff's Deputy Steven Williams ended up covered in green paint and blood.
For the past year some of Montgomery's neighbors on Dean Avenue have been fighting to prevent the 81-year-old and his family from keeping more than two pigs on his half-acre of land.
Other neighbors have been supporting the pig farm, which provides pigs for 4-H and FFA projects for the Kern County Fair.
The Kern County Planning Department has supported first one side, then the other.
The pigs stink, breed flies and dust and don't belong in a neighborhood setting, say neighbors Randy Cass and Mary Wilson in heated, written appeals to planning officials Jim Ellis and Ted James.
Both sides have canvassed the neighborhood, trying to drum up enough signatures to support their claims.
Currently Cass and Wilson are winning.
James issued a ruling early last month that there is not enough evidence to show that Montgomery has kept more than 10 pigs on the property for at least the last 20 years.
Proof of that would earn Montgomery the right to keep the extra pigs, even though his property is only zoned for two animals.
Last year James ruled there was enough evidence to allow the extra animals, but reversed the ruling in February after investigating neighbors' complaints.
Neither Cass or Montgomery are happy with the way the county has handled the situation.
Cass said his battle isn't with Montgomery, but with county government.
But his family's frustration with the pig farm is clear in correspondence with the county.
"This pig issue has made neighbors into enemies and friends against friends and husbands and wives fighting with each other. And all over what? stinky, smelly, loud, nasty pigs that should be raised on a farm outside of the city or neighborhood limits," Delia Cass wrote in a Jan. 29 e-mail to Ted James.
Randy Cass said the county forced him to get rid of horses on his property after the Montgomerys complained.
All the tension of the situation boiled over Sunday when Montgomery and his daughter Donna Greene decided to paint the Cass family's side of a block wall Montgomery was required by county officials to build between the two properties.
They used various amounts of spare paint they had lying around, Montgomery said.
The patchy, multicolored paint job prompted Cass to call the Kern County Sheriff's Department.
Deputy Steven Williams responded to the call.
Sheriff's Department reports of what happened from there are incomplete at this point.
But Montgomery, from a visiting booth at the downtown Bakersfield jail, said he was sitting atop his wall and painting with a five-foot-long roller brush when deputy Williams approached.
He said the deputy told him to stop painting.
Montgomery said he refused. All of the fence -- including the side facing Cass' yard -- was on his property, he said.
He said he built it 18 inches back from the property line and a chain-link fence that Cass then removed.
"Tell me why you can't paint a fence -- when it's your fence on your property -- any damn color you want," Montgomery said.
The deputy didn't agree, he claims, and got, "out of control."
Deputy Williams tried to grab Montgomery's paint roller. The two men struggled to pull the tool away from each other.
"Then he grabbed the damn brush and tried to get me off the fence. So I raised the damn thing up and it came down on top of his head," Montgomery said.
The blow cut Williams' scalp, causing him to bleed.
Williams maced Montgomery and called for backup.
"I sat there on the fence until he cleared himself, then he grabbed my leg. I sat on the fence till he got backup (because) he couldn't handle me by himself," Montgomery said.
Other deputies, when they arrived, dragged Montgomery down off the fence.
He was arrested on suspicion of assaulting Williams, and both his arms were injured as he struggled with deputies. Greene and family friend Marc Scott also were arrested for obstructing the deputies' attempts to take Montgomery into custody. They were cited and released.
Cass said Monday he was going to file a restraining order against the Montgomery and Greene families.
The conflict is not the first time the neighborhood has been split by controversy.
Greene was the legal guardian of Danny Adams, 8, who was killed in September 2005 when teen Bill Wilsted pulled the trigger on a rifle while showing the gun to Adams at his neighborhood home.
There's a video of the guy who assaulted the sheriff at the link.
Some of the background for the conflict is at http://www.bakersfield.com/static/images/pdf/pigsdocuments.pdf
I hope some one from C.A.I.R. doesn't drive by the pig farm and get offended and demand its closure because it is disrespectful of his religious beliefs.
Never bring semi-gloss exterior latex to a gun fight.
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