For eight years, Santa Clara County has weaponized code enforcement to try to seize our family farm in retaliation for civil rights advocacy. We have a land use attorney but are seeking help with an affirmative case before we lose the property - and our life savings with it.

My brother and I have spent the last eight years fighting to prevent the local government, Santa Clara County, CA, from seizing our family farm over non-existent code violations, in retaliation for civil rights activism we were dragged into reluctantly.

Why? Back in 2014, we were wrongfully arrested and prosecuted for refusing to present ID without cause (PC148, no other charges, no criminal history). The ACLU represented us and we reached a settlement - and co-authored mandatory civil rights training for all sworn officers in that jurisdiction. We've been harassed by law enforcement relentlessly ever since then.

On one occasion, I was pulled out of a friend's backyard for no reason and arrested for the same thing (PC148, refusing ID without cause, no other charges). I called and spoke to the district attorney after receiving the charges and sent him an email with a copy of the civil rights training, explaining the law on this topic. The charges were dropped.

Within just a few hours, a sheriff showed up at our property, demanding that I show him my ID. I declined and ordered that sheriff (who was trespassing and had no cause to be there) off our property. He later returned and trespassed 1.5 miles up a private road with no public access or right of way, and conducted a warrantless search of our property, then prompted code enforcement to initiate enforcement action against us. We have copies of emails from the sheriff to code enforcement documenting all of this, obtained through public records requests.

That was the turning point where law enforcement weaponized code enforcement and our family farm became the main focus and point of leverage.

Enforcement was coordinated in large part by a disgraced former police officer and convicted felon, who was then rehired as a code enforcement officer. This officer was widely known for abusing his authority and extorting property owners, and was recently suspended for allegedly running multiple real estate scams.

The government refused to even grant us a hearing to challenge the alleged violations (as required by law), claiming that we forfeited all rights to any administrative remedy by failing to respond to Notices of Violation. Years later, the government was forced to admit that the disputed NOVs were never actually issued (there was a broad conspiracy to obfuscate this falsified evidence).

Given the way we'd been abused by law enforcement, I recorded ALL of our interactions with these officers, and in doing so, documented a culture of open and rampant corruption. When presented with objective evidence of egregious abuses of power and process, instead of holding bad actors accountable, the government fought to prevent transcripts of those recordings from being admitted as evidence in administrative and legal proceedings. We were not even allowed to use transcripts of recorded conversations to impeach false testimony given under oath by government officers in an administrative hearing.

The government actually threatened to prosecute me for recording officers without their consent, attempting to criminalize the way that I obtained evidence of their own criminality. California is a two-party consent state, but there is a reasonable expectation of privacy requirement, and government officers cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy while interacting with members of the public in the course of their official duties because they embody the public space, especially while operating in an enforcement capacity.

When the editor of a local newspaper interviewed a senior police officer for an article about what was happening to us, that officer disclosed an email he'd sent to all law enforcement officers, declaring my brother and me to be a threat to law enforcement and a danger to the community. The editor asked the officer why, and the officer responded by citing that case where the ACLU represented us as the primary reason. The editor asked a follow-up question to clarify, because he knew that we'd been wrongfully arrested, and vindicated. The officer confirmed, and the editor published an account of that interview, along with a copy of the email.

The government made even more absurd mischaracterizations, accusing us of being some type of domestic terrorists and running militia training camps. As evidence, they pointed to social media posts where we'd offered to host people and/or animals that had been displaced by wildfires, temporarily, and for free.

My brother and I have extensive wildfire-fighting experience and we store firefighting equipment at our farm, which is very remote and inaccessible, and where there is an extremely high fire danger. We've responded to many fires over the years and been heralded as hometown heroes for saving dozens of homes in one particularly bad fire, but the local government is trying to deny us the right to defend our lives and property.

The most serious of the alleged violations are actually related to emergency work my brother and I performed at our property during the Loma wildfire in 2016, in direct coordination with Cal Fire, for work that Cal Fire officers testified was typical and reasonable and necessary under the circumstances, and responsibly done. From what I understand, we're the first people in the history of California to be cited for actions taken in response to an emergency, in this manner.

To date, we have managed to defeat 13 of 17 alleged violations, but it's cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the fines and fees on the remaining violations far exceed the value of the property, which represents our combined life savings and work. We now stand to lose if we can't afford to keep fighting, and there is no path forward to any reasonable resolution through settlement.

We have a land use attorney but need help with an affirmative case. I am not a lawyer, but eight years of this has forced me to become an expert in our own case, and I can provide a fully organized, documented record of every email, phone call, and interaction from day one.

Thank you for any help to save our property,

Jesse & Robert Katz
GatosGardens