| Dan Clore 2005-10-24, 2:05 am |
|
Chief hopes to publish
By Constance Dillon
Record Searchlight
October 19, 2005
ANDERSON -- It took the better part of 15 years but Neil
Purcell, Anderson's chief of police, says he has finally
finished a project dear to his heart.
His written account of his experiences in Laguna Beach in
the 1960s and 1970s centers on the impact of Timothy Leary,
the self-appointed leader of what was then heralded as a
revolution in consciousness.
Purcell, a compact, soft-spoken man of 65, believes the time
is right for another look at how the drug culture blossomed.
"The Jesus Dealer," written with a Laguna Beach writer whom
Purcell said wants to remain anonymous, has been sent off
for a final editing before it is submitted to potential
publishers.
The raw material for the book was drawn from notebooks and
diaries that Purcell kept during that time.
Purcell, who led a highly publicized drug raid at the
Anderson Oaks Apartment Complex in February 2000, aimed to
capture what he went through in trying to bring widespread
drug dealing in Laguna Beach to light.
Born and raised in the wealthy and conservative community of
Newport Beach, Purcell started working as a Laguna Beach
police officer in the mid-1960s.
The open-minded, creative bent of the townspeople, the
inexpensive storefronts and quaint cottages nestled in
Laguna's verdant canyon, made the community the perfect
hippie haven.
The worst crimes the cops dealt with were petty thefts.
Purcell is sure that drugs changed everything.
"I believe [the drug use] was originally started for
religious purposes by people who were seeking enlightenment.
When they started making big money people got greedy."
Mystic Arts, a shop that sold incense, jewelry, books on
eastern religion, and what became known as paraphernalia,
was a business started by one group of young people who
called themselves the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Purcell said.
Mystic Arts had a back room designed for people to hang out
while tripping on LSD. One wall was adorned with an enormous
mandala and there was a poster of Leary.
"I began to hear his name everywhere," Purcell said. "I was
23 or 24 at the time. He seemed pretty interesting. I really
wanted to find out about this guy."
Leary had been a lecturer in psychology at Harvard
University who tested the effects of psilocybin and LSD on
volunteer grad students. After being fired from Harvard he
styled himself as an LSD guru to American youth with his
chant, "Turn on, tune in and drop out."
Purcell went to hear Leary speak at a nearby college. What
struck him was Leary's arrogance.
"He was one of the biggest egotists I'd ever seen. He had
charisma but the ego came across right away," said Purcell.
Quietly at first, the Brotherhood lived Leary's credo.
"They took over a little part of Laguna Canyon," Purcell said.
They lived in funky houses, grew vegetables, befriended
their elderly neighbors and built a booming business in
marijuana and LSD. Orange Sunshine, the Brotherhood's brand
of acid, was known throughout the nation.
"They had a whole set up for canning. They'd put the pot
into sealed cans. They'd slap on labels they'd designed and
printed and ship them out," he said.
Purcell believes Leary, who for a time made Laguna his
headquarters, was responsible for damaging the lives of
young people all over America. Leary died of prostate cancer
in 1996 at the age of 75.
Acid casualties would eventually become commonplace in
Laguna, he said.
"I saw overdoses and deaths. A lot of kids ended up with big
mental problems. There were suicides. I saw what I thought
were very bright people have their minds blown on LSD or
psilocybin.
"Over the years I built up a dislike, almost a hatred of
Leary, and I don't hate many people," Purcell said calmly.
"I've had a desire to expose Timothy Leary for the kind of
person he really was."
On Dec. 26, 1968, during a traffic stop, Purcell had a
direct encounter with Leary. He arrested the LSD avatar for
being in possession of two kilos of pot.
"He had the nerve to say I planted marijuana on him,"
Purcell recalled, growing angry at the thought of it.
[I would take his word over that of someone who claims to
have witnessed deaths from LSD overdose.--DC]
It would be the only one of 11 arrests for which Leary would
do jail time. He was sent to a minimum-security prison from
which he eventually escaped and fled to Algeria. Purcell
later told a southern California newspaper that Leary had
sent him a postcard from there.
On Christmas Day 1970, an estimated 35,000 kids hit town for
a "Christmas Happening."
"People from all over the U.S. came to the new Mecca,"
Purcell said. Even the Manson family had spent time in the
canyon by then, he said.
Convinced that the drug activity had escalated beyond
anything the town fathers could imagine, Purcell embarked on
a crusade to bring the situation to the attention of the
state bureau of narcotics.
Purcell and others on the Laguna force pooled their own
money and used the cash for drug buys.
They also managed to get video of the young, newly rich drug
dealers dropping into the local Porsche dealership and
buying cars with cash. And they learned that some were
booking passage on international flights — and returning
with drugs sealed into surfboards and pottery.
The evidence was eventually taken to the narcotics bureau.
After a two-day examination of the material, state drug
officials became convinced that the operation was big time
and agreed to get involved.
The dozens of drug busts that followed in Laguna and in
other locales like Hawaii, and as far away as London, turned
up massive quantities of illegal substances.
"On one arrest we found 130,000 tabs of acid," said Purcell.
"They sold lots of hash oil too."
Purcell was vindicated, but not without having undergone a
painful right of passage.
"Pig, Pig, I heard that so many times," said Purcell, who
was chief in Laguna from 1981 to 1997.
"Our kids lived through hell. They were marked as piglets."
"My house was shot at with high powered rifles. It was
bombed with dynamite. They only managed to blow up the
deck," Purcell said.
Someone even loosened the lug nuts on his wife's car. She
was able to stop her vehicle before any harm was done.
"You did it because you were committed to being a police
officer. It was a lifestyle for me," he said.
Purcell, who took over as chief in Anderson in March 2002,
owns a home in Montana and plans to retire there for good
some day soon.
Reporter Constance Dillon can be reached at 225-8372 or at
mailto:cdillon@redding.com
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...edanclorenecro/
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
|