An Interview With One-Time Fugitive From the Law Todd Barnes | The Woodsman Hut | Forums

Interesting read

Todd Barnes a.k.a “Mike West” was a fugitive for 15 years. I met him through Facebook when he commented on my essay Tracking the Coyote Totem He immediately struck me as a kindred spirit and we shared some stories of drifting around the Western United States. I decided I had to interview him and he graciously agreed.

So how did you end up being a fugitive?

I was arrested in 1992 for possession of a fairly large quantity of LSD. I was visiting a friend of mine in his dorm at a liberal arts university. He went downstairs and sold a bunch of sheets to the Task Force and got busted. They gave him the option of sacrificing 10 or so of his friends, and he took it. He brought them right upstairs to me.

They took me downtown to the Detectives Division and offered me the same deal. They told me the more money and property a person had, the more they could confiscate, the fewer people I would have to betray. They said we were looking at about ten people to set up, people whom I could choose as long as they met with their approval. They let me know that some people were off limits. I was disgusted. I couldn’t value the life of one person less than my own, let alone ten. So they had me transported to lockup.

I spent five days in a makeshift jail on the outskirts of town before they allowed me a public defender who finally read me my charges: Felony Possesion with Intent to Sell and a misdemeanor for some grass I had that was just under felony weight. Bail was set and the counterculture community rallied, ponied up the money, and I was sprung. My lawyer sent me to see the prosecutor, the prosecutor set up a meeting with the DTF goons. This all took months; months of fear and intimidation. Good friends were afraid of me and old friends couldn’t take the chance of having me around. Patrol cars followed me to the grocery and on dates. When we finally had our meeting, They told me they had found old out of town traffic warrants and if I didn’t comply with their agenda to destroy my friends, they would have me arrested on those warrants and held without bail until my trial. They further threatened to enhance my charges to something they called a Class X Felony: Possession within one thousand feet of a school. The sentence for that, including the grass, would add up to a 42 year minimum. What’s more, at that time, you couldn’t get good behavior on a drug charge. Rapists, killers, and other violent criminals have lighter sentences. They gave me a date by which time I needed to comply. The next morning I became MIA in the War on Drugs.

I’ve learned that since then, the courts have declared that a university is not a school, but an institute of higher learning and not subject to that line of prosecution.

When I first split I spent a few months in the forests of the Colorado Rockies and it was a struggle. I grew up in the country and knew what I thought was a lot about survival and sustenance in the wilderness, but it was a geocentric knowledge. I had a lot to learn about the pine forests and deserts and what they had to offer. For the next roughly ten years I hid in plain sight in tourist towns and cities. At ten years I decided I’d had enough and would turn myself in, but before I did I wanted to try and spend a whole year in the wild. I eventually stretched it to five. Turning yourself in is a hard thing to do.

can read the rest here

http://disinfo.com/2.....dd-barnes/