On Thursday, the Davis Police announced the arrest of Clayton Garzon, a 19-year-old resident who attended Davis High School, with a history of violence and drug problems.
Mr. Garzon has been arrested and booked in the Yolo County Jail charged with Assault causing Great Bodily Injury; Committing a Hate Crime; Assault with a Deadly Weapon; Stalking; Committing a felony while on release from custody; and Inflicting Great Bodily Injury during the commission of a felony.
He is accused of brutally beating Mikey Partida, a 31-year-old Davis resident and 2000 graduate of Davis High, who works as an employee at the Davis Food Co-op. Mr. Partida had attended a party at his cousin’s apartment and apparently left his keys there and returned to retrieve them, “when a man began kicking and beating him while yelling homophobic slurs.”
Mr. Garzon’s classmates describe a troubled kid – fights, drug use, boarding school, rehab.
Mr. Garzon comes from a wealthy family, his father is a prominent doctor who has made the news locally for his travels to Africa, helping to treat famine victims.
Dr. Hernando Garzon lives in Davis and works as an emergency room doctor at Kaiser-Sacramento. One news account had him interviewed as he boarded a plane to help implement a program to treat those suffering in Somalia, Kenya and possibly Ethiopia.
Clayton Garzon’s MySpace page is adorned with dozens of photos depicting him partying it up – smoking from a bong, drinking, with expensive stereo equipment.
It was last September that Mr. Garzon and a 16-year-old from Carmichael were arrested in Davis after the Dixon police at 1:14 am on a Sunday morning responded to a fight.
An hour later the police were summoned to a Safeway parking lot for a report of an assault with a deadly weapon, where police discovered two stabbing victims who had been stabbed at a house party.
There were five victims in the incident – four them were stabbed and one received blunt force trauma to the head.
Mr. Garzon and the 16-year-old were arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and booked into Solano County Jail and Juvenile Hall, respectively, according to a report in the Vacaville Reporter on September 11, 2012.
One of the charges Mr. Garzon now faces is the commission of a felony while on release from custody.
Despite these two alleged violent acts, the Davis Enterprise reported that Mr. Garzon received $75,000 bail, and was promptly released from custody after posting the bail.
The victim’s mother, forewarned of this possibility, wrote on the Facebook page, “I have since learned that, in addition to a pre-existing history of violence, his attacker will have no trouble securing very good legal help. While I know it is difficult for him to accept monetary assistance (he has worked since he was ten) we are asking for contributions to ensure that this tragic and senseless, animalistic act, is immediately redressed.”
She wrote, “While the immediate challenges posed by the severity of his physical injuries are clear, the long-term impacts of PTSD are not. Consequently, we are in the process of seeking legal representation to secure every possible resource and support necessary to facilitate his recovery and healing.”
Mr. Garzon received an April 13, 2013 arraignment date and his case in Davis may have to wait for his trial in Solano County.
Mr. Partida was walking with a group but forgot his keys and had to back. Before that point, the attacker was already yelling slurs at him according to Mr. Partida’s cousin, Vanessa Turner.
“He just continued, getting closer and closer, and then he just punched me,” Mr. Partida explained.
“The slur used begins with the letter ‘F’ and is a nasty term for homosexuals. Partida said the attacker was saying it over and over again while beating him,” News 10 reported.
“Pretty loud and proud about it,” Mr. Partida said. “He just kept fighting me and fighting me until I blacked out. And then I came to and was here.”
Ms. Turner told News 10 that, after the attack, the attacker knocked on the door to brag about what he had done.
From a legal standpoint, one of the key questions will be whether this constitutes a hate crime. For a crime to be considered a hate crime, the sexual orientation of the victim has to be the motivating factor and, in fact, the primary reason for the attack.
In this case, we know that the alleged assailant Mr. Garzon yelled epithets, derogatory words for gays, at the victim prior to the attack.
Under California Penal Code section 422.55, “Hate crime” means “a criminal act committed, in whole or in part, because of one or more of the following actual or perceived characteristics of the victim…” including “sexual orientation.”
A hate crime charge acts as a case enhancement. Under PC section 422.75, “a person who commits a felony that is a hate crime or attempts to commit a felony that is a hate crime, shall receive an additional term of one, two, or three years in the state prison, at the court’s discretion.”
—David M. Greenwald reporting
[quote]In this case, we know that the alleged assailant Mr. Garzon yelled epithets, derogatory words for gays, at the victim prior to the attack.[/quote]
Interesting use of words. You don’t always give the prosecution the benefit of the doubt this way. We don’t in fact know anything about what the alleged assailant did.
What we know is that is that the alleged assailant Mr. Garzon IS ALLEGED TO HAVE yelled epithets, derogatory words for gays, at the victim prior to the attack.
I think you were reading too much into that sentence.
Was asked to post this
[img]images/stories/vigil.png[/img]
David wrote:
> Mr. Partida was walking with a group but forgot
> his keys and had to back. Before that point,
> the attacker (Mr. Garzon) was already yelling slurs
> at him according to Mr. Partida’s cousin,
> Vanessa Turner.
Did Mr. Garzon kick Mr. Partida out of a party at his Dad’s house on I Street and get in the fight when Mr. Partida came back?
> Ms. Turner told News 10 that, after the attack,
> the attacker knocked on the door to brag about
> what he had done.
Did he knock on a random door at 3:00 am, or the door of the house having the party (not clear if the party was at his Dad’s house or another house on the 300 block of I Street)?
I think that if Mr. Garzon beat Mr. Partida he belongs in jail (even if he didn’t yell any slurs), I’m just trying to find out what happened.
A bit of trivia in this case: Apparently, the attack on Mikey Partida took place right outside the Garzon home at 334 I St. As it happens, that 102-year-old house is a City of Davis Landmark, the Schmeiser House. It is easily the most important and beautiful old home in Old East Davis. I knew it a long time ago as “the swastika house.”
334 I Street was built in 1911 by Theodore Schmeiser, who in the first couple decades of the 20th C. was the most important businessman in Davis. He owned and operated Schmeiser Mfg., which built farm implements, including almond hullers. (In those days, our region was the almond capital of the world.) Here is a picture of a Schmeiser Co. brochure:
[img]http://www.davisenterprise.com/files/2011/06/SchmeiserAd19141-2.jpg[/img]
The buildings near the tracks would today be in the SP Depot parking lot, east of Davis Ace. And the more northerly ones, I think, would be between 3rd and 4th Streets.
In 2011, I wrote a column about TG Schmeiser and his house. Here is how it opened: [quote]It was 1980 when I first saw the swastika. I was a sophomore at Davis High at the time. I’d lived here since I was a toddler, but rarely had reason to go to Old East Davis. I don’t remember why I went to the house or if someone had taken me to see it.
But I recall being jarred. A swastika, the symbol of Hitler, decorating someone’s home? In Davis?
I didn’t notice that the building itself, at the corner of Fourth and I streets, was perhaps the most beautiful old house still standing in the city. I just remembered the brickwork on the south side of the mansion, embellished with a crooked cross.
What I didn’t know as a teen was that the ancient Indian swastika had become a popular symbol of good luck throughout the Western world in the years before the Schmeiser house was built on I Street in 1911. This year marks the centennial anniversary of that “Colonial Revival with Queen Anne style.”
Like many places in the United States 100 years ago, Davis was in love with the swastika as a symbol of fortune. Our little burg, with a population under 900 people, had its own football team that competed against Woodland, Dixon, Winters and other nearby towns. Our boys were called the Davis Swastikas. Their uniforms were adorned with the symbol made infamous later by the Nazis.[/quote]
This is a troubled young man.
I know some kids just go off the rails, associate with the wrong people, make bad mistakes, have a personality or other mental/emotional issues that cause them to behave badly.
However, I can’t help but think that this kid lacked enough of an appropriate father figure in his life.
I know the following comment might affend some people, but I cannot think of another way to make the point.
This looks like a parenting problem.
Growing up, at a young age, I knew my mom and dad loved me and cared about me. However, I feared my dad. I thought he might actually kill me if I misbehaved bad enough. I felt that if I made a big enough mistake, he might just take me out. It was the combination of me knowing he cared, and that he had a critical line of expectation that kept me from crossing that line.
My dad wasn’t always a perfect role model. He made mistakes too. In fact, he made mistakes that were bigger than any I could have made and still feel safe that he would not punish me severely.
This is the tough-love that a father (or father-figure) should provide. Some kids absolutely need it to grow to healthy and functioning adults.
Prior to that is a need for a child to get the nurturing unconditional love from a mother (or mother-figure). All people need this or they need counseling.
Young Mr. Garzon appears to have been lacking in one or the other or both.
Or maybe he is just a bad seed.
it aounsa likw they were neighbors, mikey walked home from his cousin’s house, mikey left his keys behind as garzon approached and taunted, when he came back with the keys, garzon beat the crap out of him and then knocked on the cousin’s door to brag about it.
sounds like
don: remove rich’s post, not only is it irrelevant but given the topic of this threat, it’s completely inappropriate.
frankly: i agree. i know we’re not supposed to speculate (for some reason) but it sounds like Dr. Garzon was more interested in saving the world (which is fine) but he neglected being a father and a husband (divorce). but that’s speculation
One more point.
And I don’t intend to diminish the seriousness of this crime.
Growing up there was a lot of fighting amoung young men. In many cases people were beat badly like Mikey. However, it never was a seventeen article story with a candelight vigil. Most of the time it was a small page-5 story in the paper, or nothing at all.
I think we need to take stock of the situation in the context of life in general. It is not good, but it is not worthy of too much attention given what else we all should be worried about and working on. Despite the 17 articles and the candle light vigil, people like Mr. Garzon will continue to exist.
Frankly: [i]It is not good, but it is not worthy of too much attention given what else we all should be worried about and working on. Despite the 17 articles and the candle light vigil, people like Mr. Garzon will continue to exist.[/i]
Here’s another way of looking at it. I, too, grew up where there was a lot more fighting among young men, etc. Perhaps the social situation has improved enough other ways and areas that we can be outraged at this particular incident and give it this kind of attention.
it seems like a lot of people are diminishing this incident and i don’t understand why… give one reason that this should be outrageous?
However Garzon got this way is too bad. But it drives me nuts that he is in and out of jail as fast as you can snap your fingers. I don’t understand how this can be, especially since there is already a previous incident. He could do just about anything for revenge.
And now some of the guys on the blog are downplaying this on a boys will be boys basis. BS, boys are a problem when they are like this, they always have been, it will never be OK. It’s time to admit it IS NOT OK and just “how boys are”. it’s the reason it’s OK to have wars, because it’s just how boys are. Oh I am pissed.
Davis Prog: [i]give one reason that this should be outrageous?[/i]
You’re kidding.
It’s unacceptable to beat someone like that. It’s even more unacceptable to do so because of assumptions that the perpetrator makes about the victims sexual orientation.
oops
i miswrote that, i meant to say this “shouldn’t be outrageous”
i was getting ticked off at frankly and others minimizing this as though it were boys will be boys
Frankly: [i]”I can’t help but think that this kid lacked enough of an appropriate father figure in his life.”[/i]
Unless you know the specifics of that father-son relationship, it strikes me as inappropriate to point part of the blame at this young man’s father (or mother, for that matter). I am not saying you are wrong. Bad parenting does greatly increase the odds of having a troubled child who will go on to do bad things. But there are plenty of other reasons a young man can become troublesome, no matter how nurturing his father is. For all we know, this young man has a biological defect of some sort which impairs his impluse control. My suggestion is to leave the father out of the equation, unless or until you know more about that relationship.
DPROG: [i]”remove rich’s post, not only is it irrelevant but given the topic of this threat.”[/i]
Apparently, you don’t care about Davis history, the Schmeisers, or the Schmeiser landmark house. Those are all very important to a lot of people in Davis, and this crime took place at that location.
Admittedly, it is tangential to the crime. But it is still quite appropriate that people of Davis care about Davis, and knowing our community’s history is a vital foundation for caring.
that’s a presumptuous comment. i am all for davis history, but this is tangential to this issue — AT BEST. i don’t think your post is appropriate here. post it on the bulletin board or submit it to davis
[quote]it seems like a lot of people are diminishing this incident and i don’t understand why..[/quote]
Let’ see…child of local wealthy well respected physician who does a tremendous amount of charity work around the world. Do you really think people would be diminishing this incident if it were the child of poor single parent living in trailer park?
i was thinking more the gay angle, but yeah
I support Rich’s comment, find it interesting to learn more local history; perhaps kind of a fall from grace associated with history of that house.
Also interesting to be reminded that before the symbol was cursed by the Nazis, swastika was a very positive symbol.
I think those who understand the significance of Rich’s post also understand the connection between my above two sentences.
Frankly
[quote]Frankly: “I can’t help but think that this kid lacked enough of an appropriate father figure in his life.”
[/quote]
I am sure from your previous writings that this is literally true for you. You cannot help but see it that way because you can only imagine one paradigm that is optimal for raising a child. However, you and I have had similar conversations many times. There are many, many situations in which boys are raised to manhood successfully by single mothers. There are cultures, some in our own southwest in which men are not considered to be integral parts of the central family which is a woman and her children on her land. This does not lead to men not succeeding in fulfilling the expectations of their culture. Not all families follow the paradigm that you happen to believe is superior, and not all cultures are centered around this paradigm.
[i]Growing up, at a young age, I knew my mom and dad loved me and cared about me. However, I feared my dad. I thought he might actually kill me if I misbehaved bad enough. I felt that if I made a big enough mistake, he might just take me out….
This is the tough-love that a father (or father-figure) should provide. Some kids absolutely need it to grow to healthy and functioning adults.
[/i]
My father could not have been more different than what you describe. And my parents made it clear to us that fighting was unacceptable, completely unacceptable behavior.
I completely disagree with your parenting theory. More to the point, we have no idea what kind of parenting this young man experienced.
medwoman wrote:
> There are many, many situations in which
> boys are raised to manhood successfully
> by single mothers.
We all know this is true and we congratulate you for beating the odds and raising a boy to manhood successfully as a single mom. There are also many situations where people drop out of high school and are successful in life (I congratulate them also since like a mom raising a son on their own they worked real hard).
Just because someone beat the odds and raised a successful kid without a Dad or started a successful business without a high school diploma does not make raising a son without a dad or dropping out of high school a good idea.
P.S. What is the name of the “culture in our own southwest” that is turning out lots of successful young men without Dad’s around?
I perhaps should have used the past tense in my example and/or explained that I was stressing, successful within their own culture, not in the sense that most of us would consider successful since it means holding to their tribal values and traditions rather than defining success economically or in terms of power or influence the way we typically do.
The Tohono Ottam had a social structure in which the women typically owned their home and men came and went in what we would probably consider a rather casual fashion prior to largely being confined on the reservation outside Tucson. Like a number of native American cultures there was not what we would consider a nuclear family but rather an extended family, often with a woman as the matrilineal head of the family. Having said that, it is true that at the time I was on the reservation, a more western style familial structure had become more the norm. But as is typically the case when there is a forced move or confinement of peoples, the fit with modern western was not a particularly good one and was accompanied by many social problems.
You may know the Tohono Ottam or their very closely related tribe the Pima of Arizona who have the dubious
distinction of having the worlds highest incidence of Type II diabetes. This was not the case when the groups were living in their traditional style off the land where beans grown by hand were a major part of their diet.
However, with the adoption of a western style diet and gradual abandonment of an active lifestyle their health as a group rapidly deteriorated as have their social adaptations leading also to a high incidence of alcoholism. This is offset by the much smaller number who did not adopt the new lifestyle, live in the traditional manner and do not develop obesity and Type II diabetes or display the same rates of alcoholism as is the “westernized”
population.
[quote]we congratulate you for beating the odds and raising a boy to manhood successfully as a single mom[/quote]
I thank you for the kind words, but was not actually writing with myself in mind. What I was thinking as I wrote was how wide a variety of experiences in parenting the men I have known in my life have been through.
One of the gentlest, kindest men I know was raised by a father who beat him, at least one time into unconsciousness. Another very kind and generous man I know had very distant parents. Two brothers I know were raised by a father who sexually and physically abused them ( they did not turn out so kind or caring).
I have known men from intact families that provided a warm caring home and I have known men from intact families who were regularly terrorized by the father. I believe quite simply that if a child, whether male or female is raised in a family in which all members are treated with respect, love and caring and are not witnesses to violence, the child has a greater chance of growing into a kind, caring human themselves, regardless of the gender of the caregivers.
This case is eerily like another one involving a prominent, accomplished, well-to-do Davis family’s son (Chris Vochatzer). Speculation seems pretty useless about how our children get caught in a vicious, downward spiral of violence. There’s obviously something at play that’s more significant than parenting, whether it involves one or two parents and whether the family is rich or poor, loving or otherwise.
The alleged perps relationship with his father is immaterial. This guy is nineteen. At this point other than helping him raise bail and finding a lawyer this father and son relationship has no bearing on the case being charged. As for hate crime or old school boys being boys debates are immaterial. This is a second charge, and, if both result in convictions, will make the perp a repeat offender. This is a much more serious classification for a violent criminal especially since he is rightly being charged for this while on release from a similar charge.
When i turn 21 in prison doin life without parole,
No one could steer me right but mama tried, mama tried,
Mama tried to raise me better but her pleading i denied,
That leaves only me to blame cause mama tried.
Merle Haggard
And something we don’t know is if this kid has juvenile priors that are sealed.
medwoman wrote:
> I believe quite simply that if a child, whether
> male or female is raised in a family in which
> all members are treated with respect, love and
> caring and are not witnesses to violence, the
> child has a greater chance of growing into a
> kind, caring human themselves, regardless of
> the gender of the caregivers.
I agree with the above statement 100% and also agree that a smart hardworking single mom that cares about her kids and makes a real effort can do better than the average family with a mom and a dad.
What I am saying is while it is possible for a native american to grow up on a reservation and not end up an overweight alcoholic (my cousin is an Oregon MD who has spent his entire career working with native americans on reservations and all the reservations in Oregon have the same Type II diabetes and alcohol problems as the Pima) is will be harder for him to do it than for a native american growing up in Davis where his parents are UCD Professors (and members of the Davis Bike Club and Mad Cows Triathlon Team).
Having dad around is no guarantee that a kid will turn out OK, but most college grads had a dad at home and most people in prison didn’t…
“Having dad around is no guarantee that a kid will turn out OK, but most college grads had a dad at home and most people in prison didn’t….”
Hmmm, just trying to figure out what this means. Guess we could change it by putting more white people in prison. Lots more.
[i]”… most college grads had a dad at home and most people in prison didn’t.”[/i]
A sports theory of mine–I don’t believe the evidence for this has ever been collected or studied–follows that same correllation. I hypothesize that “most black American major league baseball players had a dad at home and most black American NBA players didn’t.”
The thought behind that theory is that baseball usually starts as a father-son activity in our country. (In other baseball-playing countries, it could be different.) By contrast, boys who grow up to be great basketball players don’t usually get introduced to the game by their fathers.
If my theory is true, it’s value would be to partly* explain why there has been a dramatic decline in the absolute and relative number of African-Americans in the major leagues over the last 30+ years. (I heard someone on the Giants radio station say that there is not a single African-American on the Giants 40-man roster.) The suggestion is that as a higher and higher percentage of black American boys are raised without their father in their homes, they lack the agent (that is, their father) who would normally take junior outside to play catch and teach his son to hit a baseball.
Anecdotally, my observation about black-American baseball players in the majors in the last 15-20 years is that almost all of them seem to come from suburbs and small cities (like Jermaine Dye from Vacaville or CC Sabathia from Vallejo), but almost none come from large black ghettoes. It seems to be the reverse in the NBA. I would guess that the rate of fathers in the home is higher in black suburban households and smaller cities than it is in inner city black households.
*Another part of the explanation–and possibly the entire explanation, negating my theory–is cultural. That is, as basketball became a lot more popular among African-Americans in the 1970s, baseball just lost out in a cultural trend. Baseball was just less cool for black kids, and that is why fewer play and hence fewer become pros.
Finally, a different theory–which I doubt–is that the decline is explained by economics. That it takes a lot of family money and expensive ballparks to train a boy to become a great baseball player, but not a lot of family money or great facilities for him to become a talented basketball or football player. And hence high rates of poverty among blacks explains the decline in black boys playing baseball. The reason I doubt this is because if poor black parents were teaching their kids to play baseball, and the cultural milieu taught those children that baseball was a great game to excel at, they would figure out how to play it for very little money, just like inner-city blacks and poor whites did 50, 60 and 70 years ago.
SOD
And now, with the possible exception of the “Mad Cows Triathalon Team ( is that real of did you make it up)
we really do seem to be in agreement. Whew……!
medwoman: [i]There are many, many situations in which boys are raised to manhood successfully by single mothers.[/i]
For instance, Bill Clinton & Barack Obama.
medwoman wrote:
> with the possible exception of the “Mad Cows
> Triathalon Team ( is that real of did you make it up)
I can’t believe you didn’t think Davis had a “Mad Cows Triathalon Team”:
http://www.madcowsracing.org/moo-at-us.html
Rich: your 6:21 comment was way off topic, so I removed it.
Michael Jordan was close to his father until his father was murdered while he was in the NBA.
There is so much misconception about what children need being written here its rather sad. Rifkin’s weird and completely unsubstantiated speculations on race and sports are particularly disturbing. Sadly of course, aside from myself, Rifkin’s racial obsessions and his willingness to speculate upon them have been posted here for years without challenge from the rest of the community. A failure, I might add, of The Vanguard, David Greenwald and the Vanguard editorial board.
What we know is that kids who have at least one role model have a much better chance at being successful. It can be either parent, a step parent, a coach, teacher, counselor, grandparent, other relative or someone else. if a child knows someone cares and is watching over them they have a much better chance at having a good outcome over kids who don’t have anyone.
Dr. Garzon’s filing with the CA Medical Board states that almost all his time is spent in “administration”, very little time is spent with patients.
He’s assigned to an emergency room but is not certified in Emergency Medicine.
It’s a little curious that he doesn’t do much “patient care” here, but has flown to remote locations to do emergency care.
SOD
Just goes to show how invested I am in evidence ! ; )