Car Insurance

The Northern California High Intensity Drug Trafficking task force said the 10 counties in the San Francisco Bay area continue to be a hub of operations for narcotics traffickers for distribution throughout California and into other states.

As a result of the illegal narcotics-related manufacturing and distribution organizations operating in California, it is estimated that more than $1 billion per year is returned to foreign source countries, the task force said.

Illegal narcotics activity in the area includes primary manufacturing, transshipment, and distribution.

The affluence of the region has also contributed to a surge in the use of narcotics and the emergence of meth as the popular recreational drug of choice in the gay and youth communities, the task force said.

Meth use is also reaching into secondary schools where students as young as 13 are consumers.

The task force attributes the highlevel of criminal activity to a number of economic, demographic, and geographic factors, including the large area population of seven million people, major national and international transportation centers, and racial and ethnic diversity.

Other reasons include:

* Smugglers continue to use the three international airports serving over 58 million passengers annually to move illegal drugs and money.

* Commercial vehicles have become an increasingly popular method of smuggling with the use of the many highway corridors leading into the bay area.

Northern California has increasingly become the target of Mexican polydrug organizations.

The meth-user populations of college students, young professionals, the gay community, and blue-collar workers are increasing.

Hispanics have surpassed the outlaw motorcycle gangs as the primary manufacturing and distribution organizations for methamphetamine.

Narcotic-related arrests account for 60 percent to 85 percent of the total arrests in Northern California.

Gangs are the primary means for distributing illegal narcotics at the street level. Gangs use firearms and violence to protect their territories and supplies. Gang violence is increasing and strongly associated with the methamphetamine trade.

Emergency room visits due to methamphetamine abuse have more than doubled since 1992. The majority of users in this region inject methamphetamine, thereby increasing the risk of AIDS and hepatitis.

With the price of methamphetamine decreasing during the past several years, the user population has increased and drug trafficking organizations are becoming more organized and better equipped as they gain experience and evade arrest.

Cocaine and black tar heroin continue to be smuggled across the Mexican border and shipped to Northern California via Mexican and Colombian organizations in the Los Angeles area.

The San Francisco Bay area, in turn, serves as a trans-shipment point for the Pacific Northwest and Midwest.

“Sinsemilla” marijuana, grown in Northern California, is a high potency form of marijuana that is in demand in all parts of the country. Estimates of the value of one mature plant range as high as $5,000 each.

Most of the $1 billion that drug traffickers will generate in California will return legally to the United States and laundered into legal investments, the task force said.

Despite intensified policing and record seizures along the southern border areas of California, dangerous drugs continue to be available in large quantities in the 10 Northern California HIDTA counties, the task force said.

Charlie Batch, QB, Steelers. He figures to get plenty of preseason reps with Ben Roethlisberger recovering from injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident. The team is in good hands if Big Ben can’t go because of Batch’s familiarity with its schemes.

Angelo Crowell, OLB, Bills. Takeo Spikes has progressed well so far while recovering from a torn right Achilles’, but Buffalo has terrific insurance in Crowell, a young playmaker in the making who would benefit from more playing time.

Joey Harrington, QB, Dolphins. Miami is supposed to be a fresh start for Harrington, but the team might be in trouble early if Daunte Culpepper has any setbacks with his knee. Harrington’s past inspires little confidence.

Damione Lewis, DT, Panthers. Carolina didn’t want to get caught without front-four depth if Kris Jenkins goes down again. Lewis and fellow newcomer Maake Kemoeatu are expected to develop into key parts of the rotation.

Marcus McNeill, OT, Chargers. With the quarterback change to inexperienced Philip Rivers, the team hopes veteran left tackle Roman Oben can come back from his foot surgeries and hold together the protection. If that doesn’t happen, McNeill, a rookie, will be pressed into a key role.

Anthony Wright, QB, Bengals. Wright has shown a nice arm in the past, but Carson Palmer is an irreplaceable talent in terms of smarts and physical tools. If Palmer’s knee rehab hits a snag, the playbook will have to be scaled back.

DeAngelo Williams, RB, Panthers. Considering starter DeShaun Foster and second-year back Eric Shelton are trying to return from broken bones, the team’s top draft pick will need to have a great camp to prove he can handle being the feature back.

PACIFICA — His name was Francis Clifford, but they all called him Cliff — even his kids. Not that the name “Francis” bothered him.

He was christened “Cliff” over the loudspeaker, at his first competition, doing what he loved best, racing motorcycles — and that’s the name that stuck.

Francis “Cliff” Clifford was an important figure in American motorcycles, and for gearheads in Bay Area, he was practically a legend. He was a racer and an ace mechanic, and he cared passionately for motorcycles. Like the vintage Harleys and Indians he rode, he was tough, brash, and respected by the younger generation.
Clifford, 86, died at his Pacifica home Monday of complications of myelodysplasia syndrome, a disease which affects the bone marrow.

Born May 13, 1920 in Calgary, Canada, Clifford was raised by his grandparents. At 15, he traveled to San Francisco and found a job working as a bike messenger for Postal Telegraph. One day, in front of the telegraph office, Clifford encountered his fate: a Harley- Davidson JD with a “For Sale”sign. He paid $5 down and promised to pay the rest in installments.

A few years later, Clifford entered his first race, on a half- mile dirt track in Lakeport. There he was clipped by another rider, propelled into a wall, and left with a broken leg. But Clifford’s friends propped him back onto the bike and sent him back into the race. One hundred yards down the stretch, he ran into a side rail and broke his right ankle. After the race, Clifford didn’t wait long to get back on a bike, riding around town with his injured leg on the tank.

Clifford continued riding and racing until he was drafted during World War II, when he became an underwater welder in the Navy. After the war, he returned to San Francisco and found work at Hap Jones, a landmark motorcycle accessories distribution company, as a motorcycle mechanic.

In 1948, Clifford rode his custom-built, custom-tuned Indian 101 Scout to the Reno Speed Trials. There he traveled 106.38 miles per hour, and won. For the next five years, Clifford raced every Saturday and Sunday — traveling, at one point, to Milwaukee to meet with Walter Davidson of Harley-Davidson, who gave him a tour of the manufacturing plant and presented him with a brand new set of leathers.

He was married in 1961 to Guillermina Gonzalez, whom he met on a trip to Mexico, and together they had two children, Cindy and Robert, before Mina died of leukemia in 1976.

As a union mechanic, Clifford fixed thousands of bikes — balancing motors, straightening frames, grinding cams, relieving cylinders, restoring and repairing parts — and developed a reputation for excellence. Along the way, he also worked as a fisherman and a San Francisco cab driver. After retiring in 1982, Clifford gradually attained a certain fame among a younger generation of motorcycle enthusiasts.

Clifford represented the best qualities of the motorcycle men of his generation, according to Tommy Perkins, owner of the Dudley Perkins Company, San Francisco’s Harley Davidson emporium.

“The guys of his era weren’t just mechanics, they were really bike builders,” he said. “They could straighten a frame, weld the tanks and fender, rebuild the engine, go out and race it, blow it up, and go back and rebuild it from the ground up.”

Clifford didn’t have any much patience for chrome, vintage parts or the kind of bike that folks haul to exhibitions for show.

“He wasn’t a show guy,” said vintage bike enthusiast Ray Ebersole. “He was a get-it-going guy. He’s the end of an era, the way I look at it.

“Guys like Cliff perverted me,” he said. “He cured me of all that showy stuff. Now my bikes are greasy and dirty and solid rust.”

For Clifford, a product of the Depression, necessity was the mother of invention. He didn’t just fix bikes but cars, washing machines, and stoves. Clifford custom-made parts for his hunting guns and refilled his brass shells with gunpowder. Once he turned a broken-down fridge into a smoker for the salmon he loved to fish.

“Guys like Cliff were proud of being able to take care of everything in their lives — from smoking fish to making their own bean salad,” said Ebersole.

That’s how a man saved money. And money, which was scarce, never got spent improperly or impractically. When his son Robert wanted a bike, he found him a girl’s bike on the side of the road, welded a piece of metal to its frame and painted it black. Once, for his daughter Cindy’s birthday, he bought her a pair of jumper cables; for her wedding, he presented her with an electric welder.

And like many men of his generation, he talked plain, calling the shots like he saw them. If he didn’t like a meal you cooked, his daughter Cindy said, he’d tell you so. And, according to his second wife Helen, he didn’t suffer fools gladly either, earning a reputation for being “irascible” and “crusty.”

He was so completely clean of — and pardon me for saying this — the bull,” said Helen. “He was free of neurosis and did not go around inflicting his feelings on everyone.”

When Clifford endured heart surgery some years back, his only complaint was that the doctor didn’t release him from the hospital early enough. Several years later, when he underwent radiation treatment for prostate cancer, he braved it stoically. And a year and a half ago, when he was diagnosed with myelodysplasia syndrome, he suffered silently — even though, according to his wife, he would have just as soon died the day they told him he couldn’t go down to the basement to work on the bikes.

Now that Clifford’s gone, that Pacifica basement is dank and quiet, filled with abandoned carburetors. At the center of the workshop, his lathe stands idle, draped with a blue quilt. The bikes have been given away, sold, or otherwise removed.

Only one motorcycle remains — a 1931 Indian 101 — and two days after her husband’s death, Helen Clifford removed the wool blanket from the chassis and took a moment to reflect on a world without men like Clifford.

“Everybody’s running around the world like Chicken Little,” she said. “There’s global warming, a meteor’s gonna hit the Earth, an earthquake’s coming to San Francisco, a volcano in Yellowstone. For Cliff, he wouldn’t concern himself with that. He’d say, ‘What’s the point?’ Worry about what you can change. Take care of what’s in front of you.’”

Francis Clifford is survived by his wife Helen, his son Robert, his daughter Cindy Mejia, and his two grandchildren, Miranda and Francesca.

A memorial service will be held Saturday, 10 a.m., at St. Paul’s Church, 1690 Church St., in San Francisco.