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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.

With the price of fuel skyrocketing and the American Family budget getting stretched thinner and thinner because of it, Motorcycles, because of their increased fuel economy, will certainly only become more popular.

Motorcycles, because they take up less space than a car or truck, are harder to see. This loss of visibility makes it more likely for a Motorcycle to be involved in a collision than other vehicles. Because Motorcycles lack the protection of other vehicles, such as a car or truck, severe injury is much more likely.

In researching this article, I found that there are conflicting reports as to whether or not a Motorcycle Helmet actually helps decrease injury.

For instance, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration it is estimated that an unhelmeted rider is 40% more likely to suffer a fatal head injury and 15% more likely to incur a nonfatal head injury than a rider who is helmeted. Yet a report published by Dr. Jonathan Goldstein of Bowdoin College states “It is concluded that (1) Motorcycle Helmets have no significant effect on probability of fatality and (2) past a critical impact speed, helmets increase the severity of neck injuries”.

I’ve seen the same report, specifically the National Safety Administration report to Congress, the CODES study, one 1995 and on 1999, used to prove opposites. Here is an example: “Helmets are minimally effective in preventing most injuries” come from the 1995 study. Then from the 1999 study, “…Helmets are 67% percent effective in preventing brain injuries and that unhelmeted motorcyclists involved in crashes were more than three times more likely to suffer injuries than whose wearing helmets.”

These two examples show that there are mixed messages being sent to Motorcycle Riders. To further illustrate this point here are some further examples of mixed message:

Automobile accidents account for 45.5% of all head injured patients and are responsible for 37.1% of all fatalities involving head injury (The Journal of Trauma, 1989), indicating that cars are more dangerous than motorcycles.

Per vehicle mile, motorcyclists are about 26 times as likely as passenger car occupants to die in a traffic crash and about 5 times as likely to be injured. (NHTSA Traffic Safety Facts, 2002), indicating that occupants of a car are much less likely to be injured than riders of a Motorcycle.

Injured motorcycle operators admitted to trauma centers had lower injury severity scores compared to other road trauma victims. They accrued lower hospital charges. They were less likely to rely on Medicaid and Medicare, and they had about the same level of commercial or private insurance as other road trauma victims. (University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, June, 1992), indicating that Motorcyclists are less likely to be in the Hospital.

Hospital stays are longer for unhelmeted riders and the cost to taxpayers is significantly higher since many motorcyclists are uninsured. (Michigan Traffic Safety Information Council.), indicating those unhelmeted Motorcyclists are a larger cost to society.

In my opinion this mixed message is dangerous to those Motorcycle Riders. We all must be responsible for ourselves and to those who love us. The decision as to whether or not to wear a Motorcycle Helmet is ultimately our own.

Recent events can shed light upon whether wearing a helmet is smart or not. Ask Ben Roethlisberger, Quarterback of the Pittsburg Steelers, whether wearing a Motorcycle Helmet is smart or not. I promise his opinion on whether or not to wear a Helmet is different now than it was before his accident. For reference on this, see Ben’s apology to his coaches and fans after he left the hospital after major surgery to repair his face and jaw. All of this information is available on the ESPN website.

I have personal experiences that have taught me that wearing a Helmet is an absolute necessity when riding a Motorcycle. I served as an Emergency Medical Technician for my local community in the early 1990’s for more than five years. I could use a number of examples from different calls I went on. One in particular stands out in my mind.

We were called to an automobile accident involving a motorcycle. When we arrived on the scene we found that a Motorcycle was unable to stop and ran into the back of a full size Ford Bronco, head first. The victim was lying on the ground. He did not wear a helmet and as such was lying in a pool of his own blood that came from injuries to his head. He was conscious but not coherent. He didn’t know what day, month, or year it was. Due to his current state of consciousness it was necessary to rush him to the Hospital. The police later determined that had he been wearing a helmet, he would’ve received a few cuts and bruises, but would’ve essentially walked away.

A second story I’d like to share from my experiences as an EMT, is very similar, but with a different outcome. Again, we were called to an accident involving a motorcycle. Upon arriving on the scene we noticed a motorcycle had hit the back of another vehicle. The “victim” was not lying on the ground. He was up walking around conversing with other people. He had no signs of trauma, he had been wearing his helmet. He walked away.

When you go for a ride on your motorcycle, you’re out to have fun. And hey, you’ve never had a crash before, so why would it happen now? Here are the government statistics about motorcycle helmets.

A brief history of the Law

In 1967, the US federal government said that it would take away funding from any state that didn’t have a helmet law. By 1975, 47 states had complied with the federal government. However, in 1976, they repealed the law, ruling it unconstitutional. Most states softened their helmet laws.

Kentucky and Louisiana

In the late 1990s, Kentucky and Louisiana repealed their helmet laws. While the helmet laws were in effect, nearly 100% of the people wore their helmets. When the laws came off the books, it fell to only half of people wearing helmets. The rate of fatalities per number of registered motorcycles rose 37% in Kentucky, and it rose a staggering 74% in Louisiana.

Don’t mess with Texas

Similarly to Kentucky and Louisiana, Texas took its helmet law off the books in 1997 for riders 21 or older who have insurance or training. Helmet use dropped from 96% to 66%, and motorcycle related deaths went up 1/3rd. This means that the death rates corresponds almost directly to the proportion of people who do not wear helmets.

Florida’s Example

Florida repealed its helmet law in 2000. From 1997-1999 (three years while the law was in place) 515 motorcycle riders were killed in crashes; 48 of those deaths were people not wearing helmets. From 2001-2003 (three years after the law was created) there were 933 motorcycle riders killed in crashes; 566 of these were not wearing their helmet.

What we can learn from this is that more people die when helmet use becomes optional. There were roughly 400 deaths in each three year period of people who wear helmets. However, the rate of people who died not wearing helmets went up more than 10 times. This is not coincidental.

Helmet Law Defense League

The Helmet Law Defense League is a group of people who lobby against laws requiring the use of helmets. They claim that it anti-constitutional to force people to wear helmets. They also argue that the word “helmet” is too vague.

Bells and Whistles

Even if you don’t choose to wear a motorcycle helmet for safety reasons, there are other reasons. The face guard allows you to see more clearly and prevents damage to your eyes when you go at high speeds. It also offers ear protection. Some helmets can be equipped with intercoms so you can communicate with your friends while you’re on your bike.