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In the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting raids, black helicopters hovered over fields, farmland, even backyards, sometimes while blaring Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”

U.S. postal worker Katherine Bauer was stopped by CAMP troops while working her mail route in Humboldt County, made to return home to get identification, then searched for weapons. The next night, she heard chanting, honking and cheering; the CAMP troops were leaving town, celebrating on their way out. As she walked out to see what was causing the commotion, shots rang out from the hillside. It was a rural area and the sound of gunshots was common.

But the CAMP warriors hopped out of their trucks. One of them screamed at Bauer to “get moving.” She replied that she was standing on her own property. Bauer later said a deputy sheriff and part of the CAMP effort charged at her, put a rifle to her head, and told her she was an “asshole.” If he heard another shot, he said, he’d “open up” on her home.

“If there’s going to be any shooting around here, I’m going to be the first son of a bitch to open up on all you motherfuckers,” he said. Bauer said the helicopters often buzzed her property. Her son was terrified.

“Mommy, they are going to shoot me and they are going to shoot you,” he said after one incident. Bauer said, “He cried and lay down on the ground covering his head, repeatedly asking me to ‘take me away from here where I can’t hear them.’”