Catherine Crier - Final Analysis

Officer Mooney was familiar with the location, having been summoned to the residence numerous times for loud, juvenile parties. “All of the alcoholic beverage containers were located in and around groups of persons who I separately identified as being in age from 16 to 18.”

Mooney noted that Frank [Felix] Polk, was in the kitchen, which overlooked the pool and the pool house, when he and his partner arrived at 10:20 that night. “Both the alcoholic beverages and the large group of juveniles were in plain view,” Mooney wrote. “Shortly after my arrival, Frank came outside, and asked what I was doing on his property. I told him that we had a complaint of a loud party. Frank said that it was just a graduation party and that it wasn’t loud.

“I told Frank that there were minors on his property while alcoholic beverages were being consumed and reminded him of my previous warning on 5/5/01. Frank replied that it was a graduation party.

“Frank’s son, Adam, approached as I was speaking with Frank. Adam told me that he was 18 years old and that it was his party and that he was responsible for the party.”

It was then that the officers placed Felix and his son under arrest and charged them with “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” and “un-lawful juvenile gathering on private property.” Though both men were later released at the scene and got off with mere citations, the episode was a disturbing example of Felix’s double standards. This hypocrisy would only worsen over the course of the next year; the Orinda police were regularly summoned to the Polk house in response to complaints of loud parties with underage drinking and fistfights. During one such call, in May of 2002, police arrived to find nearly one hundred teens, the majority of them minors, holding red plastic cups filled with beer. While there, a fight erupted in the crowd near the guesthouse and officers worked to break it up. Police found Felix Polk at home and admonished him for allowing alcohol to be served to minors.

Despite his claims of Susan’s negligence when it came to disciplining the boys, it became increasingly clear that Felix suffered from a similar inability to set boundaries for their teenage sons. While he would routinely belittle Susan’s ability to parent her children, his own attitudes proved just as dangerously nonchalant. Furthermore by allowing these unsupervised parties, he risked not just the well-being of his sons but of other teens as well.

In the days after Susan’s arrest, the questionable parenting of both Felix and Susan was examined as police reviewed their files and learned a lot more about this dysfunctional family. Officers were summoned to the Polk house frequently to deal with situations involving Adam, Eli, or Gabriel. Indeed, problems of one sort or another with the Polk family went way back—particularly with regard to Eli who had been in and out of trouble since 1998, when he and several friends allegedly entered another schoolmate’s house without permission and stole one hundred fifty dollars worth of alcohol. He was twelve at the time.

The following January, Eli was stopped for driving without a license. The officer who flashed him over intended to cite him for a broken headlight until he discovered the driver was just thirteen years old—far too young for even a learner’s permit.

Even worse, he had three female passengers in the car with him.

Susan and Felix took custody of Eli and his three young passengers, and Eli was fined one hundred twenty-five dollars for the violation.

In addition to his recklessness, Eli also displayed severe problems with aggression and harassment. It was no secret that he loved to fight, but he ran into problems when he brought this inclination to school with him. In April of 2000, he was expelled from Piedmont High School for harassing a classmate, calling the teen a “fucking fag,” and speaking derogatorily about homosexuals. He further inflamed the situation by yelling back “I say we kill all homosexuals” as he was ordered from his fourth-period classroom and directed to the principal’s office. Eli was ultimately suspended for his comments and for passing a note that read “u r gay” to the classmate. In addition, his teenage victim filed a police report alleging that Eli was so threatening, he “feared for his life.”

Unfortunately, Eli was not the only son with a tendency toward violence. In April of 1998, Adam was accused of battery for allegedly punching a classmate of Eli’s in the face at a middle-school dance. At the time, he was attending De La Salle High School, a Catholic all-boys school in Concord. Adam told officers who came to the family’s Piedmont home to investigate that he was simply “preventing Eli from getting a beating.” Adam claimed he went to the school that night to make sure Eli was “protected,” after hearing rumors that the kid had threatened to “jump” his brother and carried a knife. According to Adam, he approached the teen, who was standing with friends in the schoolyard, and asked if he was “talking” about Eli. Words were exchanged and, at one point, Adam hauled off and punched the kid in the nose, fleeing the school grounds in the aftermath.

Not surprisingly, the victim’s recollection of the night’s events differed significantly from Adam’s. In the ensuing police report, the boy said Adam punched him twice, once in the nose and once on the cheek, while he was outside on the street in front of the school waiting for his father to pick him up that night. He didn’t even know who Adam was when he walked up and announced that Eli said the kid had been “talking about him [Adam].”

“If I were to punch you, would you block it?” Adam reportedly asked the teen.

“No, I don’t want to start nothing,” the boy replied.

The victim claimed that Adam hit him in the face two times without provocation, and then walked away. When it was all over, Adam was issued a ticket and released to the custody of his mother. He was also ordered to receive counseling from a member of the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office on the dangers of taking situations into his own hands, agreeing that in the future he would call police for help.

In the summer of 2002, people attending a party at a nearby home in Alamo charged that Adam stole silver dishes and a Sony Play Station, worth in excess of five hundred dollars. Officers were dispatched to the Miner Road house to interview Adam but learned that he had already left for UCLA. Gabriel answered the door that day and insisted the accusations were false. He said Adam told him that the girl who hosted the party “wanted to sleep with Adam” but Adam “didn’t want to sleep with her.” It was for this reason that she named him as the culprit, he said.

When police reached Adam by phone, he denied any involvement in the theft and pointed a finger at another area teen.

Despite being the youngest, Gabriel was not immune to the problems that his brothers faced. On March 24, 2000, Gabriel and five of his friends burglarized a neighbor’s home, stealing six speakers, DVDs, and one hundred dollars from the homeowner’s wallet, which they took from a pocketbook in the kitchen. Police found all six boys in the backyard of the Polk’s house in Piedmont. The homeowner declined to press charges, asking that the boys be counseled and released to the custody of their parents. A police report indicated that the stolen property was returned.

Also in 2000, Gabriel got into a fight with a fellow student in the hallway of Miramonte Middle School. He claimed the boy was a “snitch” and accused the kid of “acting gay.” Gabe claimed the boy got in his face, provoking a fight. There were indications that friction had existed between the two boys dating back to the sixth grade. At first, Gabriel sought to avoid a fight with the boy. But when the boy struck him in the back of the head with a set of keys, Gabriel turned to confront the youth. Gabe was later taken to the hospital, where he was treated for a gash that required staples to close it up. A subsequent investigation revealed that Gabe had been struck with a T-shaped weapon, a two-inch steel rod with a flat metal base, however this did little to quell the ongoing feud. School authorities accused Gabe of bringing “manufactured” weapons such as a roll of taped quarters, a brass card holder made into brass knuckles, and an eight-inch weighted blackjack to school to seek revenge. Police confiscated the materials and later learned the homemade weapons were brought to school by several of Gabe’s friends. The boys were arrested on charges of “possession of a deadly weapon” and ordered to attend an anger management course.