Lear Asset Management has been thrust into the national spotlight after some of its agents forcibly removed a woman. Locally, the firm has been known patrolling illegal cannabis grows.
A private security firm founded in Mendocino County is once again in the national spotlight.
On Saturday, men in unmarked black polo shirts forcibly removed and zip-tied Teresa Borrenpohl of Post Falls, Idaho, during a Kootenai County Republican Central Committee town hall meeting in Coeur D’Alene. Video of the incident went viral on the internet, and several national news outlets wrote about what transpired.
When Borrenpohl refused to leave the meeting, the Kootenai County sheriff gestured to the men, who grabbed her arms and pulled her from her seat. They dragged her out of the auditorium.
The three men have since been identified as agents with Lear Asset Management. Locally, the company is known for descending from unmarked helicopters throughout the “Emerald Triangle” in Trinity, Humboldt and Mendocino counties to clean up illegal cannabis grows.
Former Mendocino County Fish and Wildlife Game Commissioner Paul Trouette, who has a decades-long history in Mendocino County as an environmentalist and hunter, formed the company in 2011.
Trouette started Lear partly in response to the murder of Jere Melo, a Fort Bragg forester and former city council member. Melo was killed by an illegal opium poppy grower in August 2011 while patrolling the forest north of the Mendocino coastal town in his capacity as a security worker for Campbell Timber Management company.
The killing shook Trouette and other hunters.
Throughout 2012 to at least 2014, Lear worked both with and without the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office doing drug raids in the Mendocino National Forest, working to clean up illegal grows deep in the woods by removing cannabis plants and replanting native vegetation.
Often times, the group was hired by private landowners and timber companies seeking support outside of official law enforcement.
In 2013, The Willits News reported that Lear found an illegal pot grow on private, rural land in Mendocino County. During the raid, its agents detained two trespassers until Mendocino County Sheriff’s deputies arrived.
“Law enforcement just doesn’t have the means to take care of it any longer,” Trouette told Talking Points Memo in 2014.
At the same time Lear patrolled the forest for illegal cannabis grows, Trouette’s nonprofit, Mendocino County Blacktail Association, cleaned up the aftermath of cannabis grows and other destruction in the Mendocino National Forest.
Personnel from both groups were armed with assault rifles.
“We don’t want to give the impression that we’re some vigilante group,” Trouette told Outside Magazine in 2012, at the height of Mendocino County’s illegal cannabis problem.
The goal of Blacktail, he said, was to clean up the land. But, he noted to Outside, “we’ve had standoffs … This is our land. We want to be able to take our families out and recreate on it.”
Blacktail kept busy for a handful of years. In 2018, the Bureau of Land Management gave the nonprofit $85,000 to lead restoration efforts and reduce potentially flammable brush in the Mendocino National Forest near Covelo, a hot bed for illegal grows.
Lear grew, according to its website, expanding its services beyond cannabis grows. It began to offer security services, including monitoring the train tracks for Northwestern Pacific Railroad. In 2017, the security firm reported a fire along the tracks in Willits. Last September, the company donated security services during a clean-up of the Russian River in Ukiah. Employees wore shirts identifying themselves as security guards, according to photos published by MendoFever.
According to its website, the company also offers law enforcement and civilian training throughout the greater Pacific Northwest.
Trouette, who is listed as the president, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The Coeur D’Alene Police Department, which is investigating Borrenpohl’s removal, said in a statement, that all citizens are afforded the rights to free speech. The statement also said that Lear Asset Management’s local business license has been revoked because its officers failed to wear uniforms indicating their employees were security guards.
The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that no Kootenai County Deputy Sheriffs or other personnel were present or involved in the incident.
Amie Windsor is the Community Journalism Team Lead with The Press Democrat. She can be reached at amie.windsor@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5218.
