Former mayoral candidate and small business owner Yolanda Perez has been forced to endure an extended campaign of harassment by the Emerson Valley Sheriff’s Department over the past six weeks. Mrs. Perez’s grocery store, Downtown Market, has been a key holdout in preventing a development company from knocking down a row of buildings on Main Street to construct a new Walmart superstore.

“I don’t lease my building. I own it outright,” Mrs. Perez explained during a phone interview with the Gazette. “City Hall was able to revoke the leases of the other shops that’re being torn down, but they couldn’t do that with me. So now Mayor Faulk is getting his goon squad at the Sheriff’s Department to make my life miserable until I agree to sell.”

Normally, this would seem like an outrageous claim, but Mrs. Perez has seven different witnesses to the various gangster-like tactics used by the Sheriff’s Department.

“I just popped into Downtown Market for some milk when I saw two deputies come into the store,” said Emerson Valley resident Carl Nyland. “They knocked a bunch of stuff over as they headed towards the check-out counter. Yolanda’s there most days now since she can’t afford the help anymore. So the deputies start saying stuff like, ‘Uh-oh, that food’s been on the floor. You’ll get fined if you try to sell it now.’ They were laughing while she had to just stand there and take it.”

Another witness who wishes to remain anonymous added further context: “When Eddie Ritter still had his toy store next door, the police would go in and break half the toys on the shelf. He tried to stop them once and they broke his arm, then charged him with assaulting a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest. He lost his lease and had to sell his house.”

Mrs. Perez remains defiant in the face of the harassment. “I won’t back down,” she vowed. “They can bully me all they want, but I’m not moving.”

When the only law enforcement in town are the ones perpetrating the harassment, recourse is next to impossible. Any complaints to Sheriff Grayson are ignored, and reports to state or federal authorities of this gross abuse of power are negated by destroying the credibility of potential witnesses.

“They planted drugs on Rick Stoddard after he called the state police,” Mrs. Perez told the Gazette. “Then when they searched his tobacco shop, they ‘found’ a huge stockpile of drugs. The state police had no interest in investigating the claims of a drug dealer, so Rick lost his shop and his freedom. He was the last one besides me to stand in the way of them ripping down these buildings to built their superstore.”

The development company who holds the contract to build the store itself is owned by Ethan Harrison, the younger brother of Jorus Tech CEO Arthur Harrison. Both men are cousins of Miriam Rook, the President of the Raven Club and an influential resident of Emerson Valley who allegedly has money tied up in the construction of the Walmart Supercenter.

It remains to be seen if Mrs. Perez will be able to weather the storm. It seems like the invasion of major corporations is an inevitability at this point. Most of the small businesses that once lined Main Street are long gone. Other supermarket chains in the Emerson Valley area are already pricing Downtown Market out of business. One way or another, those in charge will get their way, and Emerson Valley will lose the last vestige of its former small town charm.

-Quinn Paxton, Local News, Emerson Valley Gazette