Domino Harvey (1969 - 2005): the remarkable eco-system of the War Without End

Domino Harvey, and an ad for the upcoming movie "Domino" starring Kiera Knightly as Domino Harvey. Click here & scroll down a bit for an absolutely thrilling 2-fisted machine-guns-blazing action-packed thrill-a-minute youth-oriented movie trailer.

One evening a few years ago when Saint Bob of the Truck was running the town's emergency hot-and-cot winter homeless shelter, one of our guests asked to use the Church office phone. He looked pretty desperate and told me he had to check in with his probation officer. (My town is also Courthouse Town, our shelter was largely the residential annex for dozens of indigents who spent their days warming the courthouse benches.)

He was about twenty -- just old enough so that his days of getting a break in the juvie criminal system were forever behind him, and now every misstep big or small was Seriously Adult. It was a good, convincing story, accompanied by all the right Worry Body Language, so I parked him at the secretary's desk, dialed the number he gave me (so he wouldn't call Alaska), and hovered in a corner of the office so he wouldn't rummage through the office for valuables. I started off by trying not to eavesdrop, but that wasn't really possible.

And I was glad I could hear his side of the conversation.

He wasn't talking to his probation officer. He was talking to a police detective. He was giving up a name or two or three of his friends and acquaintances involved in the same sad piddleshit that had stuck him in all his trouble. He was a junkie facing hard time when sentencing rolled around in a few days, and now he was trying to deal himself out of some of that by giving up some of his junkie friends to a narc. He was living in a cot shelter and didn't even have enough pocket change to use the pay phone a block down the street.

I didn't hang up the phone for him, but I gazed at him with my Laser Death Eyeball Rays, and finally made the TV director's hand-sign for CUT! He finally hung up.

I was being judgmental. I did not consider giving up names to a narc to be an appropriate use of the Church phone. It seemed also not to be in the spirit of church Sanctuary (even though, legally, there's no such thing.) I wasn't exactly an official of the Church, but if two or three of my neighbors were going to be put on the courthouse bus to state prison, I felt obligated to make sure their Corrections Department paperwork didn't say COMMUNICATIONS ASSISTANCE PROVIDED BY SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

Because the War on Drugs is a War Without End -- eventually winning (like World War Two), or losing (like Vietnam), or signing some kind of Armistice (like Korea), or curing all the drug addicts, just aren't among its goals -- it has developed a remarkable and remarkably complex eco-system.

Narcs and narcotics prosecutors need to get promoted, they get promoted by achieving Results, results are reckoned in Numbers of Narcotics Arrests, narcotics arrests are achieved by convicted or probationer or parolee junkies turning in the names of other junkies.

The other night a Discovery documentary noted that since Nixon founded the DEA thirty years ago, Congress and all Presidents (Democrat and Republican, don't ever forget that) have increased the DEA's budget every year. Two generations of federal, state and local narcs and narcotics prosecutors have relied on the War on Drugs to buy swimming pools, send their kids to college (or expensive private rehab), and buy this year's SUV exactly the way steelworkers or truck drivers or teachers depend on their jobs to support their families.

The only difference is -- steelworkers and truck drivers and teachers can get laid off. Narcs and narc prosecutors will never be laid off, and they know it, and they make sure it stays that way forever.

Sometime very soon, a Hollywood movie about the life of actor Laurence Harvey's daughter, Domino Harvey, will be released. While it lasted, hers was a thrilling, colorful life. She eventually made something resembling a living as a pistol-packin' Bounty Hunter (Huntress?) in Los Angeles.

I don't want to spoil the plot for you, but the movie will suggest that she risked her life regularly to shoot it out with Violent Urban Gang Leaders and other such Desperados, and bring 'em back Dead or Alive.

But in real life, Violent Gang Leaders and Desperados weren't really her bread-and-butter commodity.

Most of the time, Domino the heroin addict earned her bounties by busting other heroin addicts out on bail who'd skipped their court dates. That was how she earned the money she needed to buy heroin.

The War on Drugs is structured so that Junkies Eat Junkies, and the War on Drugs works best when, after the Junkies have eaten the other Junkies, there are more young, new junkies, so narcs and narcotics prosecutors can be employed and promoted forever.

I love this eco-system. Natural Selection could have never evolved it. Only Intelligent Design could have created this eco-system.

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from Wikipedia:

Domino Harvey (August 7, 1969 - June 27, 2005) was a British-born former model turned Los Angeles bounty hunter, notable within that field for being female, rebellious, and from a privileged background.

The daughter of the actor Laurence Harvey and his third wife and widow, the supermodel Paulene Stone, she was reportedly named after Bond girl Domino Derval from the movie Thunderball (The character's real name was Dominique, though she was called Domino).

Harvey claimed that she had initially followed her mother's footsteps as a Ford model before turning to more dangerous careers, but her employment with the agency has been unconfirmed. She did run a London nightclub, work as a San Diego ranch hand, volunteer with the Boulevard Fire & Rescue company near the Mexican border and, eventually, bounty hunt. [1].

In and out of drug rehabilitation for years, on May 4, 2005, she was arrested for allegedly dealing methamphetamines. She was awaiting trial and under house arrest at the time of her death. She would have faced up to ten years in jail if she had been convicted.

Harvey was found dead in a bathtub by a family friend in West Hollywood. On September 3, the Los Angeles County coroner reported that she had died from an overdose of fentanyl. The report said Harvey died June 27 from 'acute fentanyl toxicity.' Fentanyl is a pain killer more powerful than morphine. The coroner's report officially listed the cause of death as "accidental".

A film loosely based on her life called Domino, which stars Keira Knightley in the title role, and also features Mickey Rourke, Lucy Liu, Christopher Walken among others, is scheduled for release in October 2005. There have been press reports that the ending was changed following Domino's death, and also that she had been unhappy with her portrayal in the film - and in particular, the censorship of her bisexuality. The film studio has countered that she had been involved with the project with Tony Scott for nearly twelve years. Promotional featurettes for the movie include Domino on set with the cast and crew, she contributed to the songs on the soundtrack, and also attended the movie's wrap party in December 2004. Domino herself appears at the very end of the cast credits of the film.

Tony Scott did insert a 'In Loving Memory' title card for Harvey, to acknowledge Domino's death, which appears at the beginning of the production credits.

A July 22, 2005 article by the Los Angeles Times [2] quotes her uncle, Warwick Stone, as saying: "she was considering suing several publications for describing her as a lesbian and was also considering suing one of the rehab facilities."