11/22/2017 San Bernardino County gets grant to help crack down on DUI offenders - Fontana Herald News: News San Bernardino County gets grant to help crack down on DUI offenders Posted: Wednesday, November 15, 2017 10:45 am
Persons arrested for DUI in San Bernardino County, especially repeat offenders and those involved in fatal or injury crashes, can expect to face highly trained, specialized prosecutors, funded by a $211,883 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS).
The grant to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office will fund a Vertical Prosecution team that will work cases from arrest through conviction and sentencing. "I will always remember CHP Officer Ruben Rios, who lost his life to a drunk driver while on duty protecting the public," said District Attorney Mike Ramos. "Officer Rios had spent so much of his time as an officer educating the community about the dangers of drinking and driving. We can't say or do District Attorney's Office anything to bring him back, but we can carry on with the The San Bernardino County District work that was near and dear to his heart. This grant will Attorney's Office received a grant to help allow us the chance to add more resources to protect our crack down on DUI offenders. citizens and ultimately hold those who decide to drink and drive responsible for their actions."
In 2015, there were 85 deaths and 1997 serious injuries as a result of DUI crashes in San Bernardino County. Funding from this DUI prosecution grant will aid the District Attorney's Office in handling cases through each step of the criminal process from crash scene to sentencing, prosecuting both alcohol and drug- impaired driving cases.
Prosecution team members will work with California's Traffic Safety Resource Prosecutor Training Network to expand knowledge and resources in the office by obtaining and delivering specialized training, including the emerging problem of drug-impaired driving. Team members will share information with peers and law enforcement throughout the county and state.
"Vertical prosecution teams working serious DUI cases get the positive results needed," said OTS Director Rhonda Craft. "The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office, with assistance from the Office of Traffic Safety, will be working to help keep the streets across San Bernardino County safe for everyone." While alcohol remains the worst offender for DUI crashes, the District Attorney's Office supports the new effort from OTS that aims to drive awareness that "DUI Doesn't Just Mean Booze." Prescription medications
http://www.fontanaheraldnews.com/news/san-bernardino-county-gets-grant-to-help-crack-down-on/article_31b57ce0-ca35-11e7-aa34-9306b642173c.h… 1/2 11/22/2017 San Bernardino County gets grant to help crack down on DUI offenders - Fontana Herald News: News and marijuana can also be impairing by themselves, or in combination with alcohol, and can result in a DUI arrest.
Deputy District Attorney Jack Liu is currently assigned to the unit.
Since his assignment in the Fall of 2015, DDA Liu has trained more than 600 police officers regarding the investigation and enforcement of DUI/DUID cases. More recently, in an effort to combat the rise in opioid and marijuana use by drivers, Liu spearheaded an effort by the District Attorney's Office to bring Drug Recognition Expert (DRE) training to the county.
On Oct. 16, DDA Liu co-hosted the county's first ever DRE training at the Ontario Police Department, which allowed more than 40 police officers to be trained to recognize impairment in drivers under the influence of drugs other than, or in addition to, alcohol.
http://www.fontanaheraldnews.com/news/san-bernardino-county-gets-grant-to-help-crack-down-on/article_31b57ce0-ca35-11e7-aa34-9306b642173c.h… 2/2 11/22/2017 Self-taught rocket scientist plans to launch over San Bernardino County ghost town – Daily Bulletin
LOCAL NEWS Self-taught rocket scientist plans to launch over San Bernardino County ghost town
In this Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2017, photograph, daredevil/limousine driver Mad Mike Hughes is shown with with his steam=powered rocket constructed out of salvage parts on a five-acre property that he leases in Apple Valley, Cal. Hughes plans to launch his homemade contraption on Saturday near the ghost town of Amboy, Cal., at a speed of roughly 500 miles-per-hour. (Waldo Stakes/HO courtesy of Mad Mike Hughes via AP)
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | | PUBLISHED: November 21, 2017 at 2:47 pm | UPDATED: November 21, 2017 at 2:57 pm
By PAT GRAHAM, AP Sports Writer
The countdown to launch creeps closer and there’s still plenty for self-taught rocket scientist “Mad” Mike Hughes to do: Last-second modi cations to his vessel. Pick up his ight suit. Leave enough food for his four cats — just in case anything happens.
Hughes is a 61-year-old limo driver who’s spent the last few years building a steam-powered rocket out of salvage parts in his garage. His project has cost him $20,000, which includes Rust-Oleum paint to fancy it up and a motor home he bought on Craigslist that he converted into a ramp.
His rst test of the rocket will also be the launch date — Saturday, when he straps into his homemade contraption and attempts to hurtle over the ghost town of Amboy. He will travel about a mile at a speed of roughly 500 mph.
http://www.dailybulletin.com/2017/11/21/self-taught-rocket-scientist-plans-to-launch-over-san-bernardino-county-ghost-town/?utm_source=dl… 1/3 11/22/2017 Self-taught rocket scientist plans to launch over San Bernardino County ghost town – Daily Bulletin
“If you’re not scared to death, you’re an idiot,” Hughes said . “It’s scary as hell, but none of us are getting out of this world alive. I like to do extraordinary things that no one else can do, and no one in the history of mankind has designed, built and launched himself in his own rocket.
“I’m a walking reality show.”
The daredevil/limo driver has been called a little bit of everything over his career — eccentric, quirky, foolhardy. Doesn’t bother him. He believes what he believes, including that the Earth is at. He knows this thought is a conundrum, given that he’s about to launch himself into the atmosphere.
Down the road, he’s intending to build a rocket that takes him to space, so he can snap a picture and see with his own eyes.
“I don’t believe in science,” said Hughes, whose main sponsor for the rocket is Research Flat Earth. “I know about aerodynamics and uid dynamics and how things move through the air, about the certain size of rocket nozzles, and thrust. But that’s not science, that’s just a formula. There’s no difference between science and science ction.”
This will actually be the second time he’s constructed and launched a rocket. He jumped on a private property in Winkelman, Arizona, on Jan. 30, 2014 , and traveled 1,374 feet. He collapsed after that landing — the G-forces taking a toll — and needed three days to recover.
That distance, though, would’ve been enough to clear the Snake River Canyon, which is a jump daredevil Evel Knievel made famous when he failed to clear it during his attempt in 1974. Stuntman Eddie Braun did successfully zoom over the canyon — using Knievel’s original blueprints — in September 2016.
Just don’t mention Knievel around Hughes. He’s not a fan.
“He was an average stunt guy,” said Hughes, a former motorcycle racer. “He stole his look from Elvis.”
Hughes constructed his latest rocket at the “Rocket Ranch” in Apple Valley. It’s a ve-acre property he leases from Waldo Stakes , the CEO of Land Speed Research Vehicles who’s currently working on a project to make a car travel 2,000 mph.
Their relationship formed a few years ago when Hughes approached Stakes about building a rocket. Stakes receives plenty of these sorts of requests, but this one stood out because Hughes was building it himself.
“Nothing is out of reach,” Stakes said. “Anything can be done. You just have to put enough money, time and thought into it.”
Here’s the thing: Hughes doesn’t make all that much money — $15 per hour as a limo driver, plus tips. That’s why he’s scrounged for parts, nding the aluminum for his rocket in metal shops and constructing the rocket nozzle out of an aircraft air lter. He gave it a good varnish of cheap paint, and his launch pad is attached to a motor home he bought for $1,500.
“I want to inspire others — and you have to do something incredible to get anybody’s attention,” Hughes said.
The location of the jump will be Amboy, a ghost town in the Mojave Desert and along historic Route 66. The ctional town of Radiator Springs in the Disney movie “Cars” was loosely based on Amboy.
Hughes got permission from the town’s owner, Albert Okura, who purchased the rights to Amboy in 2005 for $435,000. The launch will take place on an air strip next to a dilapidated hangar.
“It is absolutely the most wacky promotional proposal I have had since I purchased the entire town in 2005,” said Okura, who’s also the founder of the Juan Pollo restaurant chain. “He is a true daredevil and I want to be part of it.”
On the morning of the launch, Hughes will heat about 70 gallons of water in a stainless steel tank and then blast off between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. He plans to go about a mile — reaching an altitude of about 1,800 feet — before pulling two parachutes. They’re discouraging fans — safety issues — but it will be televised on his YouTube channel. He said he’s been in contact with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Bureau of Land Management.
Following his jump, he said he’s going to announce his plans to leap into the race for governor of California.
No joke.
His future plans include an excursion into space. He and Stakes have already brainstormed on a “Rockoon,” which is a rocket that, rather than being immediately ignited while on the ground, is carried into the atmosphere by a gas- lled balloon, then separated from the balloon and lit. This rocket will take Hughes about 68 miles up.
First things rst — this jump over a ghost town. He will be tinkering with his rocket right up to takeoff.
“A guy who builds his own rocket in his garage, about to jump a mile is pretty cool,” Hughes said. “It’s the most interesting human-interest story in the world.”
http://www.dailybulletin.com/2017/11/21/self-taught-rocket-scientist-plans-to-launch-over-san-bernardino-county-ghost-town/?utm_source=dl… 2/3 11/22/2017 Community answers San Bernardino Animal Control’s call for newspapers to help cats – Press Enterprise
LOCAL NEWS Community answers San Bernardino Animal Control’s call for newspapers to help cats
On Friday, Nov. 17, the San Bernardino Animal Control shelter took in as many as 40 abandoned cats. Within an hour of soliciting donations of newspapers, the public had delivered stacks to the shelter. (Photo by Brian Whitehead, San Bernardino Sun/SCNG)
By BRIAN WHITEHEAD | [email protected] | San Bernardino Sun November 21, 2017 at 3:40 pm
http://www.pe.com/2017/11/21/community-answers-san-bernardino-animal-controls-call-for-newspapers/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=t… 1/4 11/22/2017 Community answers San Bernardino Animal Control’s call for newspapers to help cats – Press Enterprise SAN BERNARDINO – Oscar Perez received a call Friday morning that as many as 40 cats had been abandoned inside an apartment at a nearby complex.
The third-year San Bernardino Animal Control manager knew his shelter was in trouble.
Already with a full cat kennel, Perez phoned local rescues in an attempt to clear space. He was able to, and that a ernoon dozens of abandoned cats took up residence off Chandler Place.
But another problem arose: The shelter needed more newspapers to line litter boxes and kennels.
Perez solicited the community’s help.
Within an hour of asking for donations, stacks of newspapers had been delivered to Perez’s front door – among the publications, The San Bernardino Sun. The shelter, whose employees discard used newspapers daily, should be set on liner for a while, Perez said.
The community’s generosity was no surprise, the manager added. When a water valve at the shelter ruptured two years ago, the public donated three cases of bottled water and about 60 2-liters. Blankets also are regularly gi ed, Perez said.
The abandoned cats are working their way through the shelter’s vet and should be released to the public for adoption in another week or two.
“The rescue community, our staff and the community,” Perez said, “it’s a good connection.”
For information about the shelter or its adoptable pets, visit http://www.sbcity.org/cityhall/police_department/animctrl/default.asp.
Tags: animals, Top Stories PE, Top Stories Sun
Associate mug of Brian Whitehead Brian Brian Whitehead covers San Bernardino for The Sun. Bred in Whitehead, Grand Terrace, he graduated from Riverside Notre Dame High Trainee and Cal State Fullerton. For seven years, he covered high school Anaheim. and college sports for The Orange County Register. Before Date shot: landing at The Sun, he was the city beat reporter for Buena Park, 12/31/2012 Fullerton and La Palma. http://www.pe.com/2017/11/21/community-answers-san-bernardino-animal-controls-call-for-newspapers/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=t… 2/4 11/22/2017 Sterling Natural Resource Center clears a hurdle - Highland Community News: Breaking News Sterling Natural Resource Center clears a hurdle Posted: Wednesday, November 22, 2017 7:40 am The San Bernardino Valley took another step toward the development of recycled water on Tuesday, Nov. 21,, when the city of San Bernardino and its Water Department reached an agreement to resolve all current litigation with San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District and East Valley Water District.
A negotiation team consisting of elected officials and staff members from each agency reached a solution that benefits residents living in this region.
The agreement was announced following a closed door session of the East Valley Water District Tuesday night
“This settlement represents a revitalized spirit of cooperation for this community and lays the groundwork for many more valuable regional partnerships in the future,” said San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District Board President Susan Longville. “This agreement marks a new chapter for recycled water development and sustainability of our local groundwater basin.” Following several weeks of joint discussions, community leaders found common ground to promote water reliability. As with all major initiative investments, this agreement spurs a transition that will take place over several years. This will shift how wastewater is treated and utilized to enhance the local groundwater supply for nearly 700,000 people within San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District’s service area. “With this collaboration among agencies comes an opportunity for a higher level of public service,” said City of San Bernardino Mayor R. Carey Davis. “Starting today, we can take a look at how we can work together to maximize benefits to the residents of our communities.” “Investing in the future of our water supply is essential for this region,” said San Bernardino Water Department President Toni Callicott. “An important step in preparing for future droughts is enhancing the reliability of this precious resource.” The new agreement recognizes the importance of working together to develop regional recycled water as an alternative source of supply. Multiple projects have been identified to achieve this goal, including construction of the Sterling Natural Resource Center and Clean Water Factory.
“We have all been entrusted with the responsibility of serving our community and taking steps to ensure reliability for the future,” said East Valley Water District Chairman Ronald Coats. “We look forward to the many opportunities for new partnerships and collaborations moving forward.”
Two cases against the Highland recycled water project were filed, consolidated and moved to San Diego for trial. The city of San Bernardino had filed one suit and the Socal Environmental Justice Alliance filed the second suit.
http://www.highlandnews.net/news/breaking_news/sterling-natural-resource-center-clears-a-hurdle/article_6bed9e7c-cf9b-11e7-9c45-ffd733e31de1.ht… 1/2 11/22/2017 Sterling Natural Resource Center clears a hurdle - Highland Community News: Breaking News The resolutions of these lawsuits will clear the way for the Sterling Natural Resource Center to move forward.
http://www.highlandnews.net/news/breaking_news/sterling-natural-resource-center-clears-a-hurdle/article_6bed9e7c-cf9b-11e7-9c45-ffd733e31de1.ht… 2/2 11/22/2017 Councilman Valdivia Praises Water District Settlement - Highland Community News: Breaking News Councilman Valdivia Praises Water District Settlement Posted: Wednesday, November 22, 2017 7:48 am Calls for Expansion of Regional Water Partnerships
San Bernardino City Councilman John Valdivia praised today’s legal settlement between the city of San Bernardino Water Department, the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District (SBVMWD), and the East Valley Water District.
“For many weeks I have been encouraging our city water department to resolve its legal disputes with neighboring agencies,” said Valdivia. “I applaud today’s settlement as a positive step forward that will benefit local residents and businesses, and opens up greater opportunities—ultimately—for development. Undeniably, the effects of this agreement will be a welcome boost for home builders and addresses the needs of our state’s housing shortage,” stated Valdivia.
“San Bernardino needs more regional partnerships to rebuild our city’s economic foundation. Unfortunately, the Davis Administration has been undermining our ability to create these partnerships by filing lawsuits instead of finding solutions,” stated Valdivia. “Today’s settlement will provide significant benefits for San Bernardino and surrounding communities,” continued Valdivia. “It will add a significant additional water (6,000 acre feet of water per year) replenishment at the Bunker Hill Groundwater Basin. It will streamline service delivery for residents and create a multi-agency approach that can enable water providers to lower rates for consumers. And it encourages the use of green landscaping to help stretch our future water supplies in drought years.”
“The 22-acre land swap provided in this settlement also provides substantial job creation opportunities just to the north of the San Bernardino Airport,” declared Valdivia. “My council colleagues and I will be working in close collaboration with the San Manuel Tribal Leadership to ensure a high quality economic development use on this extremely valuable tract of land.” “I want to thank the our city water Board of Commissioners for their willingness to put an end to costly litigation and to help begin a collaborative process that will hopefully continue for many years to come,” concluded Valdivia.
http://www.highlandnews.net/news/breaking_news/councilman-valdivia-praises-water-district-settlement/article_96c70204-cf9c-11e7-a183-0fbbd811ff8… 1/1 11/22/2017 More than 260 local students participate in STEM conference
More than 260 local students participate in STEM conference By Staff reports Posted Nov 21, 2017 at 2:26 PM Updated Nov 21, 2017 at 2:26 PM Schools in Hesperia, Apple Valley, Victorville, Helendale, Adelanto, Lucerne Valley, Trona and from the Antelope Valley participated in this year’s program.
More than 260 local students and advisers recently participated in the 10th annual Youth Environmental Leadership Conference and STEM Service-Learning event, where 31 teams rotated through workshops to learn about robotics, wind energy, engineering principals, solar power, water conservation and more.
The event, hosted by Granite Hills High School in Apple Valley, was organized by the Mojave Environmental Education Consortium, which was founded in 2001 and is headquartered at Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District’s facility in Victorville.
Schools in Hesperia, Apple Valley, Victorville, Helendale, Adelanto, Lucerne Valley, Trona and from the Antelope Valley participated in this year’s program.
STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math, and “is a vital step towards providing students with the needed skills and technological familiarity,” MDAQMD spokeswoman Violette Roberts said in a statement, “that will enable them to take part in the exciting economies of the future.”
In one workshop, students were taught basic engineering principals as they designed a 30-foot roller coaster using pipe insulation foam and masking tape.
Students who participate in Service-Learning, meanwhile, are tasked with applying academically acquired skills and knowledge to identify and solve real-world community problems and accessing community partner expertise in broaching those issues, Roberts said.
During this year’s event, held in late October, the consortium introduced “Maker,” an educational approach that relies upon hands-on, often collaborative learning experiences as a method for solving authentic problems and which is seen as “the next step in advancing STEM education in the classroom,” according to Roberts.
Joel Greene, the host and producer of the PBS television show “Curiosity Quest,” acted as the keynote speaker.
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http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20171121/more-than-260-local-students-participate-in-stem-conference 1/1 11/22/2017 How hot is your Thanksgiving going to be? – Press Enterprise
LOCAL NEWS How hot is your Thanksgiving going to be?
By CITY NEWS SERVICE | November 22, 2017 at 7:05 am
Temperatures are expected to heat up over the Thanksgiving Day holiday, and people are already taking advantage of the warmer than average temperatures at Hermosa Beach. (Photo by Chuck Bennett/Daily Breeze/SCNG)
http://www.pe.com/2017/11/22/how-hot-is-your-thanksgiving-going-to-be/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 1/4 11/22/2017 How hot is your Thanksgiving going to be? – Press Enterprise LOS ANGELES — A mini heat wave could send some Southland temperatures into record territory today, including a high of 94 degrees in Downtown L.A., setting the stage for an uncommonly warm Thanksgiving Day, with more records possible, forecasters said.
Temperatures today will be around 20 degrees above normal while Thursday’s will be generally 20 to 25 degrees higher than the average even though they’ll be a little lower than today’s in many communities, said National Weather Service meteorologist Rich Thompson.
The highest L.A. County temperature expected today is 95 in Woodland Hills and Burbank, while Mission Viejo in Orange County may reach 97.
The unusual temperatures are the result of high pressure alo combined with weak but warm offshore winds, Thompson said.
Some heat records for a November 21 were set in Los Angeles County Tuesday, including 91 in Burbank, topping the 88 set in 2002; 91 in Woodland Hills, besting the 89 set in 2002; and 74 in Sandberg, compared to 70 in 1995.
More records are possible today, including in Downtown L.A., Long Beach, Burbank, Lancaster and Palmdale, Thompson said, adding that heat records could also be set Thursday in Downtown L.A., Burbank, Lancaster and Palmdale.
If Thursday’s high in Downtown L.A. reaches 90, as forecast, it would tie a record set on November 23, 1903, Thompson said.
In Orange County, a high of 81 is expected in Newport Beach, tying a record set in 2002, while the expected high of 91 in Santa Ana Thursday could tie a record set in 1950, said NWS meteorologist Greg Martin.
The NWS forecast sunny skies in L.A. County today and highs of 82 in Palmdale and Lancaster; 84 on Mount Wilson; 85 in San Pedro; 86 in Avalon; 90 in Santa Clarita and at LAX; 91 in Torrance; 93 in West Covina; 94 in downtown L.A., Long Beach, San Gabriel, Whittier and Pasadena; and 95 in Burbank, Northridge, North Hollywood, Van Nuys and Woodland Hills.
In San Bernardino County, it will be 69 in Big Bear; 82 in Hesperia; 84 in Victorville; 87 in Yucaipa; 92 in Redlands; 93 in Rancho Cucamonga; and 94 in San Bernardino and Ontario.
Sunny skies were also forecast in Orange County, along with highs of 78 in Laguna Beach; 80 in San Clemente; 81 in Newport Beach; 95 in Yorba Linda and Anaheim; 96 in Irvine and Fullerton; and 97 in Mission Viejo.
http://www.pe.com/2017/11/22/how-hot-is-your-thanksgiving-going-to-be/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 2/4 11/22/2017 How hot is your Thanksgiving going to be? – Press Enterprise In Riverside County, it will be 87 in Blythe; 89 in Desert Hot Springs; 90 in Indio; 92 in Palm Springs and Palm Desert; 93 in Hemet; 94 in Lake Elsinore and Perris; and 95 in Riverside, Murrieta, Menifee and Temecula.
Thanksgiving Day temperatures will be between one and four degrees lower than today in many communities, then fall again on Friday, when highs will be 10 degrees lower than today in several areas but still above the norm.
Tags: Top Stories IVDB, Top Stories OCR, Top Stories PE, Top Stories RDF, Top Stories Sun
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http://www.pe.com/2017/11/22/how-hot-is-your-thanksgiving-going-to-be/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 3/4 11/22/2017 ROTWNEWS.com – San Bernardino County Fire Has Tips For a Safe Holiday Kitchen
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in Community News, Fire, For Your Information, Informational, Mountain Region, News, Safety, Subject, Ticker / by Michael P. Neufeld / on November 22, 2017 at 5:03 am /
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By Susan A. Neufeld
San Bernardino, CA – As your home warms up with all the delicious smells of Thanksgiving cooking, make sure you’re being safe while in the kitchen. Cooking fires are the number one cause of home fires and related injuries. The National Fire Protection Association reports that 30 percent of all home fires start in the kitchen, that’s more than any other part of the home. Follow these safety guidelines to help ensure a festive feast:
Never leave cooking food unattended. Be alert! Do not attempt to cook if you have been drinking or are drowsy. Keep cooking areas and appliances clean; build up grease can cause fires. Keep children and pets at least three-feet from the stove. Keep flammable objects (dish towels, potholders, curtains, etc) away from the stovetop. Turn pot handles inward to prevent them from being bumped or grabbed by children or pets. Wear short sleeved shirts or close fitting clothes when cooking. Dangling clothes can easily catch fire. Avoid reaching over the stovetop
WHAT TO DO IF THERE IS A FIRE
Put a lid on grease fires. If a small grease fire starts in a pan, smother the flames by slowly sliding the lid over the pan. Turn off the burner. Do not remove the lid until it is completely cool! If there is a fire in an oven or microwave, keep the door closed, turn off the oven or microwave, and disconnect the power.
http://rotwnews.com/2017/11/22/san-bernardino-county-fire-has-tips-for-a-safe-holiday-kitchen/ 1/6 11/22/2017 ROTWNEWS.com – San Bernardino County Fire Has Tips For a Safe Holiday Kitchen Stop drop and roll. If your clothing catches on fire, stop. Do not run. Drop to the ground. Cover your face with your hands and roll over and over to smother flames.
Cool a burn, Run cool water (not ice water) over a burn for 10 to 15 minutes. Never apply butter or grease to a burn. If the skin is blistered or charred, see a doctor immediately.
When preparing that amazing feast be aware and us common sense.
For more information visit: http://www.sbcfire.org
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http://rotwnews.com/2017/11/22/san-bernardino-county-fire-has-tips-for-a-safe-holiday-kitchen/ 2/6 11/22/2017 San Bernardino Turkey Trot expected to draw hundreds – San Bernardino Sun
LOCAL NEWS San Bernardino Turkey Trot expected to draw hundreds
Staff file photo San Bernardino International Airport will be the site of the San Bernardino Turkey Trot on Thursday, Nov. 23.
By BRIAN WHITEHEAD | [email protected] | San Bernardino Sun PUBLISHED: November 21, 2017 at 10:00 am | UPDATED: November 21, 2017 at 10:24 am
Hundreds will work up an appetite Thursday in San Bernardino before treating themselves to Thanksgiving dinner.
The third annual San Bernardino Turkey Trot, presented by the city’s Community Emergency Response Team, is scheduled for 7 a.m. at San Bernardino International Airport, 105 N. Leland Norton Way. There will be a “Kiddy Walk” for children ages 2 to 10 and post-race activities.
What began as an alternative to holiday runs in neighboring cities has become a signature CERT fundraiser and a Thanksgiving Day tradition for some local runners.
All proceeds bene t the disaster-preparedness and response program.
Last November, the team donated turkeys to community organizations and held a pop-up dinner at San Bernardino nonpro t Option House, a shelter for domestic violence survivors.
Turkeys will again be distributed to local organizations.
Thursday’s trot also kicks off the inaugural Quad City Challenge, a four-race series including runs in Loma Linda, on Dec. 10, Highland, Jan. 28, and Redlands, March 4. Finish all four and earn the Quad City Challenge medal. http://www.sbsun.com/2017/11/21/san-bernardino-turkey-trot-expected-to-draw-hundreds/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 1/3 11/22/2017 San Bernardino Turkey Trot expected to draw hundreds – San Bernardino Sun
For the second year, San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis has challenged city of cials and community members to put together teams of two to compete in a team relay. Runners split the 3.1-mile course.
Registration is $30 per person and $40 per team. Children 10 and under are $15. Runners registering on site will be charged an additional $5. Registration booths open at around 6 a.m.
Information or to register: [email protected] or 909-453-2968.
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Brian Whitehead Brian Whitehead covers San Bernardino for The Sun. Bred in Grand Terrace, he graduated from Riverside Notre Dame High and Cal State Fullerton. For seven years, he covered high school and college sports for The Orange County Register. Before landing at The Sun, he was the city beat reporter for Buena Park, Fullerton and La Palma. Follow Brian Whitehead @bwhitehead3
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http://www.sbsun.com/2017/11/21/san-bernardino-turkey-trot-expected-to-draw-hundreds/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 2/3 11/22/2017 ROTWNEWS.com – FREE Thanksgiving Dinners in Running Springs and Crestline
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in Community News, Entertainment, For Your Information, Informational, Mountain Region, News, Subject, Ticker / by Michael P. Neufeld / on November 21, 2017 at 5:01 am /
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By Susan A. Neufeld
Mountain Communities – Turkey, gravy, potatoes, dressing, cranberry, pies and more are on the menu at the FREE Thanksgiving dinners being served in Running Springs and Crestline.
Here are the community feasts that are being held in the mountain communities.
RUNNING SPRINGS
http://rotwnews.com/2017/11/21/free-thanksgiving-dinners-in-running-springs-and-crestline/ 1/7 11/22/2017 ROTWNEWS.com – FREE Thanksgiving Dinners in Running Springs and Crestline The Running Springs Area Golden Oaks Senior Citizens invite the community to join their annual Thanksgiving Day dinner party.
The Golden Oaks are hosting the event at the Robert Hootman Senior/Community Center from noon to 3 p.m.
The meal — featuring turkey and all the fixings — is open to the community. Please sign up to attend at the Thrift Store, located at 31944 Hilltop, Running Springs.
The Hootman Center is located at 2929 Running Springs School Road in Running Springs.
To volunteer please contact the Thrift Store.
CRESTLINE
The ” The Banquet Table of Life” will once again take place at the San Moritz Lodge, 24640 San Moritz Way, Crestline. The event is hosted by the Crestline – Lake Gregory Rotary. The dinner is Thursday, November 23rd, from 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., and open to all of those in need of a hot traditional Thanksgiving meal.
Senior shut-in deliveries will be made. Many Seniors are unable to attend for various reasons and those identified will be delivered hot meals.
The meal will include- turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry and pie. The meal is FREE to all.
Generous sponsors of the dinner are: Lake-Gregory Recreation Company/San Moritz Lodge, San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, Lake View Realty, Goodwin’s Market, Mick Hill Enterprises, Styles by Jolayne, Road House Pizza, Supervisor Janice Rutherford, Crestline-Lake Gregory Rotary Members and countless volunteers from the mountain communities.
If you would like to volunteer to help serve dinners, set up, clean up, or deliver meals please contact Gaston Maya , (213) 297-9548 to volunteer.
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http://rotwnews.com/2017/11/21/free-thanksgiving-dinners-in-running-springs-and-crestline/ 2/7 11/22/2017 Volunteers needed for mega San Bernardio food drive – Press Enterprise
LOCAL NEWS Volunteers needed for mega San Bernardio food drive
Another Way is seeking volunteers to help with it’s 10th Annual Navidad En El Barrio Food Drive – set for Dec. 16, 2017 in San Bernardino. (Photo courtesy of Inland Regional Center – Another Way)
By STAFF REPORT | Press-Enterprise November 21, 2017 at 4:49 pm
Another Way is seeking volunteers to help with it’s 10th Annual Navidad En El Barrio Food Drive – set from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dec. 16 at the Inland Regional Center, 1365 S. Waterman Ave., San Bernardino. http://www.pe.com/2017/11/21/volunteers-needed-for-mega-san-bernardio-food-drive/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 1/3 11/22/2017 Volunteers needed for mega San Bernardio food drive – Press Enterprise Local agencies are assembling food baskets for more than 1,000 families in need in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.
Volunteers from Another Way, Inland Regional Center, the community, and other partners like UPS, the local Housing Authority, Innovative Business Partnerships, Desert ARC, ARC of Riverside County, In-Roads, Inland Respite, and Pathway, Inc. donate time and money. Cardenas Markets has donated supplies. Food baskets go to families helped by the center, which serves individuals with developmental disabilities.
Information: Andrea Gonzales, 909-890-3045 or [email protected]
Staff report
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http://www.pe.com/2017/11/21/volunteers-needed-for-mega-san-bernardio-food-drive/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 2/3 11/22/2017 Victor Valley Rescue Mission's Thanksgiving meal feeds thousands - News - VVdailypress.com - Victorville, CA
Victor Valley Rescue Mission’s Thanksgiving meal feeds thousands By Matthew Cabe Staff Writer Posted Nov 21, 2017 at 12:01 AM Updated Nov 21, 2017 at 10:01 PM For the organization’s volunteers, sponsors and staff — like Volunteer Coordinator Jeremy George — there’s “no greater joy” than reaching out to a community in need.
VICTORVILLE — Jeremy George approached a small stage on the Victor Valley High School (VVHS) campus to address a crowd of hundreds that would eventually swell to thousands.
From the microphone, he thanked a legion of sponsors before leading the group in prayer, a reflective moment that kicked off the Victor Valley Rescue Mission’s Great Thanksgiving Banquet, which fed approximately 1,800 homeless and low-income citizens last year alone.
“We’re expecting, hopefully, 2,000 (this year),” George said. “There’s a process of about a month and a half (to) two months when we start planning. We kind of roll right out of our Donor Appreciation Banquet ... at the end of September right straight into planning the Thanksgiving event.”
The banquet is a labor of love for George, 38, the Rescue Mission’s volunteer coordinator, and the volunteers who come together each November to provide not only a feast, but compassion.
Diners are escorted to their tables inside the VVHS cafeteria and waited on in a setting that breeds conversation, understanding and warm embraces. It’s an endeavor George believes in because he was once the one in need and benefitted from the organization’s help.
“I came out of a four-year prison term straight to the Rescue Mission (and) went into the program,” he said. “I had met Jesus already, but it gave me an opportunity to grow. To get a solid foundation for me to be able to stand and continue to stand.”
The banquet was first held in 2008, “across the street” at First Southern Baptist Church, according to Rescue Mission Director Bill Edwards, who — like George — conquered his own demons en route to his role with the Rescue Mission.
“I’m clean and sober 10 years myself, and I’ve been married since I was 17 years old to a beautiful woman — Marianne — and I spent many a Thanksgivings lost in my drug addiction,” Edwards said. “So it means a lot. It means a lot that these people can spend time, even if it’s not
http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20171121/victor-valley-rescue-missions-thanksgiving-meal-feeds-thousands 1/3 11/22/2017 Victor Valley Rescue Mission's Thanksgiving meal feeds thousands - News - VVdailypress.com - Victorville, CA
(with) their family, in a place that they’re loved. They’re loved beyond homelessness ... beyond their situation ... (and) beyond whatever label society might put on them. And all for the glory of God.”
The banquet has grown each year, and moved shop to VVHS to accommodate equally increasing numbers five years ago. Edwards said hundreds of people ensure its annual success.
“Not just 10 or 20, but you’re talking about agencies and private donors and just people who love what we do,” he said. ”(They) partner with us year after year to help feed the community and make sure people have a Thanksgiving.”
One of the lovers of the Rescue Mission is Kelli Ventura, a VVHS culinary arts teacher. Ventura and her crew began preparing 200 turkeys, stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce and 700 pounds of mashed potatoes two weeks ago.
“We cook everything and then we carve everything,” she said. “What we have to do then is we have to like flash freeze it and reheat it today. So we had 700 trays of food to heat up today.”
Ventura has led the food-preparation effort the last five years, and she enlists the services of current and former VVHS students, as well as friends in the foodservice industry, along the way.
“Without them I couldn’t do it,” she said. “Some of the little ones are my kids, or my nieces and nephews or cousins. It’s definitely a family affair. My husband’s been here the last few days.”
Many VVHS students, who are on Thanksgiving break, walk or skateboard to campus in order to help. Monday was particularly challenging; Ventura said between 12 and 13 hours were necessary for finishing touches.
The fruits of their labor are visible from the kitchen, however, on the smiling faces of well-fed guests like 54-year-old Henry Loera, a formerly homeless Victorville resident.
“I appreciate it very much,” Loera said. ”(This is my) second time. I came last year ... You got to accept what you can get and appreciate it. A lot of people don’t know how to do that. I mean, I learned to eat what’s in front of you.”
The day wasn’t only for sustenance, though. Outside the cafeteria — near where George led the prayer — fun was included in the form of face painting, live music and a bounce house.
Booths were set up to offer crucial services and, for the first time in the banquet’s history, a HOPE Worldwide mobile medical unit provided care to the needy free of charge, according to Jeanetta Tobias with HOPE’s Inland Empire chapter.
“The mobile van, actually we have a doctor and staff ... at all the sites we go to to do the treatments,” Tobias said. “We do give out medication to our patients and then we revisit the same site every 30 days so we can refill the medication for them.”
http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20171121/victor-valley-rescue-missions-thanksgiving-meal-feeds-thousands 2/3 11/22/2017 Victor Valley Rescue Mission's Thanksgiving meal feeds thousands - News - VVdailypress.com - Victorville, CA
For George, the HOPE van is an example of the banquet’s continued expansion, which highlights both the Rescue Mission’s outreach and the ever-present need for it.
“Two years (ago we fed) about 1,300. Last year was 1,800,” George said. “It’s just proof of the fact that homelessness and low income is increasing in the High Desert. It’s not a problem that’s going away. It’s unfortunately getting worse.”
And while that doesn’t make the job easier, it does allow for rumination on what it means to meet that challenge and have a positive impact.
“It makes my heart happy to be able to do stuff like this,” George said. “I haven’t lived a homeless life ever, but I faced the possibility of being homeless ... I didn’t know where I was going to go. If it wasn’t for the Rescue Mission, I wouldn’t have had a place to live.
“So being able to reach back into the community (to) people who are in similar or worse circumstances than I was, there’s no greater joy than that honestly.”
Matthew Cabe can be reached at [email protected] or at 760-951-6254. Follow him on Twitter @DP_MatthewCabe.
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http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20171121/victor-valley-rescue-missions-thanksgiving-meal-feeds-thousands 3/3 11/22/2017 ROTWNEWS.com – Lake Arrowhead Christmas Tree Lighting Friday, November 24
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in Community News, Entertainment, For Your Information, Informational, Mountain Region, News, Subject, Ticker / by Michael P. Neufeld / on November 22, 2017 at 5:05 am /
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Lake Arrowhead Village invites you to witness the lighting of the Christmas Tree starting at 6 p.m. on Friday, November 24. (File Photo)
By Susan A. Neufeld http://rotwnews.com/2017/11/22/lake-arrowhead-christmas-tree-lighting-friday-november-24/ 1/6 11/22/2017 ROTWNEWS.com – Lake Arrowhead Christmas Tree Lighting Friday, November 24 Lake Arrowhead, CA – An old fashioned Christmas Tree Lighting is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Friday, November 25, at Lake Arrowhead Village.
In addition to a visit from Santa Claus, the Mountain Fifes & Drums and dancers from Lake Arrowhead Classical Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” production will perform.
Attendees will have an opportunity to take free selfies with Santa Claus from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. You can take the selfies at Santa’s workshop in Suite B-230 (near Bass). Donations for Avon Walk for Breast Cancer are much appreciated.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
To see Santa’ visiting hours for the season visit: http://lakearrowhead.com. on line.
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http://rotwnews.com/2017/11/22/lake-arrowhead-christmas-tree-lighting-friday-november-24/ 2/6 11/22/2017 Photos: Christmas lights brighten the night at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana – Press Enterprise
LOCAL NEWS Photos: Christmas lights brighten the night at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana
This holiday season the Auto Club Speedway is hosting a 1.5 mile drive-thur holiday light display labeled the Magic of Lights, running from November 17 through December 31, 2017 in Fontana, Ca., November 20, 2017. (John Valenzuela/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
By STAFF REPORT | Press-Enterprise PUBLISHED: November 21, 2017 at 1:34 pm | UPDATED: November 21, 2017 at 1:45 pm
http://www.pe.com/2017/11/21/christmas-lights-brighten-the-night-at-auto-club-speedway-in-fontana/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 1/4 11/22/2017 Photos: Christmas lights brighten the night at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana – Press Enterprise The “Magic of Lights” holiday display is now in full swing through Dec. 31 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.
“Magic of Lights” takes drivers and their passengers on a slow moving, 1 1/2-mile course past, and sometimes through, illuminated holiday scenes. For those familiar with the Fontana track, “Magic of Lights” is set up in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Fan Zone.
The unique event has about 400 light displays with a wide range of themes, such as Santa Claus, Christmas in space, fairy tales and NASCAR, say organizers. One of the highlights is a 200-foot “enchanted tunnel.”
RELATED: Christmas comes to Auto Club Speedway with ‘Magic of Lights’ holiday event in Fontana
“Magic of Lights”
When: Now through Dec. 31
Where: Auto Club Speedway, 9300 Cherry Ave., Fontana
Hours: 5:30-9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; 5:30-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Cost: $20 per car advance purchase; $25 at the gate; Dash Pass for front of line, $40 in advance, $45 at the gate; $40-$45 for RVs, buses and limos.
Information: 800-944-7223, magico ights.com, www.autoclubspeedway.com
Tags: Holidays, Photos And Videos, Top Stories IVDB, Top Stories PE, Top Stories Sun
Staff report
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If you want to live in the Riverside-San Bernardino area, bring money
Statistics released by H&H.com indicate that the Riverside- San Bernardino housing market is one of the 25 most expensive in the country.
The average home here costs about $340,000, 6.55 percent higher for the third quarter than last year at this time.
With a 20 percent down payment, the payments would be $1,580 and it would take a salary of $67,750. That would be Can you qualify? a raise of $807 over last year. Average salary needed to afford a home in If a home buyer put 10 percent down, it would take a salary the 25 most expensive areas with a 20 of $79,164 to buy that home. percent down payment. The H&H report concludes: “Somewhat lower mortgage rates during the period helped to improve affordability, but we may not be able to count on this offset much as we move into the fourth quarter of 2017 and beyond.”
http://www.highlandnews.net/news/top_stories/riverside-san-bernardino-one-of-most-expensive-for-homes/article_641d7974-cedd-11e7-94b8-8b9118f… 1/1 11/22/2017 Inland Empire Business Activity Maintains Upward Climb - Highland Community News: Business Inland Empire Business Activity Maintains Upward Climb Posted: Tuesday, November 21, 2017 4:46 pm
Future Growth Constrained By Lack of Workers
Business activity in the Inland Empire grew again in the 3rd quarter, building on growth from the first half of the year, according to the newly released Inland Empire Business Activity Index. The analysis is forecasting sustained growth in the 4th quarter, which would make 2017 the sixth consecutive year of uninterrupted expansion in the region’s business activity.
While the outlook for the Inland Empire economy remains positive, a lack of available workers combined with a limited supply of housing will have a negative effect on the local economy’s ability to grow.
“Absent some surge in productivity, the region’s overall economic output will be constrained by an inability to hire both the number and types of workers needed,” said Robert Kleinhenz, executive director of research at the Center for Economic Forecasting and one of the index authors. “Our coastal neighbors are already feeling a sharper and more profound slowdown. And we’re starting to see labor shortage effects in the Inland Empire, as key measures of the economy are unable to expand at the speed of a few years ago." According to the analysis, in the 4th quarter of 2017, business activity for the Inland Empire is projected to expand in the 2 to 2.5 percent range. This quarter, business activity has increased at a 2.8 percent annualized rate. The current Inland Empire Business Activity Index is available here. The Index tracks performance of the Inland Empire regional economy on a quarterly basis and is adjusted for seasonal variations. The composite indicator is estimated using a wide range of economic data including employment, economic output, income, real estate, and other indicators at the national, state, and metropolitan level. The Index is produced entirely by the UC Riverside School of Business Center for Economic Forecasting and Development.
http://www.highlandnews.net/business/inland-empire-business-activity-maintains-upward-climb/article_8928be7c-cf1e-11e7-bbd6-d73d5227e746.html?… 1/1 11/22/2017 Los Angeles, Orange County ranked 3rd-best place to retire, Inland Empire is worst – Press Enterprise
BUSINESS Los Angeles, Orange County ranked 3rd-best place to retire, Inland Empire is worst
The Long Beach Community Investment Company (LBCIC), Thomas Safran & Associates, and Clifford Beers Housing celebrated the grand opening of Immanuel Place, a three-story, 25-unit rental apartment complex that providing affordable, quality housing for lower-income seniors. This is the home of one of residents. Long Beach September 29, 2017. Photo by Brittany Murray, Press Telegram/SCNG
By JONATHAN LANSNER | [email protected] | Orange County Register PUBLISHED: November 21, 2017 at 10:25 am | UPDATED: November 21, 2017 at 11:18 am
http://www.pe.com/2017/11/21/los-angeles-orange-county-ranked-3rd-best-place-to-retire-inland-empire-is-worst/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_… 1/4 11/22/2017 Los Angeles, Orange County ranked 3rd-best place to retire, Inland Empire is worst – Press Enterprise Los Angeles and Orange counties were ranked as the nation’s third-best large region in which to retire, while Riverside and San Bernardino counties nished last, according to an analysis by Bankrate.
The online banking website ranked 50 of the largest metropolitan areas for folks to consider for their retirement years. Bankrate used nine measurements of what it saw as key variables for retirement living. It compiled a grade for each based on how those metro areas comparatively scored on their ability to meet critical retiree needs.
Bankrate scored L.A.-O.C. “great” for weather and things to do; lauded it for “low” crime rates; graded “good” for well-being; “below average” for public transit, size of population 65-plus and health-care; and got knocked for high taxes and cost of living.
The Inland Empire was graded “good” for well-being and weather; admired for “low” crime; scored “below average” for 65-plus crowd and healthcare; and was marked down for “poor” things to do and public transit, plus “high” taxes and “very high” cost of living.
L.A.-O.C. ended up No. 3 behind Pittsburgh and Boston. The Inland Empire was 50th, just ahead of Memphis, Tenn., and Louisville, Ky.
Tags: echo code, economy, personal finance, Top Stories IVDB, Top Stories OCR, Top Stories PE, Top Stories RDF, Top Stories Sun
Jonathan Lansner Jonathan Lansner has been the Orange County Register's business columnist since 1997 and has been part of the newspaper's coverage of the local business scene since 1986. He is a native New Yorker who is a past national president of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Jon lives in Trabuco Canyon -- yes, a homeowner -- and when he's not ddling with his "trusty spreadsheet" at work you can likely nd him rooting for his beloved Anaheim Ducks or umpiring local lacrosse games. Follow Jonathan Lansner @jonlan
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LOCAL NEWS Garage fire in Yucaipa damages nearby home, vehicles, trees
Courtesy of Cal Fire A fire was reported at 9:56 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 21, in a detached garage in the 35000 block of Avenue H in Yucaipa.
By MICHAEL WATANABE | [email protected] | The Press-Enterprise November 21, 2017 at 1:37 pm
A re in Yucaipa that began in a garage Tuesday morning spread to a home, vehicles and large trees before re ghters contained it, re of cials said.
The blaze was reported at 9:56 a.m. in the 35000 block of Avenue H, according to Cal Fire spokeswoman Debbie Chapman in an email.
No one was displaced and no one was hurt.
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http://www.sbsun.com/2017/11/21/garage-fire-in-yucaipa-damages-nearby-home-vehicles-trees/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 1/2 11/22/2017 At temporary L.A. County shelters, some foster kids just keep cycling through - LA Times At temporary L.A. County shelters, some foster kids just keep cycling through
By Nina Agrawal
NOVEMBER 22, 2017, 5:00 AM
Inside a small dorm on a neatly manicured campus in La Verne, two teenage girls were flitting between rooms.
One adjusted a tight-fitting tank top over her chest and checked her reflection in the mirror. The other danced to Bruno Mars’ “That’s What I Like” as it played from a cellphone.
The teens were getting ready to run away from a temporary shelter for foster youths.
Just before 9:30 p.m. they broke into a run and headed for the campus entrance. A security guard and another staff member followed.
“Why’re you getting so close? Just stay right there, please,” the younger one begged the guard as he caught up. “My ride’s coming.”
A few minutes later, a silver pickup truck pulled over. The girls quickly got inside and took off. A staff member called the police.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-foster-youth-shelters-20171122-htmlstory.html 1/10 11/22/2017 At temporary L.A. County shelters, some foster kids just keep cycling through - LA Times
A.M., a 17-year-old, walks outside at the David and Margaret transitional shelter. She has stayed at the facility several times. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-foster-youth-shelters-20171122-htmlstory.html 2/10 11/22/2017 At temporary L.A. County shelters, some foster kids just keep cycling through - LA Times
A.M. paints her nails in a common area. She has been alternating between the streets, foster homes, group homes and shelter with friends. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
It’s a scene that recurs regularly at the David and Margaret Youth and Family Services transitional shelter care facility in La Verne.
The girls are among 4,200 young people who have stayed in such a facility since March 2016. That is when L.A. County shut down its emergency “welcome centers,” where foster children with nowhere else to go could stay for a day or less, and opened three-day shelters run by private providers.
Some kids are entering the foster system for the first time. For those, the 72-hour facilities generally serve as intended — a temporary stop on the way to a longer- term home.
But many have cycled in and out of foster placements for years, sometimes getting kicked out, “AWOLing,” or landing in jail in between. Some have histories of substance abuse, mental illness or sex work. Others are pregnant or have children of their own.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-foster-youth-shelters-20171122-htmlstory.html 3/10 11/22/2017 At temporary L.A. County shelters, some foster kids just keep cycling through - LA Times “These are kids who have been in the system a long time [and] usually have lots of issues,” said Michael Nash, the former presiding judge of L.A. County’s Juvenile Court. “It’s sort of unrealistic to think … we’re going to put them into a transitional shelter for 72 hours and figure out how to stabilize them and figure out a placement where we have confidence that they’re going to stay.”
As a result, some young people end up staying for weeks or even months.
The shelters are normally closed to the public, but The Times obtained a court order allowing a reporter and photographer to spend time at David and Margaret over the course of several weeks. The order required The Times to refer to minors only by their first and last initials.
Back at the cottage that night, M.H., a pregnant 16-year-old with a baby face and braces, was fuming. Her wallet, cellphone and some jewelry were missing.
“My [stuff] is constantly getting stolen,” she complained. A few days earlier, some of her baby’s clothes had also disappeared.
M.H. asked to call police. Then she went into the kitchen. As she sliced a cantaloupe, she became increasingly agitated.
“I’m trying to stay goddamn calm,” she said.
But she couldn’t. She clenched her fists and screamed. She punched a TV and knocked over a side table. Staff members moved out of her way, even as they attempted to calm her.
M.H. grabbed eggs out of the refrigerator and smashed them on the carpet. A minute later, she stormed out and headed for the gate.
“I don’t want this … no more,” she said. “I’m gonna AWOL to the police station. I’d rather be in … jail than here.”
M.H. had been at David and Margaret, on and off, for more than a month. Police had come to the facility on her account at least three times in two weeks.
Case workers had yet to find a long-term placement for her. Few homes accept young people who are pregnant or have children, and M.H.’s history of aggression
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-foster-youth-shelters-20171122-htmlstory.html 4/10 11/22/2017 At temporary L.A. County shelters, some foster kids just keep cycling through - LA Times compounded the difficulty.
E.D., 17, arrives at the shelter in the middle of the night. Hours later, the youth would leave to go to a foster home. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-foster-youth-shelters-20171122-htmlstory.html 5/10 11/22/2017 At temporary L.A. County shelters, some foster kids just keep cycling through - LA Times
E.D., resting on her bed, says she's lost count after having six placements in foster homes. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-foster-youth-shelters-20171122-htmlstory.html 6/10 11/22/2017 At temporary L.A. County shelters, some foster kids just keep cycling through - LA Times
E.D., showing her scars, says she began cutting herself at age 12. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Finding long-term placement is difficult
The L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services has long struggled to find homes for young people like M.H., trying out a variety of emergency shelters over the years.
In the 1980s and 1990s, it sent some of its most disturbed young people to MacLaren Children’s Center. It closed in 2003 in the wake of lawsuits over violent conditions and the county’s failure to provide adequate mental health services.
Then there was the emergency response command post — a Children and Family Services office where foster kids often spent the night because they had nowhere else to go.
Later the department opened two “welcome centers” — one for younger children and one for those 12 and older. The centers, unlicensed facilities on the campus of L.A. County-USC Medical Center, routinely housed youths for longer than a day, the maximum time allowed.
In 2015, the state sued. L.A. County reached a settlement with the California Department of Social Services and agreed to contract with licensed nonprofit agencies to provide 72-hour housing. The maximum annual cost of the contracts was $12.3 million.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-foster-youth-shelters-20171122-htmlstory.html 7/10 11/22/2017 At temporary L.A. County shelters, some foster kids just keep cycling through - LA Times
R.A., 18, cleans her room after being moved to accommodate a pregnant newcomer. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
The new facilities opened in March 2016. They are supposed to close by 2019 as part of a statewide effort to phase out group care in favor of more home-like settings.
The majority of young people stay at the facilities less than three days. But more than 800 children and teens — 20% of the total — have stayed longer, according to Children and Family Services data for the period covering March 2016 through October 2017.
Almost half of the “overstays” took place at David and Margaret, which houses teenage girls under 21, including pregnant young women and those who have been victims of sex trafficking.
People who are familiar with this population say the numbers are not entirely surprising.
“The [facilities] are different, but the real problem is the same: What do we do with clients who can’t be placed right away?” said Maire Mullaly, an attorney who http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-foster-youth-shelters-20171122-htmlstory.html 8/10 11/22/2017 At temporary L.A. County shelters, some foster kids just keep cycling through - LA Times represents some of the youths in temporary shelters. “The bottom line is the placements aren’t there.”
Each stay longer than 72 hours in a 30-day period is a violation and must be reported to the state.
Michael Weston, a social services spokesman, said the state agency is aware that some children are staying beyond the limit but has not issued any citations or penalties.
“These are licensed facilities that do have regulations and standards of care,” Weston said. “Overstays are something that are of concern, but at the same time we’re trying to identify the best-quality placement for these children. It’s a very slow process.”
Maria Ramiu, an attorney with the Youth Law Center in San Francisco, said the overstay data indicate how little progress the county’s child welfare agency has made toward phasing out the use of group shelters and finding long-term, stable homes for youth.
“DCFS is not fulfilling its core mission … to ensure the health and safety of kids and to ensure permanency for them,” she said.
‘Here all we do is emergency’
David and Margaret offers the girls who stay there a fresh set of clothes, a shower, meals and a bed. Most don’t attend school. Staff members lead arts and crafts activities, intervene in fights and provide one-on-one counseling.
Department social workers coordinate transportation to medical and court appointments, interviews with foster homes and visits with therapists.
“Here all we do is emergency,” said Nick Tran, the program manager at David and Margaret’s temporary shelter. “It’s difficult to work toward any long-term goals.”
That can be a problem, Tran said, because foster and group homes often want young people to show signs of stability — being clean of drugs, staying out of fights, not running away — before accepting them. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-foster-youth-shelters-20171122-htmlstory.html 9/10 11/22/2017 At temporary L.A. County shelters, some foster kids just keep cycling through - LA Times Even with caring and patient staff, that’s a tall order for some of the most traumatized kids.
Diamond Hyman said she has been in the foster system since she was 3 and has a history of anger issues and drug abuse. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-foster-youth-shelters-20171122-htmlstory.html 10/10 11/22/2017 L.A. County to pay $15 million to man wrongfully convicted of murder - LA Times
L.A. County to pay $15 million to man wrongfully convicted of murder
Frank O'Connell receives a group hug outside Superior Court after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a $15-million payment after spending nearly three decades behind bars. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
By Melissa Etehad
NOVEMBER 21, 2017, 7:00 PM
fter nearly three decades of legal battles, Frank O’Connell finally got the news he says will help him move on with his life. A He had spent 27 years behind bars for a murder he insists he did not commit. He had missed precious moments he could never relive, particularly the growth of his 4-year-old son into adulthood.
But on Tuesday, the final chapter in O’Connell’s legal odyssey closed as the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a $15-million settlement in his civil rights lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department.
Surrounded by family and his legal team, O’Connell stood outside the same Pasadena courthouse where a judge convicted him 32 years ago of fatally shooting a man at a South Pasadena apartment complex.
“This is a bittersweet moment for me,” O’Connell said standing next to his son, Nick. “I can now try to put the past behind me, but I can never forget what happened to me during those years I was in prison.”
His 80-year-old mother, RoseMarie O’Connell, broke down in tears.
“This is the happiest moment of my life. Every time I used to pass by this courthouse, it brought back bad memories,” she said.
The settlement is one of the largest in L.A. County in recent years, according to O’Connell’s attorney.
A judge freed O’Connell in 2012 after finding that sheriff’s detectives failed to disclose exculpatory evidence during his original trial. http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-frank-oconnell-settlement-20171121-story.html 1/3 11/22/2017 L.A. County to pay $15 million to man wrongfully convicted of murder - LA Times
Since 1989, at least 180 people have had wrongful convictions thrown out in California, including 63 in Los Angeles County, according to data from the University of Michigan’s National Registry of Exonerations. A majority of the Los Angeles cases involved witness misidentification.
O’Connell’s conviction rested heavily on the testimony of a stranger who witnessed the killing and identified him in court as the gunman.
This year alone, Los Angeles County courts have declared wrongful convictions in four cases, according to the registry. Among the defendants were Raymond Lee Jennings, Marco Contreras and Michelle Poulos — all three of whom were declared factually innocent in court.
On Jan. 5 1984, O’Connell was arrested in the shooting death of Jay French, a maintenance worker who had been in a heated custody battle with his ex- wife over their son.
O’Connell was a 27-year-old woodworker at the time. The Sheriff’s Department suspected him early on.
French’s ex-wife — Jeanne Lyon — told detectives that O’Connell had moved in with her and that they had a brief affair. In addition, a witness to the shooting reported to detectives that French told him after he was shot that “this had something to do” with his ex-wife, according to court documents.
O’Connell matched the description from witnesses of a tall, slender, blond gunman. The prosecution's star witness was Daniel Druecker, a tenant in the State Street apartment complex where the shooting occurred. Druecker identified O'Connell as the gunman from a photo lineup and testified that he was sure O’Connell was the killer.
A year after the shooting, O’Connell, a former football star at Glendora High School, was convicted of murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
For the next 27 years while in prison, he maintained his innocence. He wrote to Centurion Ministries, a nonprofit organization that works on behalf of inmates who claim they were wrongfully convicted, and asked for help.
“I quickly realized this was an innocent man,” said Kate Germond, executive director at Centurion, who worked on O’Connell’s case.
Germond learned that Druecker had an obstructed view of the shooting and wasn’t wearing his glasses at the time. Druecker also told Germond that he felt pressured by detectives to identify O’Connell as the gunman. “ I’m a little disappointed I never got an apology and I realize it may never happen, but I don’t carry it with me. — Frank O'Connell, who will receive $15 million in his lawsuit claiming he was wrongfully convicted of murder
At a new hearing in 2012, a judge determined O’Connell should be freed. Detectives, she ruled, may have improperly influenced witnesses and failed to give the defense evidence pointing to another possible suspect, a violation of the so-called Brady rule, which requires the government to turn over favorable evidence to the defense.
The evidence that was suppressed included an anonymous tip from a caller who claimed French’s ex-wife had paid a hit man in Oregon $7,000 to kill her husband, according to court documents.
In her ruling, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Suzette Clover faulted detectives for not turning over notes from their investigation revealing that another boyfriend of Lyon was suspected of trying to kill her husband several years earlier. That man was described as tall with sandy or blond hair.
After O’Connell was freed, sheriff’s detectives asked the district attorney’s office to refile murder charges against him, but prosecutors declined.
In 2013, O’Connell filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department alleging that detectives withheld evidence and provided misleading information during his trial.
Attorneys for the sheriff’s detectives argued that the law was unclear at the time about what evidence police needed to turn over to defendants.
In 2015, a federal appeals panel said authorities should have known that they were required to give O’Connell the evidence. O’Connell’s attorney, Ronald Kaye, said he hopes the case will prompt the Sheriff’s Department to make sure that detectives provide defendants with evidence that ensures a fair trial. “You have an obligation to provide evidence that is favorable to the defense,” Kaye said.
The case remains an open murder investigation, and prosecutors have not charged anyone else since O’Connell was released.
The Sheriff’s Department said in a statement that as a result of the case, the agency had “developed a checklist which will ensure that there is documentation reflecting that all material evidence has been turned over to prosecutors.” http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-frank-oconnell-settlement-20171121-story.html 2/3 11/22/2017 L.A. County to pay $15 million to man wrongfully convicted of murder - LA Times
O’Connell, now 59, works at an auto repair shop in Colorado. He’s spent the last five years rebuilding his relationship with his son.
He said he has enjoyed relearning the simple things since being released from prison, such as how to drive and use new technology.
“It’s been exciting and yet scary at the same time. But every day I wake up on my feet and I don’t look back,” O’Connell said.
He said he hopes the settlement will be a catalyst for change at the Sheriff’s Department to prevent wrongful convictions in the future.
Maintaining a positive attitude, he says, is the only way he can move forward in life.
“I’m a little disappointed I never got an apology, and I realize it may never happen, but I don’t carry it with me,” O’Connell said. [email protected]
Follow me on Twitter @melissaetehad
UPDATES:
7:00 p.m.: This article was updated with additional comments from O’Connell as well as comments from his mother and the Sheriff’s Department.
This article was originally published at 2:25 p.m.
Copyright © 2017, Los Angeles Times
This article is related to: Crime, Homicide, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-frank-oconnell-settlement-20171121-story.html 3/3 11/22/2017 L.A. County to inspect massage parlors in fight to end human trafficking - LA Times
L.A. County to inspect massage parlors in fight to end human trafficking
Sheriff's Capt. Chris Marks said that nearly every complaint about massage businesses and trafficking that comes into the department's Human Trafficking Bureau results in an arrest. (Michael Laughlin / MCT)
By City News Service
NOVEMBER 21, 2017, 12:50 PM
he Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to require routine inspections of massage parlors by health officials looking for T signs of human trafficking. Supervisor Janice Hahn recommended an ordinance that would apply to businesses in unincorporated areas of the county.
“Some of the massage parlors in our communities have actually become safe havens for sex trafficking, for human trafficking,” Hahn said.
Supervisor Hilda Solis, who co-authored the motion, said she had seen such businesses opening in areas dominated by heavy industry, where they didn't seem to fit.
“In the City of El Monte, where I live, there are many massage parlors popping up in obscure places,” Solis said.
Hahn mentioned signs offering massages for as low as $15. “I’m afraid that it’s because they’re coercing people to work there for little or no money,” she said.
Sheriff’s Capt. Chris Marks of the department’s Human Trafficking Bureau cited “a massive increase” in the number of massage businesses and told the board that nearly every complaint that comes in to the bureau results in an arrest.
The Sheriff’s Department has partnered with Polaris, a nonprofit group working to combat human trafficking. Researchers with the group found that of 1,500 separate ads for women in the massage industry, roughly 25% used telephone numbers that matched those used by websites offering a variety of sexual services.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-massage-parlors-20171121-story.html 1/2 11/22/2017 L.A. County to inspect massage parlors in fight to end human trafficking - LA Times
A representative of another advocacy group said California leads the nation in cases of human trafficking, which includes both sex and labor trafficking, based on data collected by the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
“Our clients are recruited under the guise of a massage business and endure violence and severe threats and, of course, no pay and the inability to leave,” said Kay Buck, chief executive officer of the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking. “All of these women, very young women, are living in slave-like conditions.”
A draft ordinance is expected back within six months.
County staffers also were directed to coordinate with city managers to encourage them to adopt similar ordinances and contract with county health officials to perform inspections.
Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said countywide cooperation would be critical in efforts to shut down human trafficking.
Copyright © 2017, Los Angeles Times
This article is related to: Mark Ridley-Thomas
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-massage-parlors-20171121-story.html 2/2 11/22/2017 LA allows porn viewing on library computers. Some city leaders want to change that – Daily News
LOCAL NEWS LA allows porn viewing on library computers. Some city leaders want to change that
By CITY NEWS SERVICE | PUBLISHED: November 21, 2017 at 7:13 pm | UPDATED: November 21, 2017 at 7:51 pm
The Richard J. Riordan Central Library in Los Angeles. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht/Los Angeles Daily News)
LOS ANGELES >> A pair of Los Angeles City Council members called Tuesday for software filters that block graphic material to be installed at all 73 city libraries, in the wake of reports of patrons viewing pornography on computers in view of children.
The motion introduced by David Ryu and Nury Martinez comes in response to a recent report by NBC4 that found some patrons use library computers to watch explicit porn that can easily be seen by other visitors, including children, and also uncovered widespread drug use and lewd behavior at some branches.
A second motion introduced by Ryu and Martinez requests that the Los Angeles Public Library, in conjunction with the Los Angeles Police Department, report back on all security incidents at public libraries in 2017 and on how current security measures can be improved.
http://www.dailynews.com/2017/11/21/la-allows-porn-viewing-on-library-computers-some-city-leaders-want-to-change-that/ 1/2 11/22/2017 LA allows porn viewing on library computers. Some city leaders want to change that – Daily News
“Libraries are places of learning — they are a place for communities to connect, for individuals to empower themselves with information, and for children to grow and explore. They are not a place for lewd content or behavior,” Ryu said. “Today’s motion makes that clear. Reports of individuals using illegal drugs and viewing online pornography are wholly unacceptable. Our families and children deserve better.”
David E. Ryu @davideryu
JUST IN: @CD6Nury and I introduced 2 motions to reform Los Angeles Library security and make our public libraries safe for #LosAngeles families. Read the motions here:davidryu.lacity.org/press_release_… 12:39 PM - Nov 21, 2017 26 1 7
The City Council visited the issue of pornography at libraries in 2011, but ultimately decided that blocking specific content would possibly be a First Amendment violation and chose to direct libraries to install privacy screens on computers, as well as to reposition computers to create more private viewing.
The motion introduced by Ryu and Martinez — neither of whom were on the council in 2011 — called the privacy screens inadequate, and the NBC4 found that other patrons and children were still able to see screens with porn on them when standing or passing nearby. The Los Angeles TV station also reported that software filters are not 100 percent effective in blocking explicit rated material.
The city’s head librarian in 2011 told the City Council he would oppose the installation of internet filters to block pornography on public library computers.
“I do think there’s a potential to begin a path to being on a slippery slope,” former City Librarian Martin Gomez told the council then. “We think it’s the responsibility of the parent to monitor the children’s use of the library, including the collection, as well as their computer use.”
John Szabo, who has been the head city librarian since 2012, appears to have a different opinion than his predecessor. He told Channel 4 that the privacy screens “aren’t effectively dealing with it. There’s certainly conversations about filtering, whether filtering software is an effective response.”
Councilman Paul Krekorian in 2011 said he disagreed with the decision to install privacy screens and move computers so that other patrons cannot easily view other screens.
“I’m completely unclear as to why we can’t simply deal with this issue through filtering software rather than going in the step of providing a higher degree of privacy for pornography viewers. It just doesn’t seem to make sense to me,” Krekorian said at the time.
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City News Service http://www.dailynews.com/2017/11/21/la-allows-porn-viewing-on-library-computers-some-city-leaders-want-to-change-that/ 2/2 11/22/2017 SF Public Library to crack down on 13,000 scofflaw bookworms - San Francisco Chronicle
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DEEP BUY NOW WRINKLE * See additional SF Public Library to crack down on 13,000 scofflaw bookworms
By Steve Rubenstein | November 21, 2017 | Updated: November 21, 2017 5:01pm
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http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-Public-Library-to-crackdown-on-13-000-scofflaw-12375651.php 1/5 11/22/2017 SF Public Library to crack down on 13,000 scofflaw bookworms - San Francisco Chronicle
Photo: Justin Sullivan / Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
IMAGE 1 OF 3 A library patron looks at a book at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library on January 11, 2011 in San Francisco, California.
The San Francisco Public Library tried being nice. Now it’s playing hardball.
It wants its overdue books back, and it’s going to sic the tax collector on 13,000 of its worst offenders.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-Public-Library-to-crackdown-on-13-000-scofflaw-12375651.php 2/5 11/22/2017 SF Public Library to crack down on 13,000 scofflaw bookworms - San Francisco Chronicle
In a new crackdown, which takes effect Jan. 1, the library will ask the office of the San Francisco tax collector — the same outfit that evicts people from their homes for not paying their property taxes — to get into the act.
“We have an opportunity to reach out to our patrons,” said library spokeswoman Katherine Jardine, adding that it’s the first time the tax collector — and the full range of debt collection strategies — have been employed to settle library debts.
In past years, the library has offered amnesty to scofflaw borrowers, waiving overdue fees and lost book charges to get books returned. Last winter, the library got back 2,000 missing books in its most recent amnesty program. (One of the returned books, a collection of short stories, had been borrowed in 1917 by the great-grandmother of the man who brought it back with a sheepish expression.)
The library offered amnesty in 2009, 2004 and 1998 as well. But not this time. If you offer amnesty too often, say librarians, there’s no incentive for scofflaws to return the books. They can just wait around for the next amnesty.
Under the six-month crackdown, dreamed up by City Librarian Luis Herrera and announced at a recent meeting of the San Francisco Library Commission, the library will pay $73,000 to the Bureau of Delinquent Revenue arm of the tax collector to hire its debt collectors and have them use “leverage mechanisms to resolve debt on a case-by-case basis.”
The mechanisms will start with a series of three letters and three emails that say “tax collector” on them, Jardine said, and ratchet up from there. http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-Public-Library-to-crackdown-on-13-000-scofflaw-12375651.php 3/5 11/22/2017 SF Public Library to crack down on 13,000 scofflaw bookworms - San Francisco Chronicle
If library patrons have moved, Jardine said, city debt collectors “may use their resources to find out where the individual lives now.” They can also put deadbeats on installment plans and accept partial payments to settle accounts, just like auditors from the Internal Revenue Service.
But the library says there will be no heavy-handed debt collector stuff such as credit rating dings, late-night phone calls or property liens as punishment for such offenses as failing to return “Green Eggs and Ham.”
“This is not going to be the same thing as having a person come to repossess your TV in the middle of the night,” promised Cathy Delneo, the library’s chief of branches.
Herrera told the library commission that debt collectors’ techniques would be “consistent with their collection efforts for other city departments” such as San Francisco General Hospital.
At present, the fine for overdue books is 10 cents a day, up to a maximum of $5. After that, the book is assumed lost and the borrower is billed for its replacement cost. The library’s 135,000 active borrowers owe $3.7 million in fines and fees. The new program is targeted at only the worst offenders, those who owe more than $100. Jardine said only 2 percent of borrowers are responsible for half the total outstanding fines and fees.
Patrons with more than $10 in fines are forbidden from checking out more books and materials, although they are free to visit the library and read books on the premises and use facilities such as the restrooms, Jardine said.
Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected]
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-Public-Library-to-crackdown-on-13-000-scofflaw-12375651.php 4/5 11/22/2017 Sacramento RT restores website after hacker attack. Department of Homeland Security helps transit agency. | The Sacramento Bee
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Drop that cigarette! When the 'Voice of God' scolds them, scofflaws comply 1:15
TRANSPORTATION After hacker attack, Sacramento transit district restores website and gets help from feds
BY TONY BIZJAK [email protected]
NOVEMBER 21, 2017 04:15 PM UPDATED NOVEMBER 21, 2017 05:52 PM Sacramento Regional Transit restored its website Tuesday following a weekend cyberattack and began meeting with federal security experts on ways to reduce the chance of future breaches.
SacRT officials said the agency has recovered 80 percent of the destroyed internal systems data so far via backup devices, with more retrieval expected in the coming days.
“We don’t anticipate losing much of anything,” SacRT operations chief Mark Lonergan said.
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http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/transportation/article185934933.html 1/5 11/22/2017 Sacramento RT restores website after hacker attack. Department of Homeland Security helps transit agency. | The Sacramento Bee
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Three federal Department of Homeland Security officials visited SacRT headquarters Tuesday to review the incident and offer analytical and security expertise, Lonergan said. The agency also filed a crime report with the Sacramento Police Department.
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A DHS federal spokesman, Scott McConnell, confirmed his agency’s involvement, but declined to comment, saying DHS’ work with local agencies is confidential.
An initial review found that no data was stolen, Lonergan said. Train and bus service was not affected.
However, Betsy Cooper, a national security expert and former DHS attorney, said it typically takes days or weeks of analysis to fully understand the nature of the attack and its impacts, including whether any data were taken.
“I hope it is true that no customer data was accessed,” said Cooper, who is head of the UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. “But it takes a bit of time to know what the hacker did.”
The attack was the first major cyberassault on the transit agency, Lonergan said. He described SacRT’s computer systems protection layer as strong, but said the agency intends to improve the system.
“Once fully restored, we intend to go through a deeper forensic look to make sure we didn’t miss anything,” he said.
Lonergan and other SacRT officials described a dramatic moment Sunday morning when their computer security system alerted officials that large amounts of data were being mysteriously erased.
At about that time, the agency received a private Facebook message from an anonymous hacker demanding that SacRT pay a one bitcoin ransom, worth over $8,000 as of Tuesday.
The message read: “hello, I will always attack your website, we are hackers. we can do everything. Pay us now to stop attacking.”
SacRT officials said they did not respond to the hacker and did not pay the ransom. They were able to shut down their systems quickly to prevent further erasures. Most of the erased data had been recently backed up, Lonergan said.
UC Berkeley cybersecurity expert Cooper said such attacks are growing as companies move more operations onto computers. Hackers typically go after the systems that are easiest to infiltrate, she said.
RELATED STORIES FROM THE SACRAMENTO BEE
Hackers attack Sacramento transit system and demand $8,000 ransom
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/transportation/article185934933.html 2/5 11/22/2017 Sacramento RT restores website after hacker attack. Department of Homeland Security helps transit agency. | The Sacramento Bee
“Companies should expect there are going to be increasing attempts to test out their networks and see whether they are vulnerable, and they should have security built in so they aren’t the low-hanging fruit that hackers can attack,” Cooper said.
She said she recommends that companies increase cybersecurity training for employees, who sometimes allow a virus into the company system by clicking on a hacker’s link. She also recommends companies use two-factor authentication for all sensitive products, and that companies compartmentalize their data so that system breaches can be contained.
Numerous private sector companies have been hit by major cyberattacks. Uber executives revealed on Tuesday that 600,000 names and driver’s license numbers were stolen last year from cloud-based storage the company uses. Earlier this year, credit reporting agency Equifax fell victim to a hacker who reportedly obtained personal data for nearly 150 million consumers.
San Francisco’s bus and rail agency suffered a similar cyberattack a year ago that forced the agency to shut down its fare vending machines as a precaution.
Lonergan said the cyberattack threat is pervasive. “There are two kinds of businesses, those who have been hacked and those that will be hacked.”
Tony Bizjak: 916-321-1059, @TonyBizjak
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http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/transportation/article185934933.html 3/5 11/22/2017 Attorneys filing Vegas shooting lawsuits with 450 plaintiffs
Attorneys ling Vegas shooting lawsuits with 450 plainti s By Ken Ritter / Associated Press Posted Nov 21, 2017 at 10:58 AM Updated Nov 21, 2017 at 10:58 AM LAS VEGAS — Attorneys who filed one of the first lawsuits after the Oct. 1 mass shooting that killed 58 concert-goers and left hundreds injured on the Las Vegas Strip filed four new negligence cases Monday on behalf of more than 450 victims.
This time, however, Houston-based lawyers Chad Pinkerton and Mo Aziz filed the cases in Los Angeles against companies including MGM Resorts International, the corporate owner of both the Mandalay Bay resort and the Route 91 Harvest Festival concert venue.
Pinkerton said the intent was to get the cases before a jury less likely to be influenced by the size and clout of a casino company that is both an active political contributor in Nevada and the largest employer in the state.
“Los Angeles is a better venue for fairness for our clients,” Pinkerton said in a telephone interview ahead of a news conference announcing the filing of two wrongful death lawsuits, a third case stemming from a woman’s head wound and a fourth on behalf of 450 people claiming injuries in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
“There would be certain advantages for MGM to defend its case in Nevada,” Pinkerton said, adding that a jury in MGM Resorts’ hometown might include people with direct or indirect ties to the company and its more than 70,000 employees.
The company has said through representatives it won’t litigate shooting lawsuits in the media. In statements, it has blamed the massacre on the gunman, Stephen Paddock.
http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20171121/attorneys-filing-vegas-shooting-lawsuits-with-450-plaintiffs 1/3 11/22/2017 Attorneys filing Vegas shooting lawsuits with 450 plaintiffs
Defendants in the new lawsuits also include Live Nation Entertainment, the concert promoter. In a statement, the Beverly Hills, California-based company expressed sorrow for “countless people forever impacted by this senseless act of violence” and said it was cooperating with an active FBI investigation. It declined to comment about the lawsuits.
Documents submitted Monday in Los Angeles also seek compensation from Paddock’s estate.
They included a refiling of a negligence claim originally filed Oct. 10 in Las Vegas on behalf of a wounded California woman, Paige Gasper, with four new plaintiffs added. Gasper’s original case was dismissed Friday in Nevada.
“Most of our clients from California.” Pinkerton said. “Most all are getting their treatment here.”
The lawsuits do not seek class-action status, but Aziz said he expects they will be consolidated during pretrial investigations and evidence exchanges.
The new lawsuits followed a wave of cases filed last week in Nevada state court in Las Vegas on behalf of 14 concertgoers, including some who were shot, injured or say they were traumatized trying to escape.
A Chicago law firm helped prepare those filings, involving plaintiffs from the Chicago area and a California man who was shot and wounded.
Police and the FBI say the 64-year-old Paddock rained bursts of gunfire for 10 minutes from a 32nd-floor room at the Mandalay Bay into a crowd of 22,000 people in the concert venue across Las Vegas Boulevard.
Paddock, a high-stakes video poker gambler with homes in Reno and the southern Nevada resort town of Mesquite spent several days amassing an arsenal of assault-style weapons and ammunition in a two-room suite. Authorities say he killed himself before officers reached his room. A motive for the deadly rampage has not been identified.
Plaintiffs in mass-shooting lawsuits face a high legal bar to prove responsibility and liability by someone other than the shooter, and lawsuits can take years in court.
http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20171121/attorneys-filing-vegas-shooting-lawsuits-with-450-plaintiffs 2/3 11/22/2017 Attorneys filing Vegas shooting lawsuits with 450 plaintiffs
But Pinkerton said he believes he can show that tragedy could have been avoided if hotel and corporate officials followed hotel weapon possession policies already in place and implemented recent safety recommendations.
“We know in this day and age that evil does happen, and we have to protect against that,” the lawyer said. “This was the largest venue security failure in U.S. history.”
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http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20171121/attorneys-filing-vegas-shooting-lawsuits-with-450-plaintiffs 3/3 11/22/2017 The Day the Pastor Was Away and Evil Came Barging Into His Church - The New York Times
https://nyti.ms/2hSVbLX
U.S. The Day the Pastor Was Away and Evil Came Barging Into His Church
By SERGE F. KOVALESKI NOV. 22, 2017 On any other Sunday, Frank Pomeroy, the pastor at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Tex., would have been in the pulpit. He would have seen the gunman, his steely gaze familiar, barge in mid-sermon. He would have heard the gunfire break out.
But he was hundreds of miles away. And so Mr. Pomeroy, reflecting in his first extensive interview on the mass shooting that took place inside his church, can only imagine the awfulness of it. And ponder whether he could have made a difference had he been preaching that day.
Instead, Mr. Pomeroy was attending a class in Oklahoma City on the morning of Nov. 5. A three-word text message came across his cellphone. “Shooting at church,” it said.
He thought the sender, who was the church’s videographer, was kidding. “I hope you are joking,” he wrote back.
The reply came seconds later: “No.”
Mr. Pomeroy frantically tried to call parishioners who were at the service, but no one picked up. “By then, it was too late,” he recalled. “They had been shot.” He finally reached a friend, who was 10 minutes away from the church. The friend rushed to the scene and soon confirmed the unimaginable. Bodies were sprawled everywhere. Among the dead was the pastor’s 14-year-old daughter, Annabelle.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/us/pastor-frank-pomeroy-sutherland-springs.html 1/5 11/22/2017 The Day the Pastor Was Away and Evil Came Barging Into His Church - The New York Times
“I am trying to follow the Bible, which says you should not let the sun set on your anger because anger only makes it worse,” Mr. Pomeroy said. He is attempting to live by the advice he typically gives to parishioners in mourning. Good versus evil. God’s plan. The importance of faith.
“We are supposed to find that peaceful place and to pray about it and accept what it is,” he said.
But finding that spiritual refuge has hardly been easy.
The carnage that Devin P. Kelley wreaked in what became the worst mass shooting in Texas history left 25 people dead, including a pregnant woman whose fetus was declared fatality No. 26, and 20 others injured. The trauma affected thousands more, certainly everyone in the tiny rural community of Sutherland Springs.
Amid the collective grieving, Mr. Pomeroy, 51, has found himself in an unfamiliar situation for a pastor. While presiding over funerals and counseling bereaved families are cornerstones of his calling, he now requires consoling himself.
“What is different here is that the comforting is mutual,” he said through his cellphone this week from outside a hospital where he was visiting a wounded survivor of the shooting. “We are all leaning on each other because this is surreal and beyond the scope of anything we have had to deal with. We are a tightknit group anyway. If nothing else, this has made us closer.”
Mr. Pomeroy’s own pain and the suffering of his wife of three decades, Sherri, have not hindered him from carrying out his pastoral duties — as grim as they have been. When he is not attending funerals or making hospital visits, he has spent hours in meetings with insurance companies, lawyers and a committee put together to make decisions on the future of the church.
“In a word, life has been tumultuous and it feels like the days are running together because they have been extremely busy,” Mr. Pomeroy said. “I feel that I am not grieving as adequately as I should. I feel pretty weak right now, a bit shaky.”
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He added: “It is hard to be strong for everyone else when I have my own heartache. But each day I am able to function a little better.”
He said that news reports stating he had decided to demolish the church because it would be too painful to continue using it were inaccurate, and that a decision on what to do with the small house of worship had not yet been made.
“Those reports hurt a lot of people who needed the church to grieve,” Mr. Pomeroy said. For the time being, he added, the sanctuary where the attack occurred will no longer be used for services and will remain a memorial to the victims.
Mr. Pomeroy had met Mr. Kelley, 26, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Over the past three years or so, Mr. Kelley came to the church once or twice a year and sat in the back, out of sight from the camera that recorded the services for wider online viewing, Mr. Pomeroy said.
“I tried to talk to him a few times but he wouldn’t listen or engage,” he recounted. “He acted entitled and spoke often in a harsh and ugly way. He seemed like an angry person who had never been taught to treat people the right way.”
Mr. Kelley made it clear to him that he “despised” the church, the pastor said, and that he wanted him to know he was an atheist. “He would throw these snide remarks in there when I was talking to his wife,” the pastor said of Danielle Shields, Mr. Kelley’s second wife. He added that after Mr. Kelley married Ms. Shields, she too was rarely seen at the church. “Once Danielle got married to him, she was pretty much gone,” Mr. Pomeroy said.
By the time of the attack, the couple was estranged, and law enforcement authorities have said that the shooting may have stemmed from a dispute between Mr. Kelley and his mother-in-law. She and several others from that side of the family were regulars at the church. As Mr. Pomeroy put it, “Pretty much every time the church door was open, the mother-in-law was there.”
But on the morning of the shooting, Mr. Kelley’s mother-in-law was at home with her grandson. Once she realized that she was late for church, the pastor said, she opted not to go. Among the dead though was Lula Woicinski White, the
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grandmother of the gunman’s estranged wife and one of Ms. Pomeroy’s closest friends.
“My opinion is that he was going to the church to find the mother-in-law and was planning to shoot everybody on that side of the family,” Mr. Pomeroy said. “I think he came there for them but intended to do something much bigger.”
The pastor saw Mr. Kelley at the church’s fall festival on Oct. 31, just days before the shooting. “He just seemed like he was glaring at everybody he walked by,” Mr. Pomeroy recalled.
The pastor said that even though Mr. Kelley had such an unsettling presence, he never imagined that he would have “the guts or courage” to kill and wound so many innocent people. “He was a mean and hateful person, but I would not have dreamed that he had this magnitude of darkness in him,” Mr. Pomeroy said.
Law enforcement officials and friends of Mr. Kelley’s mother-in-law have said that he had been sending her threatening text messages. Mr. Pomeroy said he was not aware of the texts, but knew that she and others on that side of the family clashed with Mr. Kelley.
On the morning of the shooting, Mr. Pomeroy was taking a gun class so that he could get licensed to give instruction at a youth camp next summer on handling old- fashioned single-shot rifles and pistols.
The pastor, who said he carries a concealed firearm when he preaches, does not believe that anyone in the church was armed that morning. Outside the church, Mr. Kelley was injured by a bystander who shot him twice after the attack.
“In a way, I think that if I were there I could have done more,” he said. “But who is to say?”
After learning that his adopted daughter had been killed in the rampage, he struggled to tell his wife. Ms. Pomeroy was in Florida at the time doing contract work for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
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“I didn’t want her to be alone when she heard that,” Mr. Pomeroy said. “I ended up having to tell her over the phone.”
He said that she was “coping but having a hard time” dealing with a shooting in which she lost her two closest friends.
The couple has one other adopted child, as well as one they have helped raise without formally adopting. They also have four biological children.
The outpouring of support the couple has received from around the world has left them feeling uplifted.
“It is encouraging that although there was one bad guy who tried to steal the day,” Mr. Pomeroy said, “thousands of good people have stood up in support.”
© 2017 The New York Times Company
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https://nyti.ms/2hRJntn
U.S. How Trump’s Hands-Off Approach to Policing Is Frustrating Some Chiefs
By STEVE EDER, BEN PROTESS and SHAILA DEWAN NOV. 21, 2017 SPOKANE, Wash. — Six years ago, a police officer in this city in eastern Washington was convicted of beating a disabled man to death and trying to cover it up. After other alarming episodes involving Spokane officers came to light, the city asked federal officials to suggest changes to the police department as part of an Obama-era policing program.
Ever since, use of force by officers has declined, as have complaints from residents.
“It is a great program,” said Craig Meidl, the Spokane police chief. “As a C.E.O. of a law enforcement organization, you’ll appreciate having an outsider come in and give you advice.”
But in September, the Justice Department announced it would significantly scale back the program, known as the collaborative reform initiative, and reorient it toward more hands-off “technical assistance.” The decision to soften what was already a voluntary program was aligned with the Trump administration’s general approach to law enforcement — cracking down on violent crime, not regulating the police departments that fight it.
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The changes to collaborative reform reflect the administration’s broader effort to overhaul programs that the Obama administration used to ease tensions between communities and the police, according to interviews with current and former law enforcement officials and documents obtained through freedom of information laws.
Since President Trump took office, for example, the Justice Department has not entered into a single court-monitored consent decree with a troubled police department, even in towns with widespread constitutional violations, records show. It has also ordered reviews of existing consent decrees — which are a tougher, more punitive alternative to the collaborative reform initiative — negotiated under President Barack Obama’s Justice Department.
The changes, designed to ease pressure on law enforcement, have actually encountered some resistance from police chiefs in cities that participated in the programs. And those chiefs work not only in big-city Democratic strongholds, but also in places like Spokane, which has a Republican mayor and is the largest city in a county that voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump.
In interviews, some of the chiefs said the new direction was out of step with a growing consensus that rebuilding community trust is essential to fighting crime, particularly after a spate of high-profile police shootings spurred a national debate on policing and fueled the Black Lives Matter movement and the Blue Lives Matter response. At one point, the collaborative reform initiative was popular enough among chiefs that there was a monthslong wait to join it; now, the Justice Department has told at least one city that it must file a public records request even to see the program’s research on its police department, internal records show.
In explaining its decision to chiefs and the media, the Justice Department has said that some police departments complained that the program became too aggressive and produced wide-ranging reports that contained errors.
“The President tasked the Attorney General with reducing violent crime, and the Justice Department believes the changes to the Collaborative Reform Initiative will help accomplish this goal by returning control to local law enforcement agencies and by targeting the department’s assistance to the actual needs of those agencies,” Devin M. O’Malley, a Justice Department spokesman, said in a statement. He added
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that “America’s law enforcement community stands resolutely with the Attorney General and the decisions he has made to enforce the rule of law,” though the statement did not mention any chiefs who supported Mr. Sessions’s decision to change collaborative reform.
Diane Hobley-Burney, the chief of police in Fort Pierce, Fla., in another pro- Trump county, signed up for collaborative reform after an officer killed an unarmed black motorist in 2016. After the Trump administration reined in collaborative reform this September, ending her chance at receiving a report recommending improvements for her police force, Chief Hobley-Burney sent a letter to the Justice Department seeking to remain in the program while expressing how “disappointed” she was in the program’s reduced ambitions.
“We were working together for the common good,” she said in an interview. “I did not see it as being heavy-handed in any way.”
The Fraternal Order of Police had a dimmer view of the collaborative reform initiative. While chiefs answer to mayors and city councils, the union represents rank-and-file officers, some of whom faced heavy scrutiny in the wake of police shootings.
During last year’s presidential campaign, the union posted to its website a 12- page questionnaire from Mr. Trump in which he promised that the union would “always have a seat at the table” in his administration. And in March, shortly after Jeff Sessions was sworn in as attorney general, he delivered on that promise for Mr. Trump, meeting with two senior union officials, according to a copy of Mr. Sessions’s calendar reviewed by The New York Times.
One of the officials, James O. Pasco, said they discussed a “laundry list of issues,” including concerns about the collaborative reform program. The union, which also met with the president at the White House, says the program veered well beyond its advisory mission and was used as a cudgel against rank-and-file officers, who were then pulled away from policing to comply with new bureaucratic requirements.
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Within a month of the meeting, Mr. Sessions ordered a comprehensive review of federal policing programs, a decision that resulted in the rollback of both collaborative reform and consent decrees.
Interviews and government records show that the police union, along with some of Mr. Sessions’s top advisers, helped to lay the foundation for the Trump administration’s new direction — all united in opposition to what they consider federal meddling in the affairs of local police.
One of the advisers, Steven H. Cook, is a former beat cop who helped advise on the Justice Department’s changes to the collaborative reform initiative, according to a person briefed on the matter who was not authorized to reveal internal discussions.
A mainstay of conservative law-and-order circles, Mr. Cook ran the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, a group that operates loosely as a labor union but also as an advocate for tough-on-crime policies. While leading the group, Mr. Cook teamed up with Mr. Sessions, when he was a senator, to oppose legislation that would have softened mandatory life sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.
William C. Killian, who was the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, where he served as Mr. Cook’s boss, said his former colleague had long been skeptical of federal officials stepping in to second-guess local policing matters.
“He kind of felt like the police officers had a hard enough time as it was,” Mr. Killian said. “They didn’t need any extra pressure on them.”
That philosophy is now evident across the Justice Department as it revisits Obama-era programs aimed at repairing frayed ties with communities.
In August, Mr. Sessions announced that police departments could have broader access to surplus military equipment like grenade launchers used for tear gas and armored vehicles, which had stoked tensions with protesters after police shootings. Mr. Sessions’s announcement, which fully reinstated a Pentagon program that the Obama administration curbed, came in a speech to the Fraternal Order of Police in Nashville, where he described the equipment as “lifesaving gear.”
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The Justice Department also rewrote criteria for local policing grants to restrict money for so-called sanctuary cities that do not fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities, creating a sense of fear among residents in those cities that complicates crime-fighting efforts, police chiefs say. Additionally, a community policing grant program struck a section on “Building Trust With L.G.B.T.Q. Communities,” a reversal of the Obama-era effort for law enforcement to cultivate a rapport with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.
While these changes aligned with Mr. Sessions’s political views, some local chiefs have opposed them.
“I kind of resist the attorney general’s narrative that the Department of Justice has been this oppressive presence in law enforcement,” said Chris Magnus, the police chief in Tucson, Ariz., a city that leans Democratic in a state dominated by Republicans. “I actually think it’s exactly the opposite. There are far more examples when they have really supported us to do innovative things.”
In keeping with the new direction, Mr. Trump’s proposed budget seeks essentially no increase in funding for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which operates the collaborative reform program and had been poised to receive a large increase in Mr. Obama’s final budget. Mr. Sessions has also not named a new director to run the office.
Chuck Jordan, the chief of police in Tulsa, Okla., a Republican stronghold that voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump, said he recently asked the office to review his department after an officer shot an unarmed man. Without a new leader, he said, the office has delayed his request.
“Everything is on hold, and that’s not a good place to be in,” said Mr. Jordan, who is instead proceeding with his own community policing changes, including creating a citizens advisory board. “We’re kind of frustrated by the fact that we’re having trouble getting decisions.”
Healing a Community
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One night last month, police officers responded to a report of gunshots fired at a home in Spokane. Two white men were suspected of assaulting an African-American man, calling him racial slurs, punching him in the face and threatening him with a gun.
After the suspects were arrested, Spokane’s mayor and its police chief stood in unity at a news conference with civil rights advocates, who applauded the police’s handling of the incident.
“I’m often asked, ‘Why do we need to improve our law enforcement community relations?’” Phillip Tyler, the former president of the N.A.A.C.P.’s Spokane chapter, said at the news conference. “This is why.”
Chief Meidl and others trace the improved community relations to Spokane’s decision in 2013 to participate in the collaborative reform initiative.
“Everyone is facing the right direction,” said Jeffry K. Finer, a civil rights lawyer who represented the estate of Otto Zehm, whose killing by a Spokane officer in 2006 first raised concerns about the department’s problems. Mr. Zehm, who was developmentally disabled, had been trying to buy a Snickers bar at a convenience store when, in an apparent case of mistaken identity, the officer beat him with a baton, shot him with a Taser and hogtied him.
Some officers were skeptical of the Justice Department’s presence. But Chief Meidl, a 23-year veteran of the Spokane force who became chief last year, said “fears were minimized” when officers saw that the program was in fact a collaboration with the Justice Department, not a heavy-handed intervention.
Collaborative reform was overseen by Bernard Melekian and Ron Davis, both former police chiefs who led the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services during the Obama administration. Their version of collaborative reform relied on a network of private consulting firms staffed with former police executives and academic researchers who analyzed use-of-force data and made regular visits to participating cities, where they met with officers and chiefs and participated in community meetings. The Justice Department would then deliver the
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cities peer-reviewed reports that identified areas of concern and recommendations for improvement.
The result in Spokane, in December 2014, was 42 proposed changes, including better documentation of use of force. The recommendations were nonbinding, but the city’s leadership embraced them, and this year, Chief Meidl reported a 62 percent reduction in complaints and a 29 percent decrease in nondeadly use of force incidents since the collaborative reform initiative was introduced.
“There’s no question in my mind that we are a better department because of our involvement,” Chief Meidl wrote to city officials.
But because of the changes to the program under Mr. Sessions, Spokane will not be getting a final report from the Justice Department confirming the achievements. The report was completed several months ago, according to two people briefed on its drafting, but in September a Justice Department official called Chief Meidl to tell him the program would no longer issue the reports.
Chief Meidl objected, and so did David A. Condon, the city’s Republican mayor, who made a final, unsuccessful plea for the report during a visit to the Justice Department in Washington. “That stamp of approval from an outside agency — acknowledging the progress made — is priceless,” Chief Meidl said.
The Justice Department said it dropped the reports and made other changes because the program had “evolved to include much broader ranging assessments” that caused “the unintended consequence of a more adversarial relationship.”
The program’s new direction “will fulfill the Attorney General’s commitment to respecting local control and accountability,” according to an internal Justice Department email reviewed by The Times.
Chief Meidl and other police chiefs said they feared the changes would do the opposite, denying them access to reports that they hoped would build trust with their communities. Even some departments that were lukewarm about participating in the program objected to being denied final reports.
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Jon Belmar, the police chief in St. Louis County, said he signed up for the program as community and federal pressure intensified after violence in nearby Ferguson, Mo. But after receiving initial recommendations, he waited in vain for the Justice Department to produce a follow-up report showing the progress his force had made. Although he decided to carry out the Justice Department’s initial recommendations, he lamented an “opportunity missed” to do more.
In Milwaukee, where some residents complained that collaborative reform was too friendly to the police department, a rough draft of its initial report was leaked to the local news media. That unfinished report contained some errors that painted an overly dark picture of the department, according to federal officials. Although a corrected version has been written, and the police department sought its release to set the record straight, the Justice Department has not done so.
The Republican mayor of North Charleston, S.C., wrote to the Justice Department in August, pleading with the agency to “please provide an update on the status” of its collaborative review, according to a copy of the letter obtained through a public records request. The city joined the program after a police officer fired eight rounds toward the back of a fleeing and unarmed black motorist, Walter Scott, whose death inflamed tensions with police across the country.
The police in St. Anthony, Minn., were early in the review process and were awaiting a list of recommended changes when the program was revamped. The department requested the program last year after an officer shot and killed Philando Castile, a black motorist, whose final moments were streamed on Facebook by his girlfriend. When St. Anthony requested copies of data and notes from the review process, the Justice Department referred them to a link to file a Freedom of Information request, according to emails reviewed by The Times.
The Justice Department has said that its new approach, in addition to facilitating community policing, will focus on providing training and “technical assistance” on various topics that coincide with Mr. Sessions’s priorities, including “officer safety and wellness” and preventing “gang participation and violence.” Criteria for grant money, recently published by the Justice Department, also
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includes a new requirement that local governments certify that they are cooperating with immigration authorities.
Critics say the changes have essentially killed the program, while several police chiefs said they were confused about the new direction and the meaning of “technical assistance.” Gina Hawkins, the chief in Fayetteville, N.C., which has been approved for such assistance, said a call with a Justice Department official did not offer clarity.
“I said, ‘Well, what does that mean?’” Chief Hawkins said. The reply from the federal official, she said, was, “I’m not quite sure.”
A Missing Consent Decree
The Trump administration’s hostility toward consent decrees, the Justice Department’s most coercive tool to address systemic problems in police departments, is greater than its dislike of voluntary efforts like collaborative reform.
Although Mr. Sessions has said that “a consent decree is not necessarily a bad thing,” he has also called consent decrees “one of the most dangerous, and rarely discussed, exercises of raw power,” and in March, he ordered a review of all “existing or contemplated consent decrees.”
Advocates of the settlements worry the review could undercut high-profile consent decrees in place in Baltimore and other cities, where they are designed to correct deep institutional problems in police departments. Mr. Sessions’s Justice Department asked for a 90-day delay in the Baltimore consent decree, which a judge denied.
“I want this consent decree,” the Baltimore police commissioner, Kevin Davis, said at a news conference. “We know we have to get better. We know that over many, many years, things have occurred here that prevent the Baltimore Police Department from being the best that it can be.”
Public records and interviews show that Mr. Sessions’s new direction is also having a chilling effect on potential new consent decrees, even in places where there is local support for them. The department declined to push for one in Chicago, and
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in the small Acadian city of Ville Platte, La., it appears to have dropped Obama-era efforts to impose one.
In 2014, an F.B.I. agent assisting with a murder investigation in Ville Platte stumbled onto a broader problem: The police and sheriff’s deputies there had a habit of throwing people in jail without probable cause or a warrant. The detainees — including witnesses who were not suspected of a crime — were held for days and questioned without access to a lawyer, a phone or even, sometimes, toothpaste and tampons.
The police chief, Neal Lartigue, acknowledged that the detentions, known as 72- hour holds, had been going on for as long as he could remember, and said that he had not known they were unconstitutional.
The F.B.I. agent, Steven Krueger, alerted numerous agencies to his findings, according to interviews with state and local law enforcement officials who recounted the previously unreported events. But his effort stalled: The local district attorney turned out to have been personally involved in the illegal interrogations, the state attorney general at the time declined to take the case, and the state inspector general investigated but did not have the power to prosecute.
The case fell to the Justice Department’s civil rights division.
In a report issued in the waning days of Mr. Obama’s tenure, the civil rights division said the Ville Platte police and the Evangeline Parish Sheriff’s Office had illegally detained at least 900 people in a three-year period.
In the Obama administration, such a report typically would have been followed by a consent decree or other court-enforceable agreement, in which the police would agree to carry out specific reforms — most likely, in Ville Platte’s case, in the areas of training officers and rebuilding trust. Local officials in Ville Platte said they were still awaiting a proposed agreement from the Justice Department, but added that they had fully cooperated with the investigation, which, after all, was instigated by a law enforcement official.
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In a statement, Mr. O’Malley, the Justice Department spokesman, said the agency was “committed to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of all individuals,” adding that Mr. Sessions was “committed to holding any officer responsible who violates the law without restraining the ability of good cops trying to do their part in reducing violent crimes.”
Mr. O’Malley declined to comment on Ville Platte because the Justice Department has not resolved the matter. It is unclear whether the department will ultimately reach a settlement with the city.
While the police chief and the sheriff have said that the illegal holds have been halted, local politicians and activists are skeptical. In an interview, the chief said he saw no need to repair the community’s trust.
But the mayor, Jennifer Vidrine, a Democrat, said she was especially disturbed to learn that local residents had been too afraid to come forward before federal investigators arrived.
“There’s a reason why the Justice Department exists,” she said. “And if they can provide the proper oversight just to make sure that people are doing things the correct way, I’m for it.”
Follow Shaila Dewan on Twitter: @shailadewan.
A version of this article appears in print on November 22, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Dept. of Justice Eases Scrutiny Of Local Police.
© 2017 The New York Times Company
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/us/trump-justice-department-police.html 11/11 11/22/2017 Lawsuit accuses Santa Rosa senior home of abandoning residents as wildfire approached - LA Times
Lawsuit accuses Santa Rosa senior home of abandoning residents as wildfire approached
A wheelchair sits outside the smoldering Villa Capri facility in Santa Rosa. Some residents of the assisted living center have sued its owners saying they were abandoned in the face of October's Tubbs fire. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
By Anh Do
NOVEMBER 21, 2017, 2:50 PM
esidents in a senior living center in Santa Rosa have filed suit against the facility’s owners, claiming that staffers abandoned them in the face of R last month’s devastating wildfire. In a lawsuit filed Monday in Sonoma County Superior Court, four residents of the now-destroyed Villa Capri assisted living center said they were abandoned by the staff, along with “other residents in wheelchairs, and other residents with dementia who were physically and cognitively incapable of escaping a burning building without assistance.”
The suit names Oakmont Senior Living and Oakmont Management group as the defendants.
“There was absolutely no communication at all,” plaintiff’s attorney Kathryn Stebner told a Los Angeles Times reporter Tuesday. “These people were left stranded. They had no keys, no cell service, no walkie-talkies. The three caregivers on hand did not know about any evacuation plan ... and in fact, were waiting for an executive director, who did not show up. How could they have gotten out?”
Stebner said the ages of the roughly two dozen residents who lived there ranged from 82 to 92. The four plaintiffs — Elizabeth Budow, Alice Eurotas, Virginia Gunn, and Helen Allen — praised the “herculean efforts” of two visitors to the home, who rushed to the building after midnight Oct. 9 and helped everyone evacuate. The two female visitors were relatives of some of the residents, Stebner said.
As the Tubbs fire raged, the visitors ran outside to see how close it was. They were shocked to learn that the front door had locked behind them.
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“There they were, the two women outside, with all the folks inside staring at them motionless through the glass,” Stebner said. “One of them ran to her car, got a tow hitch from her Jeep and threw it into the glass, broke the glass, then used it to keep the door pried open. They refused to leave anyone behind. We still can’t believe there was no emergency plan.”
All residents were successfully evacuated before flames swept over the facility and destroyed it.
A representative of Oakmont could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
The lawsuit details how Oakmont gave false statements to the media and other residents that seniors from Villa Capri had been safely evacuated. The plaintiffs are alleging elder abuse and demanding unspecified damages for false imprisonment, negligence and emotional distress.
They sued “to send a strong message to Oakmont and to care facilities that they must create evacuation plans and train staff to carry them out — so that this doesn’t happen again,” Stebner said. “This is basically a lesson in what not to do. The two women who came to help are both in their 60s — one just had back surgery, and the other just had hip surgery. When they arrived, all the patients were still in bed. What would have happened if they didn’t show up?” [email protected]
Twitter: @newsterrier
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Copyright © 2017, Los Angeles Times
This article is related to: Alzheimer's Disease
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-fire-evacuation-lawsuit-20171121-story.html 2/2 11/22/2017 Leading Democratic candidates for California governor back universal preschool – Press Enterprise
NEWS Leading Democratic candidates for California governor back universal preschool
From left, Kevin Dang, Phillip Vo and Angie Nguyen work on their art projects during their preschool class at Land School in Westminster, Calif.
By EDSOURCE | November 21, 2017 at 4:58 pm
BY LOUIS FREEDBERG AND ASHLEY HOPKINSON, EDSOURCE
http://www.pe.com/2017/11/21/leading-democratic-candidates-for-california-governor-back-universal-preschool/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_me… 1/8 11/22/2017 Leading Democratic candidates for California governor back universal preschool – Press Enterprise In what would be a signi cant shi from Gov. Jerry Brown’s position on early education, the four leading Democratic candidates running to replace him next year say they are committed to offering universal preschool in California.
Under Gov. Brown’s watch, California has increased the number of subsidized preschool and child care slots, as well as access to an early kindergarten grade called transitional kindergarten for some 4-year-olds. But much to the frustration of early education advocates, Brown has rejected pressures to expand preschool to all low-income 4-year-olds, mainly citing the costs of such an expansion as the major impediment. In a setback for advocates two years ago, Brown vetoed what was called “The Preschool for All” legislation (Assembly Bill 47).
But at an October event in Sacramento organized by Advancement Project California as part of its “Birth to Five Water Cooler” gathering, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, State Treasurer John Chiang and former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin all agreed that universal preschool was essential not only for children, but for the state.
In addition, all four agreed that early education workers are underpaid, that the state should provide greater support for children long before preschool, and that they would be willing to look at reform of Proposition 13 or the state’s tax structure to generate funds to underwrite an expansion of early education programs. The candidates did not spell out what they meant by universal preschool, but it generally is understood to mean ensuring access to high quality preschool for all 4 year olds, with the state subsidizing the costs for low-income children.
Because it is virtually certain that a Democrat will succeed Brown, their comments suggested that the cause of universal preschool will get a major boost under the next governor. “The event demonstrated there’s a chance we’ll nd an early learning champion who will value the importance of high-quality early learning programs for all of California’s kids with teachers who are compensated fairly,” said Patricia Lozano, executive director of Early Edge California, an advocacy organization promoting expanded early education programs.
Several public opinion polls indicate considerable support for expanding access to preschool. For example, an EdSource poll earlier this year showed that nearly two-thirds of parents of young children think the state should be doing more to allow children to attend preschool.
http://www.pe.com/2017/11/21/leading-democratic-candidates-for-california-governor-back-universal-preschool/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_me… 2/8 11/22/2017 Leading Democratic candidates for California governor back universal preschool – Press Enterprise “It is terri c to see the gubernatorial candidates recognize the importance of committing to voluntary universal preschool for all 4-year-olds,” said Karla Pleitez Howell, director of educational equity for Advancement Project California. “It is scienti cally proven that the early years of life are the most important for learning.
Newsom, the former two-term mayor of San Francisco who is currently the front- runner based on early polls, described universal preschool as a “developmental imperative” for the state. “It’s not a nice to have,” he said. “It is a must-have in the world we are living.”
He pointed to the “preschool for all” program established in San Francisco while he was mayor as evidence of his commitment to the issue. The program, which began in 2014, offers free or reduced pricepreschool to all low-income 4-year-olds in the city funded by a special tax approved by voters.
He also noted that he has young children of his own, ages 1, 3, 5 and 8. “You have an opportunity next year to elect a governor that has four of his own kids, that’s experiencing those realities in real, who is not just ‘interested’ in these issues, but is truly passionate and committed to these issues,” he said.
But Newsom said broadening the tax base is critical to being able to underwrite expansion of early childhood programs. “We can actually tax the economy that exists today, not the economy of 100 years ago, which is our current tax structure,” he said. “There have been a lot of proposals even beyond ‘tax reform,’ and that includes the issues of oil-severance tax and other opportunities to be a little more creative.”
Former LA mayor and Assembly speaker Villaraigosa similarly declared his support for preschool at the Advancement Project California event. “I’m committed to it,” he said. “Almost every Western industrialized nation has some form of early child care. We ought to join the club.”
Villaraigosa said preschool is a right every child should have and not just a privilege for some. Children who are o en le out are “disproportionately poor and disproportionately people of color,” he said. “We need to make sure those kids have the resources they need to compete with those who grew up in more af uent homes,” he said.
“We do have the money,” he said, rejecting the argument that the state does not have the funds to support universal preschool, he said. “We just have to make universal preschool a priority, starting with kids in poverty.”
http://www.pe.com/2017/11/21/leading-democratic-candidates-for-california-governor-back-universal-preschool/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_me… 3/8 11/22/2017 Leading Democratic candidates for California governor back universal preschool – Press Enterprise Villaraigosa said he supports raising taxes when appropriate. “I would be willing to raise taxes if necessary and cut other programs where necessary because I intend to be the governor who implements universal preschool,” he said.
He said reform of Prop. 13 is needed, but that he would prefer it be done through the Legislature rather than going to voters to do so through the initiative process. He said the Legislature should re-examine California’s “broken” tax system. “I’ve spoken out against it my entire life in public service,” he said. “I think the Legislature is up to the task, particularly now that we have a two-thirds majority in both houses.”
State Treasurer John Chiang also said he “fully supports” universal preschool. “It’s crystal clear,” he said. “We can no longer afford not to have universal preschool in California,” he said.
As to how the state could pay for it, he said the state could nd the money if it made early childhood education a priority, but it would call for making tough choices.
“The children pay the price when the adults get the budget wrong,” Chiang said. Prioritizing the state’s youngest learners means ensuring state dollars are spent ef ciently and that districts are accountable for how monies are spent, he said, citing audit ndings as an example of aggressive scal management.
Chiang made a point of saying that he would support expanding full-day preschool programs, in part he said because it is much harder for low-income parents to have their children attend part-day programs. Under Gov. Brown, the state increased funds substantially for full- day programs, but most children are still in part-day programs.
“We can’t have this system today where you have kids going in for half a day,” Chiang said. “That creates lack of access, especially for low-income folks, who have to take public transportation, who can’t leave (their jobs) in the middle of the day.”
Delaine Eastin, who was the elected state superintendent of public instruction from 1994 to 2002, lamented that California lags behind states like Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma in offering universal preschool, while leading the nation in its spending on prisons. “For someone born in California, it breaks my heart,” she said.”Prison is an expense,” she said. “Preschool is an investment.”
“We have research that shows if we spent more money on preschool, we wouldn’t have as many people on welfare, unemployment, or in jail,” she said.
http://www.pe.com/2017/11/21/leading-democratic-candidates-for-california-governor-back-universal-preschool/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_me… 4/8 11/22/2017 Leading Democratic candidates for California governor back universal preschool – Press Enterprise Eastin said she would go to the voters to reform Prop. 13. But she also argued that the two-thirds vote local governments need to get parcel taxes on real estate approved must be revised. “The truth is, we let you x the building with a 55 percent vote, but it requires a 66-2/3 vote to staff the building,” he said.
All four candidates agreed that workers in early education programs, including preschool teachers, need to be paid more.
Newsom said that increasing wages for early childhood education workers is key to improving program quality. “It would be reasonable to expect or require workers to have higher credentials, butthat would mean paying higher wages.”
Villaraigosa also agreed that early childhood education workers are underpaid, but that additional pay should be tied to better training and preparation. “If we want the best and the brightest, we’ve got to pay them more, and we’ve also got to train them more. And I’m committed to doing that, because I think training is a key issue for early child care.”
Eastin said the United States compared unfavorably to other countries in how much they pay early education workers. In France, she noted, preschool teachers have the same level of education and the same pay as elementary school teachers. “It’s time for us to do that in California.”
Chiang said that early childhood educators in California are “severely under- compensated.” “We ought to pay educators the appropriate salary so that they can have a decent standard of living,” he said. In addition, he said, investing in professional development programs is important so that more teachers can “obtain the advanced degrees needed to run quality early care programs.”
This story originally appeared on EdSource.org. EdSource is an independent journalism organization that works to engage Californians on key education challenges with the goal of enhancing learning success.
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http://www.pe.com/2017/11/21/leading-democratic-candidates-for-california-governor-back-universal-preschool/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_me… 5/8 11/22/2017 Young and homeless in America: Survey says the problem is worsening – San Bernardino Sun
NEWS Young and homeless in America: Survey says the problem is worsening
Lisa Coker, a staffer with Fighting Back Santa Maria Valley, a non profit agency that helps homeless youth and families in Santa Maria, distributes school supplies to students at Santa Maria High School. Coker also helps families seeking emergency shelter at Good Samaritan Shelter, where this family of two adults and six children share three bunk beds. PHOTO: IRIS SCHNEIDER FOR EDSOURCE
By EDSOURCE | PUBLISHED: November 21, 2017 at 5:16 pm | UPDATED: November 21, 2017 at 5:31 pm
http://www.sbsun.com/2017/11/21/young-and-homeless-in-america-survey-says-the-problem-is-worsening/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_mediu… 1/6 11/22/2017 Young and homeless in America: Survey says the problem is worsening – San Bernardino Sun By Carolyn Jones, EdSource
More than 4 percent of adolescents and 10 percent of young adults nationwide were living on the street, in cars or shelters, or couch-sur ng at some point in the last year, according to a sweeping study by the University of Chicago released last week.
The study, “Missed Opportunities: Youth Homelessness in America,” was based on random phone surveys of 26,000 young people ages 13 to 25, and represents one of the most accurate, wide-ranging overviews ever conducted of homeless youth, a group whose numbers have long eluded researchers, educators and social workers, homeless advocates said.
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“We just haven’t had de nitive numbers like this before,” said Shahera Hyatt, director of the California Homeless Youth Project, a state agency. “It’s fantastic to have this data, but the numbers are staggering. We as a country really have to face the truth about youth homelessness. I hope this report nally spurs us into action.”
Homeless young people are usually counted through their schools, as required by the federal McKinney-Vento Act, or through “point in time” counts, in which case workers count how many people were in shelters or living on the street on a given day. Both counts are considered low because families might be reluctant to answer school surveys truthfully, or because homeless young people tend to dri in and out of homelessness and might not be counted on a speci c day, Hyatt said.
http://www.sbsun.com/2017/11/21/young-and-homeless-in-america-survey-says-the-problem-is-worsening/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_mediu… 2/6 11/22/2017 Young and homeless in America: Survey says the problem is worsening – San Bernardino Sun The University of Chicago study, which was funded in part by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and private foundations, included young people in cities, suburban and rural areas in every region of the country, and breaks down the data down by race, education level and sexual orientation. Young adults were de ned as those 18 to 25 years old and adolescents were those 13 to 17. The study did not break down its ndings by state.
Among its ndings:
Rural homelessness was nearly equal to urban homelessness. LGBT youth were 120 percent more likely to become homeless than their straight peers. African-American youth were 83 percent more likely to become homeless than other groups. Among those homeless youth who were 18 to 25 years old, the primary reasons they were homeless were high housing costs, low wages and large student debt, according to Matthew Morton, a research fellow at University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall policy research center who oversaw the study.
“This really is a call for urgency and alarm,” he said. “It shows we need to look at this with a wider lens than we have been. Clearly, affordable housing is vital, but it’s not the only factor.”
Young people without a high school diploma or general equivalency degree were 346 percent more likely to become homeless than their peers, underscoring the important role that schools play in preventing homelessness, Morton said.
“Teachers, coaches, school staff, every adult in a school can look for the signs of homelessness among students,” and ensure those students get assistance and stay in school, he said.
The study recommends that Congress invest more in safety-net programs, such as child welfare, education and counseling, and promote more affordable housing. Better cooperation between schools, the juvenile justice system, public health agencies and other groups that deal with low-income families would also help, he said.
Sherilyn Adams, director of Larkin Street Youth Services, a homeless youth shelter in San Francisco, said the University of Chicago study provides an accurate depiction of a group that’s o en invisible. Young homeless people o en don’t appear obviously homeless, and therefore can be dif cult to identify and help.
http://www.sbsun.com/2017/11/21/young-and-homeless-in-america-survey-says-the-problem-is-worsening/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_mediu… 3/6 11/22/2017 Young and homeless in America: Survey says the problem is worsening – San Bernardino Sun “What’s signi cant about this study is that it gives us long-needed data about the prevalence of youth homelessness. And the numbers are huge — they’re wholly unacceptable,” she said. “This tells us there is a daunting need that we all need to take seriously. If you know a kid who’s sleeping on someone’s couch, you should get involved.”
More affordable housing, job training, education and shelter spacewould help provide long-term solutions, she said.
In California, just over 3 percent of the K-12 public school populationwas homeless last year, according to data submitted by schools to the State Department of Education. Those numbers include students who were living in cars, motels, shelters, on the street or with their families “doubled up” with other families. The University of Chicago study did not ask respondents speci cally if they were living “doubled up” — some of those families would have said they were couch-sur ng, or living under a roof but in a highly unstable situation, while others would not, meaning that the study data is not precisely comparable to California’s data, Morton said.
High housing costs and low wages in some parts of the state have le California with a child poverty rate of 23 percent, according to a recent study by the Public Policy Institute of California. The group found that the highest rates of child poverty are clustered in the San Joaquin Valley, Los Angeles and the Central Coast. Schools in those areas also reported some of the highest rates of student homelessness.
College students are also affected by the high cost of living. A study released by California State University found that 10 percent of its 460,000 students are homeless.
“We know what needs to be done. We all need to advocate louder for housing,” said Hyatt at the California Homeless Youth Project. “People need to talk to their elected leaders at the local, state and federal levels about creating a safe and stable housing supply.”
This story originally appeared on EdSource.org. EdSource is an independent journalism organization that works to engage Californians on key education challenges with the goal of enhancing learning success.
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