Dysfunction and scandal plague NorCal sheriff's office
Sacramento Bee, RYAN SABALOW and JASON POHL: "There’s a motto among locals in this coastal corner of Northern California, a rugged place where tourists ambling among the redwoods outnumber residents living in Crescent City.
“There’s no law north of the Klamath,” a nod to the river at the county’s southern border with Humboldt County.
Locals still mention the saying — which dates back to the unruly 19th-century Gold Rush — when they talk about the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office. The office has been struggling with a series of departures and scandals that have some in the community questioning whether the department is so dysfunctional that it cannot safely perform its duties and protect the public."
READ MORE POLICE/PUBLIC SAFETY NEWS --- Newsom signs new laws to ease California's strict criminal sentencing system -- The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO
Alisal Fire raging in SoCal blasts across more than 13,000 acres, jumps Hwy 101
The Chronicle, JESSICA FLORES: "The Alisal Fire burning in Santa Barbara County grew to 13,400 acres as of Tuesday evening, continuing its rampage in dry brush after doubling in size the night before.
The brush fire was 5% contained as crews continued battling the blaze in gusty conditions with northwest winds up to 35 mph and gusts up to 70 mph, officials said.
The fire started at 2:30 p.m. Monday north of Santa Barbara near the Alisal Reservoir, and jumped Highway 101 to Tajiguas Beach, said Andrew Madsen, spokesperson for Los Padres National Forest. By Tuesday morning, it had burned across 8,000 acres."
READ MORE WILDFIRE NEWS --- California announces changes to ease the thorny problems of fire insurance for vintners, farmers -- The Chronicle, ESTHER MOBLEY
The Chronicle, DANIELLE ECHEVERRIA/YOOHYUN JUNG: "In another alarming measure of California’s historic drought, the summer months this year were the state’s driest on record since 1895, when data-gathering for the government’s standard drought index began.
The monthly average dryness for July, August and September 2021 was -6.8 on the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which indicates extreme drought.
Anything below -4.0 on the Palmer scale is considered “extreme drought.” A year with normal precipitation would fall between -0.49 and 0.49 on the scale, and an “extremely wet” year would land above 4.0."
Newsom vetoes workplace diversity bill
Sacramento Bee, ANDREW SHEELER: "California Gov. Gavin Newsom last week vetoed legislation that would have required the California Department of Human Resources to develop employee “upward mobility goals” that would factor in race, gender, sexual orientation, veteran status and physical and mental disabilities.
Assembly Bill 105, authored by Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, was intended to give women and minority state job candidates a better opportunity to navigate the state’s civil service system.
The bill also would have required that state boards and commissions have at least one board member or commissioner from an underrepresented community."
READ MORE LEGISLATIVE NEWS --- Reporters covering protests in California get new protections under law signed by Newsom -- The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO
Investigators examine role of unprecedented port gridlock in OC oil spill
LA Times, HANNAH FRY/RICHARD WINTON: "With the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach facing unprecedented gridlock, investigators are trying to determine what role the congested shipping lanes played in the massive oil spill that has fouled the Orange County coast since early this month.
Investigators are probing possible issues with the way ships are anchoring or drifting off the coast in long lines caused by skyrocketing consumer demand and disrupted supply chains during the pandemic.
Officials believe a ship anchored off Huntington Beach hit an undersea pipe, possibly months before the oil began spilling in the ocean. It’s unclear how a ship came to lower its anchor on a pipeline when the placement of vessels is supposed to be carefully orchestrated to avoid such mishaps."
Biden will announce expanded ops at Port of LA as supply chain crunch continues
LA Times, CHRIS MEGERIAN/DON LEE: "The Port of Los Angeles will begin operating around the clock as the White House pushes to clear supply chain bottlenecks threatening the holiday shopping season and slowing the country’s economic recovery from the global pandemic, senior Biden administration officials said.
Similar steps have already been taken in recent weeks at the Port of Long Beach. Together the two sprawling facilities are responsible for nearly half of all imports into the United States, making them a key part of logistical networks strained by the coronavirus crisis.
The administration officials said the plan, which is scheduled to be announced Wednesday by President Biden, was brokered by the White House as part of an effort to untangle supply chain problems that are making it harder for Americans to get electronics, cars, lumber and other consumer goods that rely on overseas manufacturing."
The Ring of Fire's recent seismic activity, and how it may possibly affect California next
The Chronicle, GWENDOLYN WU: "The major earthquakes that jolted Hawaii and Alaska over the past two days caused no major damage, but rattled nerves both locally and perhaps in California — also a famously earthquake-prone state.
However, the typical immediate concern — a tsunami that could travel thousands of miles and strike California’s coast — did not occur. And geologists also offered reassurance this week that the temblors will not impact California’s earthquake fault system.
“It’s too far away to make a difference in terms of stressors,” said Austin Elliott, an earthquake geologist in the USGS Earthquake Science Center at Moffett Field."
Some essential workers may benefit from a Biden pandemic relief plan
Sacramento Bee, GILLIAN BRASSIL/JEONG PARK: "Front-line farm, grocery-store and meatpacking workers in California could see financial relief through a federal program designed to alleviate pandemic-related costs.
The Farm and Food Workers Relief Program, offered through the United States Department of Agriculture, promises $700 million in grants for those workers across the U.S. The Biden administration has not said when it plans to release the money.
Many workers in the food and farming industries were unable to work from home, which put them at risk of contracting the coronavirus — and sometimes meant personally paying for protective equipment, care for loved ones and COVID-19 testing and quarantining expenses."
Sacramento Bee, PHILLIP REESE: "About 70% of residents 12 and older in the four-county Sacramento region were fully vaccinated as of Monday, higher than the national average of 66%, state and federal data show.
But there were holdouts. Among ZIP codes with at least 5,000 residents, there were still five communities where most people 12 and older were not fully vaccinated.
Those five ZIP codes are each politically conservative and they each have a relatively high proportion of residents without a four-year college degree, two factors that survey data show are associated with low vaccination rates. Some of them also have a high proportion of residents living in poverty - another predictor of vaccine hesitancy."
READ MORE COVID/VAXX NEWS --- Pregnant women were kept out of clinical trials. That left them vulnerable to COVID-19 -- LA Times, AMINA KHAN, US to reopen land borders in Nov. for fully vaxx'd -- AP, ZEKE MILLER
This Silicon Valley county is trying to end a 'hidden epidemic' of homeless families. Will it work?
The Chronicle, LAUREN HEPLER: "Maria Castañeda wasn’t always sure where she and her three children were going to sleep, but she did everything in her power to keep them off the street.
Some nights, that meant staying at domestic violence shelters near her hometown of San Jose. For a while, the family of four shared a moldy queen mattress in a house with 10 roommates. In really uncertain times, they rented whatever motel room a county voucher could pay for — usually one “where people don’t really sleep,” she said.
“The kids, they saw too much,” Castañeda, 35, said of her 6-, 15- and 18-year-old children. “They deserve better now.”"
How this pick-your-own operatuon near Sacramento helped feed the hungry and save a farm
Sacramento Bee, BRIANNA TAYLOR: "In 1997, 10 churches formed an agreement with Davis Ranch partner Jim Davis allowing them to collect day-old surplus produce. The system lasted for 15 years until Jim Davis and his wife, Peggy, determined a new direction.
Helping Hands Produce LLC was born in 2012 with the idea of combating produce waste by allowing community volunteers to pick surplus produce for food banks. Soon after, Davis Ranch — located east of Sacramento in Sloughhouse — created a U-pick farm on the ranch.
“That worked out so well, and people were so excited about it, they asked ... how can we pick for ourselves and we decided to go ahead and start doing it for the public and it’s been huge — people love it,” said Jim Ayers, the Davis Ranch store manager."
How the Philippines' colonial legacy weighs on Filipino American mental health
LA Times, AGNES CONSTANTE: "Daniela Pila spent an hour after school one day scrubbing her brown skin with a bar of papaya soap, hoping it would turn white.
She was 12 and had never really cared much about the color of her skin. But the negative comments she had received about her physical features throughout her life had started to weigh her down.
She remembered a family member saying her nose made her look like a pig. Her classmates called her fat, ugly and damak — a Filipino term that means filthy. She saw that her peers with lighter complexions were showered with compliments."