San Jose approves first law in U.S. requiring gun owners to have insurance
AP, BY OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ AND JULIET WILLIAMS: "The city of San Jose voted Tuesday night to require gun owners to carry liability insurance in what’s believed to be the first measure of its kind in the United States.
The San Jose City Council overwhelmingly approved the measure despite opposition from some gun owners who said it would violate their 2nd Amendment rights.
The council also voted to require thousands of gun owners in the city to pay a small fee, which would be used for firearm safety education and services such as domestic violence prevention and mental health services."
Why struggling Sonoma County has Bay Area’s toughest COVID restrictions
JULIE JOHNSON, Chronicle: "Pedro Toledo guided his 82-year-old mother by the hand to the intake window of a Petaluma health clinic and found himself in an unfamiliar position — asking where to report for an appointment.
Most days, Toledo is the one in charge: He’s chief administrative officer for the Petaluma Health Center’s network of clinics that serve about 40,000 patients in Sonoma and Marin counties. But on Monday morning he was a concerned son escorting a mother who was among the latest in Sonoma County to be infected with the coronavirus.
Testing positive the day after she returned home from a brief hospital stay, Toledo’s mother — who is in a high-risk age group and also suffers from the autoimmune illness lupus — became one of more than 71,000 residents overall who have been infected in a county that continues to have some of the Bay Area’s highest coronavirus case rates, even as the winter surge begins to level off across much of the region."
Omicron in California: State forecast shows hospitalizations falling by half in the next month
DOMINIC FRACASSA, Chronicle: "Bay Area health officials are starting to plan for for what pandemic life might look like on the other side of the winter wave two weeks after the omicron surge showed signs of leveling off. Sonoma County’s residents now are living with tougher restrictions aimed at stemming transmission than other parts of the Bay Area, where cases mostly appear to be tapering off. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a deal with state lawmakers that would see paid supplemental COVID-19 sick leave return for employees after it was allowed to lapse.
State forecast shows hospitalizations falling by half in the next month: With California’s positive test rate edging down 15% from earlier this month, the state’s projection model shows the number of hospitalizations will fall by half in another month. There were 15,248 people hospitalized with COVID statewide as of Monday. An ensemble forecast shows that number dropping to 7,640 by February 24. The number of patients in intensive care unit beds is also expected to fall from 2,602 to 1,118 in the same period. However, deaths will continue to climb, with an additional 5,436 COVID fatalities bringing the state’s cumulative pandemic toll to 83,534 and rising.
Rate of infection for unvaccinated Santa Clara County residents is 1,000 per 100,000: Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County’s health officer, said during a virtual town hall event on Tuesday that the rate of infection among unvaccinated people is close to 1,000 per 100,000. Cody described that figure as “very, very high” compared to the rate of infection for boosted people, which is around 100 per 100,000 people. “So, there is about a 10-fold difference on just for rates of infection,” Cody said. “When you look at rates for hospitalization, it’s also, you know, a huge, huge difference. The vaccine is very, very, very protective as far as hospitalization and extremely effective at preventing you from dying of COVID.”
UCLA Gymnastics stood together against racial injustice, then was ripped apart by it
LA Times, THUC NHI NGUYEN: "The black T-shirts read “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” but the message meant to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. during UCLA’s season-opening meet rang hollow for several Bruins gymnasts.
Wearing matching T-shirts did little to cloak wounds from months of internal strife within the UCLA program. After two gymnasts told The Times a teammate used a racial slur, which prompted a university response that some gymnasts of color found to be insufficient, the Bruins produced their worst team score in seven years. Senior Margzetta Frazier, along with a teammate who spoke with The Times on condition of anonymity because she feared repercussions, described a negative atmosphere and cracks within the famously joyful facade of one of the nation’s most visible and successful programs.
The rift deepened to the point that Frazier and fellow senior Norah Flatley tweeted at UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond for help on Jan. 20."
Why is L.A.’s iconic skyline far from the beach — unlike Miami, Seattle and other cities?
LA Times, RACHEL SCHNALZER: "In summer 2021, we began asking readers to submit their most pressing business-related questions about Los Angeles and California.
Then we put the questions to a vote, allowing readers to decide which question we would answer in story form.
Our latest winner was submitted by Javier Barraza, an economics student at California State University, Los Angeles, who asked: “Why doesn’t L.A. have a skyline by the water like New York, San Francisco and Seattle?”"
In controversial move, S.F. allows drug use at Breed’s new Tenderloin treatment linkage center
MALLORY MOENCH and KEVIN FAGAN, Chronicle: "San Francisco is allowing people to use drugs in an outdoor area of Mayor London Breed’s new Tenderloin Linkage Center in United Nations Plaza, interviews and Chronicle observations confirm.
Several people told The Chronicle in interviews Tuesday that they had used drugs inside the fenced-in area bordering the center’s entrance on U.N. Plaza. In addition to the outdoor area, the city offers basic hygiene services, food, clothing and connections to services such as treatment and housing on the first floor of the seven-story building.
The mayor’s spokesperson, Jeff Cretan, said in an email that the “emergency initiative is about doing everything we can to help people struggling with addiction, and getting them connected to services and treatment. As part of that, the linkage center is serving as a low-barrier site to bring people off the street.”
Killing of LAPD officer brings scrutiny on one of L.A.'s oldest and largest gangs
LA Times, MATTHEW ORMSETH: "Seven decades ago, Latino youths in South Los Angeles banded together to form a gang. They called themselves Florencia, after the east-west thoroughfare that ran through the heart of their territory. Years of violent conflict over that territory with other gangs lent Florencia an identity and reason for being.
Over the years, demographic and social shifts have weakened many street gangs and caused some to die out altogether. Florencia did the opposite, law enforcement officials say, absorbing smaller gangs and expanding their extortion and drug dealing rackets on the orders of its leaders, who are incarcerated many hundreds of miles away.
The gang is now at the center of the killing earlier this month of an off-duty Los Angeles police officer."
Senators push Biden to fight to preserve the child tax credit
LA Times, ELI STOKOLS: "Five Democratic senators urged President Biden on Wednesday to continue to fight hard to extend the child tax credit, which he suggested last week might have to be dropped from a revamped version of his sweeping climate and domestic spending package.
The credit, which delivered monthly payments of $250 or $300 per child to more than 35 million families last year, was included in the $1.9-trillion American Rescue Plan signed into law in March. The payments ended in December, and a one-year extension that had been included in Biden’s domestic spending bill is in jeopardy as lawmakers look to revamp the package in order to secure the 50 Senate votes needed to pass it.
In a letter to Biden, Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Ron Wyden of Oregon called the child tax credit “a signature policy achievement of this administration” and “the biggest tax cut for low- and middle-income families in modern American history.”"
A woman was killed by her CHP officer husband because cops just can’t police themselves
Opinion, MARCOS BRETON, SacBee: Mary Wheat was killed by an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer who she could not escape as he terrorized her, stalked her, surveilled her, and then shot her to death on Labor Day weekend in 2018. Wheat’s killer was her estranged husband Brad Wheat, a cop in the CHP office of Amador County.
He tracked her down in Sutter Creek and unloaded his .40 caliber CHP-issued handgun on her while she and her boyfriend begged for mercy. Brad Wheat then killed himself, leaving their four children without parents.
First reported by The Bee’s Sam Stanton, the following facts of this horrific case are not in dispute: Before attacking her, Brad Wheat told his CHP colleagues that he planned to kill his estranged wife’s boyfriend and then kill himself. Brad Wheat’s CHP co-workers were concerned enough to take the revolver away from him but later returned it to him.
People aren’t responding to California’s unemployment fraud crackdown. What happens next?
DAVID LIGHTMAN, SacBee: “Most of the 1.4 million people asked last year to prove they properly received federally-funded unemployment benefits have not responded to the state’s request and could eventually face penalties and repayments.
The state first sought the information in November. In some cases, it said, it could seek a potential repayment of all benefits received. It talked about penalties.
The state’s Employment Development Department, which manages the unemployment program, said it would add a 30% penalty “if we determine that you intentionally gave false information or withheld information to receive benefits.”
