San Francisco’s lack of rain this year just smashed a 170-year-old record
The Chronicle, JESSICA FLORES: "A persistent lack of rain in the Bay Area led two cities to break their respective records for the driest first two months of the year, though weather forecasters remained cautiously optimistic Tuesday that rain would return to the region this week.
San Francisco and San Jose saw little to no rain in January and February, said Matt Mehle, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service — months where the region ordinarily receives a majority of rainfall during the winter season.
The Bay Area’s water year, which begins Oct. 1 and lasts through Sept. 30, had a decent start due to the storms in October and a wet December. That shifted at the start of 2022 when some cities, like San Francisco, began to see historic dry streaks."
Woman warned court her boyfriend was dangerous before he killed 4 at Sacramento-area church
LAT, MACKENZIE MAYS/RICHARD WINTON: "A custody battle and restraining order preceded a deadly shooting Monday in which a 39-year-old man killed his three children and the person assigned by the court to supervise his visits with them at a Sacramento-area church, according to court records and county authorities.
Sgt. Rodney Grassmann, a spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, said authorities are investigating how the man obtained the firearm despite the court order. It was also revealed Tuesday that five days before killing his daughters and then turning the gun on himself, the assailant — identified as David Fidel Mora Rojas — had been arrested in Merced County on suspicion of assaulting an officer and drunk driving, among other charges.
Sacramento County court records show that Illeana Gutierrez Rios filed for a domestic violence restraining order in May against Mora, her then-boyfriend."
California appeals court revives lawsuit against S.F. in case of gun stolen from police officer
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: "A state appeals court on Tuesday revived a lawsuit against San Francisco by a woman whose son was shot to death with a gun stolen from the car of a city police officer.
Officer Marvin Cabuntala had brought the handgun, his personal firearm, along in his car while driving to a training session in August 2017. Guns were not allowed at the session, but Cabuntala said afterward he felt it was part of his job to bring a weapon in case something happened at a jail that was next to the site.
He left the loaded gun in his car, then drove home and left it inside the vehicle, though not in a lockbox or the trunk. That night, someone broke into the car and stole the gun, which was used several days later to shoot 23-year-old Abel Esquivel as he was heading for his family’s home in the Mission District. Esquivel had been walking home from the Central American Resource Center, where he worked as an intern. Three men were later arrested and charged with his murder."
San Diego County jails to adopt body-worn cameras after scathing audit over inmate deaths
Union Tribune, LYNDSAY WINKLEY: "Some deputies were outfitted with body-worn cameras late last week in the first San Diego County jail to use the technology, officials said Tuesday, following a scathing state report on inmate deaths in the jail system.
The pilot program includes 72 deputies at the Las Colinas Detention and Reentry Facility, a women’s jail in Santee, all of whom received their cameras Friday. That’s about 30% of the 230 deputies that work at the facility, according to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.
Officials said they will collect surveys from the deputies participating in the program. The feedback will be used to improve the department’s body-worn camera policies as the program expands to other county jails and to identify best training practices."
California’s death row inmates fan out across prison system
URIEL ESPINOZA-PACHECO, Capitol Weekly: "Scores of California’s condemned prison inmates are being removed from their cells on San Quentin’s death row and sent to eight high-security lockups in the state’s sprawling penal system.
The transfers follow an executive order by Gov. Gavin Newsom halting executions in California. The governor also has vowed to remodel San Quentin’s death row, where executions have been conducted for generations.
“We talk about justice, we preach justice, but as a nation, we don’t practice it on death row,” Newsom said earlier this week."
Small fire burns vegetation in Sonoma County near Monte Rio
The Chronicle, LAUREN HERNANDEZ: "Firefighters battled a small vegetation fire in Sonoma County on Tuesday and planned to continue containing the fire overnight into Wednesday, authorities said.
The 7-acre blaze, dubbed the Alpine Fire, burned timber above Monte Rio in the North Bay county, officials with Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit said.
Shortly before 8:15 p.m., Cal fire officials said firefighters had stopped forward progress of the fire."
John Eastman, Trump’s lawyer on overturning election, under investigation by California Bar
LAT, NATHAN SOLIS/HANNAH FRY/DAVID G. SAVAGE: "Orange County attorney John Eastman is at the center of an ethics investigation into whether he violated laws while advising President Trump on how he could overturn his election defeat in 2020, the State Bar of California said Tuesday.
Eastman, a former professor and dean at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, emerged as a key legal advisor to Trump in the weeks after it was apparent he had lost the election to Joe Biden.
Eastman wrote two legal memos that advised Vice President Mike Pence he could declare that the results in several states were disputed and therefore their electoral votes would go uncounted. Doing so would have injected a new element of uncertainty and opened the door for several state legislatures to recast their votes for Trump. The State Bar’s chief trial counsel, George Cardona, announced Tuesday that Eastman has been the center of an investigation since September.
Which of the Bay Area’s largest school districts are dropping mask mandates? Here’s a roundup
The Chronicle, ANNIE VAINSHTEIN: "After anxiously awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement about the mask mandate in schools, districts across the Bay Area have received an answer — but not all are following in the state’s footsteps.
California joined Oregon and Washington in lifting school mask mandates, officials announced Monday. The requirement will end March 12 across the state, and six Bay Area counties —Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Solano, San Mateo, San Francisco and Sonoma — have announced they will immediately adopt the state guidance. Alameda County officials said they would issue a decision this week. Marin and Napa counties have not yet decided on any changes.
However, individual school districts may choose to keep mask requirements in place in counties that adopt the looser state guidelines."
L.A. County likely to drop indoor mask order Friday
LAT, LUKE MONEY/RONG-GONG LIN II: "Los Angeles County will likely lift its universal indoor mask mandate Friday, a significant acceleration of the expected timeline following changes in federal face-covering guidance.
While nothing is set in stone, the potential changes would align L.A. County’s mask rules with those unveiled Monday by the California Department of Public Health, meaning it would be strongly recommended — but not required — for both vaccinated and unvaccinated residents to wear masks in public indoor settings.
“As we’ve emphasized throughout the pandemic, masks are one of the easiest things we can do to prevent COVID-19 transmission and provide strong protection to the person wearing them as well as to the people around them,” county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday."
Baseball itself locked out by MLB owners and their commissioner
The Chronicle, ANN KILLION: "No Opening Day. No day after Opening Day. No first two series of the season.
And that’s just for starters.
Unable to reach an agreement Tuesday afternoon, Major League Baseball canceled regular season games for the first time since those canceled in 1994 and 1995 in baseball’s last big labor dispute."
As fentanyl ravages San Francisco, there’s been a sudden shift in the debate over a get-tough method of rehab emphasizing abstinence
The Chronicle, KEVIN FAGAN: "Desperate to combat a drug epidemic that’s cost more than 1,300 lives in the past two years, San Francisco officials are pushing to get more people into treatment and spending millions on expanding existing programs and creating new ones.
Now, some city leaders and nonprofits are reviving talk of a get-tough method of rehab that has been largely rejected throughout the U.S. since the 1990s — placing a primary emphasis on requiring clients to shake their addictions without medication or relapses, loosely referred to as abstinence.
Currently, the city’s health department and its nonprofit partners embrace a “harm reduction” approach, letting people shed addictions mostly at their own pace with help from medication if requested and without intensive judgment from counselors if they relapse. At times that means going into residential rehab, but it also can simply be living inside away from the temptations of street dealers."
Six years later, Oakland developer still hasn’t built promised housing. City Council pulls plug in frustration
The Chronicle, SARAH RAVANI: "For nearly seven years, an Oakland developer has been trying to raise enough money to break ground on a 360-unit project near Lake Merritt on city-owned land. On Tuesday, the City Council voted against giving the developer a sixth extension to get the two-building project off the ground.
If the council had approved the project, it would have brought market-rate and affordable housing and tax revenue to the city, but officials have been frustrated that the key lot was empty for six years, until a council member opened a temporary tiny home village for the homeless there.
The project had promised 729 union construction jobs, more than $600,000 in annual tax revenue and about $4.7 million in land sale proceeds, city staff said. But council members said that publicly-owned land should prioritize affordable housing projects and instead the city should look to lease public land rather than sell."
State of the Union: Biden vows to halt Russia, hit inflation
AP, ZEKE MILLER/COLLEEN LONG: "Addressing a concerned nation and anxious world, President Joe Biden vowed in his first State of the Union address Tuesday night to check Russian aggression in Ukraine, tame soaring U.S. inflation and deal with the fading but still dangerous coronavirus.
Biden declared that he and all members of Congress, whatever their political differences, are joined “with an unwavering resolve that freedom will always triumph over tyranny.” He asked lawmakers crowding the House chamber to stand and salute the Ukrainians as he began his speech. They stood and cheered.
It was a notable show of unity after a long year of bitter acrimony between Biden’s Democratic coalition and the Republican opposition."
Huge Russian convoy advances on Kyiv; missiles batter Ukraine, nearly 700,000 have fled
LAT, NABIH BULOS/KATE LINTHICUM/TRACY WILKINSON: "Russian forces struck government buildings, a television tower and Ukraine’s main Holocaust memorial on Tuesday as they ramped up their assault on urban centers and assembled a 40-mile-long column of tanks, artillery and other military vehicles outside Kyiv in what appeared to foreshadow an imminent assault on the capital.
The specter of more violence and the scenes of civilians huddled in bomb shelters or pouring across Ukraine’s western borders came as Russia found itself increasingly isolated on the world stage, with few allies beyond China and North Korea and sanctions inflicting immediate damage to its economy and currency.
President Biden announced during his State of the Union address Tuesday night a ban on Russian aircraft in American airspace, the latest in a barrage of punitive measures that Biden said have made Putin “more isolated from the world than he’s ever been.”"
