Buffalo shooter’s prior threat, hospital stay under scrutiny
CAROLYN THOMPSON and MICHAEL BALSAMO, AP: "The white gunman accused of committing a racist massacre at a Buffalo supermarket made threatening comments that brought police to his high school last spring, but he was never charged with a crime and had no further contact with law enforcement after his release from a hospital, officials said.
The revelation raised questions about whether his encounter with police and the mental health system was yet another missed opportunity to put a potential mass shooter under closer law enforcement scrutiny, get him help, or make sure he didn’t have access to deadly firearms.
Authorities said they were investigating the attack on predominantly Black shoppers and workers at the Tops Friendly Market as a potential federal hate crime or act of domestic terrorism. Saturday’s mass violence in Buffalo was the deadliest of a wave of fatal weekend shootings, including at a California church and a Texas flea market.
Churchgoers tackled, hogtied gunman after deadly Laguna Woods church shooting
LA Times, HANNAH FRY, RICHARD WINTON, LAURA NEWBERRY, JEONG PARK, ANH DO, ANDREW J. CAMPA: "A gunman attacked a lunch banquet at a Taiwanese church in Laguna Woods, killing one person and wounding five others Sunday before congregants tackled him, hogtied him with an extension cord and grabbed his two weapons, authorities said.
“That group of churchgoers displayed what we believe is exceptional heroism and bravery,” Undersheriff Jeff Hallock said, later adding, “It’s safe to say that had they not intervened this situation could have been much worse.”
The violence left the south Orange County suburb — home to the sprawling retirement community once known as Leisure World — reeling and in grief, coming a day after a racist attack at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket left 10 dead."
Column: Buffalo shooting is an ugly culmination of California’s ‘great replacement’ theory
LA Times, ERIKA D SMITH: "It started in California and it hasn’t stopped yet.
On Saturday, a heavily armed 18-year-old white man rolled up to a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo, N.Y. He had on military fatigues and body armor, and a camera strapped to his head in hopes of livestreaming his every move.
He parked his vehicle and then opened fire."
A new generation of white supremacist killer: shedding blood with internet winks, memes and livestreams
LA Times, JENNY JARVIE/MOLLY HENNESSY-FISKE: "Bored during the early days of the pandemic, Payton Gendron logged on to the 4chan message board website to browse ironic memes and infographics that spread the idea that the white race is going extinct.
He was soon lurking on the web’s even more sinister fringes, scrolling through extremist and neo-Nazi sites that peddled conspiracy theories and anti-Black racism. It wasn’t until he spotted a GIF of a man shooting a shotgun through a dark hallway, and then tracked down a livestream of the 2019 killing of 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand, that Gendron appeared to have found his calling: as a virulently racist, copycat mass shooter with a craving for notoriety.
The white 18-year-old from Conklin, N.Y., suspected of killing 10 people Saturday in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket, appears to represent a new generation of white supremacists. They are isolated and online, radicalized on internet memes and misinformation, apparently inspired by livestreams to find fame through bloodshed, much of it propelled by convoluted ideas that the white race is under threat from everything from interracial marriage to immigration."
California surplus expected to hit unprecedented $97 billion under Newsom’s budget plan
JOHN MYERS, LA Times: "California’s government surplus is expected to balloon to $97.5-billion by next summer under the budget plan unveiled Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, an estimate that vastly exceeds previous projections and comes amid concerns that rising inflation and arcane spending rules could throw the state’s finances into disarray in the near future.
Many of the governor’s ideas on how to use the extra cash — including rebates, new debt repayments and additional funding for public schools — are contained in a $300.6-billion budget blueprint for the fiscal year that begins in July. Other portions of the surplus would be set aside in the state’s cash reserves.
“No other state in American history has ever experienced a surplus as large as this,” Newsom said at a news conference in Sacramento."
Column: I covered the first $3-billion budget in 1963. Now Newsom could crack $300 billion
GEORGE SKELTON, LA Times: "The two most striking things about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised state budget proposal are the immense size and mad money.
He’s seeking the first state budget to crack $300 billion — $300.6 billion to be exact. Billion with a “B.”
It’s striking to me, at least, because I covered passage of the first $3-billion budget in 1963. That’s right: 100 times smaller than what Newsom wants."
Why is the COVID case rate in San Francisco so much higher than the U.S. right now?
The Chronicle, SUSIE NEILSON: "For almost the entire pandemic, San Francisco’s COVID-19 case rates have been lower than the nation’s as a whole. But not anymore.
Earlier this spring, the city’s confirmed new case rates climbed above those of the U.S. Then, on May 3, San Francisco’s case rate doubled that of the U.S. As of May 10, the national daily case rate was at about 23 new cases per 100,000 people, whereas in S.F. the rate was at 42 per 100,000, according to data from the New York Times analyzed by The Chronicle.
Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UCSF, said that San Francisco’s current high case rates are likely due to the city being relatively protected from the disease for the last two years, combined with city residents taking more risks as local pandemic-era restrictions and messaging wane."
Rice is Sacramento Valley’s gift to the world. Can it withstand California’s epic drought?
DALE KASLER, SacBee: "Don Bransford has been growing rice in the fertile Sacramento Valley for 42 years.
Not this summer.
California’s worsening drought has cut so deeply into water supplies on the west side of the Valley that Bransford and thousands of other farmers aren’t planting a single acre of rice."
California could close three more state prisons, Gavin Newsom’s budget says
WES VENTEICHER, SacBee: "Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new budget proposal suggests California could close three more prisons in the next three years.
Citing reductions in the number of people in prison, Newsom’s new budget proposal says it “may be possible” to close three additional prisons by the fiscal year that ends in June 2025. Newsom’s administration closed one state prison — Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy — last year, reducing the number to 34.
The governor has been trying to shut a second, California Correctional Institution in Susanville, but its closure is tied up in court.
Sacramento County to propose rules limiting where homeless can camp, supervisor says
PATRICK RILEY, SacBee: "Wrestling with a growing homelessness crisis, Sacramento County officials are working on an ordinance that would limit where unhoused residents could camp in the unincorporated area.
Although specific ordinance language is still being drafted, the proposal would prohibit camping near “sensitive infrastructure,” which could include flood-control facilities and highway overpasses, and near sites the county creates to house homeless residents, such as tiny home communities, Supervisor Rich Desmond said in an interview last week.
Desmond outlined the efforts in an email news bulletin to constituents last week.
U.S. reaches 1 million COVID deaths — and the virus isn’t done with us
LA Times, EMILY BAUMGAERTNER/KURTIS LEE: "David Dowdy hunches in front of his laptop at his kitchen table as he watches COVID-19 data trickle in. One death. Then another. And another. And another.
That’s a typical day for the Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist, his screen propped up on board game boxes and magazines, the clock progressing through another 12-hour day.
Dr. Dowdy is a tuberculosis researcher, but for the last 25 months he’s been keeping track of national and global coronavirus trends, doing his own analysis of the spread of the virus in an attempt to discern where the pandemic may be headed."
The Bay Area cities where homeowners have saved the most on property taxes as home prices soared
The Chronicle, KELLIE HWANG: "As the Bay Area’s top-in-the-nation home prices surged even higher during the pandemic, most buyers who managed to score a house are also likely paying far higher property tax bills than their neighbors who paid less for comparable homes and have owned them longer.
That “double whammy” caught the attention of Bay Area resident Phil Levin, who created the interactive data website Tax Fairness Project to explain the complexities — and point out the disparities — in how homeowners benefit from Proposition 13, California’s landmark tax law.
Approved overwhelmingly by voters during a housing bubble in 1978 when assessments were skyrocketing, Prop. 13 caps property taxes to 1% of a home’s assessed value at the time of purchase, and limits annual increases to 2%. Properties are reassessed for tax purposes only when they change hands."
As inflation spikes, Oakland reconsiders a record 6.7% rent hike
The Chronicle, LAUREN HEPLER: "Gas prices are going up. Food costs are climbing. But in Oakland, officials are moving to limit how much inflation drives up local rents.
Council Member Carroll Fife is leading an effort to bring the East Bay city in line with neighbors such as San Francisco by further limiting price increases on rent-controlled apartments. The shift comes after Oakland housing regulators announced that, starting in July, landlords would have the option of increasing rent up to 6.7% because of inflation, the highest such one-year jump on record.
Reconsidering how rent caps are calculated is the latest example of how Bay Area cities are grappling with the pandemic’s housing fallout — a task pitting landlords against tenants in eviction courts, lawsuits and now, city meetings."
Biden urges unity to stem racial hate after Buffalo shooting
AP, DARLENE SUPERVILLE: "President Joe Biden urged unity Sunday to address the “hate that remains a stain on the soul of America” after a deadly mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, while state officials pleaded for federal action to end the ”uniquely American phenomenon” of mass shootings.
Addressing an annual law enforcement ceremony at the U.S. Capitol, Biden said he and his wife, Jill, pray for those who were shot “by a lone gunman, armed with weapons of war and hate-filled soul,” and their families.
Authorities say a white 18-year-old male in military gear opened fire on shoppers and workers at the supermarket on Saturday, killing 10 people, including a retired Buffalo police officer, and wounding three others. Most of the victims were Black."
