Light winds, increasing humidity and a chance of rain are forecast to bring relief to Los Angeles on Thursday after dry and windy conditions fueled the spread of the ferocious Franklin fire in Malibu this week.
While that fire continued to smolder on Wednesday afternoon — with 4,000 acres scorched and 7% containment — strong Santa Ana winds subsided, prompting the National Weather Service to cancel its red flag alert for Greater Los Angeles at 1 p.m.
There will continue to be locally strong wind gusts of around 30 mph as well as areas of very low humidity through early Thursday. These conditions, however, no longer meet extreme hazard criteria, according to the weather service.
“While elevated fire weather conditions will persist into Wednesday night, the threat of the critical fire weather conditions has ended, and that’s really due to the winds decreasing,” said weather service meteorologist Kristan Lund.
A low-pressure system will sweep into the region Thursday, bringing with it a 20% chance of afternoon rain, she said. The greatest chance of scattered showers is in the foothills of the San Gabriel Valley and the Santa Monica Mountains, she said.
Temperatures will remain cool Thursday and Friday, with overnight lows in the 40s and daytime highs in the 60s. On Saturday, there is another chance for light rain showers in L.A. County. More substantial precipitation is expected farther north, with heavy showers forecast for San Luis Obispo County.
And in Northern California, a powerful storm system is forecast for Thursday, Friday and over the weekend, bringing 1 to 2 inches of rainfall to the Sacramento and San Francisco areas as well as dumping 10 to 20 inches of snow in elevations above 5,000 feet in the the Sierra.
In L.A. County, humidity levels are expected to rebound to the 20%-to-30% range Thursday after a dangerously dry start to the week, Lund said.
Humidity levels were already rising near the Franklin fire Wednesday and had reached the low teens in Malibu by the afternoon, she said.
On Thursday, the return of onshore winds, moving from the ocean up the mountains, is expected to help humidity levels continue to rise, which in turn should help firefighters get a handle on the blaze, she said.
On Monday, humidity levels were critically low — in the single digits — while fearsome Santa Ana winds were gusting up to 65 mph. This menacing combination prompted the weather service to issue a rare “particularly dangerous situation” red flag warning.
These extreme warnings should, on average, be issued only once every three to five years, according to the weather service. But this year there have been two back to back.
On Nov. 5, a “particularly dangerous situation” alert was issued for Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The following day, the Mountain fire exploded in Camarillo Heights and, fueled by gusts of up to 80 mph, scorched more than 20,000 acres and destroyed more than 130 structures.
At a Tuesday news conference, Gov. Gavin Newsom grimly noted that the Franklin fire proved that “fire season is not a season — it’s year-round in the state of California.”
A top L.A. County probation official has said the agency won’t obey a state order to vacate Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall this month, potentially setting up a costly showdown between state and county officials and prompting threats of legal action from defense attorneys.
“We’re not moving,” Chief Deputy Probation Officer Kimberly Epps told a group of several dozen probation officers last month, according to a recording provided to The Times. “You’re going to have to put our stuff on the curb.”
Probation officials have not publicly signaled their plans, but a refusal to vacate Los Padrinos would defy the California Board of State and Community Corrections, which ordered the Downey facility shut by Thursday unless the county could improve staffing levels. A spokesperson for the state oversight board confirmed Monday that the Probation Department failed a last-chance inspection because it did not have enough officers on site to safely monitor the young people inside.
The county’s refusal to relocate roughly 260 youths in their teens and early 20s from Los Padrinos could lead to legal battles that would mark another massive liability for an agency already under fire by the California attorney general’s office and facing sex abuse lawsuits anticipated to cost billions of dollars.
“I don’t see how the court in good faith can continue to order youth detained at Los Padrinos when you have the powers that be saying they’re not going to improve conditions and they’re not going to comply with oversight bodies,” said criminal defense attorney Jerod Gunsberg.
Luis Rodriguez, chief of the juvenile division for the L.A. public defender’s office, said the agency will ask the courts to release all 107 of its clients housed at Los Padrinos if the Probation Department doesn’t shut the facility down by Thursday, arguing that continuing to operate the hall after the state’s order violates California law.
“We call for the immediate release of our clients to their families or to non-carceral housing that provide trauma-informed care, access to education, and consistent rehabilitative support,” Public Defender Ricardo Garcia said in a statement. “Every day they remain in an unsuitable facility deepens the harm and undermines their future.”
The state oversight body on Oct. 14 found Los Padrinos “unsuitable” to confine young people because it failed to meet state staffing requirements. The Probation Department has long struggled to properly staff its facilities, with officers often refusing to come to work or remaining on medical leave long-term, an issue that played a role in the shutdown of the county’s other two juvenile halls in recent years.
The state oversight board gave the Probation Department 60 days to fix the problem or shut the hall. A probation spokesperson said last week that officials were “confident” the county would make the fixes, avoiding a potentially chaotic transfer of detainees to yet another location.
After last week’s failed inspection, probation officials are out of chances to appease regulators — but also showing no intention of moving to vacate.
Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa has said little in public about a potential move, and several defense attorneys said they had received no guidance from the department about what might happen Thursday.
Adding to the confusion, Viera Rosa sent notice last week to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors that he would step down as chief at the end of the year. He reversed that decision on Tuesday after a closed-door meeting with supervisors, but gave no public explanation as to why he changed his mind.
A department spokeswoman said this week that the agency is “weighing its options” about closing Los Padrinos, but Viera Rosa’s second-in-command left little room for interpretation in a closed-door meeting last month.
In the recording obtained by The Times, Epps told a group of several dozen probation supervisors that she would not obey any order to vacate the facility.
“If our inspection is not successful we are going to come into compliance where we are,” she said, drawing cheers from some in the room.
Jana Sanford-Miller, a spokesperson for the state oversight board, declined to comment on Epps’ remarks, saying they were “unaware of L.A. County’s plan.”
Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes another juvenile hall in Sylmar, said she was “angered and disappointed by the continued failures” of the Probation Department, but the board stands behind Viera Rosa.
“It is my hope that Chief Viera Rosa will use this moment to demonstrate his ability to manage this crisis and implement the reforms that are desperately needed,” Horvath said.
The union that represents rank-and-file probation officers blamed the Board of Supervisors for the ongoing issues, claiming the staffing crisis stems from the supervisors’ unwillingness to fund hiring of more personnel.
“Until the Board of Supervisors prioritizes immediate emergency hiring initiatives and meaningful retention strategies, these crises will persist and jeopardize the safety of both youth and staff,” the union said in a statement.
Epps’ remarks in the leaked audio unnerved one probation official who was present and requested anonymity for fear of retribution within the department.
“I definitely have concerns, staff will soon feel they too are invincible and that they can run that place as they see fit,” the probation official said. “They just don’t respect our governing bodies.”
The county’s troubled halls have been a source of frustration for the state for years. The board closed Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar and Central Juvenile Hall in Boyle Heights in the last two years, leading Viera Rosa to reopen Los Padrinos.
But the new facility quickly became as chaotic as the two old ones. In the first month, there was a riot and an escape attempt, and dozens of staff members continued to refuse to report to work. A video surfaced of several officers standing idly by while several youths beat down another teen. Within a year and a half, another shutdown order came.
Vicky Waters, communications director for the Probation Department, said the agency disagrees with the board’s assessment that Los Padrinos needs to be closed.
“We have tried working with the [Board of State and Community Corrections] on viable and aggressive solutions, because this needs to be a collaboration to ensure public safety,” she said in a statement.
Many juvenile justice advocates said the department’s continued spiral into chaos represents a failure of a number of oversight bodies, including the California Department of Justice, which entered into a settlement with the Probation Department to mandate reform in 2021. Little has changed since then.
“This agreement has failed and has failed consistently for years,” said attorney Sean Garcia-Leys, a former member of the L.A. County Probation Oversight Committee. “Having eyes on the situation is not solving it. There’s no shortage of people going into Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall and seeing that it’s unacceptable.”
A spokesperson for Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta declined to say what, if any, action his office could take if Viera Rosa refuses to close Los Padrinos. The spokesperson noted that the state’s settlement with the department places a monitor over all the county’s halls, including Los Padrinos.
Erin Palacios, executive director of the Prisma Legal Center for Youth Justice, said if the department won’t comply with the state’s shutdown order, it should at least work to reduce the population at Los Padrinos, where many detainees are being held awaiting foster care placement or on noncriminal probation violations such as missing school or violating curfew.
“Los Padrinos is a complete shame of a facility for children,” Palacios said. “When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging.”
Waters, however, warned that roughly a third of the detainees housed at Los Padrinos are charged with murder, attempted murder, sexual assault or robbery, and could not be “easily released or transferred.”
State regulators appear to have little ability to force the county to follow the order. Counsel for the state board said at a November public meeting that officials were “discussing internally” whether they could sue L.A. County.
“I would fully expect on Dec. 13 that someone — maybe not this Board — will probably file suit,” board member Jeffrey Macomber said. “I fully expect that’s how this would probably play out.”
The board has scheduled an emergency meeting for Dec. 18 to discuss next steps.
Palacios warned that the spiraling conditions at Los Padrinos aren’t merely a danger to the kids inside the Downey facility. Eventually, she said, all of Los Angeles County will pay for it.
“The treatment people receive in there is directly correlated to the treatment we will receive from them when they get out. And they will get out,” she said. “They’re children.”
Last week’s shocking killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, Brian Thompson, reopened a national wound inflicted by the delay and denial of health coverage to countless Americans.
This was a violent crime that won’t solve anything. But the ensuing organic and spontaneous outpouring of populist anger underscored how many Americans have been cruelly and unjustly denied medical treatment.
After an election that showed widespread discontent with the status quo, this should be a wake-up call for Washington. Despite progress on healthcare coverage and rights, protecting American patients is unfinished business.
In the 1990s, California pioneered a patients’ rights movement that gave those covered by HMOs a right to second opinions, independent medical reviews of coverage denials and guaranteed coverage of certain commonly denied procedures. Many states adopted California’s model, and President Obama’s Affordable Care Act took important steps to insure the uninsured and prevent companies from denying coverage to people who want it.
But America’s patients never got equitable access to justice when claims are denied. People who buy their own insurance or get it through a government job or program such as Medicare have the right to sue for damages if they believe they have been harmed by an unreasonable denial. But most of us get health insurance through our jobs and have no such right to go to court, no matter how outrageous the denial or tragic the consequences. More than 100 million Americans have no legal recourse if a health insurance company messes up our claim.
In the 1987 case Pilot Life Insurance Co. vs. Dedeaux, the Supreme Court ruled that people with employer-provided coverage do not have a right to sue their insurer for damages but rather only for the value of the denied benefit. If the covered person dies, any suit is rendered moot.
Despite many attempts to change this, including through Obamacare, the ruling has stood. That’s why insurance companies often act as if they have a license to kill: They face scant legal consequences for any harm they cause by delaying or denying payment for needed care.
A 17-year-old Angeleno, Nataline Sarkisyan, became a poster child for addressing this injustice. Nataline, who had recurrent leukemia, had to wait too long for insurance approval of a liver transplant that doctors considered likely to save her life. Her mother, Hilda Sarkisyan, protested with nurses at the headquarters of their health insurance plan, Cigna. When the company finally approved the surgery under pressure, it was too late: Nataline died in 2007, hours after the approval was granted. And because of the Pilot Life decision, the family had little legal recourse.
The Sarkisyans have crusaded to have the Pilot Life ruling overturned and to spare others their daughter’s fate. Congress has made it easier to obtain coverage but has yet to give patients the leverage they need once they have insurance: the right to collect damages from companies that behave horribly.
This shouldn’t be hard. Congress — whose members do enjoy a right to sue over denials of their own health insurance claims — has many options for limiting the extent of insurers’ exposure to lawsuits, such as making them liable only when they show gross indifference to a patient’s suffering.
Insurance companies pay attention to whether patients can take them to court. At least one company, Aetna, even had a training tape showing how to process claims differently for those with and without a right to sue.
If insurance companies have no legal incentive to approve a claim, they will too often deny or delay it. It’s time for Congress to restore the possibility of justice for millions and answer the urgent calls for reform.
Jamie Court is the president of the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog.
For 15 years, it was a ritual that kept Andrés Cortes close to his beloved abuelita.
He would collect the rent from the other four tenants of her Cypress Park rental property, add his own and deliver the envelope in person to the family homestead a few blocks away.
She’d ask for news of the tenants by name and demure every time he told her they were willing to pay more.
“No,” she’d say. “I have enough.”
That unwritten contract expired in March when the widowed Rufina Cortes died at 97. Her six children faced the inevitable decision to put the five-unit property, in the family since the 1970s, up for sale.
The tenants needed a buyer who would be willing to sacrifice profit to keep the rents affordable. But to buy the property at current market rates without jacking up rents, even an altruist would have to come up with some unlikely financial wizardry.
And it wasn’t altruists showing interest. Cortes and his partner, Claire Bernson, found themselves increasingly dismayed with a string of investors and developers brought through their one-bedroom cottage on the two-lot complex.
Andres Cortes’ walks with Erika Flores who rents a place at his Cypress Park property.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
“They weren’t hiding anything,” Cortes said. “They wanted to get rid of us. While we were right in front of them, they will be talking about tearing down walls. It was dehumanizing.”
They knew how this situation normally played out in L.A.: “cash for keys” to remove the nine tenants, demolition, new construction and higher rents presaging a change of character for the prewar homes on Arvia Street, part of one of L.A.’s last neighborhoods still largely untouched by gentrification.
Other tenants had lived there longer than Cortes had. He polled them and found, not surprisingly, that they would all work with him to stay. But how?
A 39-year-old artist with no experience in finance or real estate, he had no idea.
Ultimately, it would be his art, and some luck, that provided the answer.
The last stop on a Clockshop walking tour of Cypress Park was the alley behind the Arvia Street property where Cortes has been working for 10 years creating a mosaic of broken chips of tile, mirrors and found objects.
Claire Bernson watches Richard the cat in front of Andres Cortes’ Cypress Park property in Los Angeles.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
The story of his family’s three-generation stewardship of the property — and its impending end — naturally became intertwined with the project as a autobiographical story of his bonding with the community.
As the tour was breaking up, one of the participants pointed Cortes to Betty Avila. She is a board member of LA Más, a Cypress Park-based nonprofit that seeks to build “collective power and ownership for neighborhood stability and economic resilience” throughout Northeast Los Angeles.
The chance meeting came at a perfect moment. After focusing for several years on helping Northeast Los Angeles homeowners build backyard units, LA Más was expanding into housing preservation.
“We went through a year of engagement with our community members asking, ‘What do you want to us do?’ ” said executive director Helen Leung. “They chimed in, ‘There is so much risk of displacement: A lot of residents getting kicked out; no affordable options. Can you find options to keep housing affordable for longtime residents?’ ”
Andres Cortes and Claire Bernson stand in the back alley of Cortes’ Cypress Park property.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Ariva would be the test case with challenges. The six children of Felipe and Rufina Cortes agreed to discount the $1.5 million appraised value. But the rents of $600 to $1,000 were far too low to support financing the final price of $1.2 million.
“No way we could get money for that,” Leung said. “It didn’t pencil out. What can we do?”
Four of the five tenants, among them a couple with a teenage daughter who has lived there her entire life, volunteered to raise their own rents, but that was a not a solution either. By law, the rent-stabilized units couldn’t rise high enough to service a mortgage.
Looking over the four buildings on the property — the single family home Cortes and Bernson live in, two duplexes and an ancient tool shed refashioned as an artist’s studio — LA Más concluded the shed would have to go to make room for an ADU that would bring in market-rate rent.
With two bedrooms in a tight 640 square feet, Leung figured it would command $2,700 a month. But with each the other five units bringing in much less, that was still thin for a conventional loan on a $1.6 million project with the ADU.
The sun sets over a unit on Andres Cortes’ Cypress Park property.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Much like developers who use tax credits to build affordable housing, Leung had to assemble financing from multiple sources. But in contrast to the complicated, competitive and time-consuming pipeline to tax credits, she called on personal relationships in a network of social impact investors.
The bulk came from the Self Help Ventures Fund, a national nonprofit that raises capital from mission-aligned organizations and individuals. It had funded LA Más’ earlier affordable ADU program.
Self Help contributed $1.22 million that will have to be repaid to its investors. Leung refers to it as debt-like equity because the rate is lower than a conventional loan and Self Help doesn’t require a fixed repayment schedule.
“Given the nature of the project, we recognize there needs to be some flexibility in the first two years while we stabilize and build the ADU,” said Tim Quinn, senior project manager at Self Help Ventures Fund. “We don’t need to see our investment returns on year one. We just need to see that over time the investment will bear fruit and be a good investment.”
A photo of Andres Cortes’ grandmother hangs on the wall inside his home on his Cypress Park property.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Self Help added a little over $90,000 of its own funds as equity to become a co-owner of the property.
LA Más, as the managing co-owner, sought grants for its equity share, and received $250,000 from Mayor Karen Bass’ LA4LA program.
“It’s such a phenomenal idea to be able to take off the market a five-unit complex and preserve it as affordable and have no one be displaced and even build community through the process of acquisition,” said LA4LA lead strategist Sarah Dusseault. “It’s been a phenomenal experience being part of it.”
Leung finally turned to the LISC, the Local Initiatives Support Corp., a national nonprofit that raises capital for local groups.
LA LISC obtained a $40,000 grant from the U.S. Treasury Department’s CDFI Equitable Recovery Fund.
With another $40,000 grant, the funding package was complete, and escrow closed in October.
The Arvia Street purchase is part of a movement of community-based groups trying to slow displacement of low-income tenants by purchasing historically affordable housing at risk of being sold to investors seeking maximum return. There is no single model. Some use government funds. Others, under the land trust model, help tenants purchase the buildings they live in. The only constant is that it’s complicated.
Leung hopes the multi-pronged financing package she put together can be used again and again to preserve affordable housing as other projects come to their attention.
Arvia Street is now owned by an LLC controlled by LA Más and Self Help with a required component of tenant engagement.
A mutual trust developed over deep community ties.
“They were checking out us, if our values align with theirs, and we were doing the same thing,” said Bernson, who has lived with Cortes in the home since 2020.
Cortes did not grow up in Cypress Park. Priced out of Los Angeles, his parents settled in Chino Hills but returned to the old neighborhood regularly on weekends to be with aunts, uncles and cousins.
Andres Cortes’ Cypress Park property.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Cortes would often walk from the homestead to Arvia to find his abuelito in the shed out back doing maintenance or puttering at his TV and radio repair business.
In 2009, the front house became vacant, and Cortes, in his senior year at Cal State LA, accepted his father’s offer to move in. His connection with the neighborhood grew with the mural, which now stretches hundreds of feet on the backyard walls of several neighbor’s homes and includes guest works by Bernson and other artists.
“That’s my language, my way of communicating with people,” he said. “It’s a way of meeting people in the neighborhood, working with kids.”
Cortes also had a sentimental attachment to the shed, where he and Bernson had set up their studio. For the deal to work, it would have to be razed to make room for the ADU.
“That’s a sacrifice in the mix,” Cortes said. “Yeah, whatever needs to happen. I’m willing to put that down.”
Cortes and Bernson have now assumed new roles as part of an evolving tenant governance community. They serve as the tenants’ liaison to LA Más for decisions affecting their homes, such as where the ADU will be placed and, in the future, maintenance and rent increases. They’re also attending monthly meetings of the Northeast Los Angeles Housing Alliance that advises LA Más on broader policy.
In January the organization is launching a committee that will include residents to advise it on future projects.
Cortes is uncertain what all that means for him.
“The difference is now that, for as much as I don’t know, I’m certain that the legacy of my grandparents and for this home to be for this community, that’s going to be held together.”
He still collects the rent, but now he walks it to the La Màs headquarters, five blocks away. It’s not the same as it used to be with his abuelita.
“My last conversation with her, she was getting coupons from Super King,” he said. “She was sharing how these coupons were better than other coupons.”
After years of culture war battles in school and public libraries, the campaign by conservative-leaning “parent rights” groups has succeeded in casting a nationwide chill over the market for children’s books they deem inappropriate, greatly diminishing sales and opportunities for authors to promote their work.
During the 2023-24 school year, there were more than 10,000 book bans in public schools — a 200% rise over the previous year. The books overwhelmingly included LGBTQ+ themes and characters of color, according to PEN America. Many of the same books are banned over and over across the country, through coordinated efforts by groups that share lists of titles among their members, including picture and board books for preschool children.
In what some in the book publishing industry call “shadow bans” or “soft censorship,” the effects are far-reaching:
Teachers and librarians, facing threats and fearful of losing their jobs or even going to jail in states that have passed laws criminalizing certain works, are hesitating to put controversial books that include LGBTQ+ characters or discussions of racism on their shelves.
Publishers — which depend on schools and library purchases — report that sales of such books are down significantly, even when the works receive critical acclaim.
And authors have seen school visits canceled, leaving them without a crucial income stream.
Engage with our community-funded journalism as we delve into child care, transitional kindergarten, health and other issues affecting children from birth through age 5.
“Teachers and librarians have to really weigh whether it’s worth the risk,” said Lee Wind, chief content officer for the Independent Book Publishers Assn.
Of the 23 picture books banned in at least two districts in the 2023-24 school year, 14 included LGBTQ+ characters and 17 had characters of color, with some books falling into multiple categories, PEN America said.
1
2
3
4
1.“Sparkle Boy,” by Leslea Newman, illustrated by Maria Mola and published by Lee & Low Books.2.“Milo Imagines the World,” by Newbery Medal-winning author Matt de la Pena and Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator Christian Robinson.3.“Heather Has Two Mommies,” by Leslea Newman and illustrated by Laura Cornell.4.“Separate Is Never Equal,” by Duncan Tonatiuh, winner of the Pura Belpre Award.(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
The No. 1 most banned picture book, “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, tells the true story of two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo who raise a chick together. “The Family Book” by Todd Parr — tied for second place — has one page illustrating the line, “Some families have two moms or two dads.”
“In the Night Kitchen,” by award-winning children’s author Maurice Sendak, who died in 2012, was also banned multiple times last year and deemed “pornographic” because the main character, Mickey, is depicted without clothes as he helps a trio of bakers find milk for the morning cake. “Draw Me a Star,” by beloved author-illustrator Eric Carle, who died in 2021, was banned for including an illustration of a naked Adam and Eve.
A childen’s division of Penguin Random House called Kokila, which is dedicated to publishing stories that have traditionally been marginalized, has seen one-quarter of its books banned. They include “Hair Love” by Matthew A. Cherry, a picture book about a Black father who teaches his child to love her hair.
”I think there is an understanding, even from people who are banning books, that these are the books that shape you and can change you,” said Namrata Tripathi, president and founder of Kokila. “It reinforces my belief that a lot of people understand how meaningful this form is.”
In many ways, those who challenge books agree with Tripathi about the power of a children’s book. They say the rising number of bans and dwindling book sales show just how deeply their campaigns resonate with parents.
“I absolutely think it’s a success that those folks aren’t seeing as high of sales as they might have been before the awareness happened,” said Madison Miner, chair of Moms for Liberty’s Orange County chapter. “You don’t have to be a Democrat or Republican to believe that parents have the right to protect their own kids. I think that’s a pretty universal stance.”
‘Don’t give us anything controversial.’
Banned children’s books are photographed on Dec. 6, 2024.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Librarians and teachers are trained to select materials for certain age groups and curriculum. But in recent years, the process has become fraught with fear and actual risk.
In at least eight states, including Indiana, Missouri and Montana, librarians and school employees now face criminal prosecution with punishments that can include jail time and thousands of dollars in fines, according to the library advocacy group EveryLibrary.
The group has identified 128 additional state bills throughout the country that would restrict access to certain materials, limit funding or otherwise harm libraries.
A new, Republican administration could mean legislation on a federal level as well. The introduction to Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s proposed plans for the incoming Trump administration — equates “the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children” with pornography. “The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.”
Generally, state laws don’t specify which material might be “harmful,” leaving many educators to err on the side of caution.
“Teachers fear for their jobs,” said Ann David, chair of the National Council of Teachers of English’s Committee Against Censorship. They “make a very reasoned decision to pull back on books they might otherwise teach in their classrooms.”
The California campaign
When Miner’s oldest son was in kindergarten, “he came bouncing home one day saying, ‘Mommies can marry mommies, and daddies can marry daddies!’ ” She knew he hadn’t learned this at home, but she couldn’t imagine that a book about sexual orientation could possibly be part of a kindergarten curriculum. But she soon learned that there were picture books in school libraries about gay pride parades and same-sex parents.
“The Family Book,” by Todd Parr, from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“It was frustrating as a parent to feel like that’s a conversation that was stripped from me,” said Miner, who has four children. “These are books that are just so inappropriate for a school setting. It’s not a school’s responsibility to educate a kid on sexuality and gender preference.”
Miner served on the Orange Unified School District board but was recalled in March after spearheading policies opposed by LGBTQ+ advocates, including a policy that required schools to notify parents if their child identified as transgender. The board also directed the district to suspend their digital library app after some parents complained that it contained books that were inappropriate for young children.
Miner restarted the Orange County chapter of Moms for Liberty in July to teach parents how to work with their local school boards to have content removed. She said it’s “heart-wrenching” to hear from parents who are unhappy with a school librarian’s selection of books “but feel like they are walking on eggshells because they didn’t want to cause rifts.”
Brenda Lebsack, a special education PE teacher who recently was elected to the Santa Ana Unified School District board, campaigned against allowing books in schools that sexualize children and suggest gender is fluid. Books in kindergarten, she said, teach kids that “their gender and pronouns can change like the weather based on their feelings.”
“When I read this as a 59-year-old adult, I’m questioning. I’m confused. So what does it do to a 4-, 5-, 6-year-old child?“ said Lebsack. “What we’re doing to kids is creating a mental health crisis.”
A 2022 Washington Post-KFF poll found that 77% of Americans think it’s inappropriate for teachers to discuss trans identity in public schools with students in kindergarten through third grade.
But a Knight Foundation survey conducted this year found that despite those beliefs, two-thirds of Americans oppose efforts to restrict books in public school. Book challenges and bans often stem from the complaints of a few people who present their school district with a list of books that they want removed.
“I will never deny a Moms for Liberty member the right to express their view about the literature that we publish,” said Dan Novack, attorney at Penguin Random House. They can always go to their child’s teacher or librarian and ask for an accommodation for a book they’re uncomfortable with, he said. However, “they’re playing free-roaming monitor and blocking everyone else’s kids from accessing it.”
Nine states have passed laws to shield schools and libraries against censorship, according to EveryLibrary — including one in New Jersey passed this week. California passed a law allowing the state to fine schools that ban books portraying LGBTQ+ people and other historically marginalized groups, and another prohibiting libraries from banning such books.
Still, “librarians and library staff are struggling. There’s a lot of anxiety and fear,” said California Library Assn. President Genesis Hansen. The theme of the group’s most recent conference was “self-care and shelf care” to address their mounting concerns.
At the Los Feliz branch of Los Angeles Public Library, children’s librarian Diane Garcia said she has been intimidated several times by a patron who was furious about the LGBTQ+ picture books on display. And since 2022, the librarians have been finding controversial books shoved under bookshelves, hidden in the wrong sections, or even damaged.
Even in a library system such as L.A.‘s that’s supportive of diverse materials, Garcia said she sometimes feels afraid. “It’s a safety issue because its a public space, and we don’t know who’s going to come in and what they’re going to have,” she said. “It does make you look at the exits more and have a plan if something like that happens.”
Booksellers have also noticed the shift.
Linda Sherman-Nurick, owner of Cellar Door Bookstore in Riverside, said teachers and librarians have a new request: “Don’t give us anything controversial.” And she’s heard from several teachers that challenged books have been taken off the shelves of their school library.
Maureen Palacios reads to children Nov. 27, 2024, at her Montrose bookstore Once Upon a Time, which opened in 1966.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Once Upon a Time Bookstore in Montrose opened in 1966, making it among the oldest children’s bookstores in the country. In recent years, owner Maureen Palacios said, some schools have hesitated to purchase certain books — especially those with LGBTQ+ themes. And when Palacios writes them to schedule an author visit, some schools are now requesting that the authors leave behind any books they’ve written about LGBTQ+ characters.
Or they simply decline the visit, telling her, “This is just not going to work at this time.”
Children’s book writer Kyle Lukoff has written several popular books about transgender children, including “When Aidan Became A Brother,” one of the most commonly banned picture books during the 2023-24 school year, according to PEN America. He’s also the winner of several of the most important children’s book awards, including a Newbery Honor.
At this point in a career, Lukoff said an author usually has no problem booking school and library visits to present their books to excited young readers. He has struggled recently to fill his calendar — and several schools have canceled already-booked visits.
“School visits make up the bulk of my income,” said Lukoff, who is a transgender man and former school librarian. “I’m very concerned that a sharp decrease in school visits will impact my ability to survive as a full-time author.”
A pendulum swing for diverse books
Over the last five years, the number of racially diverse children’s books received annually by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has soared. The center is sent thousands of new books each year from publishers. Books by Black and Indigenous authors and illustrators more than doubled, and books by Asian and Latino writers and illustrators increased by more than 50%. And books about LGBTQ+ individuals increased by 75%.
Independent publisher Levine Querido launched in the summer of 2020, in the midst of protests over the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Headed by veteran publisher Arthur Levine, Levine Querido focused on publishing underrepresented voices and books in translation. Sales of diverse titles were strong, and three have won Newbery honors.
One year after their launch, the backlash to diversity initiatives began. Sales plunged.
Palacios points out several books that some people would like to see banned. She owns Once Upon a Time, one of the country’s oldest children’s bookstore, in Montrose.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
“Whenever the pendulum swings in one direction, you can bet it’s going to swing back,” said Levine Querido marketing director Antonio Cerna. For example, Jyoti Rajan Gopal’s “Desert Queen,” a picture book about a young drag performer in India, won the Stonewall Book Award for LGBTQ+ books. But sales never took off. “Something Great,” by Jeanette Bradley, a book about a nonbinary child who invents a toy, also struggled.
By 2023, Levine Querido’s total sales were down 50%. The company was saved by an auction and outside investors.
Levine, who has worked in book publishing for four decades, said past book bans used to have “such a negligible effect on the success of a book that we used to welcome them” for the free publicity. But recent bans, Levine said, are a much more coordinated political campaign that often spreads across school systems and states.
“Does that mean I won’t make that book? No, I will still make that book as long as I can. But if I’m put out of business — as I very nearly have been — then I won’t make those books anymore. And that will be the ultimate effect of book banning.”
Larger publishers such as Penguin Random House also report that book sales of diverse books — especially newer titles — have decreased due to longer vetting and approval processes that can take up to six months, said Dominique Cimina, a member of Penguin Random House’s Intellectual Freedom Task Force.
In some parts of the country, schools have simply stopped buying books altogether, said Benjamin Conn, president of the Educational Book and Media Assn., which represents the distributors and publishers that sell about 90% of all books to schools and libraries.
Some districts have purchased boxes of books and then left them sitting in a warehouse, unopened, because they’re so nervous. In Texas, six teachers at one elementary school decided to keep their classroom libraries boxed up this year to avoid putting out any controversial books, said David of the National Council of Teachers of English.
Protecting challenged books
Eighteen states — including California — already have or are considering legislation to protect schools and libraries against censorship, according to EveryLibrary. And several organizations are working to fight back against book bans and the larger effects on the publishing industry.
We Are Stronger Than Censorship, for example, purchases two copies for every book that is challenged, and donates to the communities that need them. We Need Diverse Books seeks to diversify the publishing industry, including mentoring creators and providing books to classrooms.
Countering the effects of the chill will probably require a more widespread movement of support for the books being challenged. “People have to be as vocal and organized as the conservative right,” said Levine, who advises supporters to attend the same school board meetings and say, “I demand my child have access to books that reflect our family and other viewpoints.”
But parents who campaign to challenge certain books are confident that the country is shifting in their direction.
“I truly have hope that with this new presidency, something will happen that will protect our future generations in schools,” said Miner of Moms for Liberty. “We need the help.”
This article is part of The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.
UCLA Police Chief John Thomas, who was blasted for serious security lapses and failing to protect students during a melee at a pro-Palestinian encampment last spring, has left his job at the university, the campus police department said Wednesday night.
In a post on the social media platform X, the UCLA Police Department said that Thomas’ last day with UCLA was Tuesday. UCLA Police Capt. Scott Scheffler will serve as interim police chief until a permanent chief is selected, the post said.
The post did not elaborate on whether Thomas voluntarily resigned or was fired. Rick Braziel, associate vice chancellor who heads the newly created Office of Campus Safety, informed Thomas after the melee that he would be reassigned while internal and external investigations examined campus security shortfalls. During the violence in early May, UCLA students and others involved in the protest encampment had to fend for themselves against attackers for three hours before law enforcement moved in to quell the disturbance.
Braziel declined to respond to a question Wednesday about whether Thomas was terminated and said he had no statement.
Thomas could not be reached for comment. He told The Times in May that he did “everything I could” to provide security and keep students safe during a week of strife that left UCLA reeling.
He said he advised leadership from the beginning not to allow an encampment because it violated campus rules against overnight camping and he feared it could lead to problems as he assessed other protests sweeping the country.
University leadership, he said, decided to allow the tents “as an expression of students’ 1st Amendment rights” and directed that police not be included in any security plan. He also told The Times he developed a plan that relied on private security and made sure to alert the Los Angeles Police Department of the need to respond immediately should problems arise. Thomas said he provided daily briefings to campus leadership on the latest situation, the number of resources and the response protocol, and assigned roles for those deployed.
But a University of California independent review released last month found that UCLA failed to protect students because a “highly chaotic” decision-making process, lack of communication among campus leaders and police, and other shortfalls led to institutional paralysis.
The review, conducted by a national law enforcement consulting agency, found that UCLA had no detailed plan for handling major protests, even as problems were “reasonably foreseeable” as encampments at other campuses were drawing at times violent conflict. Campus police had no effective plan to work with external law enforcement and failed to take command on the night of the melee — leading the LAPD and the California Highway Patrol to devise an ad hoc response.
The review recommended how to fix future responses to campus unrest or emergencies. Braziel has begun to address those shortcomings by overhauling UCLA’s security and safety operations.
The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to hike the minimum wage for more than 23,000 tourism workers, handing a huge victory to labor unions whose members have struggled to keep up with the rising cost of food, rent and other expenses.
On a 12-3 vote, council members instructed City Atty. Hydee Feldstein-Soto to draft the legal language needed to push those wages to a minimum of $30 per hour by July 2028, just as the city hosts the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.
During a meeting that lasted more than five hours, council members touted the economic benefits of a higher tourism wage, saying it would prompt workers to spend more money across the region — and, as a result, spur the creation of thousands of new jobs.
“When we support low-wage workers, they can contribute to our economy and bolster the city,” said Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who took office on Monday and represents part of the Eastside.
Councilmember John Lee, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley, voted against the proposal, warning his colleagues they were about to “take an ax to the local economy.” Councilmembers Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez also voted no, saying they fear hotels and other businesses will scale back operations, cutting employees or turning to automation.
“My hope is that we’re not creating the best paid unemployed workforce in the country,” Rodriguez said.
The campaign for the so-called Olympic wage had been spearheaded by Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel and restaurant workers, and United Service Workers West, a local of the Service Employees International Union whose members work at Los Angeles International Airport. Both organizations staged rallies, led marches and, this week, organized a three-day fast by tourism workers stationed outside City Hall.
Jovan Houston, an LAX customer service agent who took part in the fast, said she was “overjoyed” with the vote. Houston, 42, has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and believes the wage package would help ease costs of treatment.
“I’m glad they came to their senses, finally,” she said.
Under the proposal, the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers would go up in increments of $2.50 per year, starting at $22.50 in July and moving to $25 in July 2026, $27.50 in July 2027 and $30 in July 2028.
At hotels, housekeepers, desk clerks and other employees would see a 48% hike over 3½ years, compared with the $20.32 per hour currently set by the city’s hotel minimum wage law. They would also receive a new $8.35 per hour payment to cover healthcare.
Those increases would apply to workers in hotels with at least 60 rooms.
Skycaps, cabin cleaners and many other workers at Los Angeles International Airport would see an increase to their minimum wage of nearly 56% by July 2028, compared with the hourly rate currently required by the city’s living wage ordinance. The current minimum wage at LAX is $19.28 per hour.
Those workers also would see their healthcare payment jump to $8.35 per hour, up from from $5.95.
Throughout the meeting, hotel and airport workers described their struggle to pay for child care, housing and meals. Some fought back tears as they pleaded with council members to approve the higher wages.
Lorena Mendez, who is employed by LSG Sky Chefs, said housing costs have climbed so rapidly that she and her three daughters moved from Inglewood to Bakersfield. Mendez, 55, said she now spends several nights each week sleeping on her sister’s couch in Lennox or at her mom’s home in Hawthorne to avoid the more punishing commute.
“We’re not living. We are surviving, and that’s not fair,” she said.
Business leaders said the wage increases — coupled with the new or increased healthcare payments — would wreak havoc on the city’s hotels and LAX concessionaires. Some hotel owners said they are rethinking their participation in room block agreements needed for the Olympic Games, while others said they are looking at closing their dining operations.
Lightstone Group, which owns the 727-room Moxy + AC Hotels near the city’s Convention Center, said the wage proposal could result in the closure of Level 8, a collection of restaurants on the hotel’s eighth floor.
Level 8 is already struggling to cover the $20.32 per hour required as part of the city’s hotel minimum wage law, said Mitchell Hochberg, president of Lightstone, in an Oct. 31 letter to Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
The city’s overall minimum wage is $17.28 per hour.
“We’re already fighting this battle with a minimum wage that is $3 above our non-hotel peers and are experiencing the repercussions,” Hochberg wrote. “It’s simply impossible for us to remain competitive while absorbing the higher operating costs.”
Mark Davis, president and chief executive of Sun Hill Properties, said the wage proposal would “likely kill” his company’s plans for expanding the Hilton Universal City Hotel. Such a move, he said, would deprive the city of about 1,000 planned construction jobs and some 200 “permanent, good paying jobs.”
David Roland-Holst, a Berkeley-based economist hired by the city to assess the proposal, largely dismissed the dire warnings.
Appearing before the council, he said he expects that hotels will accommodate their increased labor costs by raising prices by an average of 6%. Although some job losses will occur, the wage hikes will ultimately serve as a “potent tool for economic growth,” spurring the creation of 6,000 full-time jobs in L.A. by 2028, he said.
“We don’t see any empirical evidence of massive layoffs in response to minimum wages anywhere in California,” Roland-Holst said.
Even if the council had rejected the proposal, the minimum wage for LAX and hotel workers would have continued to go up on an annual basis. Those increases would have been tied to the consumer price index, according to city policy analysts.
The proposal is expected to increase the wages of more than 40% of airport workers and more than 60% of hotel workers in L.A., according to an analysis prepared for the city.
Economics professor Robert Baumann at College of the Holy Cross, who studies the effects of the Olympics on cities, said L.A.’s hotel and airport workers are in a prime position to demand higher wages. With the city hosting an event as prominent as the Olympics, they have “a unique amount of leverage right now,” he said.
“The time is ripe to go for a wage increase,” he said.
L.A. could still see labor tensions in the run-up to the 2028 Olympics, even with a higher tourism minimum wage in place. That’s because dozens of hotel employee contracts are scheduled to expire in January 2028, about half a year before the Games.
As part of their decision Wednesday, council members requested a yearly assessment of the higher wages on jobs, hotel development and other aspects of the tourism industry. They also voted to seek a report next year on alternative policy strategies for businesses that lease space at hotels, including restaurants, shops and spas.
Council members rejected a move to cut the number of hotels covered by the wage hike. And they turned back an effort to limit the types of hotel workers affected by the wage increases.
Councilmember Imelda Padilla, who represents part of the San Fernando Valley, voted in favor of the proposal. Nevertheless, she said she was disappointed that her colleagues weren’t interested in addressing some of the concerns about the higher wages.
“I voted yes because to me this is about the workers, and it was always about the workers for me,” she said. “But I always wanted to be able to proudly say we compromised, and that we paid attention to all stakeholders. Because we really didn’t.”
A man in San Pedro shouted a racial slur and chucked a glass bottle at a Black bus driver on her break. A trans woman getting off the Metro in Koreatown was told she belonged in hell. A father on his way to a Tarzana synagogue was interrupted by a man threatening to “kill all of you Jews.”
The grim encounters were among the record-breaking number of hate crimes that took place across L.A. County last year, an increase fueled by an onslaught of harassment directed at Jewish, Black and LGBTQ+ people, according to a county report released Wednesday.
The report from the county’s Commission on Human Relations found 1,350 reported hate crimes — up 45% from the year before. It’s the highest level since the commission began counting in 1980.
“I will tell you I was shocked to learn that,” said Robin Toma, the commission’s executive director, at a Wednesday news conference announcing the results.
Toma called the figure “historic,” potentially the result of both better outreach by the commission and rising levels of vitriol directed at the county’s minorities.
Hate crimes across the county have been trending up since 2014, but last year’s tally of more than 1,300 incidents marked a significant jump. In 2022, the commission recorded 930 incidents.
The previous high had been 1,031 hate crimes in 2001, the year of the Sept. 11 attacks.
“It is unacceptable,” said Sheriff Robert Luna. “I promise you as the sheriff of this county that we are going to respond.”
The county’s newly-elected District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who campaigned on restoring public safety, rebuked his predecessor for failing to prosecute hate crimes and pledged to “send an increasingly clear message to the hate criminals.”
“I don’t see prosecution here,” said Hochman. “I don’t see consequences.”
Jewish and transgender people saw some of the most significant increases. The report counted 99 hate crimes against transgender people — a 125% jump. Nearly all were violent. These incidents included a trans woman attacked by two men and called a slur while carrying her groceries in South Los Angeles and another trans woman physically assaulted in Koreatown.
“This is obviously unacceptable,” said Bamby Salcedo, a transgender activist whose organization, TransLatin@ Coalition, received multiple bomb threats earlier this year.
Hates crimes against Jewish people nearly doubled to 242 incidents. Many were cases of vandalism, such as graffitied swastikas. The county has seen a number of Jewish-owned businesses vandalized since the eruption of the Israel-Hamas war 14 months ago.
Anti-Muslim crimes increased from 7 to 19, according to the report. The authors also noted 5% of all hate crimes involved “language regarding conflict in the Middle East.”
Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and a member of the California Commission on the State of Hate, said the findings match up with what he saw in big cities across America last year, all of which saw jumps in hate crimes against Jewish people, Muslims, Latinos, and LGBTQ people.
For the first time, he said, Jewish people had become “the most targeted group” in the 10 largest U.S. cities.
He also noted the new data provided by the commission could force the state to change its findings released this summer that overall hate crime in California had decreased by 7.1% in 2023 from 2022 levels.
The state had used incomplete data from the LAPD , Levin said, and the new county report includes nearly 700 more hate crimes than what was taken into account by the attorney general’s report. With the new incidents factored in, Levin said, overall hate crime in California didn’t drop, but instead increased by about 25 percent.
“I’ve been waiting months for this to happen,” said Levin. “The headlines were all 7.1% decrease — I said ‘No, no, no.’”
The Attorney General’s office did immediately respond to a request for comment.
There were small silver linings buried in the findings. Speakers noted the increase in hate crimes was likely fueled by improved reporting thanks to a county campaign to encourage people to report. And a smaller portion of the hate crimes was violent — 65% compared with 72% in 2022.
All five county supervisors denounced the startling rise. Supervisor Hila Solis, who helped create the reporting campaign, called the data “a sobering wake up.”
“I have to say I’m not proud of the Metro center I represent, where many of these crimes have centered,” Solis said at the news conference, adding she was aware of the fast-approaching Olympics when the region will be flooded with visitors from across the globe.
The county’s Metro region, stretching from West Hollywood to Boyle Heights, had the most reported hate crimes, followed by the San Fernando Valley, according to the report. Many of the crimes took place in schools — about one tenth of the total — and on public transit.
Nearly half of the total hate crimes were racial crimes, with Black people disproportionately the target of attack.
Despite making up about 9% of the county population, Black people were the targets of half of racial hate crimes. There were 320 crimes against Black people — an all time high and an 8% increase from 2022.
Supervisor Holly Mitchell, the only Black woman on the Board of Supervisors, said she was discouraged but unsurprised by the report; she said she experiences a “microaggression every single day.”
“I am deeply concerned that the next report will be even worse,” said Mitchell. “We know the polarization of all things related to ‘wokeness’ or ‘DEI’ is front and center in our natural discussion,” she said, referring to programs encouraging diversity, equity and inclusion.
Hate crimes against Latino people increased by 19% to 144 — another all-time high. After a dip in 2022, Anti-Asian crimes rose again to 80 victims — the second highest number ever recorded.
Nearly a mile above Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, a hacked drone soared through restricted airspace for roughly an hour.
The lightweight drone photographed sensitive areas of the military facility on Nov. 30, including a complex used by SpaceX, according to federal investigators.
The drone then descended back to the ground, where the pilot and another man waited at a nearby park.
Four security officers from the military base arrived on the scene and asked the men if they had seen a drone flying through the area, unaware that one of them had tucked the drone under his jacket.
Authorities identified that man as 39-year-old Yinpiao Zhou, a Chinese citizen and a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. He was charged with failing to register the drone and flying it over restricted airspace to take photographs of the military base, the U.S. attorney’s office announced Wednesday.
On Nov. 30, personnel at the military base detected the drone and determined that it had taken off from nearby Ocean Park to the north. The drone traveled south near Surf Beach and then directly toward Space Launch Complex Three and Four, according to court records.
The drone flight came several hours after the base had hosted the launch of a SpaceX rocket carrying a spy satellite for the federal government.
When security personnel arrived at the park that day, Zhou told them he saw a drone, but did not see the pilot, according to court records. He said this while his hands were in his pockets; when he took them out of his jacket at the security personnel’s request, he exposed the drone, federal investigators said.
When asked why he lied, Zhou said he was afraid that the security personnel were with the military, according to court records.
The security personnel then asked to see the footage captured on his drone. When they saw that it included portions of the military base, they asked him to delete it, which he did, according to court records.
Court records suggest that Zhou was aware that flying into the base’s air space was forbidden. A month earlier, Zhou allegedly searched “Vandenberg Space Force Base Drone Rules” on his phone, then told another person in a message that he could hack his drone to reach higher than it could otherwise fly, according to an affidavit filed on Sunday in the Central District of California.
The affadavit alleges that Zhou admitted to federal agents that he purchased software online that allowed his drone to reach higher elevations and enter no-fly-zones. He also did not register his drone with the Federal Aviation Administration and did not have a license to operate the device, according to federal prosecutors. He also admitted that he got in trouble once for flying his drone in a no-fly zone in Shanghai.
Zhou and the man he was with, who was not named in court papers, had stayed overnight at a campground in the Big Sur area of Monterey County on Nov. 28. The two arrived at Ocean Park the following day and learned about the SpaceX launch at the military base on Nov. 30. Zhou admitted he recorded the launch with a handheld camera.
Zhou, who lives in Brentwood in Contra Costa County, entered the U.S. on an immigrant visa on Feb. 12 and planned to return to China around Dec. 9, along with the other man who was with him at the park, the Justice Department said. That person arrived in the U.S. on Nov. 26 on a visitor visa, according to federal investigators.
In October, Zhou sent images he took with his drone of a city and mountains to someone through the WeChat messaging app, federal prosecutors alleged. He emphasized the elevation of the images, with one image reportedly taken at 1,800 feet and another at 8,000 feet.
“Oh wow that damn thing flys high,” the other person wrote back to Zhou.
“I hacked my drone. It’s not supposed to go that high lol,” Zhou wrote back, according to federal prosecutors.
Zhou later admitted to federal agents that photographing the SpaceX facility at the military base was “probably not a good idea,” court records show.
Authorities say that Zhou flew his drone outside of visual line of sight, which would require him to register the drone with the FAA. Data gathered from the drone show that it flew approximately 1.8 miles from Ocean Park and then nearly a mile up at its maximum height.
Zhou was arrested Monday at San Francisco International Airport before he was able to board a flight to China, and he appeared in a San Francisco courtroom on Tuesday. He did not enter a plea and is expected to be arraigned in Los Angeles in the coming weeks, according to the U.S. attorney’s office
The tensile strength necessary to pull the trigger of a nine-millimeter Kel-Tec firearm is roughly 5½ to 6½ pounds. That trivia became important this week to Fresno police as they investigated how a toddler could have shot his own mother.
Authorities arrested an 18-year-old gun owner and were scrutinizing how a 2½-year-old child found the weapon and fired it once, striking and killing his mother Friday evening.
Fresno police booked Andrew Sanchez, boyfriend of the victim, Jessinya Mina, on charges of felony child endangerment and felony criminal storage of a firearm.
He was freed on bail, according to Lt. Paul Cervantes, Fresno Police Street Violence Bureau commander, while the police continue to investigate the circumstances of the shooting.
“As you can imagine,” Cervantes said at a news conference this week, “it’s difficult because we’re having to wrestle with the idea that it’s even conceivable that a 2½-year-old child would have sufficient strength to manipulate a firearm.”
Attempts to reach Sanchez were not successful.
Mina was the mother of the young boy who authorities believe fired the shot and an 8-month-old girl. Both are now staying with her parents.
The family’s plan last Friday evening was to go out, Cervantes said.
The four were relaxing in the bedroom of their apartment complex a few blocks away from Fresno State around 5:30 p.m. when the toddler took hold of the weapon loaded with a single round, according to Cervantes.
Mina, who was lying in bed, was struck in the upper body, according to authorities.
How exactly the child reached the gun is still under investigation. Cervantes noted that the weapon was improperly stored in the family bedroom.
Police responded around 5:38 p.m. Officers arrived just as Sanchez was attempting to drive his dying girlfriend to a nearby trauma center. They stopped him outside the Butterfly Grove Apartments.
They and paramedics rendered emergency aid to the victim, according to authorities, and attempted to transport her to the hospital. She died en route, Cervantes said.
Sanchez was interviewed by detectives and eventually arrested.
Cervantes said Sanchez had no criminal record, nor was he part of a gang. How he acquired the weapon is still under investigation.
The gun did not have any external safety features that might have prevented the shooting, Cervantes noted.
At the news conference, Cervantes advised children to alert adults of any unattended weapons.
“Unfortunately, in this case,” he said, “we’re talking about a 2½-year-old child who probably didn’t have enough notion to understand what was happening.”
