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Tracking your health with a device? Here’s where the data could go

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November 23, 2024

Tracking your health with a device? Here’s where the data could go

Every day millions of people share more intimate information with their accessories than they do with their spouse.

Wearable technology — smartwatches, smart rings, fitness trackers and the like — monitors body-centric data such as your heart rate, steps taken and calories burned, and may record where you go along the way. Like Santa Claus, it knows when you are sleeping (and how well), it knows when you’re awake, it knows when you’ve been idle or exercising, and it keeps track of all of it.

People are also sharing sensitive health information on health and wellness apps, including online mental health and counseling programs. Some women use period tracker apps to map out their monthly cycle.

These devices and services have excited consumers hoping for better insight into their health and lifestyle choices. But the lack of oversight into how body-centric data are used and shared with third parties has prompted concerns from privacy experts, who warn that the data could be sold or lost through data breaches, then used to raise insurance premiums, discriminate surreptitiously against applicants for jobs or housing, and even perform surveillance.

The use of wearable technology and medical apps surged in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, but research released by Mozilla on Wednesday indicates that current laws offer little protection for consumers who are often unaware just how much of their health data are being collected and shared by companies.

“I’ve been studying the intersections of emerging technologies, data-driven technologies, AI and human rights and social justice for the past 15 years, and since the pandemic I’ve noticed the industry has become hyper-focused on our bodies,” said Mozilla Foundation technology fellow Júlia Keserű, who conducted the research. “That permeates into all kinds of areas of our lives and all kinds of domains within the tech industry.”

The report “From Skin to Screen: Bodily Integrity in the Digital Age” recommends that existing data protection laws be clarified to encompass all forms of bodily data. It also calls for expanding national health privacy laws to cover health-related information collected from health apps and fitness trackers and making it easier for users to opt out of body-centric data collections.

Researchers have been raising alarms about health data privacy for years. Data collected by companies are often sold to data brokers or groups that buy, sell and trade data from the internet to create detailed consumer profiles.

Body-centric data can include information such as the fingerprints used to unlock phones, face scans from facial recognition technology, and data from fitness and fertility trackers, mental health apps and digital medical records.

One of the key reasons health information has value to companies — even when the person’s name is not associated with it — is that advertisers can use the data to send targeted ads to groups of people based on certain details they share. The information contained in these consumer profiles is becoming so detailed, however, that when paired with other data sets that include location information, it could be possible to target specific individuals, Keserű said.

Location data can “expose sophisticated insights about people’s health status, through their visits to places like hospitals or abortions clinics,” Mozilla’s report said, adding that “companies like Google have been reported to keep such data even after promising to delete it.”

A 2023 report by Duke University revealed that data brokers were selling sensitive data on individuals’ mental health conditions on the open market. While many brokers deleted personal identifiers, some provided names and addresses of individuals seeking mental health assistance, according to the report.

In two public surveys conducted as part of the research, Keserű said, participants were outraged and felt exploited in scenarios where their health data were sold for a profit without their knowledge.

“We need a new approach to our digital interactions that recognizes the fundamental rights of individuals to safeguard their bodily data, an issue that speaks directly to human autonomy and dignity,” Keserű said. “As technology continues to advance, it is critical that our laws and practices evolve to meet the unique challenges of this era.”

Consumers often take part in these technologies without fully understanding the implications.

Last month, Elon Musk suggested on X that users submit X-rays, PET scans, MRIs and other medical images to Grok, the platform’s artificial intelligence chatbot, to seek diagnoses. The issue alarmed privacy experts, but many X users heeded Musk’s call and submitted health information to the chatbot.

While X’s privacy policy says that the company will not sell user data to third parties, it does share some information with certain business partners.

Gaps in existing laws have allowed the widespread sharing of biometric and other body-related data.

Health information provided to hospitals, doctor’s offices and medical insurance companies is protected from disclosure under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, which established federal standards protecting such information from release without the patient’s consent. But health data collected by many wearable devices and health and wellness apps don’t fall under HIPAA’s umbrella, said Suzanne Bernstein, counsel at Electronic Privacy Information Center.

“In the U.S. because we don’t have a comprehensive federal privacy law … it falls to the state level,” she said. But not every state has weighed in on the issue.

Washington, Nevada and Connecticut all recently passed laws to provide safeguards for consumer health data. Washington, D.C., in July introduced legislation that aimed to require tech companies to adhere to strengthened privacy provisions regarding the collection, sharing, use or sale of consumer health data.

In California, the California Privacy Rights Act regulates how businesses can use certain types of sensitive information, including biometric information, and requires them to offer consumers the ability to opt out of disclosure of sensitive personal information.

“This information being sold or shared with data brokers and other entities hypercharge the online profiling that we’re so used to at this point, and the more sensitive the data, the more sophisticated the profiling can be,” Bernstein said. “A lot of the sharing or selling with third parties is outside the scope of what a consumer would reasonably expect.”

Health information has become a prime target for hackers seeking to extort healthcare agencies and individuals after accessing sensitive patient data.

Health-related cybersecurity breaches and ransom attacks increased more than 4,000% between 2009 and 2023, targeting the booming market of body-centric data, which is expected to exceed $500 billion by 2030, according to the report.

“Nonconsensual data sharing is a big issue,” Keserű said. “Even if it’s biometric data or health data, a lot of the companies are just sharing that data without you knowing, and that is causing a lot of anxiety and questions.”

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County audit finds lax accounting at L.A. homeless authority

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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County audit finds lax accounting at L.A. homeless authority

An audit of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority has found that lax accounting procedures resulted in the failure to reclaim millions of dollars in cash advances to contractors and to pay other contractors on time, even when funds were available.

LAHSA, a city-county joint powers agency, failed to establish formal agreements on how and when advances should be repaid, did not always maintain records for capital advances and could not provide an accurate list of all contracts and their execution dates, county Auditor-Controller Oscar Valdez wrote in the 57-page audit released Tuesday night.

The audit found that LAHSA had recovered only $2.5 million of $50.8 million in Measure H funds advanced in the 2017-18 fiscal year and, as of July, had $8 million still outstanding from advances from county, city and state programs made from 2016 through 2023.

In a sample of contracts, the auditors found that LAHSA understated the amounts awarded to two recipients by $505,591 and lacked supporting documentation for approximately $5 million advanced to five recipients.

Reacting to the audit, Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath issued a statement Wednesday calling for a new county department to consolidate homelessness contracting within the county.

“The audit findings underscore the urgent need for greater accountability in our homeless services system,” the statement said. “LAHSA plays an important role, but the current structure is not meeting the scale of this crisis.”

A spokeswoman said Horvath will introduce a motion to create the new department for consideration at the supervisors’ November 26 meeting.

LAHSA officials pushed back on several of the findings. In a preemptive response, LAHSA Chief Executive Va Lecia Adams Kellum told reporters last week that most of the findings related to activities of prior administrations and that she had already identified many of the accounting issues since her appointment in March 2023. She said she was working to fix them.

Adams Kellum said she welcomed the audit to see if the agency is “on the right track for system improvement that we’ve already put in place, and to further let us know what’s missing.”

She said she was pleased to learn that the areas of concern were things she was well aware of as the former head of the service provider St. Joseph Center and that she had come to LAHSA to fix.

“Much of these audits are covering time periods before I joined LAHSA, so it’s important that I get that baseline, that I see what those key areas of pain points are, and if we’re on the right track for system improvement that we’ve already put in place, and to further let us know what’s missing,” she said.

The agency said that many of the problems occurred during a period of rapid growth in the context of the COVID pandemic when it was under intense pressure to establish services to save lives.

In particular, the agency said it was following its operational agreement with the county which did not require it to recoup the $50.8 million.

LAHSA asked the auditor-controller to drop several of the 16 findings and reduce others from high to a lower priority.

The auditor left its report intact but included LAHSA’s comments. “Given the significant public funds advanced to and still outstanding with subrecipients, it is critical LAHSA implement our recommendations to ensure public funds are properly accounted for and safeguarded,” the auditor-controller said.

The county audit, ordered by the Board of Supervisors in February, is separate from an audit of L.A. city homelessness programs being conducted under the auspices of federal court in the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights lawsuit against the city and county.

But it parallels issues that the court-appointed auditors have raised.

In an October hearing, Diane Rafferty of the auditing firm Alvarez & Marsal told the court that preliminary field work uncovered “inconsistencies in services offered due to a lack of clear standards.”

For example, she said, “for the service providers, there’s no consistent definition of what is storage, what is a shower, what is a hot meal … and it winds up being the service provider defining those for the people that they’re serving.”

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Why did someone add a giant meth pipe to MacArthur Park’s Prometheus statue?

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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Why did someone add a giant meth pipe to MacArthur Park’s Prometheus statue?

A piece of guerrilla art appeared at Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park this week, underlining the park’s reputation as a center of drugs, addiction and despair.

Prometheus is known in Greek mythology for rebelliously taking fire from the gods to give to humans, but at his statue near the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Alvarado Street in Los Angeles on Monday, he was using it to heat an oversized meth pipe.

“A lot of our work focuses on parts of the city that have fallen into disrepair, and this particular Prometheus sculpture stood out to us as significant — having eerily taken on the condition of his surroundings,” artist S.C. Mero told The Times.

L.A. artists S.C. Mero and Wild Life included a plaque to their guerrilla art of the Prometheus statue in MacArthur Park.

For longtime residents, MacArthur Park is a shadow of the 35-acre urban oasis it was built to be. Today it is known more for rampant drug use and homelessness, needles strewn on the ground and overdose deaths from fentanyl and other narcotics in the park and nearby alleys. On occasion, medical outreach teams hand out glass pipes and test kits that can detect fentanyl or veterinary tranquilizers in drugs before they’re consumed in an effort, they say, to saves lives.

The Prometheus statue by artist Nina Saemundsson was erected in 1935 by the federal Works Progress Administration and is one of several art pieces in the park. Throughout the years, vandals have occasionally broken off parts of the left hand, toes and a sphere that the figure originally held. A newsboy statute at another end of the park was mutilated by thieves earlier this year, leaving behind only two bronze shoes.

It was the state of the park and the Prometheus statue that struck Mero and her creative partner, known as Wild Life, Mero wrote on Instagram. Other pieces of her work, like a giant parking meter, pill box and a concrete-stump-turned-enlarged-prescription-bottle, were created in her Skid Row art studio and have dotted L.A.’s urban landscape in the past.

Artist Nina Saemundsson stands on ladder to work on a clay version of the Prometheus statue in her studio in 1923

“The sculpture’s fall from grace feels symbolic of [the park] itself … they all have a past life worth remembering,” Mero’s Instagram caption of the Prometheus statue said. “It also gave us a chance to share the origins of the sculpture and its sculptress — Nina Saemundsson — prior to its descent into obscurity.”

Beyond the oversized meth pipe, another addition to the piece is a description that diverts from the original myth of Prometheus as the god of foresight, fire and crafty counsel who taught humans how to use fire for warmth and cooking. Instead, a plaque at the base of the statue says he gave humans fire “for the use of fentanyl, crack cocaine and methamphetamines.”

The issues in the park Mero was highlighting have reached a crisis point after several years of worsening conditions, some say.

L.A. City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, elected two years ago as a progressive, has called the park an “Ellis Island of the West Coast” that acts as the “front yard and backyard” for tens of thousands of working-class residents, adding, “We have to do something.”

In August, Langer’s Deli owner Norm Langer threatened to close his iconic restaurant across the street from the park after nearly 80 years in business, prompting Mayor Karen Bass to pledge to “respond urgently” to the crisis.

Last month, Times columnist Steve Lopez questioned the city’s progress, writing, “I don’t see it. Not for the sake of those who are badly addicted and flirt with death each day, and not for the sake of residents and merchants who need some relief.”

Even LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, who helped clean up the park in 2003, today describes it as being in “pretty desperate straits.”

“All of the players who have a stake in that area need to weigh in and be able to provide something on the way toward a solution,” the chief said. “If everybody jumps in, I think it could look markedly different in three to six months.“

Times staff writer Libor Jany contributed to this report.

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Opinion: New California rules trade short-term climate gain for long-term health and safety

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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Opinion: New California rules trade short-term climate gain for long-term health and safety

As long-serving members of the California Air Resources Board, we have prioritized environmental justice and community health, championing efforts to combat climate change. However, we believe state policies must thoughtfully address the consequences for communities least able to bear the associated costs.

This concern applies to CARB’s newly adopted amendments to accelerate the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, or LCFS, which we opposed. The fuel standard program, established in 2011, aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by capping the carbon intensity of fuels. The current program mandates a 20% reduction in fuel carbon intensity by 2030. The proposed amendments push this to a 30% cut by 2030 and 90% by 2045.

Faster implementation, however, risks increasing gasoline prices — a significant burden on low-income communities already struggling with costs. This issue has attracted attention from the media, legislators and the public. Beyond financial concerns, the LCFS has had another, less-publicized consequence: a dramatic transformation of California’s dairy industry.

Over the past decade, many dairies have shifted their priorities driven by LCFS incentives, with troubling public health consequences.

California’s dairy industry has historically focused on milk production, but today, many dairies are producing renewable natural gas by capturing methane from manure. The LCFS propels this trend through California’s carbon credit system, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Under this program, entities earn and sell credits for cutting emissions, and dairies profit by converting methane into renewable natural gas. However, the system rewards larger-scale manure production, as more methane generates more credits and profits. This creates a perverse incentive, prioritizing pollution-heavy practices over sustainable, low-impact solutions.

Capturing methane, a greenhouse gas over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term, is vital for combating climate change. Yet, the methods to achieve reductions matter. The new amendments inadvertently incentivize the growth of mega-dairies now disproportionately concentrated in the Central Valley, where land is cheaper than other parts of the state — a region already grappling with environmental and health challenges.

As mega-dairies expand, their impacts on local communities worsen. According to comments from the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, a climate, health and equity organization working in the Central Valley, these facilities exacerbate air pollution, groundwater depletion and nitrate contamination, disproportionately affecting low-income Latino communities.

The promise of renewable natural gas as a “bridge fuel” is fundamentally flawed. Instead of transitioning toward sustainable decarbonization, the LCFS now encourages the expansion of large-scale dairies to maximize methane generation. Dairies are rewarded not for reducing methane emissions but for capturing what they generate, perpetuating pollution-heavy practices. More waste generated means more profit.

While capturing methane contributes to California’s greenhouse gas reduction goals, the collateral damage is undeniable. Mega-dairies are among the largest ammonia emitters, contributing to fine particulate matter pollution that causes respiratory illnesses and premature death. The Central Valley, already burdened with some of the worst air quality in the nation, cannot withstand additional harm. Moreover, nitrate runoff from manure continues to contaminate drinking water, disproportionately affecting disadvantaged communities reliant on domestic wells.

Accelerating LCFS mandates will only hasten the expansion of mega-dairies.

CARB has already undermined efforts to regulate livestock methane emissions. While we successfully pushed for regulations to begin by 2028, a last-minute change allowed mega-dairies to continue to profit from “avoided methane” credits based on flawed assumptions, encouraging herd consolidation and pollution-heavy liquid manure systems. Sustainable alternatives, such as dry handling or pasture-based systems, which generate far fewer pollutants, remain unsupported. For these reasons, we were on the losing side of a 12-2 vote by the board on the LCFS amendment.

Methane is an immediate climate threat, and failure to address it would be catastrophic. However, ignoring the long-term environmental and social costs of factory-farm gas development prioritizes short-term climate gains over public health and equity. Our climate solutions must not come at the expense of environmental justice.

The LCFS program could be improved by capping the size and number of dairy operations eligible for methane incentives. Without such limits, we risk entrenching an industry whose environmental harms outweigh its climate benefits.

Additionally, CARB must prioritize sustainable methane reduction alternatives, including practices that reduce pollution at the source rather than perpetuating harmful systems. Setting these limits would create a fairer and more effective framework for addressing emissions while protecting vulnerable communities.

Fighting climate change is not just about dairies. It is about choosing a path that doesn’t result in more harm to vulnerable communities. For the sake of our air, water, and public health, we must ensure our solutions work for everyone, not just for those who profit from pollution.

Dean Florez, a member of the California Air Resources Board, is a former California Senate majority leader. Diane Takvorian, a member of the California Air Resources Board, is the co-founder and former executive director of the Environmental Health Coalition in San Diego/Tijuana.

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Fire burned a quarter of Ventura’s avocados. Can this farmer rebuild?

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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Fire burned a quarter of Ventura’s avocados. Can this farmer rebuild?

SOMIS — Thousands of Hass avocados littered the soil in Sergio Acevedo’s orchard Saturday in this community northeast of Camarillo. The Mountain fire had scorched some of the fruit, leaving it shriveled or in ashes.

But the ferocious winds that followed the blaze ripped through the area and tore more than half of the remaining avocados off the trees, scattering them across his two-acre farm. Most of the fruit on the ground appeared untouched — bright green and good enough to eat.

But Acevedo knew better. He picked one off the ground and cut off a slice to reveal the inside: dry and dull green.

A man holds an avocado, sliced open to reveal the interior, a dull light green.

“You see? There’s no oil. It’s not ready,” he told his daughter Wendy Acevedo. “But it was so close.”

The avocados were only about a month away from being ripe enough for market. The 75-year-old shook his head and chucked the ruined fruit back on the ground. Over the weekend, Acevedo and his family surveyed their land, where the fire had damaged or destroyed an estimated 100 of his 300 avocado trees. Acevedo’s orchard is one of more than 140 avocado farms in the burn area, according to Ventura County Agricultural Commissioner Korinne Bell.

The county is the state’s top producer of avocados, she said.

Most of the avocado producers in the Mountain fire burn area are small-scale farmers, Bell said: “They have a small couple [of] acres here or there.”

As of last week, the Mountain fire had burned 12,000 acres of agricultural land. Avocados were among the crops hit hardest.

A farmer pulls a branch from a burned tree.

So far, 4,102 acres of avocados were in the burn area, representing a quarter of the 16,497 acres of avocados harvested in Ventura County last year. However, it’s too soon to know exactly how many avocado trees in the area sustained damage or were destroyed, Bell said.

County officials have completed a quarter of their survey and counted 588 avocado acres that were damaged or destroyed during the fire. Losses are estimated at $4.3 million.

“We expect that number to go up a lot,” Bell said.

It’s not clear yet whether the avocado market will be affected by the fire, because most of the harvest starts in winter and goes into summer in Ventura County, she said. “So if there are market impacts we will not see them until then.”

For now, consumers are unlikely to see a surge in the price of avocados from the fire because most avocados bought in the U.S. are imported from Mexico.

In total, more than 240 structures, many of them primary residences, have been destroyed and 127 damaged during the Mountain fire. As of Wednesday, the nearly 20,000-acre fire was 98% contained.

Current harvest nearly wiped out

A man hugs a girl as a woman stands nearby. In the background are avocado trees.

Acevedo said he felt badly for the many who lost their homes in the fire. He lives in Oxnard with his wife and never built a home on his farm. But it pained him to see how the fire had torched the trees he’d so lovingly tended for nearly 25 years.

The blaze also destroyed his irrigation system. He didn’t have fire insurance, he said.

In the first few days after the fire, Acevedo said, he was devastated by the images he saw of destruction. But a few days later, he switched to focusing on moving forward. Wendy, 43, started a GoFundMe for him. At first, her father was against it. He’s still a bit hesitant.

“You’re always helping other people. It’s time for you to accept help too,” she told him as they walked through the damaged orchard.

He’s reminded himself of his beginnings as an immigrant farmer who came to the United States and started with nearly nothing. He had only $100 in his pocket when he left Mexico City for the U.S. in the 1970s, he said. From that, he bought a home, put his two children through college and put a down payment on his daughter’s home.

In 2003, Acevedo poured most of his retirement money into buying the avocado orchard where he also grows a smattering of other fruit such as mandarins, cherimoya and pomegranates. After years of him spending every free minute on the farm, his orchard became productive and profitable enough to sustain itself.

Unusable avocados lie on the ground amid leaves and other debris.

The farm wasn’t just an investment, it became his refuge.

It was the setting for so many family memories, life landmarks and new traditions. It‘s where he taught his son, now an adult, how to drive. It was where his daughter married 16 years ago, between mandarin and orange trees he’d just planted. And it’s the place where his granddaughters plant pumpkin seeds in the spring and pick pumpkins in the fall.

During the week, he works as a diesel mechanic for an agricultural company and spends most of the weekend on the orchard. He’d hoped to retire on the farm, but that seems like a tougher proposition now.

“Nothing is impossible,” he said. “You just have to work hard. I just need to start over.”

He said he tries to see the fire as a setback but not the end. It takes an avocado sapling three years to begin producing fruit and about five years to provide a full yield. Acevedo will have to wait until February to grow his next saplings — all of them Hass, the major variety grown in California.

But first he’ll have to prepare the land, including cutting the dead trees down to the stump, removing the roots and having it all removed from his property. It will take at least $20,000 just to do that, and that’s not accounting for his nearly entire loss of this year’s harvest, he said.

Acevedo said he probably will be in the red for a few years before breaking even. Wendy said she’s helped her father apply for financial assistance with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A man, his back to the camera, walks a dirt path through an orchard.

On Saturday, Acevedo, a spry and agile senior, moved quickly to inspect the orchard. Several trees were completely charred. Some had fallen over. Others looked parched but had a few avocados barely hanging on. Then there were a bunch of vibrant green trees — spared from the inferno.

He approached a navel orange tree that had some scorched branches. He picked up a recently fallen orange and took a knife from his pocket to slice it in half. Acevedo peeled off some of the skin and took a big bite.

“It’s still sweet,” he said. “This tree, this one, will be fine.”

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Shoplifter injured by police dog gets a nearly $1-million settlement

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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Shoplifter injured by police dog gets a nearly $1-million settlement

A woman who shoplifted thousands of dollars in cosmetics has won a nearly $1-million settlement from a Northern California city after a police dog bit and tore at her scalp while police tried to take her into custody.

In a statement, Timothy Herbert, the chief of police in the city of Brentwood in eastern Contra Costa County, defended the officer handling the dog that day, saying his actions were justified. The chief said the city decided to settle the suit to avoid further litigation and legal costs.

Brentwood city officials agreed to pay Talmika Bates $967,000 over the 2020 incident, which left the then-24-year-old woman suffering from severe dog bites and gashes to her scalp.

“Oh, my God, please get your dog,” Bates could be heard screaming in body camera video of the incident while Brentwood Police Officer Ryan Rezentes is seen pulling at the dog’s leash. “My whole skin is off.”

According to the original complaint, Brentwood police were sent to Ulta Beauty Supply, a cosmetics store, on Feb. 10, 2020, after an employee reported that three women had shoplifted several items.

According to Brentwood police, Bates, who was on probation, and two other women had stolen $10,000 worth of merchandise from the store and fled by car. Officers tried to stop the car, but the driver crashed into their patrol car and the three women tried to escape on foot.

Officers found Bates hiding in a field behind bushes.

The lawsuit alleges Rezentes set his K-9, a German shepherd named Marco, on Bates without issuing a warning or giving her a chance to surrender.

The dog bit and gnawed on Bates’ scalp, the lawsuit alleges, and ignored Bates’ and Rezentes’ attempts to halt the attack.

“Officer Rezentes had to physically remove the dog from Ms. Bates’ head,” the complaint reads.

Attorneys for Bates allege Rezentes lost control of the dog as it bit off parts of Bates’ scalp and ignored commands to heel.

Another officer stood next to Rezentes with his gun drawn during the incident and tried to reassure Rezentes, according to video from the body worn camera.

“Don’t worry, I won’t shoot your dog,” he can be heard saying.

After a minute, the two officers ordered Bates to stand up, placed her in handcuffs and berated her for running away.

“As she emerged from the bushes, the assembled Officers could see large chunks of Ms. Bates’ scalp were ripped from her head, exposing bone and tissue,” the complaint read.

Surgeons reattached Bates scalp, but the suit alleges she continues to suffer from headaches, memory loss and depression because of the incident.

Attorneys for Bates did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

When reached for comment, attorneys for Rezentes referred to the police chief’s statement.

Bates pleaded guilty to a charge of misdemeanor grand theft and resisting a police officer, according to court records.

Attorneys for Bates alleged Rezentes lied in his police report, falsely claiming he did not have cover from another officer so that he could safely recall the dog as it was attacking Bates.

In his statement, Herbert defended the officer’s actions, pointing out that the court had ruled that the officer had lawfully deployed the dog to search for the suspects.

Herbert said his officers had no way of knowing if Bates was armed, adding that she had disobeyed officers’ orders to surrender.

The court, however, had also ruled that there was possible liability regarding the duration of the dog’s attack.

The police department has no working canines now, Herbert said.

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Laura Richardson wins Senate District 35, defeating Michelle Chambers

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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Laura Richardson wins Senate District 35, defeating Michelle Chambers

Laura Richardson emerged the victor of the competitive, costly and feisty election to win a South Los Angeles seat in the state Senate — completing her political comeback more than 10 years after a tumultuous tenure in the House of Representatives.

Richardson narrowly won the race against Michelle Chambers, a community justice advocate who faced accusations of misconduct in prior public office. The Associated Press called the race Friday after weeks of ballot counting.

The contest between two Democrats with similar social policies but differing views on crime and business attracted huge spending by special interests.

Independent expenditure committees poured more than $7.6 million into the race, making it the most expensive election for state Legislature this year, according to California Target Book, a political database. Negative campaigning dominated the race as business interests and labor unions battled for their favored candidate.

Richardson, a moderate Democrat, will join a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature. But Republicans are on track to flip three legislative seats this year, one in the Senate and two in the Assembly.

Richardson’s biggest supporters were businesses, including PACs funded by oil companies, and law enforcement associations that said they advocated for candidates who shared their beliefs on free enterprise and public safety. Meanwhile, Chambers’ biggest portion of support came from healthcare workers and teachers unions, who spent millions of dollars backing her.

Chambers wrote in a statement she was “proud of the campaign we ran,” thanking supporters who canvassed, phone-banked or cast votes for her “vision of better jobs, better wages and a California that works for everybody, not just the wealthy and well-connected.”

“This was the closest state senate race in the state, but unfortunately it appears that we will fall just short of victory,” she added. “Our people-powered efforts were not quite enough to overcome millions of dollars in outside spending on lies from the oil and tobacco industry and their allies.“

Richardson will succeed Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) in the 35th District, which encompasses the cities of Carson, Compton and stretches down to the harbor. Bradford, who had endorsed Chambers, said he believed both candidates were “qualified to do the job.”

Bradford, who championed reparations legislation during his tenure, hoped the future senator would be “willing to meet with all factions of the community, because it’s a great diverse need in this district.”

“I’m also deeply sad to see how negative this campaign was, probably one of the most negative campaigns I’ve experienced in my 30-plus years of being involved with elections,” he said. “I just hope that we can come together after such a negative campaign, regardless of who the victor is, and understand that we have to work together.”

Richardson and Chambers took aim at each other’s past controversies. For Chambers, who had picked up the endorsement of various state and local elected officials, opposition groups seized on a criminal misdemeanor charge from 30 years ago. She was also accused of bullying and intimidation from her time as a Compton City Council member, allegations that she has repeatedly denied.

Richardson faced criticism over her tenure in Congress, where a House Ethics Committee investigation found her guilty in 2012 of compelling congressional staff to work on her campaign. The committee report also accused Richardson of obstructing the committee investigation “through the alteration or destruction of evidence” and “the deliberate failure to produce documents.”

Richardson admitted to wrongdoing, according to the report, and accepted a reprimand and $10,000 fine for the violations. She previously said that during her time in Congress, Republicans frequently targeted members of the Black Caucus. After she lost her reelection bid for a fourth term, Richardson said she worked at an employment firm to improve her managerial skills and has recognized previous mistakes.

“It’s been said voters are very forgiving, and if you stand up and you accept responsibility and you improve in the work that you do — we need people who’ve been through things, who understand what it’s like to have had difficulties,” she previously told The Times. “And so that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t shy away from it.”

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Feds outline options for the shrinking Colorado River

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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Feds outline options for the shrinking Colorado River

The Biden administration has announced a range of options for new rules to address chronic water shortages and low reservoir levels on the Colorado River, a vital water source for seven Western states that has dwindled during more than two decades of drought compounded by climate change.

The Interior Department released four alternatives for new long-term rules aimed at dealing with potential shortages after 2026, when the current operating rules expire. The announcement of the proposed alternatives represents one of the Biden administration’s final steps to outline potential paths toward reaching a consensus among California and the six other states, as well as the region’s 30 Native tribes.

“We’re putting forth alternatives that establish a robust and fair framework for a basin-wide agreement,” said Laura Daniel-Davis, acting deputy Interior secretary. “Now really is the time for the basin states and tribes to redouble their work toward a consensus alternative.”

The action advances a federal review process that President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will inherit. But while the change in administration brings a dose of uncertainty, the biggest challenge for the region currently appears to be the stark divisions among the seven states that have emerged in negotiations over the last year.

There have been persistent disagreements about how triggers for water cutbacks should be determined and how those reductions should be apportioned. The disputes have pitted the three states in the river’s lower basin — California, Arizona and Nevada — against the four upper-basin states — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.

“There certainly are extremely difficult choices and trade-offs to be made, but we believe that there are ample opportunities to create a fair path to solutions that work for the entire basin,” federal Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton told reporters in a conference call.

The Colorado River provides water for cities from Denver to San Diego, tribal communities and farmlands across seven states and northern Mexico. The river has long been overallocated, and its reservoirs have declined dramatically since 2000.

The average flow of the river has shrunk about 20% since 2000, and scientists have estimated that roughly half that decline has been caused by global warming driven by the burning of fossil fuels and rising levels of greenhouse gases. The decline in flow is projected to continue to worsen as temperatures climb.

In recent years, states that depend on the river have adopted a series of incremental water-saving plans in an effort to prevent the Colorado’s reservoirs from falling to critically low levels.

The Interior Department in 2023 began the process of developing long-term operating guidelines to replace rules that expire in December 2026. The agency says an operating plan must be in effect by August 2026.

In its announcement of the alternatives, the Interior Department said the overarching goals include defining water allocations, guiding management of the river and “guarding against the need for the kind of short-term fix” that state and federal officials negotiated to temporarily reduce water use and boost reservoir levels from 2024 through 2026. The Biden administration has recently been funding programs that pay farmers to temporarily reduce water use in exchange for payments.

The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages dams on the river, said the four alternatives include: one that focuses on federal authorities absent new agreements; a second hybrid approach based on federal authorities; a third “cooperative conservation” alternative that would include “incentivizing” water conservation and developing flexible management strategies; and a fourth that would be a hybrid of proposals submitted by the states and tribes.

Also included was a “no action” alternative, as required under federal environmental law.

California, which uses more Colorado River water than any other state, responded with caution and cited the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which allocated the river’s water among the states and established the existing legal framework.

“Federal law requires the Colorado River Basin’s reservoirs be managed in accordance with the Colorado River Compact — the most significant component of which is mandatory deliveries of water from the Upper Basin to the Lower Basin and Mexico,” said J.B. Hamby, California’s Colorado River commissioner. “In order to be valid, any alternative considered must meet this requirement unless the states agree to a compromise otherwise.”

The 1922 agreement requires the four states of the upper basin to deliver an annual average of 7.5 million acre-feet to California, Arizona and Nevada (over any 10-year period).

Arizona officials have warned that projections show water deliveries might decrease below that required minimum as soon as 2027, which would enable the lower basin states to make a so-called “compact call” and require the upper basin states to meet the requirement by cutting their water usage.

Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, discussed that possibility at a meeting this week, saying such a scenario would lead to larger cuts for the upper basin than would occur under a proposal submitted by Arizona, California and Nevada.

Buschatzke said Wednesday that he was a bit disappointed the Bureau of Reclamation chose to create hybrid alternatives rather than presenting a full analysis of the three-state proposal.

Under that proposed plan, California, Arizona and Nevada would make the first round of water cuts to address a shortage, and then would look to the other states to participate if larger reductions are needed, which Buschatzke called a reasonable approach.

“How is the upper basin going to participate with the lower basin?” he said. “That’s the big issue.”

So far, the states of the upper basin have offered a proposal that includes some conservation efforts but avoids accepting the sort of mandatory cutbacks the other states are calling for.

The current impasse has raised the possibility that an intractable dispute between the states could lead to a fight in the courts. Buschatzke stressed that Arizona doesn’t want a legal battle and that representatives of other states have assured him they do not want litigation either.

“We still have a pretty wide gap between us,” Buschatzke said.

But he said he sees some good provisions in the federal government’s options, and he hopes continued talks “can move the needle forward.”

In a joint statement, California, Arizona and Nevada said they are committed to working toward a “negotiated solution that inherently requires the participation of all water users.”

Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado said the only viable solution is a “collaborative, seven-state plan to solve the Colorado River crisis,” because if the states turn to the courts, “we’ll watch the river run dry while we sue each other.”

Other experts have agreed that turning to lawsuits would create major risks.

“If this issue goes to the courts, the health of the river is going to suffer, because everybody’s attention is going to be directed towards that litigation,” said Jennifer Pitt, director of the National Audubon Society’s Colorado River program.

Pitt said she hopes the states can reach a compromise to manage the river for the 21st century in the face of climate change — now a very “different river than was imagined by the people who wrote the compact.”

The federal government announced the alternatives shortly before Touton was scheduled to meet with state and tribal leaders for the latest in a series of working group discussions.

Water management officials and representatives of states and tribes will also gather in Las Vegas from Dec. 4 to 6 for an annual conference of Colorado River water users, an event that often features negotiating sessions in addition to speeches outlining proposals for reducing demands on the river.

White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi said the struggle is fundamentally about adapting to the effects of climate change. He pointed to recent research by UCLA scientists showing that global warming is a major culprit of the river’s decline, and that higher temperatures have, since 2000, robbed the Colorado River Basin of more than 10 trillion gallons of water, more than the entire storage capacity of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir.

“Just over the last two decades, we’ve seen that deterioration take place,” Zaidi said. “It doesn’t matter what your politics are, climate change still impacts you. We are all lassoed in, banded together, and we’ve got to come up with solutions together.”

Near Las Vegas, Lake Mead is now 33% full. Upstream on the Utah-Arizona border, the water level of Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir, stands at 38% of capacity.

Zaidi noted that in 2023 the seven states reached a consensus deal to make substantial short-term reductions in water use.

“We can either remain stuck at an impasse, or we can secure a future for future generations that promises the stability and sustainability of one of our greatest natural resources,” Zaidi said.

The options the federal government has outlined, he said, “provide essentially a platform to reach a consensus path.”

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DNA shows man who found girl’s body in 1979 was actually her killer

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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DNA shows man who found girl’s body in 1979 was actually her killer

Lewis Randy Williamson found the girl’s body off of Highway 243.

Esther Gonzalez, 17 at the time, had been raped, killed and dumped in a snowbank on the side of the highway. Williamson called the Riverside County sheriff on Feb. 9, 1979, and reported his discovery. Investigators noted at the time that he was argumentative. Five days later, he sat for an interview with law enforcement officials, who cleared him of any potential wrongdoing in the case after he passed a polygraph test.

For the next 35 years, Williamson, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, lived a normal life and eventually moved to Florida, where he died in 2014.

After authorities picked the case back up recently with the newly available tactic of investigative genetic genealogy, they were able to match DNA found in the semen left at the crime scene with a sample of Williamson’s blood taken during his autopsy. Williamson was Gonzalez’s rapist and killer, the Riverside County district attorney’s office said.

Investigative genetic genealogy is a tool in which modern investigators build family trees using crime-scene DNA that has been entered into databases. The family trees allow them to locate potential suspects who they can then investigate using more traditional methods, such as finding old arrest records.

When the Riverside County district attorney’s office put the DNA from Gonzalez’s cold case into a database, they found a woman who was a potential relative of the unidentified killer.

The woman had died in Beaumont and a newspaper article listed her son as the executor of her will. His name was Lewis Randy Williamson.

Authorities subsequently realized the woman’s son was the same man who had reported finding Gonzalez’s body in 1979.

The investigator who connected the woman to Williamson “called me right away and said, ‘Hey, this could be a person of interest,’” said Jason Corey, an investigator with the district attorney’s office. .

The polygraph report could have been easily overlooked. It was a single piece of paper amid a mountain of evidence from the nearly 50-year-old case.

While investigators found some old assault allegations against Williamson, he did not appear to have any convictions for violent crimes, Corey said. And his DNA in a nationwide DNA system called Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, has never matched with any other rapes or murders.

In the end, Corey is just happy that Gonzalez’s family finally knows who killed Esther as she walked from her parents’ home in Beaumont to her sister’s in Banning.

“This killing still haunts them,” Corey said. “But Esther was never forgotten by us all these years.”

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California’s rainy season kicks off with monster storm

Ben Shapiro

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November 23, 2024

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California’s rainy season kicks off with monster storm

The first major atmospheric river storm to hit the West Coast this season is kicking off the rainy season with a bang, as the system rapidly strengthened — to the tune of a bomb cyclone — before pummeling Northern California and southern Oregon with dangerous winds and heavy rains that could cause disruptions for several days.

Supercharged by that dramatic bombogenesis and warm Pacific temperatures, which together pumped up the system’s winds and moisture, the storm could cause life-threatening flooding and damaging high surf north of the Bay Area, with prolonged, heavy rainfall, strong winds and significant mountain snow, according to the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.

“Storm total rainfall may reach as high as 12 to 16 [inches], with dangerous flash flooding, rock slides, and debris flows likely,” the agency wrote in its latest forecast.

By early Wednesday, winds in the region had caused widespread power outages and some tree damage, and were expected to bring blizzard conditions throughout the Cascades, the agency said. Gusts Tuesday night hit up to 80 mph in Crescent City, according to the National Weather Service. In two separate towns outside of Seattle, two women were reportedly killed by felled trees after winds knocked out power to more than 500,000, according to electricity providers in the area.

The worst of the winds were expected across Northern California on Wednesday, though forecasters said their primary concern remained the amount and duration of the rains that were also expected to begin in earnest Wednesday.

By the end of the week, more than a foot of rain could drench the North Bay, where a flood watch remains in effect through at least Friday. A second low-pressure storm is forecast to interact with the first atmospheric river system, adding more precipitation that will last even longer.

“That’s going to be quite a lot of water,” said Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist. These conditions are flipping much of the state “from anomalously dry to anomalously wet conditions,” he said, the latest example of California’s hydroclimate whiplash — swings that are only expected to become more sudden and dramatic as global temperatures continue to rise.

On the plus side, the significant rainfall should help most of Northern California exit fire season.

“This is welcome to a certain extent, it moves us away from fire risk by wetting down ecosystems,” said Michael Loik, a professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz. “On the other hand,” he added, “it can be too much of a good thing too quickly.”

Significant rainfall isn’t expected in the Bay Area itself and points south until Friday, but forecasts are increasingly showing that much of the state will see at least some precipitation by early next week.

But it’s remains unclear what, if anything, this monster storm could indicate about the rest of California’s rainy season, though it could be the start of a brief stretch of slightly wetter weather.

Through at least the end of the month, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center forecast an increased chance for above-average rainfall across much of California, but predictions stretching into mid-December become less clear. The latest three-month outlook through January shows equal chances for above or below normal precipitation.

“It could still be a dry season relative to normal, it’s just too early to tell,” said Roger Gass, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Monterey. “It really doesn’t have a long-term indication.”

One of the only long-term predictive measures that forecasters can use, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle, or ENSO, remains in neutral, meaning that the Pacific Ocean isn’t in a La Niña or El Niño cycle. Officials still think there’s a good chance La Niña will develop by the end of December; if it does, it’s likely going to be a “weak and a short duration La Niña,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest ENSO blog. La Niña years typically favor drier conditions for the southwestern U.S. — one of California’s last two winters that saw high precipitation was an El Niño year — but a weaker cycle means its influence can also be minimized.

“Historically, during these weak La Niñas we have seen slightly less rain than normal,” said Bryan Lewis, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Oxnard. “It’s hard to say that will continue for this period, but it does look like the next week or so we’ll have these periods of rain.”

Lewis said there appears to be the possibility for another low pressure system that could affect California by Thanksgiving weekend, but it’s too early to know where or how much rain that could bring. And he noted that a short string of storms isn’t enough to indicate what the whole winter could bring.

But water officials are taking what they can get with this storm, noting that the state remains below average for precipitation this water year (the 12-month period that started Oct. 1) after a hot and dry fall, according to California Water Watch.

“The rainfall that will occur over the next several days will be extremely beneficial for California’s snowpack later in the spring and summer of 2025,” David Rizzardo, manager of California’s Department of Water Resources Hydrology Section, said in a statement. “For California to benefit from snowmelt in the spring and summer, we need good rainstorms in the fall and early winter to wet the soils in the mountains so that more snowmelt in the spring or summer results in runoff and is not lost to the soils.”

A flood watch remains in effect through late Friday across the North Bay, where some higher elevations could see up to 10 inches by Thursday, the weather service warned. On top of that, an additional 2 to 4 inches of rainfall could fall Friday and Saturday. Much of Mendocino and Lake counties, as well as parts of the Sacramento Valley, are also under a flood watch through Friday, with concerns about “prolonged periods of moderate to heavy rain,” the weather service warned.

Mountains across Northern California, including in Shasta County and across the Sierra Nevada, could see up to 20 inches of snow at elevations above 4,500 feet, with some areas getting up to 4 feet Wednesday, according to the winter storm warning for the area.

In Southern California, the chances for major rainfall have been steadily increasing, with forecasters now confident that the region could see measurable rainfall beginning this weekend and into early next week as the storm slides southward.

“We’re thinking it’s going to be more of a beneficial rain,” Lewis said, noting that it could help ease some fire concerns, but likely not eliminate those worries entirely.

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