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Jackie and Shadow have lost one of their three chicks. The chicks that remain have been confirmed to be in the nest bowl.
What do we see? Only two were visible during the first and second feedings Friday morning as snow continued to coat Big Bear’s famous bald eagle nest.
What are people saying? The volunteer group that runs the live eagle cam urges people to "grieve and feel whatever you feel."
Read on... about the latest news on the nest.
One of Jackie and Shadow's three chicks is now confirmed not have survived a severe winter storm that dropped more than 2 feet of snow in the area where the nest is located.
Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that manages the popular YouTube livestream of the nest, confirmed the news Saturday, hours after warning that the possible remains of the missing chick had been spotted.
The chick had not been seen alive since a 6 p.m. feeding on Thursday, they said. By Friday morning it was clear to the thousand of avid fans watching the live eagle cam that something was amiss.
Friends of Big Bear Valley told eagle fans:
"We understand completely how hard this is to hear. Please allow yourself to grieve and feel whatever you feel. Please honor the chick for its courage in getting as far as it did and doing whatever it came to do."
The volunteers said they did not know which chick had died because all three, which had been named Chick 1, Chick 2 and Chick 3 for birth order, were "very close in size."
On Sunday afternoon, Jackie picked up the remains of the chick from the nest and flew off with it.
This is a tough turn for the couple’s thousands of fans, especially after the last two seasons ended in an empty nest. About 100,000 people were watching live when the youngest chick was working its way into the world last week — a new record.
All three chicks were seen during Thursday’s last feeding, but only two were visible by early Friday morning. Some fans were concerned that a chick got stuck to Shadow’s foot or got caught up in one of Jackie’s overnight “wingslaps,” but Friends of Big Bear Valley confirmed that the couple didn’t remove anything from the nest large enough to be a chick during that time.
Live images get from the nest high above Big Bear Lake to your eyeballs via a pair of cameras — one that provides close-ups of the nest, and another trained on the tree Jackie and Shadow roost in.
When LAist shared an Instagram post about the missing chick later that day, it was flooded with comments like “I’m ruined,” “this is so sad” and “I can’t take a hit like this!!!”
The good news: the other two eaglets could still be seen bobbing out of the nest bowl shortly after the news of the death was announced. Their parents cared for them during steady snowfall on Friday.
Friends of Big Bear Valley is asking fans to be kind to themselves and others in the eagle community at this time.
“We hope that seeing Jackie and Shadow’s perseverance and steadfastness brings some comfort and peace as we watch their continuing, beautiful story unfold,” the group wrote in a Facebook update. “Today we are reminded once again that this is nature, wild and unscripted.”
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In the coming weeks, you might see an experimental aircraft that looks like a cross between a small plane and a helicopter flying above Los Angeles. It’s an air taxi.
What’s happening: Archer Aviation, one of the companies jockeying to capture its place in the emerging electric air taxi industry, announced Monday it will soon begin flying its aircraft in L.A.
The goal: The company’s leadership says the flights are the most significant step yet in a race to introduce electric flying taxis to Southern California skies in time for the 2028 Olympics. LA28 has named Archer the “official air taxi provider” for the Olympics.
Future unclear: Whether air taxis will be ready for 2028 is still to be determined. There are several steps for Archer before its aircrafts can begin commercially carrying people around L.A. Chief among those hurdles is approval from the Federal Aviation Administration that the design of its aircraft, known as Midnight, meets safety and regulatory standards.
Read on…for comments from aviation experts.
In the coming weeks, you might see an experimental aircraft that looks like a cross between a small plane and a helicopter flying above Los Angeles.
It’s an air taxi.
Archer Aviation, one of the companies jockeying to capture its place in the emerging electric air taxi industry, announced Monday it will soon begin flying its aircraft, initially without passengers, in L.A.
The company’s leadership says the flights are the most significant step yet in a race to introduce electric flying taxis to Southern California skies in time for the 2028 Olympics.
"Los Angeles is where we are writing the blueprint for every city that follows," said Adam Goldstein, the founder and CEO of Archer Aviation, on a call with investors Nov. 9.
LA28 has named Archer the “official air taxi provider” for the Olympics.
Archer Aviation's upcoming activity in L.A., which will be anchored out of Hawthorne Airport, is meant to showcase its aircraft, known as Midnight, ahead of the Games and give the company an opportunity to learn about the region’s airspace. The company is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to determine where and under what conditions its aircraft can fly. In 2027, Goldstein said the company plans to include non-paying passengers on its flights.
But whether air taxis will be ready for 2028 is still to be determined. There are several steps for Archer before its aircraft can begin commercially carrying people around L.A.
Chief among those hurdles is approval from the FAA that the design of its aircraft, known as Midnight, meets safety and regulatory standards.
Archer’s air taxis are a new form of aircraft that operate on electric power and have multiple rotors, unlike a traditional helicopter, and are designed to eventually takeoff vertically, rather than on a runway like a typical plane.
The potential for this type of aircraft flying in Los Angeles has been years in the making.
Last year, Archer Aviation acquired the master lease for Hawthorne Airport, and it has begun construction on 11 new hangars there.
Before that, LA28 announced its partnership with Archer, painting a vision of air taxis taking off and landing near Olympic venues including SoFi Stadium and the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. That plan would require installing “vertiports” in key locations. Vertiports are landing sites that allow electric vehicles to take off vertically rather than on a runway.
In August, Archer said it was advancing that vision, announcing plans to build its first vertiport in downtown Los Angeles at L.A. Live, the site of a number of Olympic and Paralympic competitions.
That plan, too, still has a number of steps left to become a reality. According to a press release, Archer and AEG, which owns and operates L.A. Live, are now reviewing “operational approach and guest experience” for the project. It’s also not clear what zoning permits the companies might need to secure. LAist asked L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ office about land use rules for vertiports in the city of Los Angeles but did not receive a response.
In a sign of all the work still left to do, an Archer air taxi shown off at the L.A. Live news conference this summer didn’t fly in: It was delivered via truck.
We would love to hear from additional experts and people working in the emerging air taxi industry. We're also interested in the political and community appetite for the new technology. You can:
As Archer moves forward with conducting flights and investing in air taxi infrastructure, its key challenge before introducing air taxis commercially remains securing “type certification” from the FAA.
“This is a rigorous, aircraft-specific process involving engineering analysis, testing, and FAA findings of compliance,” Susan Shaheen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, told LAist in an email.
When Goldstein, Archer’s CEO, announced Monday that the company would launch flights in L.A., he signaled that it was a sign that Archer was close to that goal.
“This is undoubtedly our most important commercialization milestone to date,” he said.
Some observers were more tepid about the significance of the announcement.
Adrian Norris, who has an independent aerospace consultancy, said that the kind of certificate Archer Aviation received to start flying its aircraft in L.A. is used to demonstrate experimental aircraft to investors, press and potential customers.
“For a company which has got as much money as Archer, I don’t see it as a big milestone,” Norris said. “In fact, I don’t see it as a milestone.”
According to its latest earnings report, Archer Aviation has nearly $1.4 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand.
Norris also pointed to how Archer’s flights in the coming weeks won’t demonstrate the vertical take off and landing configuration of Midnight. Rather, the plane will take off more traditionally, using a runway at the Hawthorne Airport.
“They haven't yet demonstrated, publicly at least, that the aircraft can take off vertically and then transition into horizontal flight with a pilot on board,” Norris said.
If Archer can secure FAA type certification ahead of the Olympics, it won’t mean L.A. has the equivalent of Ubers in the sky in less than two years' time. Instead, aviation experts told LAist that the Games present an opportunity to showcase this new mode of potentially controversial transportation to the public, likely by offering actual rides to a select few.
“It’s a big stage, it’s an international stage,” said Josh Metz, executive director of DART, a nonprofit working on workforce preparation for this new aviation industry, about the Games. “Will your everyday Joe be riding in the air taxi to the Olympics? You know, I think that's probably unlikely.”
The question is if Angelenos will welcome air taxis or push back against them.
The company has positioned its aircraft as a game-changing fix to L.A.’s omnipresent congestion.
“Within the next couple of weeks, people will start to see Midnight flying overhead in L.A. as they’re stuck in traffic,” Goldstein said on Monday.
The electric aircraft are also expected to be much quieter than the helicopters that L.A. residents are accustomed to hearing droning overhead.
“Compared to helicopters, it's very obvious that this type of new aircraft generates much less noise,” said Seongkyu Lee, a professor in UC Davis’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, who has studied the noise output of these aircraft. “So that's very important in terms of public acceptance.”
Darlene Yaplee, co-founder of a group called the Aviation-Impacted Communities Alliance, told LAist that how people react to air taxis will depend on how the aircraft change their experience of their communities. She named a number of potential problems, like noise, the location of vertiports and even the look of the air taxis in what would otherwise be an open sky.
“So all of a sudden everyone's gonna be experiencing these impacts, and you're not gonna be necessarily living [near] an airport,” she said.
Yaplee said people will be able to turn to local governments to resist air taxis in their communities.
How Archer’s flying taxi is received may also depend on who can actually ride in it.
Jaafar El-Awady, professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, said an air taxi ride could cost anywhere from $150 to $500 or more per person for a one-way ride.
“My skepticism concerns the expectation that these services will become routine transportation for the broader public,” El-Awady wrote in an email. “A successful premium air taxi business would not, by itself, demonstrate that we have created an affordable alternative for most commuters or a meaningful substitute for mass transportation.”
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Air quality officials certified Friday that Lineage has completed all requirements to comply with its order of abatement linked to its burned-out Boyle Heights warehouse and said they’ve ended nearly five months of monitoring.
About the odor complaints: Air quality officials first started citing Lineage due to rotten food smells in mid-July, weeks after the fire that took out the cold storage facility. Over 4,200 complaints were registered at the time, prompting South Coast Air Quality Management District to issue a notice of abatement Aug. 6. Since cleanup finished in early September, the agency said it received two complaints whose sources it could not trace back to the warehouse.
What was being monitored: The South Coast AQMD was testing for ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, particulate matter, air toxic metals and other potentially harmful compounds. The final cleanup of Lineage’s warehouse, completed Sept. 5, was weeks after the deadline given by the city and air quality officials. Lineage has maintained that it conducted the cleanup as quickly and safely as it could.
The backstory: The fire, which started June 17 and burned through Lineage’s cold storage facility, left thousands of tons of rotting food to spoil in the summer heat. For months, people in and near Boyle Heights complained of odors, poor air quality and pests. The fire sparked an outcry among nearby residents in Boyle Heights and East L.A., spurring a new accountability law for cold storage facilities signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September.
What’s next: Lineage could still face fines linked to 39 separate notices of violation that the South Coast AQMD issued between July 12 and August 28. According to the agency, those notices are still working through the enforcement process and could result in fines of up to $75,000 per day per violation. Separately, the state has launched a criminal investigation, and several lawsuits related to the fire are also still playing out. Notably, Lineage sued the company that operated the warehouse’s rooftop solar panels, alleging that faulty electrical connections on the solar array started the fire. (The solar panel operator, Altus Power, has denied the claims.)
Can the warehouse be rebuilt: It’s still an open question, but L.A. city leaders are opposed to Lineage operating there again. Mayor Karen Bass and the L.A. City Council have both taken action to withhold rebuilding permits for the warehouse. Mayor-elect and Councilmember Nithya Raman has also opposed Lineage rebuilding.
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In the past few years, highly concentrated products with 7-OH — sometimes alongside other semi-synthetic opioids — have popped up online, and at many smoke shops, liquor stores and gas stations. A recent report of data from 53 U.S. poison control centers shows reports of calls related to kratom increased about 1,200% between 2015 and 2025.
What to know: 7-OH, or 7-hydroxymitragynine, is one of the major psychoactive ingredients in kratom, which comes from a tree in the coffee family. It's naturally found in kratom in very small amounts, and seems to act more like an opioid in the human brain than kratom leaf products. Kratom is used by some people with opioid addiction to maintain long-term recovery. Some people say it makes them feel energized or focused. Some users of 7-OH and kratom show classic signs of addiction, researchers and policy officials say. But the products are not always clearly labeled, so it's difficult or impossible for users to know what quantity of the substances they are consuming.
What's next: No federal actions have been taken against "traditional botanical kratom," but a new federal restriction on some 7-OH products could go into place as early as Friday, Nov. 13, 2026.
Tyler's opioid addiction began in his early 20s, and when he decided he wanted to quit, he used kratom leaf powders to help ease withdrawal symptoms.
Tyler, now 38, told NPR he thinks kratom helped him stop using opioids for a decade.
Tyler asked NPR to use only his first name because of the stigma attached to his history with drug use and addiction.
In early 2025, he saw a new product at a gas station called 7-OH. He hadn't heard of 7-OH, but said the tablets were advertised as "kratom products." He decided to try them, since the kratom powders he'd taken in the past "can be hard on your stomach," he said.
At first, 7-OH gave him a feeling of euphoria he described as similar to opioids, which "felt like a kind of a miracle," he said.
Nearly a year and a half later, he was in a rapid detox program in Michigan, where he was sedated to sleep through the withdrawals he experienced when he tried to stop taking it.
In the past few years, highly concentrated products with 7-OH — sometimes alongside other semi-synthetic opioids — have popped up online, and at many smoke shops, liquor stores and gas stations. They can come in the form of tablets, gummies, tonics and chocolate.
7-OH, or 7-hydroxymitragynine, is one of the major psychoactive ingredients in kratom, which comes from a tree in the coffee family. It's naturally found in kratom in very small amounts, and seems to act more like an opioid in the human brain than kratom leaf products. Kratom is used by some people with opioid addiction to maintain long-term recovery. Some people say it makes them feel energized or focused. Others describe the effects of kratom like those of opioids, and say it can relieve pain, feel calming or even create euphoria.
Some users of 7-OH and kratom show classic signs of addiction, researchers and policy officials say. But the products are not always clearly labeled, so it's difficult or impossible for users to know what quantity of the substances they are consuming.
"I did not know at all what I was in for. It was much more potent than I had imagined," Tyler said.
Estimates of how many people use kratom and 7-OH in the U.S. are wide-ranging. Some suggest over 5 million people have used kratom in their lifetime. David Epstein, a senior investigator at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Intramural Research Program, says he's seen estimates of kratom use as high as 15 million. Those estimates don't usually distinguish between whole leaf kratom, 7-OH or other related products.
In the last decade, the U.S. government has attempted to restrict both kratom and 7-OH products, but strong opposition to those moves by the public and powerful advocacy groups backing the substances have kept them federally legal.
That's started to change in the last few months.
No federal actions have been taken against "traditional botanical kratom," but a new federal restriction on some 7-OH products could go into place as early as Friday, Nov. 13, 2026.
The path there has not been straightforward. In August, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) restricted the making and sale of three semi-synthetic opioids derived from 7-OH and other related compounds: MGM-15, MGM-16 and mitragynine pseudoindoxyl (MGPI). Those compounds were listed under the Controlled Substances Act alongside the most highly restricted drugs, like heroin and LSD.
That caused backlash from kratom advocates who worried the rule would affect products with "trace amounts" of the semi-synthetic opioid, MGPI. One kratom advocacy organization, the American Kratom Association, filed a federal lawsuit on Aug. 26 against the DEA. It asked the DEA to ensure natural kratom products with traces of MGPI would remain legal.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) then issued a new recommendation on 7-OH and MGPI on Oct. 9, and the DEA changed its course. They now plan to restrict a narrower range of 7-OH and MGPI products: ones that contain higher concentrations of 7-OH and/or MGPI.
HHS and the DEA say they are not focusing on natural kratom products.
Many people who oppose the restriction say kratom and 7-OH products have kept them away from traditional opioids, and helped them manage chronic pain, mood and mental health. Some also point to the fact that opioid deaths in the U.S. are decreasing. In 2023 alone, a KFF report found there were over 79,000 opioid deaths, and in 2024 there were 54,000.
A recent report of data from 53 U.S. poison control centers shows reports of calls related to kratom increased about 1,200% between 2015 and 2025. Chris Holstege, a physician and a professor of emergency medicine and pediatrics at the University of Virginia's School of Medicine, is one of the authors of that report. He said he and the other authors "were a bit stunned" by those findings, which do not distinguish between kratom or products like 7-OH.
The report included 233 deaths associated with kratom during 2015–2025, with 79% of those deaths involving multiple substances. The most severe outcomes were linked to people using multiple substances alongside kratom products, like opioids, stimulants and benzodiazepines.
But Holstege points out over half the reports of calls, 62%, involved people using kratom without other drugs.
The authors used data on kratom from the National Poison Data System (NPDS), which includes calls from the public, healthcare professionals or medical examiners, and medical records.
Still, there are people who report benefits of using kratom or 7-OH, said Epstein, the NIDA investigator.
NPR spoke to one mom in Delaware, Angela Wilson, 44, who said 7-OH has helped her manage excruciating chronic pain related to endometriosis, and symptoms of depression she's had since she was a teenager.
She said she's been taking 32 to 40 milligrams of 7-OH a day, split into three doses, for the last year and a half.
Wilson said kratom powders made her feel anxious and shaky, and 7-OH seems to work for her without those side effects.
"It's been truly life-changing for my family situation, my personal life," she said.
Wilson doesn't have health insurance, and said losing access to 7-OH under new restrictions would be "devastating" for her and her family.
"We're not really sure, you know, what I'm gonna do when it's not available," she said.
Epstein has also heard stories like Tyler's. He said people can become addicted or dependent — and some of his ongoing research suggests that risk is higher with 7-OH products than with whole leaf kratom.
He said for some people, their 7-OH use "seemed to go nicely for the first couple of days, but then they found that they had to keep using to avoid withdrawal," Epstein said. "And some of them, not all of them, but some of them, even said they had to, you know, they couldn't make it through the night. They had to get up in the middle of the night to take more."
He said other people were happy with the effects they got from taking 7-OH and didn't feel like it caused problems for them.
Tyler told NPR that 7-OH tablets gave him more energy at first. He works a job where he's on his feet a lot, and with 7-OH, he said, " I can go, go, go, go, go, you know?"
He began taking around 300 to 400 mg of 7-OH a day, about ten times the dose Angela Wilson takes. In the next year, he said he made a few attempts to stop, but the withdrawals were debilitating.
"The best way to put it, I think, is to imagine having the flu, the worst flu you've had, you know, multiply that by at least three times," he said. "And then just know that all you gotta do is take one pill, and it's gone in seconds."
Another former kratom and 7-OH consumer, Brian, 41, told NPR at the height of his use, he was using much more 7-OH than both Angela Wilson and Tyler. Brian also asked NPR to use only his first name because of the stigma associated with drug use.
Brian used 1,200 mg of 7-OH — and estimates he spent around $150 each day — on the substance. He'd quit using opioids in 2016, but found kratom at a gas station in 2022. He said it claimed to help with energy.
"And 'cause literally right next to the register, nothing taboo about it, looks like those 5-Hour Energy shot type things," he said.
Brian said within minutes of taking it, he realized he felt "exactly" like he did when he'd been taking opioids.
"I was like, 'What is this?,'" he said. "'Like, are you telling me I found a legal, you know, healthy opiate that f***s you up and, you know, you feel great and no consequences, like the legality of it and everything?"
"I was like, 'This is it,'" he said.
Brian tried to stop taking kratom multiple times, but couldn't. One day at a smoke shop, he said the clerk offered him a sample of 7-OH. The clerk described it as a "version of kratom" that Brian could take in lower doses to get the same effects.
"Once I found these little tiny tablets — that I had to take one and it felt like I had taken an Oxycontin — you know, that was it," Brian said. "It was game over."
Researchers say more research should be done to understand the potential benefits of kratom and 7-OH products, including whether they can help treat addiction. On their website, NIDA says, "early studies suggest kratom and kratom compounds warrant further study as experimental treatments for substance use disorders, specifically opioid use disorder."
In the meantime, Holstege, at the University of Virginia's School of Medicine, says current marketing around kratom products seems to attract users for other reasons.
"I find it a little hard to believe that all the shops that are popping up around my campus right now are trying to advertise to people who are addicted to opioids," he said. "So the question is, what else are they advertising this product for?"
" I certainly have a growing list of patients in addiction clinics who are addicted to this, and in withdrawal, that we're having to manage," Holstege added.
Brian stopped taking 7-OH in April 2026, when he said he decided to "quit cold turkey." He said he experienced more debilitating withdrawals from 7-OH than he had from quitting opioids. He noted, though, he'd had a much easier time accessing 7-OH, and took it more frequently than he'd taken opioids.
When stopping 7-OH, he said he felt fearful, anxious, and had gastrointestinal issues. He lost the desire to leave his house.
"It was a nightmare," Brian said.
Tyler told NPR he hasn't used 7-OH or kratom since he traveled to the Michigan detox program in March. He said he doesn't think he would have been able to stop using 7-OH without that program.
"There's no chance," he said. "It's just too addictive and too accessible."
He said the road to feeling like himself again has been even longer than when he stopped using opioids. With opioids, he said, it took a few weeks to feel like he had energy again.
With 7-OH, he said the process has taken months.
"Kind of just this week I'm starting to feel kinda great," he said in October. "But it's been a long journey of getting my energy back."
Copyright 2026 NPR
Topline:
Plans to install automated license plate readers along Western Avenue to target suspected sex trafficking is no longer moving forward after Council District 13 declined a donation of cameras from weapons and technology developer Axon Enterprise.
What's next: The district is now considering cameras that would not use license plate reader technology, according to a spokesperson for Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez. The cameras would be maintained by the Bureau of Street Lighting, and the councilmember is expected to bring a proposal to the City Council before the end of the year.
The backstory: LAPD had previously said it planned to install 18 cameras along Western Avenue between Olympic and Santa Monica boulevards, a corridor the department has targeted for sex trafficking. The department said the cameras would include live-feed monitoring and license plate recognition technology and could be operating by July.
Read on... for more on plans for Western Avenue.
This story first appeared on The LA Local.
Plans to install automated license plate readers along Western Avenue to target suspected sex trafficking is no longer moving forward after Council District 13 declined a donation of cameras from weapons and technology developer Axon Enterprise.
The district is now considering cameras that would not use license plate reader technology, according to a spokesperson for Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez.
The cameras would be maintained by the Bureau of Street Lighting, and the councilmember is expected to bring a proposal to the City Council before the end of the year.
LAPD had previously said it planned to install 18 cameras along Western Avenue between Olympic and Santa Monica boulevards, a corridor the department has targeted for sex trafficking. The department said the cameras would include live-feed monitoring and license plate recognition technology and could be operating by July.
LAPD declined to provide updates over the summer.
Axon Enterprise, which supplies the LAPD with body-worn cameras, stun guns and other equipment, offered to donate the cameras to the department’s Olympic Station, according to CD13 spokesperson Andoni Elias Nava.
“We are against ALPRs. We don’t want to see them in our district,” he said. “So once we realized what that was, we said we don’t really want them in our district.”
A spokesperson for Axon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Monday, Senior Lead Officer Harry Cho said the cameras had been expected to be funded by CD13 and CD10 but that CD13 had pulled its funding.
“Right now, there’s no cameras that are city-operated on Western,” Cho said at the Wilshire Center-Koreatown Neighborhood Council meeting.
Senior Lead Officer Lucy Bermudez confirmed Thursday that the cameras have not been installed along the Western corridor and that the project is on hold.
Nava disputed Cho’s account that the district had pulled funding for the cameras.
“We never committed any kind of funding. The cameras from Axon were supposed to be fully funded by Axon. They were a donation to PD,” he said. “There was no funding that was given to be pulled in the first place.”
He said the district plans to install a different type of camera, but that the details are still being worked out over the next few months, including how many cameras would be installed.
The section of Western Avenue between Olympic and Santa Monica boulevards runs through both CD13 and CD10. A spokesperson for CD10 did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
LAPD initially described the cameras as part of a broader effort to combat human trafficking along Western Avenue ahead of the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics. The department said the cameras would help identify people involved in human trafficking and people targeting minors.
Advocates of sex workers have raised concerns that the cameras would increase police surveillance along the corridor and further criminalize people who work there.
Jayme Kusyk, a Koreatown resident and member of the abolitionist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, said replacing ALPRs with conventional surveillance cameras would not eliminate the concerns raised by sex workers.
“Certainly we definitely want less cameras up, so to any extent they’re fighting that, that’s great,” she said. “But a camera is a camera is a camera. It doesn’t have to be enabled with ALPR technology to still be really harmful.”
She said even conventional CCTV cameras could increase criminalization of sex workers.
“It still increases criminalization. It won’t decrease demand,” she said, adding that clients could become more volatile if they believe they are being watched.
At an Olympic Division Community Police Advisory Board meeting on Nov. 4, LAPD Officer Dan Chavez said officers conducted an operation that morning that resulted in multiple arrests related to sex work, including one person arrested on suspicion of pimping.
One of the sex workers “provided our officers with information saying that she was being pimped by this person and they were able to arrest that individual,” he said.
The city also recently debated the use of Axon’s license plate reader technology.
On Oct. 6, the City Council voted 10-4 to assert jurisdiction over the Police Commission’s approval of an Axon pilot program that would install automated license plate readers on city streetlights. Soto-Martínez, who represents CD13, and Heather Hutt, who represents CD 10, both voted in favor.
The council later voted to veto the pilot, but the measure failed because it needed 10 votes to overturn the Police Commission’s approval. The veto received nine votes on Oct. 27. Hutt and Soto-Martínez both voted in favor of the veto.
Los Angeles Documenter, Ashley Bolter, contributed reporting for this story from the Nov. 4 Olympic Area Community Police Advisory Board meeting. The L.A. Documenters program trains and pays community members to document proceedings at public meetings. Learn more about the program here.
