Pelosi speaks out against Confederate statues in the Capitol, why parking is so bad at Trader Joe's, previewing Monday's eclipse.
State of Affairs: Rohrabacher calls on Assange, Gov. Brown's bonds
Today, on State of Affairs:
- President Trump's controversial response to the violence in Charlottesville could haunt California's conservative lawmakers.
- Two names you don't expect to hear together in a sentence: OC Congressman Dana Rohrabacher takes a London meeting with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
- Several housing bonds could make their way to the ballot in 2018.
Guests:
- Carla Marinucci, senior editor for Politico's California Playbook
- And Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, professor of public policy at USC
Officer involved shootings disproportionately affect blacks, new report finds
Police in California shot at or used force against black people last year at triple the rate relative to their portion of the population, according to a first ever report on use of force released Thursday afternoon by the state Department of Justice.
According to the report, law enforcement agencies reported officers shot at or otherwise seriously injured 782 people across the state in 2016. In dozens of these incidents, officers perceived the people as armed when no weapon was found. More than half of the people were unarmed, the data show.
The statistics begin to fill in the information void that has enveloped police uses of force in California and the rest of the nation, where it is often difficult to garner basic facts.
Until now, no statewide agency has collected numbers on police use of force or the frequency of unarmed people being killed by law enforcement.
"We had nothing," said Assemblymember Freddie Rodriguez (D-Pomona), author of the 2015 bill requiring police shooting data collection on which the report is based. "Now, we have data to look back on what's happening on the street."
Advocates said the data was disheartening, but not surprising. "We know that black people have been bearing the brunt of use of force," said Mark-Anthony Johnson with Dignity and Power Now, an L.A.-based organization calling for greater oversight of law enforcement. "I think we’ve seen evidence that change needs to happen."
Some in law enforcement said hard data will help them better police their communities.
"We need to look into the causal factors," said Edward Medrano, Gardena Police Chief and president of the California Police Chiefs Association, which supported the data collection.
Medrano said it’s a priority among law enforcement leaders to eliminate injuries to community members - and officers.
"I think all of this is helpful to increase the dialog with our communities to help law enforcement evolve," he said. "How and where can we begin that dialog to heal some of the divides in our state and our country?"
Law enforcement agencies were required to collect data on uses of force resulting in serious injury or death beginning in 2016. The state justice department published a 63-page report with some tables and charts, but it has not yet released raw data, which could reveal hot spots for use of force and shootings.
Among the findings in the report:
More than half of the uses of force were in Southern California, a five-county area that accounts for just under half the state's population
Nearly half of incidents began with a call for service
About 20 percent of officers were injured during use of force incidents and another 6 officers died
About 65 percent of civilians were injured and another 19 percent died
As California's use of force data collection took shape, a state official told KPCC that the station's 2015 investigative series "Officer Involved" provided a blueprint.
KPCC built a detailed database of police shootings over five years by piecing together information from thousands of pages of district attorney records in Los Angeles County. This year, KPCC added hundreds more shootings from San Bernardino County.
The racial breakdown in the use of force report mirrors KPCC's reporting, which found black people were shot at higher rates in both counties than their percentage in the population.
KPCC's investigations showed that no officer in Los Angeles or San Bernardino Counties was prosecuted for any of the hundreds of shootings reviewed by prosecutors in the past decade.
Rodriguez’s data collection bill encountered no opposition and passed both houses unanimously in 2015. The law required police agencies to begin collecting data last year.
This year, a California legislator tried to go further and put forth a bill to establish an independent state team to investigate police shootings, which are now investigated by other officers or deputies, including those from the same department. Law enforcement groups opposed the bill. It was watered down to a “study” in committee.
Despite the new reporting law, many of the details of police shootings are likely to remain secret because state law allows law enforcement agencies to withhold evidence regarding shootings from public scrutiny and can shield officer discipline from the public.
The report notes that while all agencies were required to share data with the state, some nevertheless failed to do so. Dozens of agencies, including campus police, reported no significant uses of force incidents last year.
LA artists take a symbolic surf across US-Mexico border
Ignore the 18-foot-high border wall jutting up from the sand, and this could be any other Southern California day at the beach.
Los Angeles-based artist Diego Palacios is standing near the wall – really a steel fence dividing the shore into north and south portions. It extends a couple hundred feet into the water, cutting through the surf break.
“My buddy just surfed across the border there," he said. "That was awesome.”
On this Saturday at Border Field State Park, in the southwest corner of the continental United States, about 10 people are paddling surf boards past the barrier.
They’re greeted beyond the wall, in the open ocean, by a handful of surfers from the Mexico side of the beach.
Surfer Jessica Enriquez said she and her partner drove down from Pacific Beach in San Diego. She joined the group bobbing up and down on their boards in a loose circle, some bowing their heads.
“We had a moment of silence and honored people who have lost their lives or struggled trying to come into the country through the sea,” she said.
Enriquez is wearing a wetsuit against the chilly Pacific waters. She said she wants this trip to make a statement.
“It seems ridiculous that there’s an invisible border right there that you can paddle to and fro. And the border doesn’t make sense," Enriquez said. "Because migration is inevitable.”
Between two identities
There's been a heated national dialogue about borders and walls over the last year, stemming from President Donald Trump's pledge to build a physical barrier across the entire 1,900-mile stretch.
As many Southern Californians know, hundreds of miles of the U.S.-Mexico border are already fenced off.
That includes the boundary between San Diego and Tijuana, where a steel fence coated with rust proofing juts into the ocean, in an effort to stop illegal crossings and smuggling in the water.
To orchestrate a symbolic surf trip here, Palacios enlisted the help of Machine Project, a non-profit experimental arts space in Echo Park.
He said he wanted to memorialize immigrants around the world who've been lost at sea. The project, "Surf Border," is meant to explore the meaning of borders, including how international barriers keep people apart.
Palacios first surfed the border three years ago. He started from the Tijuana side that day, and conditions were rough. He said he was fighting a strong South-to-North current.
“I started off in Mexico and there was this very real danger of being pushed too far into the United States," he said. Palacios worried, "I couldn’t fight the current to get back.”
Palacios was literally being pulled into one country, while paddling furiously to stay in another.
He recalled feeling “adrenaline from the fear. And it was also adrenaline from doing something, that for me as a Mexican American, who’s had to struggle with being between your Mexican culture and your adopted American culture, is something that was exhilarating in that moment.”
Palacios decided he wanted to share the experience with others and highlight what he calls the "absurdist" qualities of the border space.
Sofia Benito is Machine Project’s summer intern. She's about to start her junior year as an art history major at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
For Benito, a dual U.S.-Mexico citizen, the border evokes strong feelings, she said.
“My mind at least goes into a commemorative, or an introspective mode, where I’m really thinking about people who have tried to cross the border," she said. "It’s like a heaviness in my chest. And I think people might experience it differently, but that’s what I’m here to have conversations about.”
Short distance, large divide
The morning of Surf Border, Machine Project members set up two base camps: one on either side of the wall. The tents are just a about a hundred yards apart, but there’s a world of difference between them.
In the U.S., around a half-dozen U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers watch every move of the small group of surfers and supporters from the hillside above the beach.
Occasionally, a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle zooms down the slope so an agent can warn a beachgoer or photographer about getting too close to the fence.
Looking north, the city of Imperial Beach is visible in the distance, across miles of empty shoreline.
It’s nothing like the Mexican side of the fence, starting with the real estate. Playas de Tijuana is bustling with businesses and apartment buildings built right up to the border.
Machine Project’s Operations Manager, Camila Sobral, sends a voice memo from the group’s Tijuana camp, on a beach crowded with picnicking families, musicians, and food vendors.
“It’s crazy just seeing these surfers go across with no problem," she said. "Surfers launching from the U.S. side and surfers launching from the Mexican side, they’re all surfing the same water, and they’re all able to move just as freely.”
The border patrol officers keeping a lookout today aren’t authorized to speak on the record. But a communications officer with the California Border Patrol confirmed the agency got a heads up from Machine Project about their plan to surf the border.
One agent keeping an eye on the day's activities said surfers here sometimes get carried over the invisible international boundary by waves and currents. He said in general, as long as they don’t make landfall or have contact with someone from the other side, there shouldn’t be a problem. No handshakes or high fives are allowed, to prevent the possible transfer of contraband.
But as the afternoon wears on, there does seem to be a problem. Three Jet Skis carrying CBP officers appear near the surfers.
Diego Palacios was approached. “They told us to stay on this side of the wall," he said.
There's also a warning if the surfers do not follow the rules. "They [said they] would take our surf boards for exchanging goods,” Palacios said. "I think if anything those kinds of restrictions accentuate the absurdity of keeping people apart.”
When and how to see the solar eclipse in Los Angeles (without blinding yourself)
Why are Trader Joe's parking lots so small?
Trader Joe’s turns 50 years old this month with the very first store opening in Pasadena – just around the corner from KPCC – in 1967.
And while it might be famous for things like Speculoos Cookie Butter and the pun-tastic Fearless Flyer, there is something special about it that many of us love to hate – the crowded, small parking lots.
"Then again, if they provided big spaces, there would be no Trader Joe's here," says Richard Willson, professor of urban planning at Cal Poly Pomona.
Willson says Trader Joe's is able to be an oasis in food deserts because it can shoehorn a store and parking onto smaller lots.
"What they are doing from an urban planning standpoint is providing a smaller grocery store option in local neighborhoods so that people don't have to drive as much," he says.
That also means more people will have easier access to fresh, healthy foods.
Willson adds stores like Trader Joe's are helping public officials rethink how to design cities.
"They act like people go to places for good parking, but it's not true," he says. "We're learning that you don't have to oversupply parking everywhere to make places attractive. In fact, it makes them less attractive because they're all spread out and not walkable."
Hamilton star Lin-Manuel Miranda surprise visits Panorama High School
A high school in the San Fernando Valley had a surprise visitor Thursday. The creator and star of the Broadway blockbuster musical, Hamilton, stopped by Panorama High School in Panorama City to give a talk to some very lucky students.
"We didn't tell them," said Panorama High School assistant principal, Michele Germic. "They started to get an idea when we had so many news crews. We did have a poster that one of our art teachers made of the outline of Hamilton so they were like, 'Could it be?' It was a great exciting moment when he came out on stage."
Manuel spoke to the school's 1,000 students in a mix of English and Spanish, which went over big, considering the student population.
"We are about 95% Hispanic Latino population. We also have a very large population of new-to-the country students, and it really resonated with them, his message with regard to immigrants and welcoming them to the U.S. and being a part of our history," Germic said.
Miranda emphasized the message of having to work to get what you want and not letting barriers get in the way, Germic said. "Pushing past those, really spoke to these students. Life isn't going to be easy, but you can get where you want to be with hard work."