The U.S. Drought Monitor reported that severe drought conditions have returned to parts of CA, how LAUSD handles campus security, decoding social media bots.
Finding memo: CA lawmakers spar ahead of document dump
Today on State of Affairs:
- The fight over a controversial memo has put two California members of Congress in the spotlight, pitting Representatives Adam Schiff and Devin Nunes against each other.
- Meanwhile: Senator Dianne Feinstein gets by with a little help from her checkbook. Feinstein's $5 million campaign contribution puts her far ahead of challenger Kevin DeLeon.
- We're in the money: California's budget reserve is bulging — but what to do with all that dough?
Guests:
- Jack Pitney, Roy P Crocker of politics at Claremont McKenna College
- Carla Marinucci, senior editor for Politico's California Playbook
Los Angeles School Police Chief on security after Sal Castro Middle School shooting
A 12-year-old girl is in custody after a shooting incident at the Sal Castro Middle School near downtown Los Angeles. She's been charged with negligent discharge of a firearm. It is unclear how the girl got the gun but the fact that it made it on to school grounds has put the spotlight on security.
Take Two spoke down with Chief Steve Zipperman, Chief of Los Angeles School Police Department, to talk about the security searches that are currently conducted on LA Unified campuses and how this latest incident will affect them.
Interview Highlights
Historical and current status of California Safe Schools Planning
Every school in the state of California is required to have some sort of safe school plan. Along with Safe Schools Planning, each district has the opportunity to implement plans they feel would make the school safer and more secure. Back in 1993, there were two incidents at two different high schools in which two students were shot and killed. The then superintendent and the Board of Education decided that they were going to implement some form of random metal detectors, hopefully dissuading students from bringing in firearms. We continue to refine this process to what we believe as the best practices so far.
How are these researches conducted
School police department is not involved at all in these searches. School administers are the ones that are trained and the ones that are carrying out the search on a daily basis. This is not a law enforcement function. However, we don't have metal detectors like you see in airports or sporting events. The policy is very specific, and it's truly random. Schools are required one time daily, at a random time, to select one class room. Within that classroom, students are randomly selected.
The effectiveness of random selection
How do you measure whether the policy is effective? Prior to these wanding policies were put in place, on average we collect about 1000 weapon a year. After 1993, that number went from 1000 to 400 a year, that seems to suggest this policy does deter weapons.
Sal Castro Middle School going forward
Sal Castro Middle School did not seem to have prominent safety issues as far as issues pertaining to policing. It's not a campus that we see criminal activity occurring everyday. It's always going to be a heighten sense of security after these incidents. However, we need to find out what circumstances prompted these tragedies. One of the things we are going to look at is whether we should always have police presence on campus, another is making sure practices like "wanding" remain in place. But we also want to remind parents to talk to their kids about school and check their backpacks. We remind kids that if they see something, say something.
Interview has been edited for clarity
This winter is so hot and dry that 'severe drought' has returned to SoCal
'Keep saving water': UCLA water expert wishes state never declared drought 'over'
When Governor Brown issued mandatory restrictions back in 2015, many people ripped out lawns in favor of drought-resistant gardens or, at the very least, watered our plants a lot less.
But people may be slip and sliding back into their water-wasting ways since the drought officially ended last year.
The U.S. Drought Monitor reports today that large portions of SoCal are back in severe drought conditions.
"If the fires weren't a wake-up call, I don't know what was," says Mark Gold, associate vice chancellor for Environment and Sustainability at UCLA.
Interview highlights
Do you wish the drought was not declared over?
Very much so. I thought the state made a very big mistake in making the cutbacks, moving them from "mandatory" to "voluntary."
What we've seen is that we went from a 24.5 percent reduction in water use – which everybody in the state had a lot to be proud of.
Now, in the year and half or so since those mandatory cutbacks went to voluntary, we're back to about 11 percent of reduction from where we were in 2013.
Would you say we're in a better position than we were before as we head into another dry period?
We're in a much better position individually as people because we did such a great job last year of capturing runoff. ...
[But] this sort of emergency response mentality of "Is it a drought?" or "Is it not a drought?" – that's what's not working. We really have to realize that conservation is a way of life in California.
Cars are a major threat to LA's mountain lions; special overpasses could help
This week The National Park Service found the body of the mountain lion known as P-23 in the Santa Monica Mountain area, near Malibu Canyon Road. It appears she was struck by a car.
NPS has been studying the big cats around the Santa Monica Mountains since 2002, and they say a total of 18 mountain lions have been struck and killed by vehicles over that period.
Seth Riley is one of the NPS researchers studying the mountain lions, and he said these urban cats face unique challenges.
"Major freeways like the 405 and the 101 separate the Santa Monica Mountains from everywhere so the roads are a major barrier to movement back and forth."
However, there is a solution: building crossings over roadways for the mountain lions and other animals. The NPS is part of the effort to build one of these overpasses over the 101 freeway near Agoura Hills.
Riley said the 101 crossing project is moving along and Caltrans is expected to put out its document on the environmental impacts of the project this month. The next steps will be the design phase and then actual construction, so it will be a couple of years before the crossing is actually complete, Riley said.
"The major challenge is that putting a big, wide, 165-foot, vegetated overpass over that freeway costs a lot of money. So we're looking at $60 million or so."
Making sure the crossings feel like an extension of the animals' natural habitat is key, Riley said, so this crossing will be a wide, vegetated path with sound walls.
Bot or not? How one CA lawmaker is trying to make social media more transparent
Facebook and Twitter have come under fire recently for allowing unverified information to be pushed through social media.
But what's at the root of the fake news problem? Often times, it's bots. As California Assemblymember Marc Levine explains it:
"Bots are accounts on social media sites that are not real humans. They're just automated artificial intelligence that push out messages or even buy advertising that have no human connection but [they] do have a goal, and that is often to spread disinformation."
Levine has introduced a bill that would require bot accounts to display a disclaimer. The goal is to make it easier to identify bots as non-human users.
He spoke to Take Two's A Martinez to detail how he plans to bring more transparency to social media sites.
Transparency in 3 steps
Assemblymember Levine's bill establishes new standards that would make it easier to detect when a social media account is in, fact, a bot. He likens the process to that of the Twitter verified check mark.
"What we would require is a similar disclaimer on the bot accounts so that when they're producing content that that content can be shown in a way that users would know could be dubious.
Secondly, we would make sure that all bots are actually connected to a real human, so the real human doesn't have to be doing everything but there needs to be greater accountability for the behavior of those bots.
Lastly, real humans would be responsible for buying advertising on social media, not the bots. We would ban bots from buying any advertising on social media. "
The bill may be heard in committee March 1st.