Latest on evacuations and the N. Calif. dam with a damaged spillway, LAPD's long-standing policy on undocumented immigrants, update on March 7 elections.
City stands by LAPD's long-standing policy on undocumented immigrants
The mission of the Los Angeles Police Department is to protect and serve.
But since 1979, officers have also vowed not to stop anyone solely because a person appeared to be an undocumented immigrant.
"If you're in the crime-fighting business, you can't have people too afraid to be witnesses or too afraid to report crime," says Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney and longtime LAPD watchdog (Disclosure: she is also on the board of trustees for SCPR).
The practice comes from a policy known as Special Order 40, instituted by then-L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates.
A surge of immigrants came to Los Angeles in the late 1970s, and Gates believed that to deal with crimes like gang violence, murders and robberies, he needed the community – even if they were undocumented – to work with officers.
"There's a lot of discretion in policing," says Rice. "There are many, many laws that are not enforced for smarter strategies that are crime-fighting strategies."
Police officers were instructed not to stop and frisk anyone because they might be undocumented.
However, the LAPD could still involve federal officials if someone committed a crime.
"If there's an established gang member who's in jail for violent offenses and they were previously deported, I know for a fact that that person will be held and [immigration officials] will be notified," says Rice.*
The decades-old practice has the full backing of current L.A. Police Chief Charlie Beck, as well as elected officials in City Hall.
"They've reaffirmed it at least four times since Nov. 8th, since the election," says Rice. "It's an important signal to send."
But over the years, many have pressed the city to drop the policy.
In 2008, for example, 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw was shot and killed by Pedro Espinoza, a gang member and undocumented immigrant.
Shaw's family argued that if Special Order 40 didn't exist, then Espinoza never would have been in America to begin with or would have been deported earlier. His parents even took that message on the campaign trail while supporting Donald Trump's presidential run.
But Rice argues dropping the practice would do far more harm.
"The status of that gang member may be a red herring," she says. ""If you deported every undocumented gang member, you would still have scores of thousands of gang members who still engage in the same activities and posing the same danger to their neighbors."
And despite the hard line President Trump has taken on illegal immigration, Rice believes that local officials will hold firm to Special Order 40.
* NOTE: In the interview, Connie Rice referred to Immigration and Naturalization Service, which used to oversee illegal immigration offenses. That agency ceased to exist in 2003, and those duties are now handled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
'The system is broken': California, immigration and President Trump's policies
Immigration has dominated the news headlines since Inauguration Day.
First there was President Trump's executive order "protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry in to the United States."
Then came the protests at airports nationwide as travelers from the countries banned under the executive action arrived in the U.S.
Following on from that, the legal fight to suspend the travel ban, which found its way to the 9th circuit appeals court.
There's more. Against this backdrop, the detention of 600 people across the United States -- 160 in Southern California -- following a series of raids by U.S. Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE) last week.
President Trump responded to the immigration sweeps on Twitter :
The crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign promise. Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2017
What does all of this mean for a state with the nation's largest number of immigrants, both with and without legal documentation?
Take Two's A Martinez and Dorian Merina discussed California's place in the immigration debate at the University of Redlands.
Guests:
"Xiadani" - Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient and student at the University of Redlands
Edina Lekovic - public affairs consultant, Muslim Public Affairs Council
Niels Frenzen- clinical professor of law and director of the Immigration Clinic at USC's Gould School of Law
- San Bernardino Police Department
Steve Wuhs - assistant provost for internationalization at University of Redlands
Watch the full conversation below.
Event highlights
Niels Frenzen
"California, like any other state, can not have laws that directly impact the admission or the deportation of non citizens ... but we have various laws that protect or provide financial aid to undocumented students or DACAmented students who are going to the Cal State or the community colleges or the UCs. So there is an extensive body of law at the state level in California that is more welcoming than alot of other states"
Chief Jarrod Burguan
"Our policy says we will not stop anybody for the sole purpose of determining their immigration status. We do have a caveat in our policy, that allows, if an officer has somebody detained for a legitimate reason ... and there is a question as to whether that person is in violation of federal law, you can hold the person just long enough to contact immigration officials and see if they want that person. That's contained in the policy. I can't tell you the last time that's ever actually happened."
"Xiadani"
"At four-years-old I didn't ask my parents to bring me here, and I think it's important to note that I've been trying in all of the smalls ways that I can to remedy that. I've had an application in to become a citizen since before I got here. I now have DACA ... I have employment authorization. I go to school here with that DACA and I also have an application for political asylum, because as a queer person, it's not safe to be in Mexico and be out in the ways that I feel like I need to be in order to be myself."
Steve Wuhs
"The polarized political environment we're in is challenging in the classroom, because there are boundary lines that one runs in to while teaching that are difficult to navigate. Part of being at a liberal arts institution is questioning those fundamental assumptions with which you've been raised, but this environment is one that's not always conducive to that. "
Edina Lekovic
"The system is broken, that's the fact that we start from, and all of the different aspects of it are broken. For refugee applicants, we have to remember they're fleeing from war and conflict and a lack of basic stability in their lives ...To go from uncertainly and instability into uncertainty and instability in the United States is a sad state to be in."
To listen to edited highlights of the conversation, click on the blue media player above.
Human Voter Guide: March 7 election and how to troubleshoot voting problems
Oroville Dam: 5 things to consider about California's water system
Roughly 200,000 residents have been evacuated from the towns below Lake Oroville in Northern California because of erosion damage to the dam's auxiliary spillway. If a wall at the top of the spillway gives way, the result would be massive flooding in the regions below the lake.
Brad Alexander, Chief of Media Relations for the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, says the second spillway is designed to relieve pressure on the dam when the lake rises to a dangerous level.
"They started using it a couple days ago slowly and then things escalated yesterday with a lot heavier flows and there was a concern they'd have an uncontrolled release of water," he said.
Alexander notes this is the first time water has run out the auxiliary spillway since the dam complex was constructed in 1986. "And since it's never been used before," he said, "it is sort of unexplored ground for the engineers that are up there."
The Oroville dam is an important part of California's water infrastructure. Is what's happening there an isolated incident, or just the most visible symptom of an entire system that is aging and in need of repair?
Jeff Lund is Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis. He answered these key questions about Oroville, and the water system in general.
Where Oroville fits into our state's water supply?
Lake Oroville is our major water storage for the state water project which is about 1/3 of the water supply for Southern California. It's the largest earth-filled dam in the United States.
The spillway is some distance from that earth-filled dam so there's no likelihood for the dam to actually fail. But its really just the top 30 feet or so of the emergency spillway that we are most worried about.
How is our water infrastructure in kept in shape year-round?
We should always have a good reserve fund. We should always be inspecting them and looking for ways to improve them. This is just a reminder of what happens when you stress these systems either with floods or droughts.
With floods you have to worry about a little but more catastrophic outcomes and we are seeing that potential here. We are in the middle of what is so far, the wettest year on record over more than 100 years. We should be seeing some strains. This is the kind of thing you expect to see and we need to be prepared for these kind of events.
What should we be doing to prevent floods, even when the weather is dry?
They have been doing inspections on the flood control systems. In fact, I think the flood control system as a whole (it's really the levy systems) are in better shape than they've been over the last 50 years or so. As we get more and more people in California, we have more and more reasons to pay attention to these sorts of things.
How would you rate, or characterize the status of our water systems?
Most of the systems for the big state water project, they were built in the 50's and 60's. So, there's getting fairly old. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're not working as well. A lot of the mechanical parts; the turbines, the gates, the pumps... those are the things we really need to start worrying about replacing. And then of course, keeping the spillways inspected and upgraded from time to time as well.
What needs to be done to improve the infrastructure across the board?
I think the flood control system is always a chronic problem because we don't have a very good funding model for handling it. We tend to fund it in big lumps, in big bonds, but we don't have regular finding for it year in and year out which what you really need to do pay attention to these things.
I think for that damaged spillway, there's going to have to figure out a way to rebuilt it fairly fast. Depending upon what the bedrock that they find down below it, it'll lay out different options that they have. I'm mostly worried about the next couple of months.
*Quotes edited for clarity*
To hear the interviews with Brad Alexander and Jeff Lund, click on the blue Media Player arrows above.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Lake Oroville. KPCC regrets the error.
On The Lot: Lego Batman, China and Hollywood
The first Lego movie brought in almost $500 million worldwide, so no surprise that Warner Bros sees the animated building blocks as a foundation for a big franchise.
Lego Batman topped the weekend's box office, and Vanity Fair's Hollywood correspondent, Rebecca Keegan, says there are other Lego movies in the works, and the plastic blocks appear to have a big future on the big screen.
Keegan also updates us on one area that has Hollywood execs nervous - US/China relations. Although, we import vast quantities of Chinese goods, movies are one area in which we actually export goods to China. So the film industry is watching how the Trump Administration is approaching China, and hoping they'll continue to have access to the world's largest movie market.
Finally, BAFTA, Image Awards, Scripters. Keegan helps us understand the relative importance of all the various awards leading up to the Academy Awards, and which ones might actually help predict winners.
Click the blue bar above to listen to the full conversation.
Happy Galentine's Day!
February 14th is Valentine's day, this we all know. But Monday, February 13th...is Galentine's day.
What's Galentine's day?
Let's let Leslie Knope answer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgAOcNNMPKI
Amy Poehler played Leslie Knope on the comedy series "Parks and Recreation," which is where the holiday comes from. But since that episode aired in 2011, it's been adopted by ladies everywhere.
You can find gift guides, do-it-yourself instructions for the perfect Galentine's day brunch and even locations hosting Galentine's day events.
So, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate friendship between the ladies. We asked some KPCC gal pals to send in their Galentine's day messages.
Here's what they had to say:
"You gorgeous domestic Queen of feral felines,
You colorful culinary princess of vegetarian cuisine,
You adorable culturally confusing house broken puppy,
You intoxicating positive exotic peacock."
-Mimi Morales, Hollywood
"Happy Galentine's Day to my ladies full of multitudes. You encourage me to be my most authentic self, even if sometimes that means pouring gin into my beet juice or taking ballet class one day and learning knife skills the next.
Thank you for living your lives so true to yourselves that it makes me want to do the same. I don't know what I'd do without you and I am grateful for you all.”
-Myra Hassaram, Los Angeles
“Happy Galentine's Day—best day of the year! You all inspire me daily and I love seeing the force you bring into the world. You are my best cheerleaders and it heartens me to see ladies celebrating ladies.”
-Liz Singleton, Los Feliz
"To my dear lady friends on Galentines' Day,
You are fierce, brave, brilliant, and beautiful. You tackle the working world with gusto and make time to support your family and friends. I still remember every inside joke, all the high fives, and the way you squeezed my hand after that horrible breakup. Though some of you are very far away, I toast to you this Galentine's, because you deserve all the waffles and frittatas your hearts desire."