Following the shooting in Florida, we take a look at campus security. The commercialization of Lunar New Year, how homelessness in the O.C. is similar to L.A.
School safety: What works and what doesn't
A 19-year-old has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, after shooting up a Florida high school Wednesday.
President Trump spoke about the massacre Thursday morning, saying that no child or teacher should be in danger in an American school.
"No parent should ever have to fear for their sons and daughters when they kiss them goodbye in the morning," he said.
For many it's becoming less difficult to believe that the nation is, yet again, talking about a school shooting where teachers and kids were targeted.
Wednesday's incident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, just an hour north of Miami, is one of too many events of this nature. And it once again raises an important question:
What can be done to protect children who are just going to class?
Ken Trump is a school security expert and a consultant with National School Safety and Security Services. In a conversation with Take Two Thursday, he outlined three prevention methods that work — and one that doesn't.
Communication is key
"We know that the number one way we learn of weapons or a plot on campus is when a kid comes forward and tells somebody," the security expert said.
It's an issue of school climate, where a kid will come forward and talk to an adult they trust to let them know of a plot or a weapon. We can't stress that enough. That was the number one lesson from Columbine: getting someone to come forward and realize that they're not snitching, they may be saving a life including their own.
Make drills a part of everyday life
"Drills that we stress today need to be balanced and realistic and not cross the line of reasonableness to the point where they do more harm," Ken Trump said.
Focus on the fundamentals. On your lockdowns, don't just do them at 9:10 in the morning, do them between class change, during lunch periods, when students arrive and at dismissal — and vary them.
Do you need to do one every week? Certainly not. But several times a year -- three or four times. Change them up a little bit so that people think on their feet.
These are schools. It's about education. We're integrating security into education, not integrating education into security, so it's a delicate balancing act.
Keep the conversation going
"Focus on the how not the wow," said security expert Trump.
Remember that school safety has to be a part of the climate and conversation and culture of the school, not just when there's a high-profile incident in our headlines and in our conversations, but down the road six months or six years after an incident occurs. Is it still part of your daily conversation and your daily culture in your school? It's very easy for safety to fall to the back burner when there's not a crisis. We tend to overreact when there is one, and then we forget about it again.
Metal detectors don't work
"Too often we see the facade of security," the security expert said.
Even after a high-profile incident, for a period schools may set up some new procedures and screening at the front door, and a lot of that, quite frankly, is smoke and mirrors.
(Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.)
How to subscribe to new cars instead of buying them
Of the 17 million cars that are sold in the U.S. each year, about a third are leased. The rest are purchased. But there's a new option for drivers coming on strong in So Cal this year — car subscriptions.
Los Angeles resident Jeremy Irvine had always owned his cars, but recently, he said, "I figured out at 38 years old that I'm not a car person."
Now he's a car subscriber, driving a Ford Focus hatchback he pays for by the month through a service called Canvas. It costs him about $500 per month.
Irvine is like a small but growing number of people who need a car but would rather not own one. So they're subscribing – paying a monthly fee to access a portfolio of vehicles they can change when they want. The flat fee includes maintenance, insurance, roadside assistance plus dropoff and delivery. And the subscription can be ended at any time.
No hassles is the idea.
Irvine had been driving a BMW X5, "but I'd sort of decided I didn't want my car anymore," Irvine said. "I was on CarMax on my phone, and somehow Instagram knew I was on Carmax and started sending me ads for Canvas. I'd never heard of car subscriptions before."
Most people haven't. Naturally, Irvine was suspicious. He actually thought it was a scam. But it isn't. Car subscriptions a real thing. And they're set to take off this year even if they're only a tiny part of the market at the moment.
"It's tiny," said David Liniado, with Cox Automotive. His company plans to bring its FlexDrive car subscriptions to an as-yet-unnamed car sharing company in L.A. in just a few weeks.
"The number of people that subscribe to mobility is probably in the 100,000 to 150,000 vehicle range," he said. But over the next 12 to 18 months, he said, "We are going to see those numbers ramp up very dramatically."
Several companies plan to offer car subscriptions in the L.A. area this year.
Volvo will offer its new Care by Volvo program with its all-new XC40 compact crossover in just a couple weeks. The Swedish auto maker says interest in the program so far is exceeding expectations, despite what might seem like a fairly steep cost. It's $600 per month, including the car, the tax, the insurance, and additional concierge services.
Lincoln will also pilot a month-to-month subscription service in Southern California by summer.
Cadillac was the first company to offer car subscriptions in Los Angeles. Book by Cadillac launched in November 2017, giving drivers access to a curated portfolio of Cadillac vehicles and the option to exchange them up to 18 times per year -- for $1,800 per month.
"We felt it was really important to offer another way to access a luxury vehicle," said Melody Lee, global director of Book by Cadillac. Right now, the average age of a Cadillac owner is 62, but a Cadillac subscriber is 38 years old.
"Today's more traditional methods are financing and leasing," she added, "but we felt that in looking at the landscape of other industries and the way that consumers are choosing to access products and services, subscription is one that seems to be very popular."
In other words, just like people subscribe to music services like Spotify, movie rentals through Netflix – even fashion with a service like Rent the Runway – they can now use a car without needing to own it. And give it back when they're done.
Ford was next to market in SoCal. It launched Canvas in West L.A. last November and now has 600 subscribers in California. Canvas lets drivers choose from about a dozen different Ford vehicles, including the Mustang, and has the added perk of letting multiple drivers share a single subscription.
And then there's Porsche. Its subscription – Porsche Passport – also launched last year, but it's only in Atlanta. For now. California being a top market for the German sports car maker, it's likely the Porsche Passport program will make its way here.
There are two plans. Launch -- for $2,000 per month -- includes on-demand access to eight models, including the Boxster, Cayman, Macan and Cayenne. The Accelerate plan -- for $3,000 -- upgrades the cars to 22 models that are interchangeable at any time, including the iconic 911.
So L.A., get ready to not own a car, like Jeremy Irvine, who's driven since he was 16 but just switched from owning to subscribing. "It's liberating," he said, "to not own something."
Even a car in car-centric L.A.
Proposal to ban tackling before high school sparks #SaveCaliforniaFootball movement
Two members of the California state assembly have proposed banning tackle football for kids until they get to high school.
Earlier this week, we spoke to one of the bill's sponsors, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher. She explained why parents shouldn't be allowed to decide whether their children participate in certain high-risk activities:
"Sometimes, the government does step in and we provide guidance and rules. And I think that that's a necessary part of the government. I know that I can't let my kids get on a bicycle without a helmet, I can't let my six-year-old in the back of my car without a car seat. And so we have these protective measures, in particular with children, because children aren't making these decisions for themselves. They can't. They're not old enough. It's the same thing we've done for smoking and drinking. I think it's time to do it for tackle football."
Bert Esposito is the president of the Southern California Football Coaches Association. He spoke to Take Two's A Martinez about the Save California Football movement, which has come out strongly against the proposal.
"As parents, we all have very good concerns about our children and the safety of our children and we can basically take this whole thing to a whole other level if people allow it to, and outlaw so many things, but I still believe that this is something that has to brought up through the parents and not through government...
I'm a firm believer in seven on seven and flag football but that's not the game that we play. And you're attacking a major part of what this game is..."
The bill that has not been formally introduced yet.
Food, family, fortune during Lunar New Year in Los Angeles
Friday ushers in the year of the dog as part of the annual tradition of Lunar New Year. Los Angeles is home to about a million East and Southeast Asian immigrants who celebrate the holiday. As one of them, I am witnessing a commercial evolution of Lunar New Year here in the city.
As a kid in China, I associated Lunar New Year with three things: food, family and fortune.
It was a time to get together, exchange red envelopes filled with crispy bills and feast until we dropped. Now living in San Gabriel Valley, I've noticed that what used to be limited to Chinatown a decade ago is now permeating American mainstream culture.
Jan Lin is a Professor of Sociology at Occidental College. He's studied the development of L.A.'s Chinatown. He said Lunar New Year was celebrated here as far back as the late 1800s. At that time, the festivities were limited to Chinese communities because of exclusionary restrictions that stopped Chinese immigrants from becoming citizens or owning land in California.
By the 1950s, however, Lunar New Year had really started to expand out of the Chinese community in Southern California.
"By that time, China was a Communist country and the new generations of Chinese were very concerned about showing their loyalty to the American public and at the same time staging this nice festival holiday. Really it was a way of reaching out to the American public," Lin said.
Now Lin says you can see competing Lunar New Year events in different areas like Monterey Park, San Gabriel and Downtown L.A. Communities even coordinate to ensure their celebrations are held on different dates.
It's impossible to go shopping right now without seeing gold coins and red lanterns. The Westfield Santa Anita mall is festooned with 2018's zodiac animal of the year -- the dog.
Debbie Oeung is the media director of the shopping center.
"This year we have a golden dog in our center court across from our money god statue," Oeung said.
Step up to the money god, and it's loaded with coins and dollar bills and blessings from mall visitors.
"We have been seeing some of that in our dog statue as well. That's just a fun tradition that people have been participating in, and we love to see that," Oeung said.
Even big dogs like Disney California Adventure and San Diego Sea World are holding Lunar New Year celebrations. The California Lottery's in on it, too, with Lunar New Year themed Scratchers.
Lin said he's noticed more high-end Lunar New Year products in recent years, like Louis Vuitton handbags.
"I would actually relate that to a growing flow of more wealthy mainland Chinese American tourists, immigrants and business people to the Southland and throughout Los Angeles," Lin said.
In a way, this American commercialization of Lunar New Year makes sense. It is, after all, a holiday that's about luck. And food.
Frank Barajas is a store supervisor with the L.A.-based candy company Sugarfina. His store has a whole range of Lunar New Year sweets.
"The custom labeling and limited [availability] really just sells itself to more than the Asian culture. They take a look and say 'what's this pretty red box?' They just pick it up and buy it," Barajas said.
This sort of packaging is spot-on to me as a Chinese American, but maybe just a little too decadent.
"A really big gold aspect of it is the 'swizzle stick' which is actually wrapped with 24-carat gold. You get the accent of the red envelope as well as the Sugarfina gummy envelope as well," Barajas said.
Debbie Oeung, of the Westfield Santa Anita mall, is Taiwanese American. She celebrates Lunar New Year.
"We think it's so important to celebrate this tradition that so many of our customers find very meaningful to them," she said. "We really want to create a great experience for them when they come to shop."
Lunar New Year isn't just about gifts and food. Traditionally, Lin said, the holiday can include household spring cleaning and celebrating family and ancestors, so some people might question the commercialization of the day.
"I think that the types of people that might be critical are the guardians of Chinese American history that don't want us to forget the struggles of the early Chinese when they came to this country," Lin said.
Whether or not you end up purchasing any Chinese New Year merchandise this week, remember to spend time with family and some homemade dumplings.
Gong Xi Fa Cai! Wishing you prosperity in the new year.
How Orange County's homelessness problem compares with LA's
An Orange County judge has signed off on a plan allowing county officials to clear a large homeless encampment from the Santa Ana riverbed. In exchange, the displaced homeless will get 30-day motel vouchers while social workers help them try to get back on their feet. The legal fight over the camp has sparked a debate about how cities in Orange County treat homeless people.
If the controversy sounds familiar, Los Angeles has gone through similar battles in the past. KPCC's Orange County Reporter Jill Replogle said that in this lawsuit, homeless advocates relied heavily on a Los Angeles case where a judge ruled that homeless people had a constitutional right to sleep.
KPCC's Social Safety Net Reporter Rina Palta said these L.A. cases have shaped the city's policies around homelessness.
Police can't arrest people for sleeping on the streets or in cars or take homeless people's possessions based on the reasoning that you can't punish people for sleeping outdoors if they aren't given alternative shelters, Palta explained. These regulations have made L.A.' homeless problem more obvious, she said.
"It's pretty much why you see homeless folks wherever you go in the city these days because police can't simply kick them out anymore. And they're not just concentrated in Skid Row. Some would say that it's actually made the homeless population more visible in L.A. because people are seeing it in their own neighborhoods... And it has perhaps resulted in some of the changes we're seeing now with people providing public investments in tackling homelessness. Others would argue of course that this has made L.A. a magnet and a mecca for homeless."
Replogle said Orange County's homeless population isn't nearly as big as L.A.'s, but the community is not used to seeing people on the streets so the Santa Ana River homeless camp was still shocking to them.