A Southern California cold snap threatens citrus farming, plus, we take a look at L.A.'s first public fruit orchard. Then, California's prison realignment causes dangerous row of dominoes at local level, a California judge will rule if a 12-year-old boy guilty of murdering neo-Nazi father two years ago, the Los Angeles Kings skate back on the ice, and much more.
Obama addresses gun control, debt ceiling in latest press conference
We just heard President Obama holding his last press conference of his first term as president. The president took on subjects ranging from the debt ceiling to gun control.
For more on this we're joined now by Josh Gerstein, White House Reporter for POLITICO.
Southern California cold snap threatens citrus farming
First we're going to start with the news everyone is talking about: the cold weather. Downtown Los Angeles hit a record low this morning at 35 degrees.
The cold snap is now in its fifth day, but we're not burning surfboards yet. There's no question that most of us are being forced out of our comfort zone. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel, a New Yorker, poked fun at Angelenos inability to deal with the weather on his late night talk show:
All kidding aside, there are folks facing real economic consequences from the cold snap: Citrus growers.
Defense claims suspected terrorist Mohamed Mohamud entrapped by FBI
In November of 2010, a young Somali American man named Mohamed Mohamud was arrested in Portland, Oregon. He was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction after allegedly trying to set off what he believed to be a bomb at a popular tree-lighting ceremony in Pioneer Square.
However, the bomb was a fake, given to him by undercover FBI agents. Now a federal trial is underway to determine his guilt.
We speak to April Baer of Oregon Public Broadcasting, who has been covering this story.
California judge finds boy guilty of murdering neo-Nazi father
On May 1, 2011 at about 4 a.m., a 10-year-old boy crept down the stairs of his family's home with a .357 magnum and killed his sleeping father with one shot to the head. The trial of the boy, now 12, has focused not on his guilt in the act, but whether or not he understood the difference between right and wrong.
The judge issued her decision in the case this morning and KPCC reporter Lauren Osen joins us live from outside the courthouse in Riverside.
California's prison realignment causes dangerous row of dominoes at local level
After a federal court ordered California to reduce its prison population, California enacted "realignment," shifting responsibility for tens of thousands of felons to counties. But a little over a year after the change took effect, local officials say they often lack critical information about who and where these people are. KPCC's Julie Small reports.
In 2011, California began "realignment" – shifting state inmates to local custody to comply with an order from a federal court to ease overcrowding as a way to improve prison medical care.
Counties had only a few months from the time realignment became law to the day they became responsible for supervising thousands of additional felons coming out of state prisons. Officials focused on beefing up probation departments and city jails. Coordinating databases wasn’t a top priority.
"It was a kind of a 'Ready, fire, aim' approach," says Glendale police Chief Ron De Pompa.
De Pompa says, from the outset, he lacked important information about the state prisoners released into his community.
"About 70 percent of the addresses we get on these individuals are bad," De Pompa said. "We are behind the eight-ball from the start because we don’t even know where these individuals reside in our community, until suddenly we encounter them on a call for service or a violent crime or in an arrest situation."
Before realignment, counties could use a state database of low-level felons in their communities to see a parolee’s physical description, address and prior convictions.
Los Gatos Police Chief Scott Seaman, head of the California Police Chiefs Association, says police relied on the database to keep communities safe.
"Parole had a system, which we all had access to, and parole agents would update the cases of their clients," Seaman says. "And we could check that system and we could know what their current status of an offender was if we had contact with them or they came to our attention in the course of an investigation."
Police can still access the state database, but it’s not up-to-date for felons under county supervision. That’s because county probation officers have their own databases to maintain. Seaman says some local police chiefs have had trouble getting access to those county files.
Greatest challenge: Los Angeles County
Under realignment, Los Angeles County has received a third of all felons released from state prisons. In the first year of realignment, the county probation department gained more than 11,000 new cases to track.
"The probation department has been challenged, both with its own ability to process the large numbers of offenders who are coming, but also the difficulties of starting a big program in a short period of time," Seaman says.
"We’re doing it. But we’re doing it with limited resources," says Reaver Bingham, the L.A. County Probation Department's deputy chief of adult services. He oversees the department’s realignment plan.
"We had to build this program quickly," Bingham explains. "So there were certain infrastructure that we had to build. There were certain things that had to be fine-tuned. There were certain basic relationships that we had to formulate. And there were certain internal things that we had to do before we could fully branch out and do some of these other things. But the intent to share information was always there."
Paper records in a computer age
One thing that slows down probation: California’s prisons maintain inmate files the old fashioned way – on paper. Probation staff digitize them by scanning the documents manually.
L.A. County Probation has worked out a system to share the data with the Sheriff's Department, which then shares it with local police departments. But that’s where the data trail ends, which creates another new problem for police: counties aren’t sharing probation data the way state parole officers do.
Fontana Police Chief Rodney Jones says if he arrests an L.A. County probationer in San Bernardino County, he can’t know if they’ve violated the conditions of their probation.
“I have very little access, if any, to find out what those terms are," Jones says. "And [whether] he’s in violation of those terms...or even find out who is probation officer is.”
There’s growing consensus among California law enforcement officials that they need to be able to read every county's probation database.
Matthew Cate, who implemented realignment when he was Secretary of Corrections, recently became head of the California State Association of Counties. Cate agrees that a statewide database would be good to have, but might be difficult to achieve.
A one-size-fits-all system would be difficult to design, says Cate, "until we know that each county can afford to provide their data, that we know whoever is accumulating data is doing it in a way that makes sense.”
L.A. County officials have been meeting with the Brown administration and the state Department of Justice to push for a statewide database of county-supervised felons.
And they’re pushing for the state to fund it.
LA opens first public fruit orchard near LAX
As we mentioned at the top of the show, citrus growers are a keeping close eye on their crops this week because of the freezing temperatures overnight. No word on whether anyone is keeping an eye out for the fruit growing in the state's first public fruit park. It's called the Del Aire Public Fruit Park and it's located here in Southern California. The California Report's Susan Valot paid a visit.
If you find yourself in one Los Angeles-area neighborhood, you can pop into a park and pick some fruit. At least that’s the idea at the new Del Air Public Fruit Park, in an unincorporated part of Los Angeles County, just southeast of LAX.
On a recent Saturday, officials and neighbors gathered to unveil the new public orchard and plant the final peach tree. The tree is among 17 in a small brown patch at the park.
Because it's winter, the trees are dormant, making the patch look more like a garden of brown sticks than a shady orchard. Nearby, 19 other fruit trees are scattered around a green lawn.
“Never in your wildest dreams would you imagine that here it’s 2013 before California has a public park that has a fruit orchard in it. You’d think they’d be all over the place, but they’re not,” said John Koppelman, the head of the neighborhood association that worked to get the orchard in the park.
“And for the first one to pop up next to a Chevron refinery and an airport and a freeway,” Koppelman said with a laugh, “it’s even more shocking.”
Koppelman said the orchard began with a request by the county’s art commission to create an art project as part of a $4 million renovation of the park, which also included a new community center.
Three L.A.-area artists known as Fallen Fruit came up with the idea of creating an orchard that the community could share.
It took a little bit of work to sell the idea of fruit trees as art. But Fallen Fruit artist Matias Viegener said it’s not as crazy as it sounds.
“The fruit tree isn’t art itself. It’s a fruit tree, and it’s a symbol, you know what I mean?” Viegener said. “It’s a symbol. The fruit’s a beautiful symbol. I think that our thought about what the art practice here is that art is something that connects people, right? It doesn’t just connect an artist to an audience. It connects people to each other. And that’s really the function of this orchard.”
Once the fruit is ready, anyone can pick peaches, apricots and plums, among other fruit. The park also includes several kinds of grapevines.
A sign greets orchard visitors with instructions: “The fruit trees in this park belong to the public. They are for everyone, including you. Please take care of the fruit trees. When the fruit is ripe, taste it and share it with others.”
Neighbor Eileen Salmas thinks the orchard will enhance the community, though she said the idea did cause some concern among neighbors about whether people will really share.
“We’ll see what happens as the trees grow and they bear fruit. You know, is somebody going to come by in the middle of the night and pick all the fruit off the trees? Or is it going to be what we envision as community?” Salmas said. “But I think unless we try it, we’re never going to know.”
So why has it taken so long for California, a state rich in agriculture, to have a public fruit orchard?
“I’m going to assume that it’s really all these fears about fruit trees in public space,” Fallen Fruit artist Austin Young hypothesized. “In every meeting, these fears were brought up, but I think, clearly, this park here is going to be a milestone in changing what people think is okay to plant in public space."
It took a bit of persuading at public meetings to get critics behind the orchard idea. Viegener said it’s often difficult to change public perceptions of what public space should be.
“It took a long time because it is very hard to affect change in public space. There’s so many [agencies]. There’s the parks department. There’s the health and safety, buildings and safety,” Viegener said. “So there’s all these organizations that need to check off on things. So any project you see like this has taken many years to come into its shape.”
Fallen Fruit artist David Burns said his group has been thinking about the idea of a shared orchard in public space for eight years now. He said it fills a gap that’s missing in today’s California.
“A hundred and fifty years ago, it was part of the due diligence of the rancho system in California to actually plant fruit trees and take care of people on their journeys across this territory,” Burns said. “And it’s funny that 150 years later, we think everything’s about my boundary and my fence.”
Fallen Fruit said it gets several inquiries every week about doing similar projects in other parts of the country. At the Del Aire Public Fruit Park opening, at least one person approached them about planting a similar orchard in her neighborhood’s park.
L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas was a driving force behind the park, which is in his district. He called the orchard “edible art,” and said he can see public orchards going up in other parts of the county.
“It is quite conceivable, in terms of the other efforts we have around community gardens and open space, green space,” said Ridley-Thomas. “It builds relationships among neighbors and a whole range of things come out of this.”
How to keep yourself healthy during a bad flu season
Flu season this year began about a month early, and it is already taking its toll across the U.S. In total, 47 states are now in the midst of fighting the latest strain of the flu virus, and some spots like New York and Boston have declared public health emergencies.
Some think the flu is just a common illness and nothing to worry about, but it can be no laughing matter, especially for pregnant women, children or the elderly. Flu vaccines are readily available and highly recommended, but they're still just 60-percent effective against the virus.
"100-percent effectiveness would be fantastic, but on the other hand if you can cut your odds that's great too and why not when its a safe vaccine," said science writer Carl Zimmer, author of the book "A Planet Of Viruses." "If you look at it in terms of a public health measure, if you get a lot of people taking the vaccine, you'll have many thousands of people who are not going to get sick and you'll have people that aren't going to die."
The virus peaks in the winter because of the humidity in the air that helps the virus travel farther distances. An infected person coughs, sending virus-infected droplets into the air, to land on doorknobs, keyboards, and other places people, especially in crowded places like schools or offices, may end up picking it up.
Because there are different strains of the virus, you're not guaranteed immunity from contracting it more than once a season. There have been two reported deaths from the flu here in California this year, but for the most part, the state has been spared from the brunt of the virus. That doesn't mean it won't get worse.
"I don't think anybody really knows or can tell you why California has been spared so far. There's nothing special about California, sorry to say," said Zimmer. "But bear keep in mind, this is early, this is not normally the peak of flu season, the modeling suggests that its going to stay this bad or worst for a few more weeks."
How to protect yourself from the flu:
1.) There CDC recommends you get a flu shot!
2.) Avoid sick people if at all possible.
3.) Wash your hands with warm water and antibacterial soap. Wipe down surfaces with antibacterial wipes, especially areas you share with other people.
4.) Avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth before washing hands.
5.) Get plenty of rest, exercise and sleep. Make sure to drink plenty of water and tea to stay hydrated.
Find a flu vaccination clinic in your area:
Seasonal Flu Checklist by American Red Cross
Hollywood Monday: Golden Globes recap
Hollywood's brightest stars were out last night for the Golden Globes, but it was the ladies who really shined. Including the evening's hosts, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler
Here to recap some of the big moments is Rebecca Keegan, film writer for the L.A. Times.
How the Taft community is coping in the wake of school shooting
The Kern County town of Taft is recovering from the shock of a school shooting last week. 16-year-old Bryan Oliver allegedly used a 12-gauge shotgun to target two other students who may have bullied him.
One of the students was hit before a teacher at Taft Union High School convinced the boy to put the gun down. Oliver has been charged with the shooting and will be tried as an adult.
Reporter Alice Daniel from the California Report went to Taft to find out how the community is coping.
Leon Leyson, youngest Holocaust survivor on 'Schindler's List,' dies at 83
This weekend, Southern California lost a prominent Holocaust survivor and educator. Leon Leyson of Fullerton died Saturday after a 4-year-long battle with lymphoma. He was 83.
Leyson was the youngest person saved from the Nazi concentration camps by the German industrialist Oskar Schindler. Schindler employed Jews at his factory in Krakow, Poland, claiming they had special skills he needed. The story of Schindler and these survivors was dramatized in the 1993 Oscar-winning movie, "Schindler's List."
Leyson was just 13 at the time he worked for Schindler, and he was so small he had to stand on the box to operate work machinery. He was a young man by the time he emigrated to the U.S. in 1949, serving in the Army, then going on to attend Los Angeles City College, Cal State Los Angeles and Pepperdine University.
He lived in Fullerton and spent 39 years as a high school teacher, speaking little of his harrowing experience under the Nazi regime, but after the film stirred national interest in Holocaust, he started to give talks and interviews around the country.
In a 2011 interview for the show Off-Ramp, Leyson credited his survival to Schindler, and to luck.
"I had a whole series of fortunate events, you know, many of them, in an unfortunate time," said Leyson. "Everytime something was happening that might have caused me not to survive, I did something not because I was smart. I just did something and it was the right thing."
One such lucky break was when he saw that he had not made the original list of Jews authorized to go work at Schindler's factory.
"Eventually I ended up in front of this officer, a brutal commadant, he was big and tall and when I looked at him all I could see was a belt buckle. And I told him I was on the list," said Leyson. "I was a child I was speaking to a man and he didn't even think I was human. But he looked at the list and he looked at me, and he just pointed me to the group and I jumped in and I waited. And I made it out of the camp. He might have shot me because he was the kind of person who was shooting people on a daily basis."
Leyson lost two brothers in the Holocaust, and said one brother was killed in a massacre in the family's village. Another brother was on a train to a concentration camp and could have been saved by Schindler, who was retrieving his Jewish accountant from the same train. But the young man refused to leave behind his girlfriend.
"People should know the Nazis did not murder numbers. They murdered individuals," said Leyson. "Somebody's brother , somebody's uncle. Somebody's aunt. Somebody's grandchild. Somebody's grandfather."
Leyson saw it as his duty to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, and to highlight the decency of people such as Schindler.
"It's not going to be very long before there won't be any witnesses," said Leyson. "And if I tell my story and there are 100 people in the audience and many of them telling the story to somebody else then somebody else will tell the story to someone else."
Leyson is survived by his wife, two children and six grandchildren. A public memorial for Leyson will be held Feb. 17 at Chapman University.