Tokyo has lost its status as the world’s largest city, with another sprawling Asian metropolis, Indonesia’s vast capital, knocking it off the top spot.
Dhaka, Bangladesh, follows close behind with almost 40 million, while Tokyo’s population stands at 33 million, putting it in third place.
Cairo remains the only non-Asian city among the top 10.
According to the report, released by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, urbanization has reshaped the global population landscape.
Cities now house 45 percent of the world’s 8.2 billion people, up from just 20 percent in 1950.
The study found a quadrupling in the number of megacities—urban areas with 10 million or more inhabitants—from eight in 1975 to 33 in 2025, with 19 of those in Asia.
The report points to significant growth for cities like Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Hajipur (India), and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), all projected to surpass the 10 million threshold by 2050, when the number of megacities worldwide is expected to reach 37.
While megacities draw most of the attention, small and medium-sized cities—defined as those with under 1 million residents—continue to outnumber and outpace megacities in population and growth, especially in Africa and Asia.
Of the 12,000 cities analyzed, 96 percent have fewer than 1 million inhabitants.
What People Are Saying
United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Li Junhua said: “Urbanization is a defining force of our time. When managed inclusively and strategically, it can unlock transformative pathways for climate action, economic growth, and social equity.” He added, “To achieve balanced territorial development, countries must adopt integrated national policies that align housing, land use, mobility, and public services across urban and rural areas.”
What Happens Next
Globally, the number of cities is projected to exceed 15,000 by 2050, with most having populations below 250,000.
While rural communities continue to shrink except in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, small and medium-sized cities are expected to drive the next wave of global urbanization, spurring both opportunities and challenges in infrastructure, housing, and climate adaptation.
PORTLAND, Ore. — A town hall is being hosted by the Portland Street Response Team Tuesday, November 18 from 6-7:30 p.m. at the East Portland Community Center on SE 106th Ave. It’s designed to be attended in person or online here.
The City of Portland calls the Portland Response Team an important resource. They say there will be time for the community to ask questions and provide perspectives.
A wrongfully convicted man who spent more than 30 years behind bars will receive $19.1 million as part of a settlement with the city of Baldwin Park, officials said.
Daniel Saldana, 56, was convicted in connection to a 1989 drive-by shooting outside a Baldwin Park high school football game that left two students injured. But for years Saldana maintained he was innocent, insisting he wasn’t at the shooting.
Saldana was was freed from prison in 2023 after a judge declared him factually innocent and, on Friday, the Baldwin Park City Council agreed to pay $19.1 million to settle a wrongful conviction federal lawsuit.
Attorneys for Saldana argued in the lawsuit it was the “egregious misconduct” of a Baldwin Park detective that led to the wrongful conviction in 1990.
Saldana could not be reached for comment, but his attorneys released a statement blaming the wrongful conviction on a Baldwin Park detective.
“Mr. Saldana’s wrongful conviction resulted from the egregious misconduct of a Baldwin Park detective who systematically fabricated evidence and pressured witnesses throughout a fundamentally flawed investigation,” said Amelia Green, one of Saldana’s attorneys.
The case against Saldana began to unravel when one of the codefendants, Raul Vidal, told the state parole board in 2017 that Saldana was not present at the shooting.
A deputy district attorney had been present at Vidal’s parole hearing, but the testimony didn’t spark a review of the case at the time. It was not until 2023 that the state’s parole board turned over transcripts of the hearing to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit.
The district attorney’s office then moved to have Saldana’s conviction overturned, and a judge found him factually innocent in May 2023.
In February 2024, Saldana and his attorneys filed a suit against the city and former Baldwin Park Police Detective Michael Donovan, alleging the former detective coerced witnesses and falsified reports to get Saldana convicted.
Donovan allegedly pressured a teen witness to testify that Saldana was the second shooter in the incident, although the teen originally testified there had been only one shooter, according to the lawsuit.
In a statement, the city of Baldwin Park confirmed the settlement and said the incident did not involve any current city employees.
“The city sincerely hopes Mr. Saldana can now move forward in his new life,” the statement read.
Daytona Beach City Manager Deric C. Feacher is defending how city employees use taxpayer-funded credit cards, even as an audit is now underway to review city spending practices.On Monday, Feacher pushed back against growing criticism over how city-issued P-cards are being used for expenses that range from hotel bills and restaurant tabs to birthday cakes and flowers. City records show some purchases appear to extend beyond official business.”There is still no issues that I’ve been able to see currently through my basic review,” Feacher told WESH 2 News.Feacher emphasized that city spending is already subject to oversight. “There’s always periodic audits that take place with our purchasing department,” he said. “So, it’s always someone evaluating and looking at each P-card expenditure and who’s using it.”The city’s P-card program came under scrutiny after city commissioner Stacy Cantu raised concerns. A former employee who oversaw the program did so before leaving earlier this year. That employee said in an email the city was hemorrhaging funds and that her concerns were ignored. Feacher disputed that account.”Not only was there something done,” he said. “There were follow-up meetings that took place with the employee, who decided in one of the emails that she didn’t need to meet with the CFO because she was going to leave.”When asked whether the city completed a full review after her departure, Feacher confirmed the process continued. “We reviewed all of those things, and we’ll provide you all the documents after she left our organization,” he said.City commissioners have selected an auditor to review the credit card spending.Feacher said some policies are about 20 years old and need to be updated. “Staff has been working on them for the past year,” Feacher said. “One of the top three priorities for our CFO, when she was hired about a year ago, was to look at our procurement and purchasing policy, and that’s in the works now.”We asked about some of the transactions. Records reviewed by WESH 2 News show hundreds of thousands of dollars in city spending at a local auto repair shop, raising questions about whether the contract had been rebid in recent years.”It’s not like we just went to the oil change place next door,” Feacher said. “There’s a process for that.”However, one city commissioner told WESH 2 they do not recall voting on that contract within the last five years, suggesting it may have expired and was never voted on again. Feacher also confirmed that contractors working for the city had been issued P-cards, something that raised further concern since those individuals are not city employees. The city has now suspended those cards.”Does it specifically say in their contract that they are allowed to have a credit card? No, it doesn’t,” Feacher said. “But it does not say that we are not allowed to let them use our stuff to get tax exemptions because they’re doing work we required.”Feacher said the city expects to finalize an updated draft of its spending and procurement policies in the coming weeks.”I’m very concerned that the narrative that’s been created, without reviewing the facts, could affect the people that I work with every day,” he said.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. —
Daytona Beach City Manager Deric C. Feacher is defending how city employees use taxpayer-funded credit cards, even as an audit is now underway to review city spending practices.
On Monday, Feacher pushed back against growing criticism over how city-issued P-cards are being used for expenses that range from hotel bills and restaurant tabs to birthday cakes and flowers. City records show some purchases appear to extend beyond official business.
“There is still no issues that I’ve been able to see currently through my basic review,” Feacher told WESH 2 News.
Feacher emphasized that city spending is already subject to oversight. “There’s always periodic audits that take place with our purchasing department,” he said. “So, it’s always someone evaluating and looking at each P-card expenditure and who’s using it.”
The city’s P-card program came under scrutiny after city commissioner Stacy Cantu raised concerns.
A former employee who oversaw the program did so before leaving earlier this year. That employee said in an email the city was hemorrhaging funds and that her concerns were ignored. Feacher disputed that account.
“Not only was there something done,” he said. “There were follow-up meetings that took place with the employee, who decided in one of the emails that she didn’t need to meet with the CFO because she was going to leave.”
When asked whether the city completed a full review after her departure, Feacher confirmed the process continued. “We reviewed all of those things, and we’ll provide you all the documents after she left our organization,” he said.
City commissioners have selected an auditor to review the credit card spending.
Feacher said some policies are about 20 years old and need to be updated.
“Staff has been working on them for the past year,” Feacher said. “One of the top three priorities for our CFO, when she was hired about a year ago, was to look at our procurement and purchasing policy, and that’s in the works now.”
We asked about some of the transactions. Records reviewed by WESH 2 News show hundreds of thousands of dollars in city spending at a local auto repair shop, raising questions about whether the contract had been rebid in recent years.
“It’s not like we just went to the oil change place next door,” Feacher said. “There’s a process for that.”
However, one city commissioner told WESH 2 they do not recall voting on that contract within the last five years, suggesting it may have expired and was never voted on again.
Feacher also confirmed that contractors working for the city had been issued P-cards, something that raised further concern since those individuals are not city employees. The city has now suspended those cards.
“Does it specifically say in their contract that they are allowed to have a credit card? No, it doesn’t,” Feacher said. “But it does not say that we are not allowed to let them use our stuff to get tax exemptions because they’re doing work we required.”
Feacher said the city expects to finalize an updated draft of its spending and procurement policies in the coming weeks.
“I’m very concerned that the narrative that’s been created, without reviewing the facts, could affect the people that I work with every day,” he said.
The law works quickly in Singapore, where last week an Australian man with a habit of disrupting events charged at Ariana Grande after jumping a barrier at the Asian premiere of “Wicked: For Good.”
This week, he’s already serving his sentence for the offense.
Johnson Wen, 26, was convicted Monday of being a public nuisance and sentenced to nine days in jail, the BBC reported. Videos from the Thursday incident show Wen jumping a barricade at Universal Studios Singapore and running at Grande, then putting his arms around her neck and shoulders while jumping up and down and flashing a big smile to the cameras. He was separated from his shocked target by her co-star Cynthia Erivo and escorted off by security.
But that wasn’t all — Wen tried a second time to jump the barricades that lined the event’s yellow carpet but was pinned down by security, the BBC said. He was arrested Friday.
The Australian was in Singapore on a 90-day tourist visa and has been in custody since his arrest. He was sentenced Monday after the prosecution requested a week behind bars on a charge that carries up to a three-month sentence, according to Singapore’s the Straits Times.
“Dude this is is not okay,” one commenter had written Thursday on Wen’s Instagram post showing him charging onto the carpet and grabbing Grande. “Look how badly you scared her! You put hands on her. I sincerely hope you [are] charged with something and banned from events.”
The judge in Singapore apparently thought something similar when speaking with Wen at the trial.
Wen has disrupted several celebrity and sporting events by running onto stages and into the middle of sporting events, including at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. “I won’t do it again, your honor,” he told the judge when asked if there was anything to mitigate his behavior, per the Straits Times.
“Are you paying lip service or is this your intention?” the judge asked. Wen replied in the affirmative, saying he was “going to stop.”
The judge referenced Wen’s earlier intrusions and noted that he hadn’t faced consequences previously, the Straits Times reported.
“Perhaps you thought the same would occur here, but Mr. Wen, you are wrong,” the judge said, adding that there are always consequences to actions.
The judge said Wen seemed “to be attention-seeking, thinking only of yourself, and not the safety of others, when committing these acts.” He said the act was premeditated and added two days to the requested sentence. It’s unclear whether Wen was also fined.
Prosecutors had labeled him a “serial intruder” who was aiming for clout online, the BBC reported.
Wen, who goes by “Pyjama Man” online, wrote on Instagram as he posted video of himself during the Thursday incident, “Dear Ariana Grande Thank You for letting me Jump on the Yellow Carpet with You.” Commenters did not support his enthusiasm.
After doing promotion for “Wicked: For Good” with a number of her castmates in cities around the world, Grande did not mention what happened in Singapore when she appeared at a Q&A about the film on Saturday in Century City. On Sunday, she attended the motion picture academy’s 16th Governors Awards at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood, where Tom Cruise was given an honorary Oscar, along with Debbie Allen, Dolly Parton and production designer Wynn Thomas.
The U.S. premiere of “Wicked: For Good” — which also stars Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard — is planned for Monday in New York, with the movie opening domestically in wide release Thursday.
Koreatown resident Scott Lyness was well aware that the city of Los Angeles was looking to tackle its food waste problem.
While bicycling to work, he saw the growing number of green trash bins popping up on curbs. He read the notice sent to his home instructing residents to expect green bins to be delivered at some point.
Still, Lyness was not prepared for what came next: 13 green bins deposited earlier this month outside the apartment building he manages on New Hampshire Avenue.
That’s on top of the three bins that the city delivered the previous week at a smaller building he also manages next door, and the two green bins that those properties were already using.
Lyness, 69, who works as a project manager at USC, said the two buildings don’t have anywhere near the room to store so many full-size cans — and don’t generate enough organic waste to fill them. He’s tried to have his tenants contact city offices to say they don’t need them. He said he’s even thought about throwing them into the street.
“Our neighborhoods are being inundated with green waste bins,” he said.
City officials are working furiously to get Angelenos to separate more of their food waste — eggshells, coffee grounds, meat bones, unfinished vegetables, orange peels, greasy napkins — to comply with SB 1383, a state composting law passed in 2016. They’ve even implemented Professor Green, an online chatbot that can help residents decide what can and can’t go in the green bin.
SB 1383 requires that 75% of organic waste be diverted away from landfills by the end of the year and instead turned into compost. Food and other organic waste sent to landfills is a significant source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Methane has a global warming potential about 80 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
To reach that goal, crews from L.A.’s Bureau of Sanitation have deposited huge numbers of 90-gallon green bins in front of some apartment buildings, including duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and larger buildings that have been grandfathered into the city’s curbside trash collection program.
Scott Lyness, 69, stands near green waste bins outside the apartment building he manages in Koreatown.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Residents are already familiar with the green bins, which were long reserved for lawn clippings and other yard waste but now are the destination for food scraps as well.
Most large apartment buildings in L.A. have been spared from the recent round of green bin deliveries, since they participate in recycLA, the city trash franchise program that relies on private waste haulers.
Sanitation officials say that Angelenos who prefer smaller, more manageable containers should fill out a form to get a 30- or 60-gallon replacement. They point out that the bins are part of a much larger effort by the city to reach its zero-waste goals and “lead on sustainability.”
Most of the green bins’ contents are taken to a facility in Bakersfield, where the resulting compost can be used by farmers, said Heather Johnson, a sanitation spokesperson.
“While some may find [the bins] inconvenient at the moment, in the short term they will result in more diverted waste and cleaner air,” Johnson said in an email.
Despite those serious intentions, Angelenos have been poking fun at the “Great Green Bin Apocalypse of 2025,” as journalist and podcaster Alissa Walker framed the situation on Bluesky. Walker recently shared a photo showing what appeared to be 20 green bins in front of one property, right next to a discarded sofa.
“This one is probably my favorite,” she wrote. “I like how they lined them all up neatly in a row and then left the couch.”
Green organic waste bins outside an apartment building in Koreatown.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
After Walker urged others to send in pictures, Silver Lake resident Tommy Newman posted a photo on Bluesky showing eight bins outside an eight-unit building, just south of Sunset Boulevard.
“Unless they are running a juice bar in there, how could they possibly create this much organic waste on a weekly basis?” wrote Newman, who works at a county housing agency.
Over on X, another observer summed up the absurdity in a different way. “LA gave every multi family unit a green bin due to a bureaucratic fever dream about composting,” the person wrote. “I have 5 personally.”
In recent months, L.A.’s sanitation agency has sent teams of “ambassadors” into neighborhoods to educate residents about the need to throw food in the green bins.
That means keeping food out of the 60-gallon black bins where residents have been accustomed to dumping most of their garbage, which ultimately winds up in landfills. Recyclable items, including glass and aluminum, will continue to go into blue bins.
The changes were also spelled out on fliers sent out by the city last summer, with a clear warning in all capital letters: “Unless we hear from you immediately, we will deliver a 90-gallon green container to your residence.”
Lyness saw those alerts and knew about the change. But he contends that most people would have missed the news or thrown the fliers away. Depositing an inordinate amount of bins around town is just not the way to encourage people to properly dispose of their organic waste, he said.
The city’s new food-waste program, which is projected to cost $66 million a year, is one reason the City Council approved a huge increase in trash fees earlier this year, in some cases doubling them. Each 90-gallon green bin costs the city $58.61, tax included, though residents are not being directly charged for the recent deliveries.
Sanitation officials say they have delivered more than 65,000 green bins across the city, with 4,000 to go. For residents waiting for them to be removed or replaced with a smaller bin, only 1,000 orders can be carried out in a regular workday, those officials said.
Around the corner on North Berendo Street, Lyness’ neighbor Lucy Alvidrez agreed that the green bins were troublesome while dragging in her black bin Thursday afternoon.
“They sure got carried away with it,” she said, pointing across the street to an apartment building with about two dozen green bins on its front curb.
Alvidrez, 69, who has lived in the neighborhood for two decades, never had an issue with trash collection until the city dropped off four green bins, one for each unit in her building. She was more fortunate than Lyness: sanitation workers took two of the bins back, upon request.
Alvidrez said she would prefer that the city “spend our money feeding the homeless” instead of purchasing bins that no one needs, she said.
A dozen green organic waste bins occupy a street in Koreatown..
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Nearby, Lyness opened a neighbor’s green bin, which was filled to the brim with trash that wasn’t compostable and should have gone in a black bin. If no one knows what to put in the green bins, nothing is going to improve, he said.
The “City of Trees” is facing a big backlog. Except in cases of an emergency, it could take crews one to two years to respond to concerns about trees on Sacramento property.Even as the city struggles to keep up, it is making plans to plant more trees in the years ahead, meaning the workload is only expected to grow.Sacramento’s identity is deeply rooted in its dense urban forest.”We pride ourselves on being the city with the most trees,” said East Sacramento resident Brett Davison.However, he and his neighbors say they have been dealing with a growing concern over the upkeep of all these city trees.”I have neighbors where it’s gotten under their roof tiles,” he said. “I just think of it as a safety issue.”A safety issue that has insurance companies taking notice.”Their insurance company flew a drone over their house,” Davison said of his neighbors.The issue comes as California is in the midst of an insurance crisis.”The insurance company had said, ‘You can’t. You’ve got to trim it back,’” he said.Davison heard the same thing from his insurance company.Since the trees are on public property maintained by the city, they say they have tried to report concerns to Sacramento over the last year or so. But the response had them stumped.”At that point, they were booked out for two and a half years for any sort of maintenance or thinning of trees in Sacramento,” Davison said. “I thought he was kidding.”KCRA 3 Investigates confirmed that, for requests the city deems non-emergencies, there is a backlog, often with a wait time of at least one year.”It’s been frustrating,” Davison said. Sacramento Media & Communications Specialist Gabby Miller, who handles inquiries involving the city’s Urban Forestry Division, declined an interview on the topic.Only by email would she say that the root cause of all this stems from staffing shortages and the 2023 storms that did unprecedented damage.Here is the prepared statement Miller provided:”The City of Sacramento maintains more than 100,000 trees in streets and parks across the city’s 100 square miles. Each tree is pruned on a proactive cycle that typically takes five to seven years to complete.”Residents who have concerns about City trees or would like to request pruning are encouraged to use the 311 Customer Service Center, either by dialing 311 or emailing 311@cityofsacramento.org. This system ensures requests are documented and tracked through to completion.”The City typically receives more than 500 service requests each month related to tree issues, with numbers increasing significantly during extreme weather. Emergency calls—such as when a tree or branch poses an immediate risk to public safety—are responded to within one hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Non-emergency requests usually receive an initial response within 48 hours. Crews prioritize work based on severity and efficiency, so that as many requests as possible are completed each month.”Severe storms in 2023 caused unprecedented damage to trees throughout Sacramento. Combined with staffing shortages in the Urban Forestry section, this created a backlog of non-emergency requests, with many taking a year or longer to address. Despite these challenges, the City has managed to keep up with emergency requests.”Substantial efforts have been made to improve the situation, including hiring more staff in Urban Forestry and directing additional resources to tree care service contracts. These steps have already accelerated pruning efforts and begun to reduce the backlog in recent months. While progress has been significant, the City recognizes there is still more work ahead before service levels fully meet public expectations.”One East Sacramento resident said he was finally able to get his concern taken care of after reaching out to Councilmember Pluckebaum.The councilmember told KCRA 3 Investigates that he usually gets a call a week about a limb falling on a car or a fence.However, on New Year’s Day in 2023, the calls to the city seemed endless.”That was a really big storm. It was significant and expensive,” Pluckebaum said.He said the city has a contract with West Coast Arborists, and the company had to bring in all its arborists from the West Coast to respond.”Fourteen hundred people to swarm the city and clear our streets, but it also cleared our budget,” Pluckebaum said.Nearly three years later, the city’s still feeling the fallout.”Our only answer is to figure out how to either reduce costs and/or raise revenue such to provide for that level of service that the folks expect,” he said.”Is there anything in the works to take any of those steps that you know of?” KCRA 3 Investigates’ Lysée Mitri asked.”No, unfortunately, it’s probably going to require yet another tax measure. We don’t have another strategy in the near term. We’re looking at budget cuts for the next three years,” Councilmember Pluckebaum said.Meanwhile, beyond three years, the job of maintaining trees is only expected to grow.In June, the city council voted unanimously to try to double the tree canopy by 2045, focusing on areas that currently lack tree cover. The plan will mean more trees on both public and private property.”Voting to increase the tree canopy is like, you know, voting for puppy dogs or apple pie, right? These are uncontroversial types of initiatives. Now, a discussion about how to pay for it is a whole other conversation,” Pluckebaum said.Currently, about 10% of trees in Sacramento are maintained by the city. It’s not clear if that would continue to be the case, but the newly adopted Sacramento Urban Forest Plan estimates that full implementation means the city would need an extra $12-13 million a year. “I’m all about more trees. Bring it on. I love, I love the trees, but you better have enough maintenance crews to handle what you’ve got going on first before you add any more,” Davison said.For many, the current financial landscape is sowing seeds of doubt.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
The “City of Trees” is facing a big backlog. Except in cases of an emergency, it could take crews one to two years to respond to concerns about trees on Sacramento property.
Even as the city struggles to keep up, it is making plans to plant more trees in the years ahead, meaning the workload is only expected to grow.
Sacramento’s identity is deeply rooted in its dense urban forest.
“We pride ourselves on being the city with the most trees,” said East Sacramento resident Brett Davison.
However, he and his neighbors say they have been dealing with a growing concern over the upkeep of all these city trees.
“I have neighbors where it’s gotten under their roof tiles,” he said. “I just think of it as a safety issue.”
A safety issue that has insurance companies taking notice.
“Their insurance company flew a drone over their house,” Davison said of his neighbors.
The issue comes as California is in the midst of an insurance crisis.
“The insurance company had said, ‘You can’t. You’ve got to trim it back,’” he said.
Davison heard the same thing from his insurance company.
Since the trees are on public property maintained by the city, they say they have tried to report concerns to Sacramento over the last year or so. But the response had them stumped.
“At that point, they were booked out for two and a half years for any sort of maintenance or thinning of trees in Sacramento,” Davison said. “I thought he was kidding.”
KCRA 3 Investigates confirmed that, for requests the city deems non-emergencies, there is a backlog, often with a wait time of at least one year.
“It’s been frustrating,” Davison said.
Sacramento Media & Communications Specialist Gabby Miller, who handles inquiries involving the city’s Urban Forestry Division, declined an interview on the topic.
Only by email would she say that the root cause of all this stems from staffing shortages and the 2023 storms that did unprecedented damage.
Here is the prepared statement Miller provided:
“The City of Sacramento maintains more than 100,000 trees in streets and parks across the city’s 100 square miles. Each tree is pruned on a proactive cycle that typically takes five to seven years to complete.
“Residents who have concerns about City trees or would like to request pruning are encouraged to use the 311 Customer Service Center, either by dialing 311 or emailing 311@cityofsacramento.org. This system ensures requests are documented and tracked through to completion.
“The City typically receives more than 500 service requests each month related to tree issues, with numbers increasing significantly during extreme weather. Emergency calls—such as when a tree or branch poses an immediate risk to public safety—are responded to within one hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Non-emergency requests usually receive an initial response within 48 hours. Crews prioritize work based on severity and efficiency, so that as many requests as possible are completed each month.
“Severe storms in 2023 caused unprecedented damage to trees throughout Sacramento. Combined with staffing shortages in the Urban Forestry section, this created a backlog of non-emergency requests, with many taking a year or longer to address. Despite these challenges, the City has managed to keep up with emergency requests.
“Substantial efforts have been made to improve the situation, including hiring more staff in Urban Forestry and directing additional resources to tree care service contracts. These steps have already accelerated pruning efforts and begun to reduce the backlog in recent months. While progress has been significant, the City recognizes there is still more work ahead before service levels fully meet public expectations.”
One East Sacramento resident said he was finally able to get his concern taken care of after reaching out to Councilmember Pluckebaum.
The councilmember told KCRA 3 Investigates that he usually gets a call a week about a limb falling on a car or a fence.
However, on New Year’s Day in 2023, the calls to the city seemed endless.
“That was a really big storm. It was significant and expensive,” Pluckebaum said.
He said the city has a contract with West Coast Arborists, and the company had to bring in all its arborists from the West Coast to respond.
“Fourteen hundred people to swarm the city and clear our streets, but it also cleared our budget,” Pluckebaum said.
Nearly three years later, the city’s still feeling the fallout.
“Our only answer is to figure out how to either reduce costs and/or raise revenue such to provide for that level of service that the folks expect,” he said.
“Is there anything in the works to take any of those steps that you know of?” KCRA 3 Investigates’ Lysée Mitri asked.
“No, unfortunately, it’s probably going to require yet another tax measure. We don’t have another strategy in the near term. We’re looking at budget cuts for the next three years,” Councilmember Pluckebaum said.
Meanwhile, beyond three years, the job of maintaining trees is only expected to grow.
In June, the city council voted unanimously to try to double the tree canopy by 2045, focusing on areas that currently lack tree cover. The plan will mean more trees on both public and private property.
“Voting to increase the tree canopy is like, you know, voting for puppy dogs or apple pie, right? These are uncontroversial types of initiatives. Now, a discussion about how to pay for it is a whole other conversation,” Pluckebaum said.
Currently, about 10% of trees in Sacramento are maintained by the city. It’s not clear if that would continue to be the case, but the newly adopted Sacramento Urban Forest Plan estimates that full implementation means the city would need an extra $12-13 million a year.
“I’m all about more trees. Bring it on. I love, I love the trees, but you better have enough maintenance crews to handle what you’ve got going on first before you add any more,” Davison said.
For many, the current financial landscape is sowing seeds of doubt.
The owners of Crypto.com Arena and L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles have filed plans with the city to potentially add another tower to their multibillion-dollar sports and entertainment complex.
AEG last week proposed a 49-story high-rise that would hold a hotel, residences, bars and restaurants.
The tower would rise across Olympic Boulevard from L.A. Live on a corner lot on Georgia Street now used by AEG for parking.
Many planned residential and other commercial projects in Los Angeles have stalled prior to construction in recent years as developers face economic headwinds, including unfavorable interest rates and rising costs of materials and labor.
AEG, too, will not be breaking ground on this project in the near future, a company representative said.
The company’s recent land-use application, which outlined the plans, is just a “first step for a potential development” on the company’s property at 917 W. Olympic Blvd., spokesman Michael Roth said. “AEG remains optimistic about downtown’s long-term prospects and is positioning the site for future development when conditions improve.”
The application calls for a large-scale development with 364 dwelling units and 334 hotel rooms.
The 783,427-square-foot building would also include bars and restaurants on levels 1, 5 and 6, along with a restaurant/nightclub on the eighth floor.
Residents and hotel guests would share an amenity deck with a restaurant, bar, pool, spa, club room, fitness area and a dining terrace. The complex would have 666 parking spaces.
In September, the City Council approved a $2.6-billion expansion of the Convention Center despite warnings from its advisors that the project would draw taxpayer funds away from essential city services for decades to come. Mayor Karen Bass and a majority of the council believe that the project will create thousands of jobs and boost tourism and business activity, making the city more competitive on the national stage.
The new construction will connect the two existing south and west exhibit halls by adding 190,000 square feet of space to create one contiguous hall with more than 750,000 square feet, and will add 39,000 square feet of meeting room space and 95,000 square feet of multipurpose space.
AEG is a co-developer of the Convention Center project with Plenary Americas.
Los Angeles-based AEG is one of the world’s biggest venue and event companies, with more than 20,000 employees. The company was founded in 1995 when Denver billionaire investor Philip Anschutz bought the Los Angeles Kings, and in 1999 it opened the downtown arena then known as the Staples Center, now Crypto.com Arena.
Among AEG’s recent developments is the IG Arena in the outer citadel of Nagoya Castle in Nagoya, Japan, where sports and entertainment events, including sumo wrestling, are held.
SAN FRANCISCO — Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a trailblazing San Francisco Democrat who leveraged decades of power in the U.S. House to become one of the most influential political leaders of her generation, will not run for reelection in 2026, she said Thursday.
The former House speaker, 85, who has been in Congress since 1987 and oversaw both of President Trump’s first-term impeachments, had been pushing off her 2026 decision until after Tuesday’s vote on Proposition 50, a ballot measure she backed and helped bankroll to redraw California’s congressional maps in her party’s favor.
With the measure’s resounding passage, Pelosi said it was time to start clearing the path for another Democrat to represent San Francisco — one of the nation’s most liberal bastions — in Congress, as some are already vying to do.
“With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative,” Pelosi said in a nearly six-minute video she posted online Thursday morning, in which she also recounted major achievements from her long career.
Pelosi did not immediately endorse a would-be successor, but challenged her constituents to stay engaged.
“As we go forward, my message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power,” she said. “We have made history, we have made progress, we have always led the way — and now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy, and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear.”
Pelosi’s announcement drew immediate reaction across the political world, with Democrats lauding her dedication and accomplishments and President Trump, a frequent target and critic of hers, ridiculing her as a “highly overrated politician.”
Pelosi has not faced a serious challenge for her seat since President Reagan was in office, and has won recent elections by wide margins. Just a year ago, she won reelection with 81% of the vote.
However, Pelosi was facing two hard-to-ignore challengers from her own party in next year’s Democratic primary: state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), 55, a prolific and ambitious lawmaker with a strong base of support in the city, and Saikat Chakrabarti, 39, a Democratic political operative and tech millionaire who is infusing his campaign with personal cash.
Their challenges come amid a shifting tide against gerontocracy in Democratic politics more broadly, as many in the party’s base have increasingly questioned the ability of its longtime leaders — especially those in their 70s and 80s — to sustain an energetic and effective resistance to President Trump and his MAGA agenda.
In announcing his candidacy for Pelosi’s seat last month after years of deferring to her, Wiener said he simply couldn’t wait any longer. “The world is changing, the Democratic Party is changing, and it’s time,” he said.
Chakrabarti — who helped Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) topple another older Democratic incumbent with a message of generational change in 2018 — said voters in San Francisco “need a whole different approach” to governing after years of longtime party leaders failing to deliver.
In an interview Thursday, Wiener called Pelosi an “icon” who delivered for San Francisco in more ways than most people can comprehend, with whom he shared a “deep love” for the city. He also recounted, in particular, Pelosi’s early advocacy for AIDS treatment and care in the 1980s, and the impact it had on him personally.
“I remember vividly what it felt like as a closeted gay teenager, having a sense that the country had abandoned people like me, and that the country didn’t care if people like me died. I was 17, and that was my perception of my place in the world,” Wiener said. “Nancy Pelosi showed that that wasn’t true, that there were people in positions of power who gave a damn about gay men and LGBTQ people and people living with HIV and those of us at risk for HIV — and that was really powerful.”
While anticipated by many, Pelosi’s decision nonetheless reverberated through political circles, including as yet another major sign that a new political era is dawning for the political left — as also evidenced by the stunning rise of Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist elected Tuesday as New York City’s next mayor.
Known as a relentless and savvy party tactician, Pelosi had fought off concerns about her age in the past, including when she chose to run again last year. The first woman ever elected speaker in 2007, Pelosi has long cultivated and maintained a spry image belying her age by walking the halls of Congress in signature four-inch stilettos, and by keeping up a rigorous schedule of flying between work in Washington and constituent events in her home district.
However, that veneer has worn down in recent years, including when she broke her hip during a fall in Europe in December.
That occurred just after fellow octogenarian President Biden sparked intense speculation about his age and cognitive abilities with his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June of last year. The performance led to Biden being pushed to drop out of the race — in part by Pelosi — and to Vice President Kamala Harris moving to the top of the ticket and losing badly to Trump in November.
Democrats have also watched other older liberal leaders age and die in power in recent years, including the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, another San Francisco power player in Washington. When Ginsburg died in office at 87, it handed Trump a third Supreme Court appointment. When Feinstein died in office ill at 90, it was amid swirling questions about her competency to serve.
By bowing out of the 2026 race, Pelosi — who stepped down from party leadership in 2022 — diminished her own potential for an ungraceful last chapter in office. But she did not concede that her current effectiveness has diminished one bit.
Pelosi was one of the most vocal and early proponents of Proposition 50, which amends the state constitution to give state Democrats the power through 2030 to redraw California’s congressional districts in their favor.
The measure was in response to Republicans in red states such as Texas redrawing maps in their favor, at Trump’s direction. Pelosi championed it as critical to preserving Democrats’ chances of winning back the House next year and checking Trump through the second half of his second term, something she and others suggested will be vital for the survival of American democracy.
On Tuesday, California voters resoundingly approved Proposition 50.
In her video, Pelosi noted a litany of accomplishments during her time in office, crediting them not to herself but to her constituents, to labor groups, to nonprofits and private entrepreneurs, to the city’s vibrant diversity and flair for innovation.
She noted bringing federal resources to the city to recover after the Loma Prieta earthquake, and San Francisco’s leading role in tackling the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis through partnerships with University of California San Francisco and San Francisco General, which “pioneered comprehensive community based care, prevention and research” still used today.
She mentioned passing the Ryan White CARE Act and the Affordable Care Act, building out various San Francisco and California public transportation systems, building affordable housing and protecting the environment — all using federal dollars her position helped her to secure.
“It seems prophetic now that the slogan of my very first campaign in 1987 was, ‘A voice that will be heard,’ and it was you who made those words come true. It was the faith that you had placed in me, and the latitude that you have given me, that enabled me to shatter the marble ceiling and be the first woman Speaker of the House, whose voice would certainly be heard,” Pelosi said. “It was an historic moment for our country, and it was momentous for our community — empowering me to bring home billions of dollars for our city and our state.”
After her announcement, Trump ridiculed her, telling Fox News that her decision not to seek reelection was “a great thing for America” and calling her “evil, corrupt, and only focused on bad things for our country.”
“She was rapidly losing control of her party and it was never coming back,” Trump told the outlet, according to a segment shared by the White House. “I’m very honored she impeached me twice, and failed miserably twice.”
The House succeeded in impeaching Trump twice, but the Senate acquitted him both times.
Pelosi’s fellow Democrats, by contrast, heaped praise on her as a one-of-a-kind force in U.S. politics — a savvy tactician, a prolific legislator and a mentor to an entire generation of fellow Democrats.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a longtime Pelosi ally who helped her impeach Trump, called Pelosi “the greatest Speaker in American history” as a result of “her tenacity, intellect, strategic acumen and fierce advocacy.”
“She has been an indelible part of every major progressive accomplishment in the 21st Century — her work in Congress delivered affordable health care to millions, created countless jobs, raised families out of poverty, cleaned up pollution, brought LGBTQ+ rights into the mainstream, and pulled our economy back from the brink of destruction not once, but twice,” Schiff said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Pelosi “has inspired generations,” that her “courage and conviction to San Francisco, California, and our nation has set the standard for what public service should be,” and that her impact on the country was “unmatched.”
“Wishing you the best in this new chapter — you’ve more than earned it,” Newsom wrote above Pelosi’s online video.
On her first day in office, Mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency on homelessness.
The declaration allowed the city to cut through red tape, including through no-bid contracts, and to start Inside Safe, Bass’ signature program focused on moving homeless people off the streets and into interim housing.
On Tuesday, nearly three years after she took the helm, and with homelessness trending down two years in a row for the first time in recent years, the mayor announced that she will lift the state of emergency on Nov. 18.
“We have begun a real shift in our city’s decades-long trend of rising homelessness,” Bass said in a memorandum to the City Council.
Still, the mayor said, there is much work to do.
“The crisis remains, and so does our urgency,” she said.
The mayor’s announcement followed months of City Council pushback on the lengthy duration of the state of emergency, which the council had initially approved.
Some council members argued that the state of emergency allowed the mayor’s office to operate out of public view and that contracts and leases should once again be presented before them with public testimony and a vote.
Councilmember Tim McOsker has been arguing for months that it was time to return to business as usual.
“Emergency powers are designed to allow the government to suspend rules and respond rapidly when the situation demands it, but at some point those powers must conclude,” he said in a statement Tuesday.
McOsker said the move will allow the council to “formalize” some of the programs started during the emergency, while incorporating more transparency.
Council members had been concerned that the state of emergency would end without first codifying Executive Directive 1, which expedites approvals for homeless shelters as well as for developments that are 100% affordable and was issued by Bass shortly after she took office.
On Oct. 28, the council voted for the city attorney to draft an ordinance that would enshrine the executive directive into law.
The mayor’s announcement follows positive reports about the state of homelessness in the city.
As of September, the mayor’s Inside Safe program had moved more than 5,000 people into interim housing since its inception at the end of 2022. Of those people, more than 1,243 have moved into permanent housing, while another 1,636 remained in interim housing.
This year, the number of homeless people living in shelters or on the streets of the city dropped 3.4%, according to the annual count conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. The number of unsheltered homeless people in the city dropped by an even steeper margin of 7.9%.
The count, however, has its detractors. A study by Rand found that the annual survey missed nearly a third of homeless people in Hollywood, Venice and Skid Row — primarily those sleeping without tents or vehicles.
In June, a federal judge decided not to put Los Angeles’ homelessness programs into receivership, while saying that the city had failed to meet some of the terms of a settlement agreement with the nonprofit LA Alliance for Human Rights.
Councilmember Nithya Raman, who chairs the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, said the end of the emergency does not mean the crisis is over.
“It only means that we must build fiscally sustainable systems that can respond effectively,” she said. “By transitioning from emergency measures to long-term, institutional frameworks, we’re ensuring consistent, accountable support for people experiencing homelessness.”
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
Danny Lakey, left, and Cheryl Shadden, center, pray with fellow community members outside of Brazos River Baptist Church on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. Voters will decide whether area around Mitchell Bend Highway will incorporate as a city during the election.
Amanda McCoy
amccoy@star-telegram.com
Voters rejected a proposition to form a city in rural Hood County, according to unofficial results Tuesday. With 100% of the precincts reporting, 76 voters were against the proposal and 50 supported it.
Some residents wanted to form the city in Mitchell Bend as a last resort to regulate noise and pollution from a cryptomining plant and nearby power plants.
The complaints over a constant whirring noise from cooling plants at MARA Holdings’ data center near Granbury began almost three years ago when neighbors, including Cheryl Shadden and Danny Lakey, described how the noise permeated through the walls of their homes and contributed to health issues that included sleep disturbances, dizziness and high blood pressure.
“I’m not sure what we are going to do. We will regroup,” Shadden said. “We are not done fighting.”
Lakey said, “This isn’t good. We will have to see where to go from here.”
The county commissioners lacked the authority to regulate the noise because it was in an unincorporated area, so residents took the matter in to their own hands.
MARA, for its part, said previously that the company is “a good neighbor” and that it has created jobs and contributed to schools and to the community.
However, days before Tuesday’s election MARA filed a federal lawsuit against several Hood County officials, including Elections Administrator Stephanie Cooper, County Attorney Matt Mills and County Judge Ron Massingill, alleging that the officials approved an illegal petition and allowed the incorporation question on the the ballot. The suit also alleged that there was not an official map showing the boundaries for the Mitchell Bend incorporation area. The company also alleged that its Constitutional rights and rights for due process were violated.
Shortly after filing the lawsuit, MARA sought a temporary restraining order to try to stop the election from moving forward, but on Sunday evening, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor denied the motion.
O’Connor stated in his ruling that MARA failed to prove that holding the election would cause irreparable harm and that the company still could challenge the election in court after it is held.
“Stopping the vote on incorporation at this late hour causes confusion and delay to the voters,” he wrote. He said the MARA Holdings would have an opportunity “to challenge alleged misconduct — if needed— after the election takes place.”
“As we have previously said, the current incorporation effort seeks only to target specific businesses — including MARA — with punitive taxes and restrictive ordinances, which is contrary to the principles of fair and lawful governance. We intend to vigorously defend against any attempt to weaponize local government against law-abiding businesses,” the company said.
MARA said it has invested $322 million in Granbury and has contributed to schools and nonprofits. Since acquiring the Granbury site in 2024, the company said, it has moved toward a quieter and more energy efficient cooling method and has built a sound wall around the center. It said independent sound studies show it operates below state and county limits.
This story was originally published November 4, 2025 at 7:28 PM.
With my guide dog Freddie, I keep tabs on growth, economic development and other issues in Northeast Tarrant cities and other communities near Fort Worth. I’ve been a reporter at the Star-Telegram for 34 years.
NEW YORK — Voters were casting ballots in high-stakes elections on both coasts Tuesday, including for mayor of New York, new congressional maps in California and governor in both New Jersey and Virginia, states whose shifting electorates could signal the direction of the nation’s political winds.
For voters and political watchers alike, the races have taken on huge importance at a time of tense political division, when Democrats and Republicans are sharply divided over the direction of the nation. Despite President Trump not appearing on any ballots, some viewed Tuesday’s races as a referendum on him and his volatile second term in the White House.
In New York, self-described democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, 34, was favored to win the mayoral race after winning the Democratic ranked-choice mayoral primary in June. Such a result would shake up the Democratic establishment and rile Republicans in near equal measure, serving as a rejection of both former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a more establishment Democrat and Mamdani’s leading opponent, and Trump, who has warned that a Mamdani win would destroy the city.
On election eve, Trump warned that a Mamdani win would disrupt the flow of federal dollars to the city and took the dramatic step of endorsing Cuomo over Curtis Sliwa, the Republican in the race.
“If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home, because of the fact that, as a Communist, this once great City has ZERO chance of success, or even survival!” Trump wrote Monday on his social media platform.
A vote for Sliwa “is a vote for Mamdani,” the president added. “Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice. You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!”
Mamdani, a Ugandan-born naturalized U.S. citizen and New York state assemblyman who defeated Cuomo in the primary, has promised a brighter day for New Yorkers with better public transportation, more affordable housing and high-quality child care if he wins. He has slammed billionaires and some of the city’s monied interests, which have lined up against him, and rejected the “grave political darkness” that he said is threatening the country under Trump.
He also mocked Trump’s endorsement of Cuomo — calling the former governor Trump’s “puppet” and “parrot.”
Samantha Marrero, a 35-year-old lifelong New Yorker, lined up with more than a dozen people Tuesday morning at her polling site in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood to cast her vote for Mamdani, whom she praised for embracing people of color, queer people and other communities marginalized by mainstream politicians.
Marrero said that she cares deeply about housing insecurity and affordability in the city, but that it was also “really meaningful to have someone who is brown and who looks like us and who eats like us and who lives more like us than anyone we’ve ever seen before” on the ballot. “That representation is really important.”
New York mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo speaks to reporters as he marks his ballot in New York on Nov. 4, 2025.
(Richard Drew / Associated Press)
And she said that’s a big part of why people across the country are watching the New York race.
“We’re definitely a beacon in this kind of fascist takeover that is very clearly happening across the country,” she said. “People in other states and other cities and other countries have their eyes on what’s happening here. Obviously Mamdani is doing something right. And together we can do something right. But it has to be together.”
Elsewhere on the East Coast, voters were electing governors in Virginia and New Jersey, races that have also drawn the president’s attention.
In the New Jersey race, Trump has backed the Republican candidate, former state Rep. Jack Ciattarelli, over the Democratic candidate, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, whom former President Obama recently stumped for. Long a blue state, New Jersey has been shifting to the right, and polls have shown a tight race.
In the Virginia race, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a 46-year-old former CIA officer, defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, according to an Associated Press projection.
Trump had not endorsed Earle-Sears by name, but called on Virginians to “vote Republican” and to reject Democratic candidate Spanberger, whom Obama has also supported.
“Why would anyone vote for New Jersey and Virginia Gubernatorial Candidates, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, when they want transgender for everybody, men playing in women’s sports, High Crime, and the most expensive Energy prices almost anywhere in the World?” Trump recently wrote on his social media site, repeating some of his favorite partisan attacks on Democrats from the presidential campaign trail last year.
At a rally for Spanberger in Norfolk, Va., over the weekend, Obama put the race in equally stark terms: as part of a battle for American democracy.
“We don’t need to speculate about the dangers to our democracy. We don’t need to wonder about whether vulnerable people are going to be hurt, or ask ourselves how much more coarse and mean our culture can become. We’ve witnessed it. Elections do matter,” Obama said. “We all have more power than we think. We just have to use it.”
Voting was underway in the states, but with some disruptions. Bomb threats disrupted voting in parts of New Jersey early Tuesday, temporarily shutting down a string of polling locations across the state before law enforcement determined they were hoaxes.
In California, voters were being asked to change the state Constitution to allow Democrats to redraw congressional maps in their favor through 2030, in order to counter similar moves by Republicans in red states such as Texas.
Leading Democrats, including Obama and Gov. Gavin Newsom, have described the measure as an effort to safeguard American democracy against a power grab by Trump, who had encouraged the red states to act, while opponents of the measure have derided it as an antidemocratic power grab by state Democrats.
Trump has urged California voters against casting ballots by mail or voting early, arguing such practices are somehow “dishonest,” and on Tuesday morning suggested on his social media site that Proposition 50 was unconstitutional.
“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump wrote, without providing evidence of problems. “All ‘Mail-In’ Ballots, where the Republicans in that State are ‘Shut Out,’ is under very serious legal and criminal review. STAY TUNED!”
Both individually and collectively, the races are being closely watched as potential indicators of political sentiment and enthusiasm going into next year’s midterm elections, and of Democrats’ ability to get voters back to the polls after Trump’s decisive win over former Vice President Kamala Harris last year.
Voters too saw the races as having particularly large stakes at a pivotal moment for the country.
Michelle Kim, 32, who has lived in the Greenpoint neighborhood for three years, stood in line at a polling site early Tuesday morning, waiting to cast her vote for Mamdani.
Kim said she cares about transportation, land use and the rising cost of living in New York and appreciated Mamdani’s broader message that solutions are possible, even if not guaranteed.
“My hope is not, like, ‘Oh, he’s gonna solve, like, all of our issues,’” she said. “But I think for him to be able to represent people and give hope, that’s also part of it.”
Lin reported from New York and Rector from San Francisco. Times staff writer Jenny Jarvie in Atlanta contributed to this report.
As much as any city, Seattle is synonymous with the tech industry. Over the past 40 years, Seattle and its suburbs have seen hometown heroes like Microsoft and Amazon grow into some of the biggest businesses on the planet. Around them has sprung up a diverse network of companies whose work touches nearly every aspect of public life, from Redfin to Costco to Wizards of the Coast, to name a few.
Tech culture has seemingly permeated nearly every aspect of city life here—a fact about which some local Mossbacks grumble—and it has transformed certain neighborhoods entirely over the past few decades. This is especially true of the South Lake Union neighborhood, where Jeff Bezos has parked his mighty balls, and a new crop of office towers and hotels have sprung up around them in priapic fashion, eager to serve Amazon’s considerable needs.
Seattle is also a distinct cultural destination in its own right, and the stuff you’ve seen before on TV—like the Pike Place Market (please note it is not possessive; Pike Place, not Pike’s Place) or the ferry boats scooting around the Puget Sound—is very much worth checking out while you’re in town. Live sports, live music, a surprisingly good comedy and theater scene, great shopping, and awesome restaurants (particularly with fresh seafood) are all on deck for Seattle travelers, and I do suggest trying it all.
I know you’re here for work, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. With the right hotel, a bar or two to decompress in, and a choice dinner reservation, Seattle offers high levels of enjoyment amidst the busy professional environment. We work hard, we play hard—try and keep up, and no one complains about the rain, because it’s simply a fact of life.
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Where to Stay in Seattle
Courtesy of Palisociety
107 Pine Street, (206) 596-0600
Tucked a block away from Pike Place Market, with epic views looking out over the market and on to Elliott Bay, this Seattle location from the California-based Pali Society offers unbeatable location benefits galore. You can literally use the market as your breakfast pantry, just a block outside your door—grab a morning pastry from Piroshky Piroshky or an espresso from Ghost Alley—and in a matter of minutes be anywhere downtown for meetings or at the Convention Center for convention stuff. Beloved Pike Place market mainstays like Athenian Cafe (for seafood), Alibi Room (for day drinking), and Café Campagne (for all-day French bistro) are seconds from your door. It literally does not get more Seattle than this.
110 Boren Avenue N., (206) 455-9077
Tech travelers with commitments in South Lake Union may want to choose a hotel directly adjacent to the action, and with around 10 to choose from, let me make it simple: Level Seattle is where you want to stay. This place is hyper modern to the extreme, with blazing fast Wi-Fi throughout the property, a vast, impressively modern gym with Peloton bikes and a climbing wall, and a level of detached chic interior design throughout that fits the busy travel vibe. If you’re here for a night or two, this place is great; if you’re in town for longer, and really getting your tech work on, Level Seattle also offers tastefully furnished apartment suites.
700 3rd Avenue, (206) 776-9090
The Arctic Club hotel is epic, in every sense of the word. Originally founded in 1908 as a social club for prospectors, financiers, and adventurers drawn to Seattle by the Klondike Gold Rush, the building was added to the National Register of Historic places in the late ’70s, and became a hotel in the late aughts. Today it’s operated by Hilton; many of the rooms have vast panoramic views of downtown, including the Olympic Mountains to the west and the historic Smith Tower building on the edge of Pioneer Square; and every room features free Wi-Fi, HDTV with streaming and casting, and complimentary breakfast. Eight of the suites feature rooftop terraces, so if you’re looking to splash out on a hospitality suite situation, this is a great option. The best part of staying here is your nightly proximity to the Polar Bar, which oozes history and sophistication, making it the perfect place to take a happy hour meeting or meet colleagues for a wind-down drink after meetings or post-dinner.
@intodustphotographyCourtesy of Fairmont Olympic
411 University Street, (206) 621-1700
Seattle’s grand dame hotel, opened in 1926, has been lovingly remodeled in a series of tasteful modernizations, including a significant $25 million update completed in 2021. They’ve really got it all here: a buzzy lobby bar, multiple restaurants, including The George, which offers perhaps the classiest brunch in Seattle, and an all-world spa and wellness complex on the bottom floor. The gym is modest and bright, but the real action is at the hotel’s glass conservatory swimming pool, which is set beneath sweeping skyscrapers above. Presidents and ambassadors and dignitaries and rock stars stay here, so why not you?
4140 Roosevelt Way N.E., (206) 632-5055
The University of Washington—my alma mater (real men wear purple)—is a major hub for various nodes of the tech industry, home to several leading research institutions and a world-class teaching hospital at UW Medical Center. If you’re in Seattle for work in and around the U District, it’s worthwhile to stay close by, and the University Inn is the best of the local bunch. Open since the early ’60s, and now managed by hospitality group Stay Pineapple, this spot is bright, clean, and modern with a kitschy ’60s atomic theme (but not too heavy-handed). I’ve been continually impressed by the range of amenities here across multiple stays: snacks in the lobby, free coffee in-room, a reusable PATH water bottle in every room and a filtered “Water Bar” in the lobby, and great customer service. The UW campus is a five-minute walk.
Coworking and Meeting Spaces
Aerial Seattle Downtown and Capitol Hill SunraysPhotograph: Mike Reid Photography/Getty Images
1424 11th Avenue, Suite 400, (206) 739-9004
Every real tech city has a coworking space where the people-watching is a good as the connectivity. Such is the scene at The Cloud Room, which floats above Seattle’s fashionable Capitol Hill neighborhood as part of the Chop House Row development. A $40 day pass gets you hi-speed Wi-Fi, printing services, free coffee (and kombucha), and flexible seating across the space’s dreamy warren of nooks and snugs. Check the events calendar for TCR’s many activities, from yoga to live music.
92 Lenora Street, multiple locations
A locally owned mini-chain of coworking spaces, with locations in Ballard, Belltown, and down south in Tacoma, The Pioneer Collective feels rooted in the Pacific Northwest thanks to a timber-forward approach to interior design—and a collection of working people from around the region. Day passes are $35, or $75 for your own private office, with gigabit Wi-Fi throughout and larger office meeting rooms available.
1700 Westlake Avenue N #200
Thinkspace has one thing the other coworking spaces in Seattle can’t match, and that’s proximity to Lake Union. Their Seattle location is set right on the water—you can even rent a stand-up paddleboard in case you need to get in a core workout between meetings. A day pass runs $50 and includes unlimited coffee and tea, showers and lockers, and phone booths as well as meeting room options. If you need to post that #OfficeViews ’gram and make the team back home jealous, this is your place.
Best Cafés and Co-Offices
Courtesy of Victrola Coffee
411 15th Avenue E., multiple locations
A personal favorite for getting a little work done with a nice cup of coffee. Victrola is a long-standing Seattle third-wave coffee bar, and its location on 15th Avenue has seen it all—get a cappuccino and a cookie and hunker down.
425 15th Avenue E
A bookshop dedicated to STEA(A)M titles and a charming, chill coffee bar with plenty of seating. This is the ideal place to work, relax, and perhaps pick up a book for your flight home. Ada’s is a short block or so from a great local cocktail bar called Liberty, in case your office hours need to transition into happy hour.
754 N. 34th Street
Long one of the city’s best cafés, in a charming neighborhood north of the lake with close proximity to the Adobe HQ. Milstead serves coffees from a variety of roasters, all prepared with “third wave” expertise and care. The shop gets busy on weekend mornings, but it’s a charming midweek coffice, particularly if the weather’s nice and you can sit outside.
472 1st Avenue N
A huge space, perfect for setting up your laptop or even taking a chill meeting, with coffee service by local roaster Café Vita. This is also the lobby for Seattle’s much-loved community supported radio station, KEXP, so you get cool points for hanging out here.
1501 17th Avenue E
Opened by former Canlis alums, this spot serves outstanding coffee and makes some of the city’s best pastries. The space inside is cute, and you can work if you need to, but use this cafe as a jump-off point for a walking meeting or a strolling phone call, and explore the leafy neighborhood it calls home.
4214 University Way N.E. (in the alley)
Seattle’s oldest continually operated coffee bar, this space vibrates with history and culture. If you’re anywhere near the U District I highly recommend you stop here for some laptop time amongst the students, professors, and assorted intellectuals that call Allegro a home away from home.
Where to Eat
Photograph: Jordan Michelman
4903 Rainier Avenue S
Brawling, bare-knuckle offal-forward cuisine to challenge and delight from chef Evan Leichtling, who cooked in San Sebastian and Paris before opening his own place in south Seattle. If a chanterelle and wild boar pot pie or ham and cantaloupe sorbet sound like your idea of a good time, perhaps washed down with some cheerful natural wine or craft beer, this is your place.
1054 N 39th Street
Mutsuko Soma is a James Beard finalist chef for her work at Kamonegi, where she hand-makes soba noodles nightly and runs one of the best tempura programs in the United States. Make a reservation, because this place is tiny, but if you have to wait, their nextdoor sake bar, Hannyatou, is a rollicking good time and features delicious drinking snacks.
2576 Aurora Avenue N
The godfather of Seattle fine dining, Canlis is unbeatable for its view, atmosphere, and timeless mid-century live piano vibes. Their beverage program is epic—in particular the cocktails of head bartender Jose Castillo (order his pimento sherry martini)—and the food from new executive chef James Huffman shows verve and promise. Some untold amount of deals and agreements and contracts and marriage proposals have been sealed behind these doors over the last 75 years, so why not add your Dinner of Great Importance to the historic register?
MEXICO CITY — Carlos Manzo was famous in Mexico for saying what few other politicians would: That cartels operated with impunity and needed to be confronted with brute force. The mayor of a city in an avocado-growing region beset by crime and violence, Manzo suggested authorities should beat criminals into submission — or simply kill them.
It was a provocative message that resonated in some sectors of a country long afflicted by drug war bloodshed. Many here viewed Manzo, with his trademark white cowboy hat, as a hero.
But his iron fist rhetoric and criticism of the federal government’s security strategy also earned him enemies. Manzo acknowledged as much, saying he knew he could be targeted by organized crime. “I don’t want to be just another murdered mayor,” he said last month. “But it is important not to let fear control us.”
Manzo, 40, was gunned down Saturday night as he presided over a public celebration of Day of the Dead in a central square in Uruapan, a city of 300,000 in the western state of Michoacán. One suspected gunman was killed and two others arrested.
The slaying, captured on video, provoked outcry throughout Mexico and in Washington.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, with whom Manzo often sparred on issues of security, mourned an “irreparable loss.” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted a photograph of Manzo smiling and holding his young son just moments before the attack. “The U.S. stands ready to deepen security cooperation with Mexico to wipe out organized crime,” Landau wrote.
On this All Souls’ Day, my thoughts are with the family and friends of Carlos Manzo, mayor of Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico, who was assassinated at a public Day of the Dead celebration last night. The US stands ready to deepen security cooperation with Mexico to wipe out organized… pic.twitter.com/hf8XObasHf
Manzo was a part of a new wave of leaders throughout the Americas who have called for a hard line against criminals.
It’s a club that includes President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who has locked up tens of thousands of people accused of gang ties, with little to no due process, and President Trump, who has pushed a more militaristic approach to combating cartels, saying the U.S. should “wage war” on drug traffickers.
The U.S. military has killed 65 people in recent months who it alleges were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean and the Pacific, including several attacks off Mexico’s coastline. Trump administration leaders have warned of the possibility of U.S. attacks on cartel targets on Mexican soil.
Calls for a violent crackdown on organized crime are at odds with the security strategy embraced by Sheinbaum and her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Both emphasized the need to address root causes of violence, including poverty and social disintegration.
López Obrador, especially, vowed to break with the confrontational approaches of past Mexican administrations, whose military operations he said failed to weaken cartels and only fueled violence. What Mexico needed, López Obrador often said, was “hugs, not bullets.”
Manzo — who got his start in politics as a member of López Obrador and Sheinbaum’s Morena party but later became an independent — fiercely criticized that mantra.
“Hugs … are for Mexicans who live in extreme poverty,” Manzo said. “Criminals, assassins … they deserve beatings and the full force of the Mexican state.” He encouraged police officers in Uruapan to use lethal force against criminals who resist arrest.
The mayor frequently criticized Sheinbaum for not doing more to confront cartels, even though there has been a decrease in homicides and an uptick in drug seizures and arrests since she took office. Sheinbaum has said that security in Mexico depends on reinforcing the rule of law, including giving suspects a fair trial.
The son of a community activist, Manzo became mayor of Uruapan in 2024. The city has been the site of some of Mexico’s worst drug war atrocities — kidnappings, bombings, bodies hung from highway overpasses — as a volatile mix of criminal groups battle for control of trafficking routes and profits from the lucrative avocado industry.
Manzo appeared Saturday with his family at a crowded public event in Uruapan’s central plaza to mark the Day of the Dead holiday. He posed for photographs with fans and broadcast the candle-lighting event live on social media, sending “blessings to all.”
When a journalist asked about security at the event, Manzo responded: “There is a presence from different levels of government. We hope everything goes well, is peaceful, and that you enjoy the evening.”
Minutes later, shots — then screams — rang out. Manzo lay on the ground, bleeding. Nearby lay his white cowboy hat.
Security consultant David Saucedo, who said Manzo was accompanied at the event by local police and 14 members of Mexico’s national guard, described the killing as a “kamikaze attack,” saying it was clear the shooter would be killed.
Manzo, Saucedo said, had been “brave but reckless” in his quest to confront organized crime. “Carlos lacked the human, financial, and material resources to defeat the cartels,” Saucedo said. His killing “makes it clear that even with political will, defeating the cartels at the municipal level is an impossible mission.”
The mayor’s slaying was the latest in a string of violent incidents in Michoacán. Last month, officials announced they had discovered the body of Bernardo Bravo Manríquez, the head of a lime growers association who had repeatedly denounced extortion demands against agricultural producers.
Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.
It was April 2021 and the LAPD was facing sharp criticism over its handling of mass protests against police brutality. The Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles complaint accused officers of firing less-lethal weapons at demonstrators who posed no threat, among other abuses.
Smith said the assistant Los Angeles city attorney wanted his signature on a prewritten sworn declaration that described how LAPD officers had no choice but to use force against a volatile crowd hurling bottles and smoke bombs during a 2020 protest in Tujunga.
He refused to put his name on it.
Instead, eight months later, Smith filed his own lawsuit against the city, alleging he faced retaliation for trying to blow the whistle on a range of misconduct within the LAPD.
Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Johnny Smith.
(LAPD)
Smith and his attorneys declined to be interviewed by The Times, but evidence in his lawsuit offers a revealing look at the behind-the-scenes coordination — and friction — between LAPD officials and the city attorney’s office in defense of police use of force at protests.
Smith’s lawsuit says he felt pressured to give a misleading statement to cover up for reckless behavior by officers.
The captain’s claim, filed December 2021 in Los Angeles Superior Court, has taken on new significance with the city facing fresh litigation over LAPD crowd control tactics during recent protests against the Trump administration.
The 2020 protests led to a court order that limits how LAPD officers can use certain less-lethal weapons, including launchers that shoot hard-foam projectiles typically used to disable uncooperative suspects.
The city is still fighting to have those restrictions lifted, along with others put in place as a result of a separate lawsuit filed in June by press rights organizations.
Last month, City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto drew a rebuke from the City Council after she sought a temporary stay of the order issued by U.S. District Judge Hernán D. Vera.
Feldstein Soto argued that the rules — which prohibit officers from targeting journalists and nonviolent protesters — are overly broad and impractical. Vera rejected Feldstein Soto’s request, but the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is taking up the matter, with a hearing tentatively set for mid-November.
A counterprotestor is arrested after approaching Trump supporters holding a rally in Tujunga in 2020.
(Kyle Grillot / AFP / via Getty Images)
Smith said in his lawsuit that he wouldn’t put his name on the Tujunga declaration because he had reviewed evidence that showed officers flouting LAPD rules on beanbag shotguns, as well as launchers that fire 37mm and 40mm projectiles — roughly the size of mini soda cans — at over 200 mph.
Smith’s lawsuit said the launchers are intended to be “target specific,” or fired at individuals who pose a threat — not to disperse a crowd.
Smith said he raised alarms for months after the Tujunga protest, which occurred amid outrage over the police killings nationwide of Black and Latino people at the end of President Trump’s first term.
But it wasn’t until the city got sued, Smith’s complaint said, that incidents he flagged started to receive attention.
The city has denied the allegations in Smith’s lawsuit, saying in court filings that each LAPD use of force case was thoroughly investigated.
Smith’s lawsuit cites emails to senior LAPD officials that he says show efforts to sanitize the department’s handling of excessive force complaints from the protests.
An internal task force deemed most of the citizen complaints “unfounded.” Yet nearly two dozen of those cases were later reopened after Smith and a small team of officers found that the department’s review missed a litany of policy violations, his lawsuit says.
Smith also called out what he saw as “problematic bias” in the way what occurred at the Tujunga protest was reported up the chain of command.
His complaint describes a presentation given to then-Chief Michel Moore that downplayed the severity of the damage caused by less-lethal projectiles. According to Smith, the report omitted photos of “extensive injuries” suffered by one woman, who said in a lawsuit that she had to undergo plastic surgery after getting shot in the chest at close range with a beanbag round.
The LAPD stopped using bean-bag shotguns at protests after a state law banned the practice, but the department still allows officers to use the weapons in other situations, such as when subduing an uncooperative suspect.
Los Angeles police officers attempt to stop a confrontation between Trump supporters and counterprotestors during a pro-Trump rally in Tujunga in 2020.
(Kyle Grillot / AFP / via Getty Images)
Alan Skobin, a former police commissioner and a friend of Smith’s, told The Times he was in the room when Smith received a call in April 2021 from the city attorney’s office about the declaration he refused to sign.
The exchange appeared to turn tense, Skobin recalled, as Smith repeated that details contained in the document were a “lie.”
Skobin said he wondered whether the assistant city attorney went “back and examined the videotaped and all the other evidence.”
“That’s what I would hope would happen,” Skobin said.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles city attorney, Karen Richardson, provided The Times with a California State Bar report that said there was insufficient evidence to discipline the lawyer involved; the case was closed in June 2024.
Richardson declined further comment, citing Smith’s pending lawsuit.
According to Smith, other high-ranking LAPD officials went along with the misleading story that the officers in Tujunga acted in response to being overwhelmed by a hostile crowd.
Smith claims he faced retaliation for reporting a fellow captain who said police were justified in using force against a protester who held a placard turned sideways “so that the pole can be used as a weapon against officers.”
Body camera footage showed a different version of events, Smith said, with officers launching an unjustified assault on the man and others around him.
The colleague that Smith reported, German Hurtado, has since been promoted to deputy chief.
The city has denied the allegations in court filings. When reached for comment on Friday, Hurtado said he was limited in what he could say because the litigation is ongoing.
“From what I understand all that’s been investigated and it was unfounded,” he said, referencing Smith’s allegations.
“The lawsuit, I don’t know where it’s and I don’t know anything about it. No one’s talked to me. No one’s deposed me.”
Critics argue that the LAPD continues to violate rules that prohibit targeting journalists during demonstrations.
After a peaceful daytime “No Kings Day” protest downtown Oct. 18, about 100 to 200 people lingered outside downtown’s Metropolitan Detention Center after nightfall. Police declared an unlawful assembly and officers began firing 40mm projectiles.
Lexis-Olivier Ray, a reporter for the news site L.A. Taco who regularly covers demonstrations, was among those hit by the rounds.
Hundreds participate in the No Kings Day of Peaceful Action in downtown Los Angeles on Oct. 18.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
In a video shared widely online, an LAPD officer can be heard justifying the incident by saying they were firing at “fake” journalists.
An LAPD spokesperson said the incident with Ray is under internal investigation and could offer no further comment.
Ray said it wasn’t the first time he’d been struck by less-lethal rounds at protests despite years of legislation and court orders.
“It’s pretty discouraging that stuff like this keeps happening,” he said.
Jim McDonnell was introduced by Mayor Karen Bass to serve as LAPD chief during a news conference at City Hall on Oct. 4, 2024.
(Ringo Chiu / For The Times)
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell defended the department at the Police Commission’s weekly meeting Tuesday, saying the “No Kings” protesters who remained downtown after dark were shining lasers at officers, and throwing rocks, bottles and fireworks.
Asked about the incident involving Ray, the chief said he didn’t want to comment about it publicly, but would do so “offline” — drawing jeers from some in the audience who demanded an explanation.
McDonnell told the commission that he supported the city’s efforts to lift the court’s injunction. Easing the restrictions, he said, would “allow our officers to have access to less-lethal force options so that we don’t have to escalate beyond that.”
Times staff writer Noah Goldberg contributed to this report.
Police chases increased tenfold in the six months after Chief Todd Chamberlain broadened the Aurora Police Department’s policy to allow officers to pursue stolen vehicles and suspected drunk drivers, a move that made Aurora one of the most permissive large police agencies along the Front Range.
Aurora officers carried out more chases in the six months after the policy change than in the last five years combined, according to data provided by the police department in response to open records requests from The Denver Post.
The city’s officers conducted 148 pursuits between March 6 — the day after the policy change — and Sept. 2, the data shows. That’s up from just 14 police chases in that same timeframe in 2024, and well above Aurora officers’ 126 chases across five years between 2020 and 2024.
The number of people injured in pursuits more than quintupled, with about one in five chases resulting in injury after the policy change, the data shows. That 20% injury rate is lower than the rate over the last five years, when the agency saw 25% of pursuits end with injury.
Chamberlain, who declined to speak with The Post for this story, has heralded the department’s new approach to pursuits as an important tool for curbing crime. Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman believes the change has already had a “dramatic impact” on crime in the city.
However, the effect of the increased pursuits on overall crime trends is difficult to gauge, with crime generally declining across the state, including in Denver, which has a more restrictive policy and many fewer police pursuits.
“You throw a big net out there, occasionally you do catch a few big fish,” said Justin Nix, a criminology professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha. “But you also end up with the pursuit policy causing more accidents and injuries.”
Of those 87 arrestees, 67 had a criminal history, 25 were wanted on active warrants, 18 were on probation and seven were on parole, the monitor found.
“What we find is that people who steal cars, it’s not a joyriding thing, it’s not a one-off, they tend to be career criminals who use these vehicles to commit other crimes,” Coffman said. “There seems to be a pattern that when we do apprehend a car thief, they tend to have warrants out for their arrest, and we do see the pattern of stealing vehicles to commit other crimes. So we are really catching repeat offenders when we apprehend the driver and/or passengers.”
The soaring number of pursuits was largely driven by stolen vehicle chases, which accounted for 103 of the 148 pursuits since the policy change, the data shows.
Auto theft in Aurora dropped 42% year-over-year between January and September, continuing a downward trend that began in 2023. In Denver, where officers do not chase stolen vehicles, auto theft has declined 36% so far in 2025 compared to 2024.
Denver police officers conducted just nine pursuits between March 6 and Sept. 2, and just 16 so far in 2025, data from the department shows. Four suspects and one officer were injured across those 16 chases.
“I think there are broader societal factors at work,” Nix said of the decline in crime, which has been seen across the nation and follows a dramatic pandemic-era spike. “When something goes up, it is bound to come down pretty drastically.”
Aurora officers apprehended fleeing drivers in 53% of all pursuits, and in 51% of pursuits for stolen vehicles between March and September, the police data shows.
Coffman said that shows officers and their supervisors are judiciously calling off pursuits that become too dangerous. He also noted that every pursuit is carefully reviewed by the police chain of command and called the new policy a “work in progress.”
“I get that it is not without controversy,” Coffman said. “There wouldn’t be the collateral accidents if not for the policy. So it is a tradeoff. It is not an easy decision and it is going to always be in flux.”
Thirty-three people were injured in Aurora police chases between March 6 and Sept. 2, up from six injured in that time frame last year. Those hurt included 24 suspects, five officers and four drivers in other vehicles.
One bystander and one suspect were seriously injured, according to the police data.
The independent monitor noted in its October report that it was “generally pleased” with officers’ judgments during pursuits, supervisors’ actions and the post-pursuit administrative review process, with “two notable exceptions” that have been “elevated for additional review and potential disciplinary action.”
The monitor also flagged an increase in failed Precision Immobilization Technique, or PIT, maneuvers during pursuits, which it attributed to officer inexperience. The group recommended more training on the maneuvers, which are designed to end pursuits, and renewed its call for the department to install dash cameras in its patrol cars, which the agency has not done.
“It sounds reasonable,” Coffman said of the dash camera recommendation. “They are not cheap and we need to budget for it.”
‘No magic number’
It’s up to city leadership to determine if the benefits of police chases outweigh the predictable harms, and there is no “magic number,” Nix said.
“When you chase that much, bad outcomes are going to happen,” he said. “People are going to get hurt, sometimes innocent third parties that have nothing to do with the chase. You know that is going to be a collateral consequence of doing that many chases. So knowing that, you should really be able to point to the community safety benefit that doing this many chases bring.”
The majority of large Front Range law enforcement agencies limit pursuits to situations in which the driver is suspected of a violent felony or poses an immediate risk of injury or death to others if not quickly apprehended.
Among 18 law enforcement agencies reviewed by The Post this spring, only Aurora and the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office explicitly allow pursuits of suspected drunk drivers. The sheriff’s office allows such pursuits only if the driver stays under the posted speed limit.
Aurora officers pursued suspected impaired drivers 13 times between March and September, the data shows, with five chases ending in injury.
Omar Montgomery, president of the Aurora NAACP, said he is a “cautious neutral” about the policy change, but would like Aurora police to meet with community members to explain the impact in more detail.
“People in the community do not want people on the streets who are causing harm to other individuals and who are committing crimes that makes our city unsafe,” he said. “We want them off the streets just as bad as anyone else. We also want to make sure that innocent people who are not part of the situation are not getting harmed.”
Topazz McBride, a community activist in Aurora, said she has been disappointed by what she sees as Chamberlain’s unwillingness to engage with community members who disagree with him.
“Do I trust them to use the process effectively and responsibly with all fairness and equity to everyone they pursue? No. I do not trust that,” she said. “And I don’t understand why he wouldn’t be willing to talk about it. Why not?”
Montgomery also wants police to track crashes that happen immediately after a police officer ends a pursuit, when an escaping suspect might still be speeding and driving recklessly.
“They are still going 80 or 90 mph and they end up hitting someone or running into a building,” he said. “And now you have this person who that has caused harm, believing that they are still being chased.”
The police department did not include the case of Rajon Belt-Stubblefield, who was shot and killed Aug. 30 by an officer after he sped away from an attempted traffic stop, among its pursuits this year. Video of the incident shows the officer followed Belt-Stubblefield’s vehicle with his lights and sirens on for just under a minute over about 7/10ths of a mile before Belt-Stubblefield crashed.
Police spokesman Matthew Longshore said the incident was not a pursuit.
“The officer was stationary, running radar when the vehicle sped past, and the officer was accelerating (with both lights and siren eventually) to catch up to the vehicle,” Longshore said. “The officer did not determine nor declare that he was in pursuit of the suspect’s vehicle before the suspect crashed into the two other vehicles.”
The officer, who has not been publicly identified, killed Belt-Stubblefield in an ensuing confrontation. Belt-Stubblefield, who was under the influence of alcohol, tossed a gun to the ground and was unarmed when he was shot.
Whether or not a pursuit preceded his death was one of several questions raised in the independent monitor’s Oct. 15 report, which characterized the shooting and the department’s response to the killing as a setback in otherwise improving community relations.
Dr. Roy Meals, a longtime hand surgeon, likes to move his feet. He has climbed mountains and he has run three marathons.
But when he shared his latest scheme with his wife a couple of years ago, she had a quick take.
“You’re nuts,” she said.
Maybe so. He was closing in on 80, and his plan was to grab his trekking poles and take a solo hike along the 342-mile perimeter of Los Angeles. His wife found the idea less insane, somewhat, after Meals agreed to hook up with hiking companions here and there.
Dr. Roy Meals with his book, “Walking the Line: Discoveries Along the Los Angeles City Limits.”
But you may be wondering the obvious:
Why would someone hike around a massive, car-choked, pedestrian-unfriendly metropolis of roughly 500 square miles?
Meals had his reasons. Curiosity and restlessness, for starters. Also, a belief that you can’t really get to know a city through a windshield, and a conviction that staying fit, physically and mentally, is the best way to stall the work of Father Time.
One more thing: Meals’ patients over the years have come from every corner of the city, and the Kansas City native considered it a personal shortcoming that he was unfamiliar with much of L.A. despite having called it home for half his life.
To plot his course, Meals unfolded an accordion style map for an overview, then went to navigatela.lacity.org to chart the precise outline of the city limits. The border frames an oddly shaped expanse that resembles a shredded kite, with San Pedro and Wilmington dangling from a string at the southern extremities.
Dr. Roy Meals takes a break from his walk to talk with Louis Lee, owner of JD Hobbies Store, along West 6th Street in downtown San Pedro.
Meals divided his trek into 10-mile segments, 34 in all, and set out to walk two segments each week for four months, traveling counterclockwise from the 5,075-foot summit of Mt. Lukens in the city’s northern reaches.
Day One began with a bang, in a manner of speaking.
Meals slipped on loose rocks near the summit of Mt. Lukens and tumbled, scuffing elbows and knees, and snapping the aluminum shaft of one of his walking sticks.
But Meals is not one to wave a white flag or call for a helicopter evacuation.
“Later, at home, I employed my orthopedic skills to repair the broken pole,” Meals writes in “Walking the Line: Discoveries Along the Los Angeles City Limits,” his just-published book about his travels.
Dr. Roy Meals walks along West 6th Street in San Pedro.
Meals, now 80 and still seeing patients once weekly at a UCLA clinic, remained upright most of the rest of the way, adhering to his self-imposed rule of venturing no farther than one mile in from the city limits. To get back to his starting point each day, he often took buses and found that although it was slow going, riders often exited with a thanks to the driver, which struck him as “wonderful grace notes of acknowledgment.”
The doctor ambled about with the two trekking poles, a cross-country skier on a vast sea of pavement. He carried a small backpack, wore a “Los Angeles” ballcap and a shirt with the city limits outline on the front, and handed out business cards with a link to his book project.
Those who clicked on the link were advised to escape their own neighborhoods and follow Meals’ prescription for life: “Venture forth on foot, and make interesting, life-enriching discoveries. Wherever you live, be neighborly, curious, fit, and engaged!”
Meals was all those things, and as his surname suggests, he was never shy about sampling L.A.’s abundant offerings.
He tried skewered pig intestines at Big Mouth Pinoy in Wilmington, went for tongue and lips offerings at the Tacos y Birria taco truck in Boyle Heights, thoroughly enjoyed a cheeseburger and peach cobbler at Hawkins House of Burgers in Watts, and ventured into Ranch Side Cafe in Sylmar, curious about the sign advertising American, Mexican and Ethiopian food.
Meals tried hang-gliding at Dockweiler Beach, fencing on the Santa Monica border, rock climbing in Chatsworth, boxing and go-kart racing in Sylmar, weightlifting at Muscle Beach in Venice.
Dr. Roy Meals stops to take in the American Merchant Marine Veterans Memorial Wall of Honor while walking one of many paths he wrote about in his book.
In each sector, Meals sought out statues and plaques and explored points of history dating back to the Gabrielinos and Chumash, and to the days of Mexican and Spanish rule. He also examined the history of those peculiar twists and turns on the city perimeter, mucking through L.A.’s long-simmering stew of real estate grabs, water politics and annexation schemes.
What remains of the foundation of Campo de Cahuenga in Studio City was one of several locations that “stirred my emotions,” Meals writes in “Walking the Line.” There, in 1847, Andres Pico and John C. Frémont signed the treaty that ceded part of Mexico to the U.S., altering the shape of both countries.
In Venice, Meals was equally moved when he accidentally came upon an obelisk marking the spot where, in April 1942, more than a thousand Japanese Americans boarded buses for Manzanar.
“May this monument … remind us to be forever vigilant about defending our constitutional rights,” it read. “The powers of government must never again perpetrate an injustice against any group based solely on ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, race or religion.”
At firehouse museums, Meals learned of times when “Black firefighters were met with extreme hostility in the mixed-race firehouses, including being forced to eat separately. … Little did I know that visiting fire museums would be a lesson in the history of racism in Los Angeles,” he writes.
Dr. Roy Meals walks past a display of an armor-piercing projectile in San Pedro.
Although Meals visited well-known destinations such as the Watts Towers and Getty Villa, some of his most enjoyable experiences were what he called “by the way” discoveries that were not on his initial list of points of interest, such as the obelisk in Venice.
“Among those that I stumbled across,” Meals writes, “were the Platinum Prop House, Sims House of Poetry, and warehouses stuffed with spices, buttons, candy, Christmas decorations, or caskets. These proprietors, along with museum docents and those caring for disadvantaged children, bees, rescued guinea pigs, and injured marine mammals genuinely love what they do; and their level of commitment is inspiring and infectious.”
His book is infectious, too. In a city with miles of crumbling sidewalks and countless tent villages, among other obvious failings, we can all find a thousand things to complain about. But Meals put his stethoscope to the heartbeat of Los Angeles and found a thousand things to cheer.
When I asked the good doctor if he’d be willing to revisit part of his trek with me, he suggested we meet in the area to which he awarded his gold medal for its many points of interest — San Pedro and Wilmington. There, he had visited the Banning Mansion, the Drum Barracks, the Point Fermin Lighthouse, the Friendship Bell gifted to L.A. by Korea, the varied architecture of Vinegar Hill, the World War II bunker, the sunken city, the Maritime Museum, etc., etc., etc.
Meals was in his full get-up when we met at 6th and Gaffey in San Pedro. The trekking sticks, the T-shirt with the jigsaw map of L.A., the modest “Los Angeles” hat.
“Let’s go,” he said, and we headed toward the waterfront, but didn’t get far.
Dr. Roy Meals takes a break from his walk to visit with famed San Pedro resident John Papadakis, 75, former owner of the now-closed Greek Taverna in the neighborhood.
A gentleman was exiting an office and we traded rounds of “good morning.” He identified himself as John Papadakis, owner of the now-closed Greek Taverna restaurant, a longtime local institution. He invited us back into his office, a museum of photos, Greek statues and sports memorabilia (he and son Petros, the popular radio talk show host, were gridiron grinders at USC).
San Pedro “is the city’s seaside soul,” Papadakis proclaimed.
And we were on our way, eyes wide open to the wonders of a limitless city that reveals more of itself each time you turn a corner, say hello, and hear the first line of a never-ending story.
Down the street, we peeked in on renovations at the art deco Warner Grand Theater, which is approaching its 100th birthday. We checked out vintage copies of Life magazine at Louis Lee’s JD Hobbies, talked to Adrian Garcia about the “specializing in senior dogs” aspect of his “Dog Groomer” shop, and got the lowdown on 50 private schools whose uniforms come from Norman’s Clothing, circa 1937.
At the post office, we checked out the 1938 Fletcher Martin mural of mail delivery. Back outside, with a view of the port and the sunlit open sea, we met a merchant seaman, relaxing on a bench, who told us his son worked for the New York Times. I later found a moving story by that reporter on his long search for the man we’d just met.
“Traveling on foot allowed me to reflect on and grow to respect LA as never before,” Meals wrote in his book.
On our walk, while discussing what next, Meals said he’s thinking of exploring San Francisco in the same manner.
We were approaching Point Fermin, where Meals pointed out the serene magnificence of a Moreton Bay fig tree that threw an acre of shade and cooled a refreshing salt-air breeze.
Dr. Roy Meals walks along the L.A. Harbor West Path, one of many paths he wrote about in his book, in San Pedro.
“If anything,” Meals told me, “I’m quicker to look at small things. You know, stop and appreciate a flower, or even just an interesting pattern of shadows on the street.”
The message of his book, he said, is a simple one.
