An investigation published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. found discrepancies between emergencies at California immigrant detention facilities that were reported to local authorities and those reported publicly by the federal government.
The study, led by Dr. Annette Dekker, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at UCLA, analyzed about 1,200 emergencies from 2018 through 2022 at three detention centers: the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego and the Imperial Regional Detention Facility east of San Diego. Most of the patients involved were men, and the median age was 39. Local authorities responsible for emergencies at two other facilities in California did not provide data.
Private prison companies manage seven immigrant detention facilities in California on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with space to detain more than 7,000 people.
Psychiatric emergencies made up just 48 of the EMS responses reviewed by Dekker and four other California doctors — less than 4% — despite significantly higher rates of such complaints reported by ICE during the same period.
At each facility, the number of psychiatric emergencies reported to EMS was less than or equal to the number of suicide attempts reported by ICE. When other ICE-reported mental health issues that required observation were added to that total, Dekker said, there was a tenfold increase over the total reported by local EMS agencies.
Dekker said she believes that discrepancy could be interpreted to mean that all but the most extreme psychiatric crises are being appropriately treated by in-house medical staff. A 2021 California Department of Justice inspection review highlighted significant mental healthcare deficiencies at all three facilities, including understaffing and care delays.
“It’s possible someone has a suicide attempt that doesn’t require EMS, but speaking as an emergency physician, there are a lot of different psychiatric emergencies — some related to [suicidal] ideation, some related to psychosis — so it is odd to me that the number of EMS-reported psychiatric emergencies isn’t higher,” Dekker said. “Why aren’t the medical staff reaching out for more help?”
Medical reviews aren’t required unless a detainee dies in ICE custody, the report notes.
“Systematic substandard care has been identified as a factor associated with these deaths, including a lack of recognition of severe illness, medical staff dismissal of concerns about individuals’ health, and delays in activating external emergency care,” the report states. “These findings suggest that there are near misses not captured in death reviews.”
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Detainees cannot access 911 and must rely on staff to call on their behalf. Broadly, death reviews show that some responses to requests for help have been delayed.
At the Adelanto and Imperial facilities, the rates of EMS-reported emergencies were lower for women than men. But at Otay Mesa, the rate was significantly higher for women, including 12% of emergencies related to pregnancy concerns.
An ICE directive issued on July 1, 2021, says “ICE should not detain” people who are pregnant, postpartum or nursing and should ensure their expeditious release from custody. Seven EMS-reported emergencies for pregnancy-related concerns were recorded after the directive took effect, “indicating that Otay Mesa continued to house pregnant individuals despite ICE directives,” the report noted.
Authors of the JAMA report said it is unclear whether the higher rate of emergencies among female patients at Otay Mesa represents higher rates of illness or better detainee health monitoring. But the 2021 California DOJ inspection noted that all three facilities “impermissibly house female detainees in restrictive housing under conditions disparate to those of male detainees.”
More than a quarter of patients at all three facilities had at least one abnormal vital sign reading during their encounter with medics — most frequently an elevated heart rate. Among all three facilities, the top three primary symptoms reported by patients were chest pain, abdominal pain and altered mental status. Traumatic injury was also among the issues most frequently reported by EMS providers.
The rate of emergencies at all three facilities increased amid the pandemic despite efforts to reduce capacity at the facilities during that time.
Between January 2019 and December 2021, there were 742 EMS-reported emergencies. During the same period, ICE reported 1,481 medical emergencies. Dekker said the discrepancy suggests that EMS data fail to capture the total number of medical emergencies occurring in ICE facilities.
Unlike ICE, publicly funded healthcare systems such as Medicare and Medicaid have greater government oversight that requires them to report more rigorous metrics, Dekker said. She said recent ICE facility reports contain less data than in years past and no longer include metrics such as off-site medical emergencies and the number of suicide attempts.
“I have walked away with significantly more questions than when I started,” Dekker said of the report. “The bottom line is that we need expanded reporting from ICE on health outcomes to understand what’s going on.”
Inside Halden Fengsel, a high-security prison in Norway, inmates choose their own clothing. Knockoff track suits from designer brands such as Karl Lagerfeld are favored.
They buy fresh produce from their well-stocked grocery store and chop onions with knives from their shared kitchens.
They play in bands and walk in the woods and pray in a graceful holy room where clerestory windows beam sunlight down onto slate floors and a compass shows the direction of Mecca.
But what surprised California corrections officer Steve “Bull” Durham most on a recent visit to Halden wasn’t the prisoners but the guards — how relaxed and happy his Norwegian counterparts were, and how casually they interacted with the inmates.
Members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. visited prisons in Norway in September to better understand the Scandinavian model of incarceration.
(Javad Parsa / For The Times)
“I am blown away by it,” he said.
Durham has been a California corrections officer for 25 years, much of it in the remote reaches of Tehachapi, east of Bakersfield. He looks like the kind of guy you’d nickname Bull. Big and bald, he leans forward when he walks, like he’s battling the wind, or the world.
I met him on the sidewalk in front of the elegant Grand Hotel in Oslo, just down the street from the stately Royal Palace of King Harald V.
Durham was one of about a dozen members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., or CCPOA, the union that represents the women and men who work in our prisons, who let me tag along with them to Norway recently.
They were there to see firsthand what all the hype is when it comes to the so-called Scandinavian model of incarceration, which California hopes to import in coming months.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is in the process of converting San Quentin into an institution — via the “Scandinavian method”— that is focused on rehabilitation, not punishment.
Tiny, rich, predominantly white and with a population roughly half that of Los Angeles County, Norway doesn’t seem like a good model for anything in California. But Newsom isn’t trying to replicate what Norway does, just adapt the basic premise to create a shift in how and why we incarcerate.
The Scandinavian method acknowledges that people rarely go to prison for life. Instead, it focuses on the reality that most people who go into prison are going to come outagain, and it’s safer for all of us if they have a plan and the skills for a future that doesn’t include more crime. That credo demands that prison is made to be more humane, and more normalized, turning the guards into at least part-time social workers.
“It’s radical,” Durham said, but he’s all for it.
An inmate at Halden prison in Norway visits the facility’s library, where books and DVDs are available to borrow.
(Javad Parsa / For The Times)
The CCPOA has long supported Newsom. But it is also one of the toughest and most powerful unions in the state and is not known for soft-on-crime stances. So it may surprise some that the union supports the Scandinavian model, even as fentanyl, homelessness and a misguided fear of rising crime have combined to swing the political pendulum back toward more incarceration.
Durham, a CCPOA vice president, said corrections officers in California are literally sick and tired from being cogs in a machine that doesn’t work — for society, for those incarcerated or for guards who want a career that doesn’t kill them.
“We are tired of seeing our partners in a casket,” Durham said. “The stuff that we see is not good.”
Being a U.S. corrections officer is not a great gig, union benefits aside. It comes with levels of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder that far outpace other professions, even in law enforcement.
Corrections officers are quick to tell any listener that the psychological stress and constant threat of violence eat at their health, leaving them vulnerable to ailments including heart attacks, ulcers and fallen arches. They drink too much, get divorced often and die by suicide at a rate 39% higher than the rest of the working-age population, according to the Vera Institute of Justice. Their life expectancy is more than 15 years below the national average.
Many people assume they are all abusive brutes, in dead-end jobs.
“It comes down to the mental health and well-being of our staff,” Durham said. “We have to try to change.”
Helge Valseth, center, the governor of Halden prison (comparable to a U.S. warden) leads a group of U.S. visitors through the facility, which houses about 250 inmates convicted of serious offenses including drug crimes and murder.
(Javad Parsa / For The Times)
Durham shared those depressing statistics as we rode in a bus to Halden, about two hours outside of Oslo, on an overcast day in September. The drive there took us through picturesque fields where cattle milled around sturdy barns, then up into hills covered in spruce and pine. It felt like traversing the back roads of Napa to Tahoe — all classy ruralism.
Nothing about our arrival at Halden dispelled that, no armed guard towers or razor wire. The only clue this was a prison was the nearly milelong wall that surrounds it, 20 feet high and curving at the top with an elegance that Scandinavians seem able to put into everything they build, regardless of purpose. It was, as a certain former president might describe it, a big, beautiful wall.
“Jeez, look at that wall,” one of the officers exclaimed as we stepped off the bus.
Critics deride Halden as a luxury prison that coddles, but it is the star of the Norwegian system, opened in 2010 with a design and a mantra: Prison should not be defined by the agony of discomfort and fear. The punishment for those incarcerated at Halden is being removed from family and friends — being behind the wall. Not the experience inside it.
Before Norway embraced this new model of incarceration in the 1990s, its prisons looked much like ours do today and recidivism rates were stubbornly high, hovering near 70% for some crimes. Now, though not as low as many had hoped, those rates have fallen to about 20% of people re-offending within five years of release — one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world.
Helge Valseth, left, the governor of Halden prison, shows off the prison grocery store to visiting California correctional officers. The inmates at Halden largely live in dorm-like apartments with a shared kitchen where they cook meals.
(Javad Parsa / For The Times)
The prison population in Norway is vastly smaller than ours — Halden holds about 250 men, fewer than your average county jail — but there are similarities with the U.S., starting with racial diversity. Forty percent of prisoners in Norway are not citizens by birth — they come from more than 25 countries, many of them migrants from places including Sudan and Pakistan.
Gangs, said Helge Valseth, the governor of Halden (our version of a warden), are a big problem, inside of prisons and out.
What is different at Halden isn’t the prisoners but the guards, Valseth said.
People incarcerated in Norway wear their own clothes and have more freedoms than in U.S. prisons.
(Javad Parsa / For The Times)
In Norway, corrections is a profession that has pathways into other branches of law enforcement. Officers start off in a two-year college program, paid as they go, and must continue their education, Valseth said. The Norwegian guards union has a partnership with management that allows officers to have a say in how a facility is run, who is hired and what the policies are.
In all, said Tor Erik Larsen, a leader of the Union of Norwegian Correctional Services Employees, it’s a good job — one that comes with respect and provides work that feels meaningful. Under the Scandinavian system, expectations of and from corrections officers extend far beyond maintaining control.
“I need to know what makes a man tick,” Larsen said. “And he needs to know what makes me tick.”
That philosophy is called dynamic security. In the United States, we use static security: lockdowns, body armor, mace. Rehabilitation is largely left up to inmates to figure out on their own through a hodgepodge of programs — some good, some questionable.
The Norwegians depend on relationships to maintain control and highly trained corrections officers to be deeply involved in rehabilitation.
An inmate at Halden prison uses a knife while working in a shop. In Norway, incarcerated people are governed by “dynamic security,” which relies on relationships with guards to maintain order and safety.
(Javad Parsa / For The Times)
Therapy, job skills, addiction treatment — corrections officers in Norway are responsible for facilitating all of it, and for building the trust and mutual respect needed for inmates to feel like someone is on their side when it comes to changing, no matter what crime they committed.
Durham knows there will be many California officers who are not just skeptical, but downright hostile to that idea — he’s cognizant that it sounds like telling officers, “Hey, from now on you have to hug every inmate on your unit.”
But Durham believes the current system leaves inmates without enough autonomy to learn how to be different. Everything is done for them or to them. He uses the grocery store inside Halden as an example. In the U.S., meals come and go on a tray, no effort required. In Norway, many facilities only provide one pre-made meal a day. Prisoners are encouraged to buy groceries, make food for themselves, share meals with officers and fellow inmates and clean up afterward.
U.S. prisons “are not teaching [inmates] any life lessons,” Durham said. In Norway, “they give them the ability to function in life.”
The same goes for officers, Durham said. Right now, U.S. corrections officers have few opportunities to interact with inmates other than keeping order and imposing discipline in part because rules often forbid getting too close. U.S. officers, Durham said, have to be trusted to act as mentors — like their Norwegian counterparts.
It’s that mutual respect that makes the Scandinavian model work. And it does work. Violence is rare at Halden.
I met an inmate named Roger (I am not using his last name for privacy reasons) in a prison auto shop. Roger was incarcerated for sexually abusing his daughter, he said.
A round-faced, bespectacled man, he was changing the oil on an Audi — largely unsupervised by officers — surrounded by tools that in the United States would be considered weapons: a hefty hammer, socket wrenches, saws, a drill. In the next room, other inmates were using power tools to cut wood.
An inmate at Halden prison works in an auto shop, largely unsupervised by correctional officers.
(Javad Parsa / For The Times)
As a child molester, Roger is the type of prisoner who typically would not be safe in a U.S. prison — always under threat of attack from other inmates and often looked down on by officers.
He’s the kind of guy that most of us have a hard time feeling empathy for. But one day in the not too distant future, Roger is getting out — as are most people who go to prison in the U.S.
At Halden, Roger said, he is learning“how to not think about my child like an abuser” would.
Norway, like much of Scandinavia, has a reputation for allowing the common good to frequently outweigh individual desires and demands. That philosophy presumably makes it easier to create a system that helps someone like Roger.
But U.S. culture prizes vengeance. How many times has some variation of “I hope you rot in prison” been uttered with righteousness in film and television?
Our culture wants wrongdoers to suffer, even at the expense of public safety. But as uncomfortable as it is to hear Roger talk about the help he is receiving, isn’t that what we should want? For criminals to stop seeing the rest of us as prey?
“It’s been a real good program,” Roger said. “I am starting on the ground floor and building up.”
Down a hallway I met David, who was from Lithuania and serving time for selling drugs. The lack of fear, of guards and other inmates, he said, took away much of the stress of being in prison. It allowed him the space to think about his future.
A cell inside Halden prison includes a window and a private bathroom. Though the door locks, the Norwegian model of incarceration seeks to normalize life inside prisons so that inmates can focus on rehabilitation.
(Javad Parsa / For The Times)
“I don’t need to be afraid that something will happen,” he said. “I don’t think I will come out a worse person. I feel I could come out better.”
Tiffanie Thomas, a San Quentin corrections officer who was on the tour, told me bringing this system to California “seems realistic.”
As a female officer who is often alone and outnumbered at San Quentin, she has long depended on relationships with inmates for her safety and theirs.
“We do a lot of this already,” Thomas said. “We just didn’t have the words to put to it.”
But, she added, relationships take time. If the state brings the Scandinavian model to California, it is going to require something that will, even if they support the model, make both prison officials and reformers unhappy:
More corrections officers.
A correctional officer checks out the ice cream freezer in the grocery store at Halden prison. The inmates are able to purchase their own groceries, including ice cream.
(Javad Parsa / For The Times)
Right now, there are too few officers on duty to spend any meaningful time with their charges. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has 21,220 correctional officers and a statewide prison population of 93,649 — though that is expected to drop by nearly 10,000 in coming years. At San Quentin, there are 833 rank-and-file corrections officers and 3,504 incarcerated people, according to CDCR.
Often, there are two officers assigned to more than 120 inmates, Durham said, and that can jump to 160 depending on the facility and the time of day.
Thomas said she has been in charge of up to 200 inmates at once. In Norway, each guard is responsible for a few dozen inmates at most — a number that has increased because of budget cuts, much to the consternation of both guards and management.
But to the officers I was traveling with, it was still unimaginably low.
Durham never dreamed of spending his life inside prisons. Who does?
A Central Valley kid, he joined the Navy to escape the expectation that he would follow his father into construction. At 18, he found himself married, with a son and getting ready to deploy. But his wife at the time was diagnosed with a mental illness — bipolar disorder, he said — in an era when such things were barely understood, much less talked about.
One day, she took too many muscle relaxers. While he was trying to help her, his baby son, crawling around their waterbed, swallowed a penny. Durham scooped everyone up and made it to the hospital, but it was a breaking point.
California correctional officers visit Halden prison. Gov. Gavin Newsom is planning to turn San Quentin prison into a model facility using Scandinavian principles.
(Javad Parsa / For The Times)
He left the military and moved back home and soon found himself a single father. He needed help and stability and a job in a place without many options. So he became a prison guard.
No regrets, he said. But “if it was me, alone, I probably wouldn’t do it. But I had to support him.”
The job has taken its toll. His first week, he witnessed a stabbing. His old-school partner barely said a word about it, he said. But then, that partner rarely said anything useful at all. He was left to figure out a foreign and brutal world largely on his own.
Over the years, there has been an endless flow of trauma. The first time Durham had to help lower a hanged man, he remembers the legs in his face, and being grateful for the strength to hold the man up, even though it was too late. More than 20 years later, he remembers that inmate’s name. Beale.
An inmate sits at a table at Halden prison.
(Javad Parsa / For The Times)
He knows there are “bad apples” in the profession and there are certainly too many instances of officers committing crimes and abusing their power. He’s also heard the criticism that it doesn’t matter if corrections officers like their job or not, because unlike inmates, they can leave whenever they want.
Even as we rightfully shrink our prison population and rethink policies that turned incarceration into an industry, the reality remains that prisons will continue to exist because society does demand accountability for committing crimes.
The Scandinavian model doesn’t promise to end crime or fix society’s problems. But it has answered an obvious if ignored question: If guards have no hope, how can prisoners?
Walking out of Halden down a gravel path at the edge of the forest, Durham told me it was “weird” to see corrections officers smiling and laughing at work. The visit gave him hope, though he knows that as it did in Norway, change will take decades in California.
Rain started to fall and the air took on the vibrant scent of moisture hitting earth.
Ahead of us, a man with a scooter walked with a man pushing a wheelchair, oblivious to our approach. I couldn’t tell if either or neither were inmates, but it didn’t seem to matter, to us or them.
For the first time, maybe in his life, Durham was relaxed inside a prison wall.
Inmates walk down a path. The natural setting of Halden prison, located outside of Oslo, is part of its rehabilitative ethos.
A solution to help bolster Southern California’s water outlook during future droughts is taking shape in the Mojave Desert. Water transported in canals and pipelines has begun flowing into a series of basins carved into the desert, filling a large underground reservoir that will be available to draw upon in dry times.
The facility, called the High Desert Water Bank, started taking in supplies from the State Water Project last month. Water diverted from the East Branch of the California Aqueduct has been flowing through a 7-foot-wide pipeline and gushing into one of the basins, where it gradually percolates into the desert soil and recharges the groundwater.
Newly drilled wells will allow for water to be pumped out of the aquifer when needed to supply cities and suburbs throughout Southern California.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is spending $211 million to build the facility. The district’s officials say the project is a vital step in improving the region’s water infrastructure to adapt to climate change.
“We know that climate change will bring more of the dramatic swings between wet and dry that we saw over the last few years, so we must take every opportunity to store water when it is available,” said Adán Ortega Jr., chair of the MWD board.
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The agency already stores water underground in other areas, but the High Desert Water Bank represents the MWD’s largest investment in groundwater storage to date.
The district developed the facility working with the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency, which owns the property near Lancaster.
After three years of construction, the initial phase of the project has allowed the district to take advantage of the plentiful water from this year’s historic storms. And more water could be coming with the current strong El Niño, which has brought forecasts of another wet winter.
Water fills one of the recharge basins at the High Desert Water Bank near Lancaster, where the Metropolitan Water District is starting to store water underground for cities across Southern California.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
There is enough aquifer space in the Antelope Valley groundwater basin to store up to 280,000 acre-feet of water, comparable to the capacity of Castaic Lake and nearly four times the size of Big Bear Lake.
The facility, which is scheduled to be fully built in 2027, will allow the MWD to put in or withdraw up to 70,000 acre-feet of water per year — enough for about 210,000 average households.
With this much additional storage in place, Ortega said, “we can confront the next drought with more confidence.”
By increasing the district’s ability to store and withdraw water along the aqueduct, the project provides the state’s largest urban water supplier greater flexibility and a valuable backup supply to adapt to more extreme cycles of drought and wet weather.
The district’s managers said having the water bank will ensure more reliable supplies during severe droughts like the one during the last three years, when supplies from Northern California were drastically cut, forcing mandatory water restrictions for nearly 7 million people.
By banking more backup supplies, the project is also intended to help Southern California reduce reliance on the overburdered Colorado River, where depleted reservoirs remain at low levels.
“When drought hits California, we can turn to this stored water, instead of drawing more heavily on our Colorado River supplies,” MWD General Manager Adel Hagekhalil said.
Hagekhalil and other officials spoke this past week at an event inaugurating the facility. As they spoke beneath a tent, water gushed into the pond behind them, creating a fountain-like upwelling in the wind-rippled surface.
At a turnout facility on the California Aqueduct, water flows into the newly built High Desert Water Bank in the Antelope Valley. The water percolates underground to be stored for Southern California’s cities.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“Climate change is upon us,” Hagekhalil said. “We need to have creative new tools, holistic solutions.”
Hagekhalil noted that the district is developing a new climate adaptation master plan, focusing on building more flexibility into the region’s water system to improve reliability of supplies. He said storing more water underground will be one piece of the district’s climate adaptation efforts in the coming years, along with recycling wastewater and cleaning up contaminated groundwater.
“It’s finding new ways to take water when we have it during wet years and put it in the ground, so we can have access to it when we have dry conditions,” Hagekhalil said. “This is the future of water management in the 21st century.”
Water has been flowing into the facility from the California Aqueduct since mid-September. By the end of the year, the district estimates it will have stored about 12,000 acre-feet in the groundwater basin, enough to meet the annual needs of about 36,000 average households.
Managers of the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency (AVEK) said this part of the High Desert is well-suited for storing water underground. The 1,300-acre property includes vacant land and farm fields that were left dry and abandoned years ago.
As work crews have built recharge basins, they have removed old irrigation systems.
Farms in the valley have produced a variety of crops, such as hay, peaches, carrots and onions, but falling groundwater levels and increased costs for imported water have led to a decline in agriculture. The Antelope Valley groundwater basin is managed under a 2015 court ruling, which regulates pumping to manage supplies and address the long-term declines in aquifer levels.
“Our groundwater supplies, they’ve diminished. And thank goodness for these water banks,” said George Lane, president of the Antelope Valley agency’s board. “It will raise the water table. … It was completely overdrafted for a number of years.”
The Metropolitan Water District will be able to recover 90% of the water it stores at the site, paying the Antelope Valley agency when it withdraws water.
Evaporation losses and water that will be left underground will account for the remaining 10%, said Matthew Knudson, general manager of AVEK.
So far, crews have finished building six recharge basins to receive water. When finished, the water bank will have 26 recharge basins covering about 600 acres, and 27 wells for recovering water from the aquifer.
The groundwater is tainted with toxic arsenic, so the project will also require building a facility to treat the water before sending it flowing back into the California Aqueduct.
Geese gather by the groundwater recharge basin at the High Desert Water Bank near Lancaster, where the Metropolitan Water District has begun storing water in the desert aquifer.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
The agencies plan for water levels to rise and fall as supplies are deposited and withdrawn. Groundwater levels at the site now range from about 260 feet to 280 feet underground, and will be allowed to rise as high as 75 feet underground at full capacity.
When water is pumped back into the aqueduct, it will flow into the MWD’s delivery system. The district supplies drinking water for 19 million people in six counties from San Diego to Ventura.
Ortega praised the agencies’ collaborative efforts on the project, saying the High Desert Water Bank is an example of “the kinds of partnerships that we’re going to need to establish throughout the state as climate change forces us to become more interdependent.”
One big plus, Ortega said, is that the underground storage facility is coming online “in time to take advantage of this historically wet year.”
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California hospitals and clinics were slow to carry out mandated training intended to combat unconscious bias among workers who care for pregnant patients, the state Department of Justice found in a newly released investigation.
Less than 17% of facilities that provided information to the state agency had initiated “implicit bias training” in the year after California started requiring it for pregnancy and childbirth professionals, according to the report unveiled Friday by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.
The numbers shot up after Bonta prodded healthcare providers about their training plans: As of summer 2022, more than 93% of medical facilities that responded had trained at least some of their staff, according to the state investigation. By that time, an average of 81% of staff in responding facilities had finished the required training, the investigation found.
Nearly a third of health facilities contacted by the Department of Justice launched their training programs only after the agency reached out to them, the report found.
The state law went into effect just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, but Bonta and other state officials rejected that as an explanation or excuse for delays, saying the required training could be accomplished through an online video.
“It was doable then, “ Bonta said at a news conference Friday in Leimert Park. “It’s doable now.”
The training mandate was prompted by concerns that implicit bias — unconsciously held attitudes about members of a specific group — can steer the decisions of medical providers, undermining patient care.
SB 464, which was passed four years ago, required California hospitals, clinics and birthing centers that care for patients in pregnancy and childbirth to confront that problem by rolling out implicit bias programs for their staff. “Refresher” trainings for healthcare providers are also required every two years.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who authored SB 464 as a state senator, said that while drafting the law, she and others were appalled to learn about persistent misconceptions about Black women among medical students. Mitchell said surveys showed that “they thought our threshold for pain was higher, that our skin was thicker and more difficult to penetrate to receive medication.”
To think that such attitudes persisted in 2019 “literally took our breath away,” she said.
SB 464 spelled out specific requirements for the training content, including identification of unconscious biases; corrective measures to reduce such bias at both the interpersonal and institutional levels; and information on the effects of historical and contemporary exclusion and oppression of minority communities.
State officials said such training is urgent due to the crisis facing Black patients in childbirth. Across the country, Black women have been about 2½ times more likely than their white and Latina counterparts to die during pregnancy, childbirth and its aftermath, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a national survey, 30% of Black women reported mistreatment during maternity care and 40% reported discrimination; both rates were much higher than among white or Asian American women.
California has reduced its rates of maternal death over time, but they have remained more than three times higher for Black patients than for those of many other racial and ethnic backgrounds.
“Far too many Black women are dying during and post-childbirth in L.A. County, in the state of California, and across the country,” Mitchell said Friday. “And what’s so deeply offensive about that is it’s within our power to change that.”
In L.A. County this year, family and friends called for justice after the deaths of April Valentine and BridgetteCromer, also known as Bridgette Burks. Both were Black women who lost their lives after childbirth at local hospitals. Bothhospitals were faulted by state investigators in the aftermath of their deaths.
Mitchell said it was painful to see that women in her county district had “died unnecessarily because they weren’t listened to, they weren’t attended to, they were in hospitals who should and must do better.”
A spokesperson for the California Hospital Assn., which supported the legislation, said hospitals in the state are committed to reducing health disparities and “still working toward full compliance despite the challenges created by the COVID pandemic that surfaced just a few months after” SB 464 passed.
Californians can check how far their local hospitals had gone toward training staff as of last year: The report released Friday includes a list of facilities that provide pregnancy care and the percentage of their covered staff that had finished the required training by July 2022. Across the state, those figures ranged from 0 to 100%.
Bonta said deadlines for finishing the required trainings, clear mechanisms for state enforcement, and consequences for hospitals that flout the California law are needed to improve compliance. He said he was committing to working with state lawmakers “to address these issues with future legislation.”
A homeless housing project in West L.A., backed by Mayor Karen Bass and opposed by some neighborhood groups because of its proximity to residential homes, was approved by the Los Angeles City Council on Friday.
The council, with exception of one member who was absent, voted unanimously in favor of the 33-bed facility on a city-owned parking lot at Midvale Avenue and Pico Boulevard, across from the former Westside Pavilion. The council also decided that the project is exempt from a comprehensive environmental review.
Bass, Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky and other supporters argue the project will provide relief for the area’s unhoused population. It will also help the city comply with a legal settlement that requires it to add beds.
“The citywide issue of homelessness deserves a citywide response,” Bass said in a statement Friday. “We must continue to do all that we can to bring unhoused Angelenos inside and I thank Councilmember Yaroslavsky and the City Council for continuing the work to urgently confront the homelessness crisis.”
Yaroslavsky spoke ahead of the vote, promising residents and business owners who opposed the project that she would secure additional parking before breaking ground and would also develop a neighborhood safety plan with the Los Angeles Police Department and local homeless service providers.
“But let me be absolutely very clear, we need these beds,” said Yaroslavsky, who represents the area. “I know 33 beds doesn’t seem like a lot, because in all honesty, it’s not. It’s not nearly enough, considering the emergency we’re in right now.”
Right now, Yaroslavsky said, fewer than 100 of the city’s 16,000 homeless beds are in her district.
“What this means for my constituents, not only in Westwood but across the entire district, is that when we are trying to resolve an encampment and bring people inside, off the street and into housing, it’s nearly impossible,” she said.
The facility, which is projected to cost nearly $4.6 million, will include “sleeping cabins” with restrooms in each unit. There will also be on-site laundry facilities, storage bins and office space, according to a report from the city’s Bureau of Engineering. It’s expected to open in about a year, Yaroslavsky told The Times.
She said residents will have access to mental health and substance use disorder specialists, employment assistance and help finding permanent housing. There will be 24-hour security on-site. Most of the beds will be reserved for people who have ties to the area.
The Westside Neighborhood Council voted last week to oppose the project because it would be near homes and businesses along Pico Boulevard. The group also expressed “dismay that other sites were not being evaluated as alternatives.”
Controversy over the proposed facility ratcheted up earlier this week when Bass abruptly removed the president of the Transportation Commission days after he led his colleagues in delaying a vote on an environmental review waiver.
At a commission meeting, President Eric Eisenberg had expressed concern about the waiver and asked for a delay so the panel could hear more about the project from city representatives.
On Monday, Eisenberg said, he was informed by the mayor’s office that he was no longer a commissioner. Bass’ office has declined to explain why she removed Eisenberg.
At a special meeting on Wednesday, the Transportation Commission — now operating without Eisenberg — approved the waiver.
Bass has made reducing homelessness her top issue. Her Inside Safe initiative seeks to quickly move unhoused Angelenos into motels and hotels, and she has ordered city departments to hasten the construction of affordable housing and shelters.
Eisenberg, in a statement he provided to The Times, said he wasn’t convinced the project should be exempt from review under the California Environmental Quality Act.
A “project of thirty small homes, with sewage, plumbing lines, and trash disposal, [could] cause a situation, where the benefits of the project do not outweigh the hazards to the community,” he wrote.
Barbara Broide, a neighborhood council member, urged the City Council at a committee hearing on the project earlier this month to look at different sites, including one on Cotner Avenue.
“We’re here to tell you this is the wrong location,” Broide said. “It’s a good project for another place.”
Broide was one of several residents who hoped to address the City Council before Friday’s vote. But the council did not allow comments until afterward.
“I just wanted the council to know that it has shredded the faith that dozens of my neighbors have in their government,” said Meg Sullivan, who lives in the council district. “They came here today to let you know their very reasonable concerns, which I share, about putting housing on a much-needed public lot on Midvale, and yet they were not able to speak.”
Margaret Gillespie, a member of the Westside Neighborhood Assn., spoke in support of the project.
“I want to thank Councilmember Yaroslavsky for her leadership on this very difficult issue. It’s difficult because of all the misinformation that circulates and the false narratives about the homeless,” she said. “I support the project because 25 of the 30 units are reserved for people who live here.”
This is a story about a kitty cat who went on the lamb and is now back in our care, after taunting the staff and volunteers of APA! for over a year! We applaud her efforts, but it is time to get this little lady some medical attention.
When Pancake first arrived at APA!’s main facility, she was clearly pretty scared, making her a flight risk candidate. Fly, she did. Luckily, she stuck around campus, making appearances. For months, the staff and volunteers reported “Pancake sightings.” We even attempted several strategized opportunities to get her back into our hands, with the biggest goal of getting her spayed. We have several “community cats” hanging around our facility – our very own barn cats! We care about this population and want to make sure they receive necessary medical attention so that everyone stays safe and can live a healthy life!
The whole organization has been in on it, for over a year! Here are some highlights from email threads:
“Volunteer just reported seeing them on the roof!”
“I was informed this cat was just spotted under a red car in front of the medical clinic!”
“Operation Ruin Pancake’s Romance”
“After a week long battle….. Pancake wins.”
“Catching Pancake (the Remix)”
The teams have finally found success and are celebrating that this girl officially received her spay surgery and has been released back into the family she created with the other APA! Community Cats. We have the honor of Pancake making her appearances around campus for many years to come!
Our barn cat program supports the cats who prefer the wild frontier. While traditionally seen as “unadoptable” in the sheltering world, our barn cat program has created a way for everyone to live in harmony– community cats get to go about their feral cat lives and those that adopt them receive pest control services for the simple cost of room and board.
Think you need a barn cat or two to support some property you have? Reach out to us – we can fill the order for you!
ANDALUSIA, Ala. (WSFA) – A family is outraged after an inmate died inside the Donaldson Correctional Facility in Jefferson County.
The Alabama Department of Corrections reported that Denarieya Smith was serving a life sentence for attempted murder out of Covington County when he was beaten and stabbed by another inmate on Oct. 1.
Hazel Bryant, president of the Covington County NAACP Chapter, described Smith’s death as unjustified.
“The fact that (he) could get murdered, supposedly in the safe keep of the government, just as outrageous,” Bryant said.
Smith’s family attorney Joel Caldwell said in a press conference Friday morning they were notified of his death via text message from a fellow inmate.
“Guards failed to arrive and respond in a timely manner, despite numerous attempts by inmates shouting for help, while DL (Denariyea) bled on the floor,” Caldwell said.
The family says Smith indicated there were problems inside the prison the last time they contacted him.
“His calls for help fell on deaf ears,” said Caldwell. “There are far too many unanswered questions at this point.”
The attorney mentioned Smith’s marks 32 deaths at Donaldson for the year of 2022, calling it “deeply disturbing.”
HAPPENING NOW: The attorneys for Denarieya “DL” Smith’s family is speaking out after they found out from another inmate their loved one was killed inside of Donaldson Correctional Facility
Bryant added the government should take a closer look at the prison system to make sure inmates are being treated humanely.
Caldwell and other attorneys at Birmingham-based Corey Watson Attorneys are reviewing the caselaw on inmate-to-inmate violence to determine if the state or federal courts will hear the case.
If you’ve lived in Austin for more than a year, you might be wondering how we are doing over here at the Town Lake Animal Center with all this rain. Historically, our little 70 year old facility floods when we get these crazy Texas torrential downpours. This happens because the land around our buildings is higher than the kennel buildings that have sunk just a little every decade into the ground. Over the past decade of our inhabiting this facility, we have flooded many times in both minor and major ways. We have worked hard to prevent this issue year after year, and in the past 12 months we have made even more improvements to correct the problem. That is why you haven’t heard from us these past weeks — our drains are actually working better than ever! This has only been possible because of the generosity of donors and the City of Austin Water and Watershed Protection Departments.
But even with these improvements, our drains are still 70 years old, and there is only so much they can take.
What is happening right now with the weather is very much like what we experienced in 2015 right before the Memorial Day Flood. It rained for many days straight and the land was completely saturated. By the time the big downpour happened on Memorial Day, the only thing water could do was travel as runoff. While we were nowhere near the hardest hit, our kennels and buildings flooded and we had to do an emergency evacuation of our pets.
We are hopeful that the rain predicted over the next week stays light, but because it would be foolish to bet against Mother Nature, we are preparing for the worst.
Right now, we need your help to move our dogs to fosters and adopters as fast as possible in an effort to decrease the number of kennels being used. That way any dogs still left at the shelter can be moved to dry kennels, as some kennels may flood before others.
If you are interested in fostering a dog and giving them a dry place to stay out of the rain, please email [email protected] to be connected to the Austin Pets Alive! Dog Foster Team.
If you cannot foster or adopt a pet in need at this time, consider making a donation to support APA!’s future life saving efforts. You can also spread the word to your networks by sharing this blog or this Facebook post.
Gordie Howe Sports Complex in Saskatoon grows to serve more athletes with the help of FieldTurf, Beynon Sports & Playteck Enterprises.
SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, February 8, 2018 (Newswire.com)
– One of Canada’s largest, most ambitious and popular, year-round, community sports complexes is receiving a massive upgrade; setting itself up as a leading example for communities worldwide.
The improvements will elevate the Gordie Howe Sports Complex, in Saskatoon, to a legendary level of public amenities and extend a strong relationship with the Tarkett Sports family – FieldTurf, Beynon Sports & Playteck Enterprises. Included in the upgrade will be a conversion to premium FieldTurf surfaces (including Canada’s first outdoor FieldTurf CORE sports field); adding a winter speed skating oval that converts into a summer outdoor Beynon track by Playteck Enterprises; plus, new indoor and outdoor baseball and softball diamonds, and much more.
“Our history with the Saskatoon sports community goes back to 2005 when we first installed our playing fields at the SaskTel Soccer Centre. Over the years, this relationship has continued to grow and in 2014 we were delighted to build our first FieldTurf Revolution field at the Gordie Howe Sports Complex,” said Eric Daliere, President, Tarkett Sports. “Led by the Friends of the Bowl, this community is leveraging the combined strengths of our Tarkett family by utilizing the unique features in every product we offer; from the debut of our CORE system to the use of FieldTurf Armour to create a winter speed skating track on top of an outdoor Beynon IAAF certified athletic running track – this is a dream project for us.”
Strong community support spearheaded by the visionary leaders of the Friends of the Bowl has experienced significant financial donations from multiple donors and has been encouraged by a supportive Saskatoon City Council.
“Whereas our Mission with the ‘Friends of the Bowl’ is to improve all sporting facilities within the Gordie Howe Sports Complex for the benefit of all citizens of Saskatoon, we are thrilled to be partnering with FieldTurf, Beynon Sports, Playteck Enterprises and its various product lines to ensure that we have the very best of sports surfaces in all areas to be used by all for many years to come,” stated Bryan Kostersoski, Chairperson.
In total, multiple sporting activities will be featured at the Gordie Howe Sports Complex, including football (tackle, flag and touch), soccer, softball, baseball, speed skating, cross-country skiing, track and field, ultimate frisbee, hockey, rugby and lacrosse.
Upgrading the existing facilities at the complex will continue to allow the hosting of future national and international sports championships, now in even more activities than ever before.
Details of newly added features include:
Canada’s first outdoor FieldTurf CORE system. The world’s first multi-layer, dual-polymer turf fiber will debut at the Gordie Howe Sports Complex.
New, indoor, 60,000 square foot multi-sport training center featuring Beynon Sports PolyTurf flooring for weightlifting spaces and general areas, plus indoor FieldTurf fields for softball/baseball infield diamonds.
New Beynon Sports BSS 2000 track and field surface built to Class II IAAF certification standards will be one of the largest and most prestigious athletic facilities across Canada. This unique, 400-meter track with all associated field events as well, will convert to a speed skating oval for use by the skating community throughout the winter months.
Two all-weather, year-round, outdoor FieldTurf baseball infields.
Batting cages, both indoor and outdoor.
The complex was originally created as part of an existing city park and renamed and expanded to honor “Mr. Hockey”, the legendary Gordie Howe, a native son of Saskatoon. From 1946 to 1980, Howe played twenty-six seasons in the National Hockey League and six seasons in the World Hockey Association; his first 25 seasons were spent with the Detroit Red Wings. The support of the Howe family with this city complex continues to this day. Construction on the new additions to the complex begin in April and scheduled for completion by late 2018.
More about the products slated for the Gordie Howe Sports Complex:
FieldTurf CORE is the world’s first multi-layer dual-polymer fiber. Engineered as the premier system, CORE is designed to deliver a more realistic, textured, grass-like shape with optimal durability and resilience. The system is constructed to deliver the highest fiber performance and resiliency available on the market. CORE is designed to provide elite high schools, high-level collegiate programs and professional teams with a system that exceeds even FieldTurf’s current industry-leading products.
Beynon Sports BSS 2000 This Olympic-caliber track system is designed to deliver safe daily training and still be exceptionally fast on race day. The track features a force reduction layer of high-performance butyl rubber and full-depth color polyurethane, finished with Beynon’s specialized Hobart Texture™, engineered to eliminate the EPDM granule migration found in traditional embedded track systems.
Beynon Sports PolyTurf Plus is a seamless sports flooring option, manufactured by Beynon Sports. This polyurethane pad and pour system is formulated for superior durability, precise game line markings, and fast installation. PolyTurf Plus Pad and Pour is also GREENGUARD Gold certified, representing a higher standard of indoor air quality. It is an excellent solution for schools and physical training areas.
FieldTurf Armour Designed to minimize wear and damage to your track & field surface. FieldTurf Armour protects against surface abrasion, surface and base compaction and contamination of the turf and the infill, as a result of event attendee traffic.
ABOUT FIELDTURF
When it comes to artificial turf sports fields, FieldTurf is the most trusted brand in the industry. Whether it’s football, soccer, baseball or any other sport, FieldTurf fields provide athletes with the safety and performance they need to perform at their best, while giving field owners the durability they want to maximize the value of their investment. FieldTurf is the world leader in artificial turf with over 20,000 installations worldwide.
ABOUT BEYNON SPORTS & PLAYTECK
Beynon Sports, the leader in track surfacing, is represented in Canada by Playteck Enterprises. Playteck has been installing, innovating and transforming the Canadian track market over the last 30 years. Alongside their nation-leading 5 Class II IAAF certified tracks, Playteck is the trusted supplier of University of Alberta, the University of Guelph, University of Victoria, Canada Games Center at the University of Prince Edward Island, Foothills Athletic Park in Calgary and countless University and College projects in Canada.
ABOUT TARKETT
Tarkett is a global leader in innovative and sustainable solutions for flooring and sports surfaces. Offering a wide range of products including vinyl, linoleum, carpet, rubber, wood & laminate, synthetic turf and athletic tracks, the Group serves customers in more than 100 countries worldwide. With 12,000 employees and 34 industrial sites, Tarkett sells 1.3 million square meters of flooring every day, for hospitals, schools, housing, hotels, offices, stores and sports fields. Committed to sustainable development, the Group has implemented an eco-innovation strategy and promotes circular economy. Tarkett is listed on Euronext Paris (compartment A, ticker TKTT, ISIN: FR0004188670). www.tarkett.com
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