A gun once registered to Christopher Dorner — the notorious former L.A. cop who killed four people including two law officers — was found in the L.A. Airbnb of a pair of alleged “crime tourists,” federal prosecutors say.
The two South American nationals are accused of stealing a $1-million watch at gunpoint last week on the patio of the Beverly Wilshire hotel.
Did they use Dorner’s gun to carry out the alleged crime?
Assistant U.S. Atty. Jena MacCabe would not confirm the weapon was used in the alleged robbery, KCAL reported, but an affidavit says it was the only weapon found in connection with the arrests.
“We’re still trying to figure it out,” MacCabe said.
Prosecutors say the suspects held up the victim in front of his wife and twin 5-year-old daughters at the high-end Beverly Hills hotel. One held a gun while the other took off the man’s luxury watch, a Patek Philippe, then fled in a car with a stolen plate, the affidavit says.
Street cameras near the Beverly Wilshire captured the Aug. 7 armed robbery of a man in front of his family.
(U.S. District Court)
Jamer Mauricio Sepulveda Salazar, 21, of Colombia, is charged with two felony counts related to the armed robbery. Nineteen-year-old Jesus Eduardo Padron Rojas, of Venezuela, is charged with felony conspiracy to commit robbery.
Sepulveda said the crew had been doing surveillance for two weeks in an effort to steal a Patek Phillipe watch, the complaint says, and both men admitted their involvement in stealing a $30,000 Rolex in Beverly Hills two days before the $1-million watch theft.
Investigators found a handgun in Padron’s pillowcase at the suspects’ Airbnb on Browning Boulevard in Los Angeles. The gun was registered to Dorner, a former officer who targeted LAPD officers who he felt had wronged him.
Over nine days in 2013, Dorner killed four people — two police officers, the daughter of a former LAPD captain and her fiancé — and injured three others. He died in a cabin in Big Bear that went up in flames after a shootout with authorities.
MacCabe said investigators were “trying to figure out how this gun from so long ago, somehow came into their possession and was tied up in this violent armed robbery series.”
A suspected serial rapist wanted in connection with the rape of two women in Massachusetts in 1989 was arrested in Los Angeles on Thursday following a lengthy police chase.
Officers located the suspect, Stephen Paul Gale, 71, who was driving a dark SUV, shortly after 4 p.m. in the Wilmington area and began their pursuit, according to U.S. Marshals.
Gale led police onto the 110 and 405 freeways, eventually exiting the freeway onto surface streets on L.A.’s Westside while driving at a moderate speed, KTLA5-TV and ABC7-TV reported.
The hour and a half pursuit came to an end on Medical Plaza Drive in Westwood near Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, said Kevin Terzes, spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department.
Police surrounded the driver’s vehicle with guns drawn, KTLA5 reported. The driver surrendered and was taken into custody.
His arrest was the result of a decades-long nationwide manhunt for Gale, who was charged with aggravated rape and kidnapping of two women in Massachusetts in 1989.
He was recently identified through genetic genealogy as a suspect in a series of rapes in Boston from 1989-90, authorities said.
At the time of the incidents, Gale’s identity was unknown and he was referred to simply as the “Boston Strip Mall Rapist.”
Gale had been on the run for years before he was finally identified as the suspect in the 1989 case, according to federal authorities. He had last been seen in public in 2008.
In May, the U.S. Marshals Office released a wanted announcement for Gale in connection with the 1989 case and a reward for his capture of up to $5,000. In addition, the announcement said Gale was also wanted for questioning in connection with the series of rapes in the greater Boston area.
A magnitude 5.2 earthquake, centered about 18 miles southwest of Bakersfield, was felt across a wide swath of Southern California on Tuesday night.
The earthquake, originally estimated at magnitude 5.3, struck at 9:09 p.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was followed by dozens of aftershocks of magnitude 2.5 and up, including a magnitude 4.5 earthquake that occurred less than a minute after the first, and a magnitude 4.1 temblor at 9:17 p.m.
The epicenter was in sparsely populated farmland, about 14 miles northwest of the unincorporated community of Grapevine in Kern County, 60 miles northwest of Santa Clarita, and about 88 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
Two minutes after the earthquake hit, a large boulder — the size of a SUV — was reported blocking multiple southbound lanes of Interstate 5, about a mile south of Grapevine Road, the California Highway Patrol said. The boulder was still blocking lanes of traffic at least an hour after the earthquake.
The area closest to the epicenter felt “very strong” shaking as defined by the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale; that zone includes a section of the California Aqueduct, which transports water from Northern California to Southern California.
By the time shaking was felt in more populated areas, including Bakersfield, Santa Clarita and Ventura, the USGS calculated that only “weak” shaking was felt, which can rock standing cars and cause vibrations in a building similar to the passing of a truck.
Some residents affected by the quake reported an extended period of shaking. One person in Los Feliz felt 45 seconds of movement, with at least three different waves — one weak, followed by a strong one, then again a weak one. In South Pasadena and Whittier, people felt about 20 seconds of shaking, contained in two distinctive waves.
In Pasadena, seismologist Lucy Jones said she felt about three seconds of shaking.
There were no immediate reports of damage. And not everyone felt the earthquake. L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy Jose Gomez said he didn’t feel the shaking during his drive into work at the sheriff’s Santa Clarita station. No damage was reported there.
The Los Angeles Fire Department said no significant damage was reported within city limits.
The USGS said the quake was felt across the Los Angeles Basin and inland valleys and in Santa Maria, Bakersfield and Fresno.
Many Southern California residents described getting alerts from the USGS’ earthquake early warning system, such as through the MyShake app or on their Android phones. (The earthquake early warning system is automatically installed on Android phones, but people with Apple iOS phones need to install the MyShake app to get the most timely alerts.)
One person described getting 30 to 45 seconds of warning before feeling the shaking arrive. Another person, in east Anaheim, reported 30 seconds of warning before shaking arrived.
Jones, a research associate at Caltech, said the duration of shaking can vary so much in the L.A. area because the length of time the earth moves at any given spot can depend on the soil and rocks beneath the location, whether a person is sitting still or moving around, and even whether an individual is on the ground floor or on top of a skyscraper — those on higher floors feel the shaking more strongly.
The reason some people may have felt more than one wave of shaking is that the first aftershock occurred so soon — less than a minute — after the main shock, Jones said.
Geophysics professor Allen Husker, head of the Southern California Seismic Network at Caltech, said it wasn’t surprising that so many people in the L.A. area felt significant shaking from a magnitude 5.2 earthquake north of the Grapevine. The temblor occurred at night, when people are resting and more likely to feel shaking from a distant quake than if they were out and about during the day and active.
Another reason many people felt substantial movement is due to the way shaking is amplified in the Los Angeles Basin. The basin is a 6-mile-deep, bathtub-shaped hole in the underlying bedrock filled with weak sand and gravel eroded from the mountains and forming the flat land where millions of people live. It stretches from Beverly Hills through southeast L.A. County and into northern Orange County.
“The basin effect … increases the shaking that you would otherwise normally have,” Husker said.
The effect happens when waves from the shaking arrive and hit the walls of the basin, then bounce back at the walls of the basin, Jones said, resulting in an “extended duration.”
A major earthquake on the San Andreas fault would result in perhaps 50 seconds of strong shaking in downtown L.A. “This earthquake was much, much smaller, of course,” Jones said, “but it was large enough to set up some of these basin effects and get things bouncing around.”
As with all earthquakes, there was a 1 in 20 chance that Tuesday’s temblor was a foreshock to a larger earthquake. The risk that a follow-up quake will be larger diminishes over time.
In the last 10 days, there had been no earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater centered nearby.
An average of five earthquakes with magnitudes of 5.0 to 6.0 occur per year in California and Nevada, according to a recent three-year data sample.
Tuesday’s earthquake occurred about 12 miles northwest of the epicenter of the magnitude 7.5 Kern County earthquake that struck on July 21, 1952. That earthquake resulted in 12 deaths, and, according to the USGS, old and poorly built masonry buildings suffered damage. Some of those structures collapsed in communities including Tehachapi, Bakersfield and Arvin; heavy damage was reported at Kern County General Hospital.
Shaking from the 1952 earthquake was felt as far away as San Francisco and Las Vegas, and caused nonstructural but extensive damage to tall buildings in the Los Angeles area and damage to at least one building in San Diego, according to the USGS.
The 1952 earthquake occurred on the White Wolf fault. Tuesday’s earthquake wasn’t associated with any previously mapped faults.
The earthquake occurred at a depth of 5.6 miles. Did you feel this earthquake? Consider reporting what you felt to the USGS.
Find out what to do before, and during, an earthquake near you by signing up for our Unshaken newsletter, which breaks down emergency preparedness into bite-sized steps over six weeks. Learn more about earthquake kits, which apps you need, Lucy Jones’ most important advice and more at latimes.com/Unshaken.
The first version of this story was automatically generated by Quakebot, a computer application that monitors the latest earthquakes detected by the USGS. A Times editor reviewed the post before it was published. If you’re interested in learning more about the system, visit our list of frequently asked questions.
Times staff writers Jon Healey, Ian James, Jason Neubert, Sandra McDonald and Raul Roa contributed to this report.
A fired bullet went completely through an apartment wall in Valley Village and struck a next-door neighbor dead, according to a police report.
On Monday around 9:30 p.m, patrol officers in the North Hollywood area responded to a radio call of “shots fired” in the 5600 block of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. When they arrived, they found one person inside an apartment suffering from a gunshot wound.
Paramedics later pronounced the person dead at the scene.
LAPD homicide detectives were called in and discovered that a bullet fired from the apartment next door had pierced the wall and struck the victim.
No additional information about the shooting has been released, and authorities are withholding the victim’s identity until their next of kin has been notified.
Anyone with information about this shooting is urged to call LAPD’s Valley Bureau Homicide Division at (818) 374-9550. Those wishing to remain anonymous should call L.A. Regional Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-8477, or send information via the website.
San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies shot and fatally wounded a man who fired at them outside a Rancho Cucamonga shopping center, authorities said.
Deputies were called to the shopping center at around 9:30 p.m. Saturday after receiving reports of a man armed with a gun, according to authorities.
Deputies found and then exchanged gunfire with the suspect outside a Walgreens near the intersection of Carnelian and 19th streets, a spokesperson for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department told KABC.
It’s unclear if the suspect was wounded during that exchange, but he then ran into a nearby Sprouts Farmers Market, authorities said.
In a statement, the Sheriff’s Department said deputies shot the man, but did not provide any further details as to where and when he was struck, or whether the suspect fired any shots into or from inside the market.
Video footage from OnScene.TV showed a shattered glass door at the Sprouts and a sheriff’s deputy being taken from the scene in the back of an ambulance. It was not immediately clear how the deputy was injured.
The suspect, who has not yet been publicly identified, was taken by ambulance to a hospital, but later died from his injuries, the sheriff’s department told KABC.
Let’s start with some common sense: Covering the Earth with plastic carpet is a terrible idea. And yet we continue to cover an ever-growing swath of our public and private open spaces with artificial turf in a way that will surely leave future generations scratching their heads in confusion.
It’s time to embrace healthier, cheaper and more environmentally responsible alternatives, and Los Angeles can help lead the way.
The artificial turf industry has had a great deal of success convincing millions of people that its short-lived, nonrecyclable, fossil-fuel-derived product is somehow good for the environment. Were there a greenwashing hall of fame, this would be in it.
In fact, it’s clear that artificial turf is bad for our ecosystems as well as our health.
Artificial turf exacerbates the effects of climate change. On a 90-degree Los Angeles day, the temperature of artificial turf can reach 150 degrees or higher — hot enough to burn skin. And artificial turf is disproportionately installed to replace private lawns and public landscaping in economically disadvantaged communities that already face the greatest consequences of the urban heat-island effect, in which hard surfaces raise local temperatures.
Artificial turf consists of single-use plastics made from crude oil or methane. The extraction, refining and processing of these petrochemicals, along with the transporting and eventual removal of artificial turf, come with a significant carbon footprint.
Artificial turf is full of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, known as “forever chemicals” because they accumulate in the environment and living tissue. The Synthetic Turf Council has noted manufacturers’ efforts to ensure that their products “contain no intentionally-added PFAS constituents.” So what? Tobacco companies don’t intentionally add carcinogens to cigarettes; they’re built into the product. PFAS have been linked to serious health effects, and while artificial turf is by no means the only source of them, it is one we can avoid.
Because artificial turf is a complex product made of multiple types of plastic, it will never be recycled. After its relatively short lifespan of about eight to 15 years, artificial turf ends up in indefinite storage, landfills and incinerators, creating a whole host of additional pollution problems.
Industry reps have seduced school boards and municipalities with promises that artificial turf fields can be used 24/7 and become a source of income as third parties line up to rent them. In reality, well-maintained, natural grass fields are more than sufficient for the limited number of hours in a day when people are available to participate in sports.
Studies show the maintenance costs of artificial turf oftenexceed those of natural grass. Naturally occurring organisms in soil break down much of what ends up on a grass field, including all kinds of human and animal bodily fluids. When the field is a plastic carpet, those systems can’t work, necessitating regular cleaning with a cleansing agent and a substantial amount of water. The infill component that cushions the turf must be combed, cleaned and replaced regularly as well. As the field ages, this work only increases.
The turf industry counters that grass fields result in the use of costly fertilizers and pesticides, which also become runoff pollution. That is a reasonable concern, but it can be addressed with environmentally responsible pest management and soil amendments. The continuing implementation of statewide food and green waste collection requirements will produce much more compost to cost-effectively maintain natural playing surfaces.
Remarkably, artificial turf doesn’t even save water compared with grass. Industry marketing materials claim that an artificial field can save millions of gallons of water a year and that homeowners who use the product to replace a conventional lawn can reduce their water use by more than half. But artificial turf must be regularly cleaned with water, and in warm climates such as Los Angeles’, artificial fields get so hot that schools must water them down before children play on them.
Industry water reduction promises generally compare artificial turf with the thirstiest sod grasses. But far more drought-tolerant varieties of natural turf grass are available. Residential lawns are indeed a tremendously wasteful use of water, but native plants are a far better solution than artificial turf — and you get butterflies as a bonus.
Even if artificial turf is never watered for cleaning or cooling, it contributes to losses of fresh water that natural surfaces would capture. Los Angeles in particular needs plants and natural surfaces that absorb as much of our precious rain as possible to recharge our groundwater and mitigate flooding. Impervious sheets of plastic cannot provide this service.
The Los Angeles City Council is considering requiring municipal departments to report on the consequences of artificial turf use, which is a good first step. From 2015 until last year, California law considered artificial turf a form of drought-tolerant landscaping that cities and counties could not prohibit. Thanks to a change in the law that excluded artificial turf from that category, Los Angeles has an opportunity to set a precedent by banning new installations of this destructive material.
Any truthful assessment of the financial, environmental and health consequences of artificial turf should lead governments to phase it out. We need to get over the antiquated notion that we can manufacture a better version of nature.
Charles Miller is the chair of the Los Angeles chapter of the Climate Reality Project and its Biodiversity Committee.
A man was in critical condition after allegedly fatally shooting a woman in Lancaster early Sunday, then attempting suicide, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
The pair were described only as male and female Hispanic adults. The man confronted the woman in another man’s Lancaster home, according to a statement released Sunday by the Sheriff’s Department. The suspect shot one round into the home; no one was injured.
The suspect and the woman, “who are believed to be an estranged couple,” according to the department’s statement, left the home together in the woman’s vehicle. They got into an argument and stopped the vehicle at East Avenue H and Challenger Way in Lancaster.
About 12:30 a.m. Sunday, they stepped out of the vehicle as they continued arguing. The suspect shot and killed the woman before driving away in her vehicle, leaving her body behind, the statement said.
At 2:09 a.m., the suspect drove to Palmdale, where he shot himself inside the victim’s vehicle outside the home of a member of her family, according to the Sheriff’s Department.
The suspect was treated for an apparent gunshot wound at a nearby hospital. He was listed in critical condition, a sheriff’s spokesperson said Sunday evening. The spokesperson said no additional information about the incident was being released yet, including the identities of the suspect and the victim.
The Sheriff’s Department statement said homicide investigators continued to investigate the incident.
The department urged anyone with information about the incident to call the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500.
Hidden in the rugged Sierra Nevada amid sprawling pine forests, Havilah was once a bustling mining town where stamp mills pulverized rock from the region’s mines and prospectors panned for precious metals in the late 19th century.
In its heyday, the town’s main drag featured saloons, dance halls, inns and gambling houses. Townsfolk witnessed midday gunfights, manhunts for wanted murders and stagecoach robberies, and they wagered gold dust on horse races, according to Los Angeles Times archives.
But for nearly a century, long after the feverish search for gold subsided, Havilah had been considered something of a ghost town, with only about 150 residents. Foundations were all that remained of most of its historic buildings when fire swept through the town July 26.
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Roy Fluhart, whose ancestors had homesteaded in the area around the Great Depression, had tried to preserve the town’s rich history. As president of Havilah’s historical society, he and his relatives helped curate the courthouse with historic documents and photographs, antique mining tools and other artifacts from the region’s past.
“We lost everything,” Fluhart said. “The sad part is, the museum was an archive, and it’s lost now. Son of a gun. … We didn’t really have time to get anything out.”
It wasn’t just the town’s history that was lost.
Havilah resident Bo Barnett, wearing the same clothes he had on when fleeing , recounts escaping the Borel fire. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Bo Barnett, whose house was destroyed, managed to escape with his dogs and the clothes on his back. Barnett, whose wife died a month ago, expressed remorse that he didn’t have time to collect her ashes.
“Fire was raining down upon us,” Barnett said, as his eyes welled with tears. “I wasn’t sure what I was driving into. My tires were melting on the road. It was horrible.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who spent much of his childhood in the sparsely populated mining community of Dutch Flat in Placer County, lamented the loss of a fellow gold rush community on Tuesday. Wearing aviator sunglasses and a ball cap, he toured the wreckage in Havilah, walking up to the remnants of the town museum and pulling a novelty Uncle Sam coin bank from the blackened rubble.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom toured Havilah after the fire, finding an artifact in the wreck of the courthouse museum.
“Towns wiped off the map — places, lifestyles, traditions,” Newsom said at a news conference. “That’s what this is really all about. At the end of the day, it’s about people, it’s about history, it’s about memories.”
In recent years, devastating wildfires have obliterated some of California’s gold rush towns, erasing the history of one of the most significant eras in 19th century America. Havilah joins the likes of Paradise and Greenville, small communities that saw influxes of prospectors, followed by population exodus and, more recently, devastation.
Havilah credits its origin to Asbury Harpending — a Kentuckian who plotted to seize California and its gold to support the Confederacy during the Civil War. In 1864, Harpending, indignant after his conviction for high treason, ventured to present-day Kern County’s Clear Creek region. He found deposits of gold and christened the area Havilah, after a gold-rich land in the book of Genesis.
Although Harpending had no land rights, he established a sprawling mining camp and sold parcels to incoming miners in what many believed could be a second gold rush. In 1866, Havilah became the seat of the newly established Kern County, a title it held for eight years until Bakersfield became the principal city. He stayed only two years but made a fortune: $800,000.
“I was literally chased from absolute poverty into the possession of nearly a million dollars,” Harpending wrote in his autobiography. “I discovered a great mining district and founded a thriving town. And if the matter of paternity is ever brought up in court, it will probably be proved to the satisfaction of a jury that I am the father of Kern County.”
A 1905 article in the Los Angeles Times details a shooting reminiscent of a Wild West film.
(Los Angeles Times archive / newspapers.com)
As gold became harder to find, people deserted Havilah, and its buildings fell into disrepair. Those who remained attempted to commemorate the community’s mining legacy and pioneer heritage. In 1966, for the centennial of Havilah’s founding, residents finished building the replica courthouse. They later built a replica of the town’s schoolhouse, which doubled as a community center.
Historical markings along Caliente-Bodfish Road indicate buildings that once existed: barbershop, a blacksmith, the Grand Inn and a livery stable. Some large plaques also pay tribute to historic events such as the last stagecoach robbery in Kern County in 1869, in which a gunman made off with $1,700 in coinage and gold bullion.
Wesley Kutzner, a historical society member and Fluhart’s uncle, helped build the replica courthouse alongside his parents and other locals. Although the historical society couldn’t afford fire insurance, Kutzner said he has resolved to clean up the property and rebuild, the same way the community did nearly 60 years ago.
“The plan is to rebuild,” Kutzner said. “It’s going to be a community effort. It’s going to be a tough road home, but we’ll get it done.”
One resident who plans to rebuild is Sean Rains. He left Bakersfield two years ago and moved to Havilah with his girlfriend and their pit bull, seeking the tranquility of the mountains. Rains, a miner and countertop fabricator, had also been one of the few people holding onto hope of finding buried treasure in Havilah.
In his front yard, Rains kept a shaker table and other equipment to sift soil for flecks of gold.
It was “nothing to make us rich,” he said, but he did find some.
“They say it’s everywhere,” Rains said. “It’s just a matter of whether it’s enough to make it worth your while.”
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1.Sean Rains moved to Havilah two years ago and had taken up panning for gold with a shaker table in his frontyard.2.A roadside scene in Havilah.3.Film canisters lay melted on the floor of the Havilah museum, just some of the artifacts lost in the Borel fire.
Rains was also recruited into the historical society. He read old letters in which a sheriff had remarked that the town’s only pastimes were robbing stagecoaches and horse racing. Another recalled how pioneers hauled their carriages over the mountainous terrain by rope.
The historical society had recently installed a water hose at the replica schoolhouse. Because Rains lived nearby, he was asked to help defend the schoolhouse if there was ever a fire.
“I gave them my word,” he said.
So once Rains saw fire crest the mountaintop behind his home and swiftly descend into the valley, he rushed next door to start up the schoolhouse’s water pump. He sprayed down the building and extinguished embers under its front porch.
He eventually turned his attention to his own one-story house, dousing it until the trees in his yard caught fire. He, his girlfriend and their dog sped away in his pickup truck.
“It was licking our heels on the way out of here,” Rains recalled. “It was right on top of us. The winds were crazy in that thing, going in all different directions. It was sucking branches right off the trees. The whole mountain was engulfed.”
Rains returned to town the next morning, walking along Caliente-Bodfish Road to see what was left of Havilah.
The valley’s pines and oaks were charred, and much of the landscape was covered in white ash. Rains’ two-bedroom home was burned to its cobblestone foundation. Two cars he had been restoring were scorched husks. His two ATVs were reduced to skeletal frames.
A warehouse in Orange County had received a late order of balut, a Southeast Asian delicacy of fertilized duck eggs, but now the warehouse had a crisis on its hands: Hundreds of the eggs were hatching.
The distributor was racked with indecision. She knew she couldn’t possibly raise hundreds of these ducklings that were meant to be eaten before birth, but now that they were out of their shells, it felt immoral to abandon them next to the dumpster to die.
So she called around, asking friends and friends of friends if they knew anyone who might be willing to take the furry creatures. That’s how she landed on The Duck Pond Inc., a waterfowl sanctuary for domesticated birds run by Howard Berkowitz.
Newborn ducklings from a failed balut order feed inside a baby playpen.
(Jireh Deng / Los Angeles Times)
“This is the largest rescue we’ve been involved with,” Berkowitz said. When he picked up the baby waterfowl, he was appalled at their condition, starving and dehydrated by the Southern California heat.
“Some of them that [had] been alive for one, two or three days had zero food, zero water,” he added. Of the 350 ducklings he retrieved, only 140 were successfully nursed back to health.
A week after the rescue, Berkowitz put out a call for foster parents to care for the newborn ducks; by the end of the day, only a few scraggly dozen were left of the tiny yellow fluffy beings. Berkowitz lifted a duckling up from a playpen that was repurposed into a duck nursery. It squawked in protest as he cupped it in his palm before relaxing, relenting to his gentle caress.
Howard “Howie the Duck” Berkowitz is a bespectacled man in his 60s with a salt-and-pepper beard and curly graying hair that pokes out the sides of his baseball cap, not unlike the flicked feathers of a duck’s tail. A former biochemist and part-time classic car mechanic, he spends most of his days now answering urgent calls for duck rescues.
Volunteer Valerie Norris holds her foster ducklings.
(Jireh Deng/Los Angeles Times)
Berkowitz’s sanctuary, a nonprofit officially known as the Duck Pond (but also as the Duck Sanctuary), is based on less than an acre in rural Winchester in Riverside County. It’s home to a motley crew of 400 ducks, geese and chickens, including a hybrid goose that belongs to one of the world’s rarest populations of geese, the Hawaiian Nene. Berkowitz has his hands full feeding them daily and making sure their kiddie pools are replaced with clean water every few hours.
He has no children of his own, he said, so the ducks are his kids. “If something ever happens to me,” Berkowitz said, “I have a half a million dollar life insurance policy [to cover] the duck sanctuary.”
Why does he care so deeply about the plight of these waterfowl? “Birds are completely different,” Berkowitz said, citing his pet goose, Goosifer, who rides with him in the car everywhere. “When they bond with a human, you actually become part of their flock.”
With the latest rescue, Berkowitz said, he hopes the favorable media coverage will raise his visibility and help finance his work.
“We’re hoping to either find some corporate sponsorship or someone who’s willing to write a check,” said Berkowitz.
Berkowitz’s zeal for waterfowl, however, has detractors along with supporters.
In total, the Duck Pond hosts 400 permanent residents, many of them domestic nonnative birds abandoned by former owners.
(Jireh Deng/Los Angeles Times)
“I’m actually divorced because of this. My wife couldn’t handle the responsibilities any longer,” Berkowitz said. “She left me because of the duck sanctuary.”
His operation has also drawn the ire of neighbors, who haven’t appreciated the cacophony caused by hundreds of ducks and geese.
To the casual passerby, this scrappy operation might look disorganized and cluttered. Among the sights are dozens of Amazon boxes haphazardly stacked on a picnic table and a basket of once fresh, now rotting peaches that Berkowitz hadn’t managed to feed to his ducks. Battalions of flies circle the duck pens. But to Berkowitz the untidy appearance hasn’t diminished what he sees as quality care he’s provided to his ducks.
“We’ve had animal control called on us several times,” Berkowitz said. “And animal control comes out and does their due diligence, and we’ve passed every inspection.”
The mess of the duck sanctuary is sometimes unavoidable. Ducks poop everywhere because they’re impossible to potty train — they don’t have sphincters to control when and where they defecate.
That cloudy water that the ducks swim in, drink from and treat as a toilet? Not brackish at all, according to Berkowitz, who says the ducks dig in the soil for bugs, then bring the dirt into the water. Ducks, like pigs apparently, love mud. “That is two-hour-old water.”
Berkowitz has been served notice by Riverside County code enforcement officers twice at two different locations that he has brought an “excessive” number of animals into a residential zone. Because of issues with neighbors and code enforcement, he’s had to move his original duck sanctuary from his property multiple times.
“This man had way too many ducks to take proper care of,” said Mo Middleton, chief animal control officer at Animal Friends of the Valley. She said the group has Berkowitz on a “Do Not Adopt” list barring him from taking any additional waterfowl from their shelter. “If we have ducks in here, we don’t let him take them.”
Every day Berkowitz feeds his birds 250 pounds of food, costing him $170 daily.
(Jireh Deng/Los Angeles Times)
But Berkowitz is already aware of the capacity issues at his current location in a backyard volunteered by a Winchester homeowner, and he’s in the process of selling his home to purchase 20 acres of land where his rescues will have a bigger plot to roam. GoFundMe efforts have raised him more than $17,000, but Berkowitz said he needs $200,000 to build a permanent home for his rescues.
“The dream is to have a functioning sanctuary that also has an educational center, where young people can learn about how to respect and treat animals,” said the Duck Pond’s Chief Financial Officer, Tylor Taylor.
Middleton is wary of rescuers who use the plight of abandoned animals for personal financial gain. Although the IRS recognizes the Duck Pond as a nonprofit eligible for tax-deductible donations, the organization has yet to register with the Registry of Charities and Fundarisers maintained by the state attorney general’s office. According to the attorney general’s office, “failing to register may lead to penalties, administrative or legal action, and the loss of tax exemption status with the [state] Franchise Tax Board.”
But Taylor said that as far as he knew, everything the organization is doing is legal and in compliance with the Internal Revenue Service rules since it first registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit two years ago. He added that the work hasn’t been profitable for Berkowitz.
“He has had to almost bankrupt himself in order to keep that place going,” said Taylor.
According to Berkowitz, he has been strapped for money since Day One. On top of water bills and food expenses of $170 a day, he has a vet bill of $3,000 to pay. He estimates spending about $1,000 of his own money each month on operations that aren’t covered by the donations to his nonprofit. He’s has had to sell more than a dozen of his antique cars to continue funding operations. On the side, he said, he still restores vintage cars for the rich and famous, which helps cover his personal expenses.
Berkowitz’s services appear to be in high demand, with nearly every day bringing another crisis to address. But while wild care facilities can often apply for conservation funding such as the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Wildlife Rehabilitation Grant Program, Berkowitz’s sanctuary cannot.
Berkowitz holds the Egyptian gosling rescued from the golf course.
(Jireh Deng / Los Angeles Times)
Debbie McGuire, executive director of the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center, said she has worked with him for 10 years, referring nonnative waterfowl to Berkowitz’s sanctuary. She commends his dedication and will to sustain his operations almost single-handedly. When she’s visited his sanctuary, she said, she hasn’t seen any issues that would raise red flags with animal welfare.
Many duck sanctuaries have tried and failed to stay open, she said, leaving Berkowitz’s as one of the last left. “I always admire the ones that can keep going.”
Thankfully, Berkowitz said, the detractors and critics are few, and the support for his work continues. On $5 Fridays, 50 to 60 people donate to the Duck Pond. Others have donated food to the ducks; on various days he gets cabbage, watermelon and strawberries, as well as worms — a favorite of the waterfowl.
Taylor is just one of the people who originally dropped off a rescued bird only to be pulled into the orbit of Berkowitz’s work. At least a dozen volunteers take turns visiting every week to clean and feed the birds — some driving from as far as West Hollywood for two hours just to help.
“This place is amazing,” said Bunni Amburgey, who adopted several newborn ducklings. Amburgey attended junior high and high school with Berkowitz and has known him for 45 years; she said his work comes from a place of true selflessness. “Are shelters or sanctuary ever perfect?” she asked rhetorically. “No, but at least have a place to go to get vet care, get fed, be safe.”
The county of Los Angeles has tentatively agreed to buy the Gas Company Tower, a prominent office skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles, for $215 million in a foreclosure sale.
The price is a deep discount from its appraised value of $632 million in 2020, underscoring how much downtown office values have fallen in recent years.
The Board of Supervisors must still approve the deal, which county real estate officials quietly but aggressively negotiated. If completed, the purchase could move workers and public services out of existing county offices, including the well-known Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, which dates to 1960, according to multiple people familiar with the transaction who requested they not be named in order to discuss the confidential negotiations.
The county has begun the due diligence process of examining the property for possible structural problems or other issues before finalizing the transaction, which could take two to three months to complete, the sources said.
In a statement to The Times, the county said that it had submitted a nonbinding “letter of interest” for the tower.
“Because we are seeing once-in-a-generation price reductions for commercial real estate in the downtown area, as responsible stewards of public funds, the County is doing its due diligence and evaluating the possibility of acquiring property in the Civic Center area, such as the Gas Company Tower,” the statement said.
Supervisor Janice Hahn, who is the daughter of longtime supervisor Kenneth Hahn, said in a separate statement to The Times that she is not fully on board with the acquisition.
“I am uncomfortable with the County moving forward purchasing this skyscraper until I understand the CEO’s full plan which I have yet to see. I am definitely against moving County services away from Los Angeles’ only Civic Center,” she said.
The Gas Company Tower represents “a generational investment opportunity to acquire a trophy asset at an exceptional basis,” Andrew Harper, a broker with the real estate firm JLL, said in May when JLL was hired to market the property. JLL declined to comment Tuesday on the pending sale.
The 52-story tower at 555 W. 5th St. was widely considered one of the city’s most prestigious office buildings when it was completed in 1991. It has about 1.4 million square feet of space on a 1.4-acre site at the base of Bunker Hill.
In recent years the downtown office market has turned against landlords as many tenants reduced their office footprint in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it became more common for employees to work remotely.
Last year, the owner of the Gas Company Tower, an affiliate of Brookfield Asset Management Ltd., defaulted on its debt and the property was put in receivership, in which a court-appointed representative took custody of the building to help creditors recover funds they lent to Brookfield. The building has roughly $465 million in outstanding loans.
Elevated interest rates have weighed on prices by making it difficult for building owners to refinance debt and pushing them into quick sales or foreclosures. Some downtown L.A. office tenants have expressed concern in recent years that the streets feel less safe than they did before the pandemic and have left for other local office centers including Century City.
The Gas Company Tower was renovated in 2023 and the tower currently is more than half leased to tenants including Southern California Gas Co., financial consulting firm Deloitte and law firm Latham & Watkins, according to real estate data provider CoStar.
Office vacancy in downtown Los Angeles was more than 30% in the second quarter, real estate brokerage CBRE said, more than triple the level typically considered to be a healthy balance between tenant and landlord interests.
Falling office values downtown are catching the attention of buyers seeking to grab property at a low point in the market, said Petra Durnin, a real estate analyst at Raise Commercial Real Estate who is not involved in the deal.
“Unfortunate situations can create opportunities for others with the cash,” Durnin said. “Downtown has been through boom and bust cycles before and always reinvented itself.”
A nearby 52-story office tower formerly owned by Brookfield at 777 S. Figueroa St. is set to be sold at the significantly discounted price of $120 million, or $117 a square foot, the Commercial Observer reported. It came close to selling for about $145 million a few months ago but the deal fell apart.
In its statement to The Times, the county said it was eyeing the Gas Company Tower as an alternative to seismically retrofitting its downtown properties. The county owns 33 facilities that engineers say are vulnerable to collapse during a major earthquake, including the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, which has been the headquarters of Los Angeles County government for six decades, home to the offices of hundreds of employees and the five county supervisors.
Last year, the county pledged to upgrade all 33 vulnerable buildings within the decade, an ambitious undertaking that experts say would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
A 21-year-old USC student was found seriously injured Tuesday evening inside her apartment in downtown Los Angeles. Los Angeles police say she was the victim of an apparent attack.
The young woman was found at about 10 p.m. in an upscale apartment building in the 1200 block of Hill Street. She was taken to a hospital, where she was in critical condition, according to L.A. police Capt. Kelly Muniz.
The incident is under investigation by the L.A. Police Department. Law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation said the woman’s parents had become concerned after not hearing from her. She was discovered by a family member who had gone to check on her. The sources, who were not allowed to speak publicly about the investigation, described the woman as having a head injury and suffering from trauma.
Investigators are conducting a forensic scrub of the apartment as well as talking to neighbors and checking surrounding video security systems.
Authorities did not say whether there were any signs of forced entry.
The building was described as a well-secured, modern apartment complex where a one-bedroom unit rents for $2,600 a month.
Anyone with information related to the attack is asked to contact detectives at (213) 996-4104 or (213) 996-4150.
Even Californians without Social Security numbers should soon have access to a state subsidy that will make cellphone service more affordable.
The California Public Utilities Commission issued a proposed decision last week that the California Universal LifeLine Telephone Service Program, known as California Lifeline, be offered to Californians without a Social Security number.
The commission needs to formally vote on the matter, with its first opportunity at its Aug. 22 meeting.
The move comes 10 years after the CPUC decided to stop requesting Social Security information from applicants — but then never did. The issue was first reported by CalMatters.
The commission is in charge of California Lifeline. The service offers qualifying participants discounts of up to $19 monthly on cellphone service, up to $39 off a service connection and eliminates a range of local, state and federal fees.
There is also a federal Lifeline program, but its discounts are less, including up to $9.25 off monthly service. Both are concurrently available to customers, according to the commission, but the federal program continues to require a Social Security number.
Chinese national Zhang Hao uses his phone at Iris Avenue Station in San Diego, where he and other asylum seekers were dropped off by Border Patrol agents.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The service consists of unlimited talk and texts, and varying amounts of data.
Users in certain government programs may be eligible for the discounts. Anyone already enrolled in a public assistance program, such as Medicaid and Medi-Cal, Section 8 housing, CalFresh or the Women, Infants and Children Program, also known as WIC, qualifies under program-based assistance.
Applicants can also qualify based on income. For instance, a family of four would qualify with a total annual gross income of $48,400 or less.
It’s unknown how many people the commission’s latest move will affect. About 1.4 million Californians use the service, according to the commission, with program enrollment up 31.1% since June 2023.
Participants are enrolled with a private phone provider. This is generally done by third-party vendors, often “street teams,” who solicit in front of public buildings — such as social service benefits offices — or near supermarkets.
The Public Utility Commission’s ruling isn’t new, however.
The group decided to drop Social Security numbers on applications in 2014, arguing that such an ask was a barrier to usage for some. At the time, the move was opposed by Cox Communications and other telecommunications companies that were concerned with fraud.
In place of Social Security numbers, the commission asked for government-issued identification.
The Public Utility Commission’s decision came two years after the Federal Communications Commission revised the federal Lifeline program to require applicants to provide the last four digits of a Social Security number on applications.
The state Public Utility Commission previously told CalMatters in February that it had already “implemented its 2014 decision.” Yet, California Lifeline applications still asked for Social Security information.
The nonprofit Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles put this issue back in front of the commission with a letter on Aug. 30, 2023, requesting immediate implementation of the 2014 ruling, according to commission documentation.
Once the decision is formally approved, Social Security number requests are expected to be removed from the LifeLine application within three months, according to the commission.
Officials on Monday were searching for a teenager who disappeared while swimming in Huntington Beach on Sunday night.
Two swimmers went into the water, but only one returned, according to Huntington Beach public information officer Jennifer Carey. There were strong rip currents earlier in the day, she said.
The U.S. Coast Guard began searching around 9:45 p.m. for the 15-year-old boy, who was last seen near Lifeguard Tower 11, according to Coast Guard public affairs specialist Richard Uranga. The Huntington Beach Fire Department has also assisted in the search.
A water search was called off about 10:40 p.m., Carey said, but the search continued on land and in the air.
The Coast Guard’s air and patrol units and its response boats have been searching the area. The search is expected to continue until at least Monday afternoon, Uranga said, when the Coast Guard captain and search-and-rescue coordinator will decide whether efforts will be suspended.
The missing teen hasn’t been publicly identified, but Uranga said he’s an Orange County resident.
The 38,000-acre Borel fire in Kern County has leveled the tiny, historic mining town of Havilah. The fire ignited Wednesday in the Kern River canyon and spread rapidly as it met with strong winds, officials said. It ran through Havilah on Friday night and razed almost the entire town, appearing to spare only a few buildings.
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, leaving many residents homeless.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Breckenridge Mountain is obscured by smoke from the southeastern flank of the Borel fire near the community of Twin Oaks.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Members of the Iron Mountain Hand Crew move to the front as dozens of firefighters manage the southeastern flank of the Borel fire near the community of Twin Oaks.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, killing livestock and leaving many residents homeless.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, leaving many residents homeless.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, leaving many residents homeless.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, leaving many residents homeless.
Voters rank the economy and inflation as the most important issues facing the country, and in spite of good news on both fronts, discontent over pocketbook issues remains steady. There’s one stretch of Southern California where, one could say, that all began: Los Angeles’ harbor and coast.
As the center for U.S. Pacific trade and an archetype for exuberant housing markets everywhere, the region’s waterfront clarifies why so many Americans feel frustrated and under pressure — and just how challenging it may be to fix this, no matter who becomes the next president.
Stretching back to the mid-19th century, when the United States annexed Southern California from the Mexican Republic, Americans looked to Pacific trade and westward settlement to stabilize their nation. That’s why our local ports were developed.
In the 1850s, a federal agency, then called the U.S. Coast Survey, identified San Pedro Bay as a focal point for shipping efforts. Since the 1910s, this has been home to the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, collectively the busiest shipping hub in the Western Hemisphere, making the region prominent in global supply chains and transpacific trade.
Officials believed Pacific trade and settlement to be a safety valve for turmoil back East, that over slavery most of all. The results proved them wrong. Commerce and settlers intensified political conflict, both in Washington and in California, by increasing the stakes. Land speculators — in most places pushing out Indigenous people and Mexicans — looked to grab former rancho claims near California’s prospective harbors, in Southern California’s enviable climate. It was a rush for beachfront property like the region had never seen. Their actions set Los Angeles’ property lines and the basis for today’s real estate markets from Malibu to Newport Bay.
This history was invisible to me as I grew up around L.A., but its effects were and are all around, continuing to reshape Southern California during my lifetime. By the early 2000s, container ships, larger than before, accumulated in the outer waters as the ports were sometimes overwhelmed. Semitrucks crowded the 110 and 710 freeways. At the same time, the coastal real estate market boomed yet again. My parents — new arrivals to the region — found it full of opportunity. They purchased their first and only home, in a subdivision on former rancho lands, and they paid it off as valuations exploded around them and their nest egg grew. The region’s economy was a dynamo, a safe harbor in more ways than one.
Shipping and competitive real estate — two legacies of 1850s Southern California — remain with us. Moreover, they are part of an ongoing story of Los Angeles and its place in American life. Today’s voters’ sense of their economic well-being is based on the prices of household necessities, mostly imported goods, and about one-third enter the U.S. through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Historically, the ships and containers that crowd San Pedro Bay have expanded affordability, but the COVID-19 pandemic and international crises disrupted their flow. Suddenly transpacific trade was blamed for soaring costs, not credited with making household items affordable. Even after the disruption abated, high prices and memories of scarcity have lingered. Nationally, politicians and the public have come to doubt the virtues of globalization. The clash between high hopes for Los Angeles’ harbors and the realities of global trade contribute once more to Americans’ sense of an uncertain world, and once again the high stakes linked to Southern California’s economy feed into tensions nationwide.
Sure investments, meanwhile, no longer offset troubled times. Americans’ primary investment — triumphant in the post-World War II era — is the single-family home. However, the nation’s high-priced real estate has unsettled this convention. Rather than absorbing newcomers and providing a path to financial security, it has multiplied voters’ sense of distress by locking many out of homeownership. The exhilarating prices and low interest rates of recent decades — profit and security to prior home purchasers — now put inflationary pressure on renters and prospective buyers, and on middle-income, low-income or young voters especially. This is most true around coastal Los Angeles, west and south of the 405 Freeway. It is true as well in markets farther afield, such as Phoenix and Las Vegas, long shaped by Southern California migrants and money.
The Southland’s residents and visitors were drawn to the promise of Pacific waters, just as generations before have been. And while many in all eras have benefited from the region’s industries and real estate appreciation, many others have always been left behind. Remembering such connections with history can clarify uncertain times. Recent polarization in U.S. politics has been compared to the Civil War era, but there is perhaps a more apt parallel between today and the 1860s: the economic ideas of trade and land investment, intended to calm political passions and to distribute prosperity, fell short in both moments.
The consequences will play out in the months ahead as pocketbook issues quite likely decide the presidential election. But regardless of the election’s outcome, we should understand that Southern California is never a place apart from U.S. politics and its dilemmas. Instead, these have deep roots in the region. And today, the region continues to invest in imports and real estate as vehicles for prosperity — even as the adverse costs accumulate in national politics.
That makes Southern California the opportune place to resolve these dilemmas of history and to lead the U.S. forward, whether by policy experimentation or new principles for how wealth might be built, sustained and shared. Shaping the nation’s better future will involve tough choices. It certainly will take visionaries and daring. Yet that, too, is a legacy of Southern California’s past, one ready to be reclaimed.
James Tejani, an associate professor of history at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, is the author of “A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America.”
Four Los Angeles County men were arrested Tuesday in connection with a series of armed robberies of 7-Eleven stores and a CVS last year that they later allegedly posted about on Instagram.
In an indictment unsealed Tuesday, federal prosecutors said Charles Christopher, 24, of Compton; D’Angelo Spencer, 26, of South Los Angeles; Jordan Leonard, 25, of Torrance; and Tazjar Rouse, 22, of Hollywood committed multiple armed robberies between Nov. 4 and Dec. 24.
Christopher and Leonard pleaded not guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles and were ordered jailed without bond. Their trial is scheduled for Sept. 17.
Rouse appeared Tuesday in federal court in Kansas City, Mo., and Spencer was expected to be arraigned in federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
The indictment details the alleged robberies.
While at least one of the group would remain outside as a lookout or getaway driver, the indictment claims, the others entered the stores during business hours, leaped over counters and took money from the cash registers that they stuffed into a black Nike bag. During the robberies, prosecutors allege, one defendant, usually Christopher or Leonard, pointed a gun at a store employee or customer and demanded their cellphones or wallets.
The indictment also alleges that the men made multiple Instagram posts following the robberies that depicted cash or goods matching those taken from the stores, and that showed them wearing clothes and with a gun apparently identical to those seen in surveillance video during the crimes.
On Nov. 4, the indictment says, Spencer, Christopher and two other men traveled to a South Los Angeles 7-Eleven in a blue BMW and fled with $2,495.
Spencer’s Instagram account, hours later, showed him next to a stack of cash, wearing black clothes and a black ski mask that matched the description of the clothing worn by a suspect during the robbery.
On Nov. 28, the indictment alleges, Christopher, Spencer and at least one other person stole cash and an employee’s cellphone from a 7-Eleven store in South Los Angeles.
Later that day, Spencer’s Instagram showed multiple shots of stacks of cash. Leonard’s account also featured a photo of cash along with the caption “love my bros we go hit every time,” while tagging the Instagram accounts of Christopher and Spencer, according to the indictment.
Two nights later, Leonard posted a video on Instagram of a man’s hand holding cash next to a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol.
The gun in the video appeared to be the same model and finish and from the same manufacturer as the one captured in surveillance video in 7-Eleven robberies on Nov. 28, Dec. 11 and Dec. 24, according to an affidavit made public with the indictment.
On Dec. 11, the indictment says, Christopher, Leonard and Rouse entered a CVS in Hollywood, leaped over the counters and stole cash and prescription medication off the shelves.
The next day, Rouse allegedly made several Instagram posts advertising medication for sale and sent a direct message to another user stating, “I got syrup.”
On Dec. 19, Spencer posted an Instagram video that showed a group of men standing near a cluster of prescription bottles and a black plastic trash bag.
“The prescription medication bottles were identical to the property taken during the CVS robbery; the black trash bag matched the one used to store the stolen medication during the CVS robbery; and the clothing worn by the depicted persons was identical to that worn by suspects during the crime,” LAPD Officer James A. Douglas wrote in an affidavit.
All told, the men are alleged to have stolen $7,617 in cash, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
While still under construction, the suicide prevention net on the Golden Gate Bridge showed significant results in 2023 and is expected to continue to reduce deaths this year, officials said.
Last year, officials recorded 14 confirmed suicides from the bridge, down from an annual average of 30. This year, the number is expected to be even lower, according to the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.
The net is made of “marine-grade stainless steel netting installed 20 feet below the sidewalks on the bridge and extending out 20 feet over the water,” the district said in a written statement.
At a commemoration ceremony held in mid-July, local leaders spoke about the multiyear project that began in 2018 and was completed in early 2024.
The net was originally scheduled to be completed in 2021, but infighting between builders and the government caused delays and cost overruns.
“The Golden Gate Bridge is a source of immense pride to San Francisco — but for too many families in our community, the bridge has also been a place of pain,” said former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco for 37 years. “With the completion of a suicide deterrent system for the Golden Gate Bridge, we are providing a critical second chance for troubled individuals.”
Ultimately, the project cost about $224 million, the transportation district said — well over the 2014 estimate of $76 million when it was approved but also much less than the $398 million figure cited in a 2022 lawsuit between contractors and the district.
Suicide prevention and crisis counseling resources
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, seek help from a professional and call 9-8-8. The United States’ first nationwide three-digit mental health crisis hotline 988 will connect callers with trained mental health counselors. Text “HOME” to 741741 in the U.S. and Canada to reach the Crisis Text Line.
The net’s purpose is to deter would-be jumpers and save those who do jump from death. Still, being caught by the net “is designed to be painful and may result in significant injury,” the transportation district said.
A 2017 study in Switzerland found that barriers and nets on bridges reduce suicides by up to 77%. In Pasadena, the City Council is considering suicide prevention barriers on the Colorado Street Bridge, according to Pasadena Now.
At the Golden Gate Bridge ceremony, Kymberlyrenee Gamboa spoke about the loss of her 18-year-old son, who jumped from the bridge in 2013.
The project’s completion “brings a profound sense of hope and healing in knowing that future families may be spared from enduring such a devastating loss,” she said.
After decades of resistance, Carmel-by-the-Sea is about to address some of its residents’ biggest frustrations.
Quite literally.
The moneyed little town, where homes and businesses have no street addresses, soon will have numbers assigned to its buildings, forgoing a cherished local tradition after too many complaints about lost packages, trouble setting up utilities and banking accounts, and other problems.
The Carmel-by-the-Sea City Council approved establishing street addresses in a 3-2 vote earlier this month, with proponents citing public safety concerns and the need to abide by the state fire code, which requires buildings to be numbered.
“Do we need to wait for someone to die in order to decide that this is the right thing to do? It is the law,” said Councilmember Karen Ferlito, who voted in favor of addresses.
Rather than street numbers, residents in the town of 3,200 have long used directional descriptors: City Hall is on the east side of Monte Verde Street between Ocean and 7th avenues. And they give their homes whimsical names such as Sea Castle, Somewhere and Faux Chateau.
There is no home mail delivery. Locals pick up their parcels at the downtown post office, where, many say, serendipitous run-ins with neighbors are an essential part of the small-town charm.
For more than 100 years, residents fought to keep it that way, once threatening to secede from California if addresses were imposed. They argued that the lack of house numbers — along with other quirks, such as no streetlights or sidewalks in residential areas — added to the vaunted “village character.”
“We are losing this place, day by day and week by week, from people who want to modernize us, who want to take us to a new level, when we want to stay where we are,” Neal Kruse, co-chair of the Carmel Preservation Assn., said during the July 9 City Council meeting at which addresses were approved.
Carol Oaks stands in front of her home, which is named “Somewhere” and has no formal address. Carmel-by-the-Sea will soon number its homes and businesses.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The debate over street numbers has simmered for years and intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people began shopping online more frequently and struggled to get their packages delivered.
Some residents and tourists worry that if they have an accident or a medical issue, emergency responders will have trouble finding them. Others have had trouble receiving mail-order prescriptions and medical equipment.
“This is a life-and-death situation in my life and my family,” resident Deanna Dickman told the City Council. “I want a street address that people can find on GPS and get there, and my wife can get the medication she needs.”
Dickman said her wife needs a shot that comes through the mail and must be refrigerated. If she can’t get it delivered, she has to travel to an infusion center and get her medication every 30 days “so she can breathe,” Dickman said.
Dickman once had her own temperature-controlled medication “tossed over a fence a block away.” The property owner was not home, and it spoiled.
Resident Susan Bjerre said she once needed oxygen delivered to her house for someone who had just gotten out of the hospital. The delivery driver could not find the residence, so she said: “I will be in the street. I will wave you down.”
“This is going to sound really snarky, but I think people who oppose instituting an address system don’t realize how inconsiderate they are to everyone else,” Bjerre said.
Another speaker, Alice Cory, said she worried that implementing addresses in Carmel-by-the-Sea — long a haven for artists, writers and poets — “would just make us another town along the coast.”
In the one-square-mile town, “the police know where everybody is,” and fire officials get to people quickly because there are so few streets, she said.
“Let’s keep it that way, and let’s keep the sweetness of this little town, because people know Carmel for a reason,” she said.
Neal Kruse, center, with Karyl Hall and her dog, Bubbles, chat with a resident at the Carmel Preservation Assn. booth at a farmers market. Kruse and Hall worry street addresses will hurt the town’s character.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Emily Garay, a city administrative analyst, told the council that while local authorities might be familiar with Carmel-by-the-Sea’s unconventional navigational practices, other emergency responders — such as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection or Monterey County’s contracted ambulance provider — might struggle to quickly figure out where people live.
The California Fire Code requires buildings to have and display addresses. But Carmel-by-the-Sea has not enforced the provision.
“I believe, as a professional firefighter for over 37 years [with] a lot of experience in emergency response, that if the question is, ‘Is it more advantageous to have building numbers identified?’ Yes, absolutely,” Andrew Miller, chief of the Monterey Fire Department, told the council.
Residents opposed to street addresses have said they fear that numbering houses would lead to home mail delivery — which, in turn, could trigger the closure of the Carmel-by-the-Sea post office.
In January, David Rupert, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service told The Times that the post office had “been serving the local community since 1889” and there were no plans to close it. (The lobby for the post office was red-tagged this spring after a septuagenarian crashed her red Tesla through the front windows.)
Garay said addresses would not trigger home delivery.
Before voting against addresses, Mayor Dave Potter said he was “concerned about the fact that we’re kind of losing our character of our community along the way here” and that it had become the nature of the community “to fight over little things.”
But Ferlito said she had received “piles of emails from residents” who wanted addresses and worried about being found in a crisis.
“If we’re saying we will lose our quaintness because we have an address, I think that’s a false narrative,” she said. “This is more than quaintness. This is life emergencies.”
In a scene one might expect to see in a movie, a man trying to escape his involvement in a car wreck on the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco Thursday climbed onto the railing and jumped, the California Highway Patrol said.
The man had been involved in a two-car crash on eastbound Interstate 80 around 2 p.m., said CHP spokesperson Mark Andrews.
The man, described as between 20 and 30 years old, climbed onto the bridge railing and plunged into the water below, where he began backstroking toward the west portion of the bridge, the CHP said.
The U.S. Coast Guard rescued the man around 2:45 p.m.
Andrews said it was “definitely unusual” for a driver to jump off a bridge after a collision and he’d never seen it happen before. The driver suffered broken ribs from the impact with the water and was being evaluated at a hospital.
Authorities did not disclose whether the man was arrested.
Standing before the renowned peristyle at the Los Angeles Coliseum, where the 1984 Olympics opening ceremony was held, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Thursday touted a $77-million infusion of cash for Metro to pay for more electric buses.
The buses will help ferry tens of thousands of fans across the city in what is being trumpeted as a “transit-first” Games, and are among thousands of details that officials need to get in order before Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Olympics. The cash influx aids a larger effort by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority as it pushes to turn its fleet of 2,000-plus buses all-electric by 2030.
“Angelenos and Olympians are going to know just how efficient this region’s public transit can be. This is an investment in the future,” said Buttigieg, flanked by Mayor Karen Bass, LA28 Chairman Casey Wasserman and other officials who are looking to the Paris Olympics, set to start this month, as L.A.’s countdown begins.
MTA aims to acquire battery-electric buses, charging equipment and supporting infrastructure to operate reliable zero-emission services spanning multiple cities within L.A. County.
Buttigieg spent the day in Los Angeles riding the subway, getting on trains, taking buses and touting funds the region had received as part of the Biden administration’s $1-trillion infrastructure bill, which has pumped millions of dollars into Metro’s expanding rail system and the port, as well as getting new projects off the ground. But most Los Angeles officials had their minds trained on the 2028 Olympics, with the Paris Games just days away.
More than a million people are expected to come to the Los Angeles region for the 17-day Olympiad, and organizers want them to arrive at venues by public transit, on foot or by bike. That will be quite a feat for a sprawling metropolis known for its congested freeways. So, local leaders have used the Olympic Games to add urgency to their wish lists, such as the fleet of electric buses. This strategy has led to some funding — but it won’t solve the logistical puzzle of moving vast crowds of tourists on a day-to-day basis.
Metro has asked the Biden administration for an additional $319 million for the upcoming year to cover costs related to the Games, including $45 million to plan and design the supplemental-bus system that will carry fans to venues and $14 million to design routes for athletes and other VIPs.
Buttigieg said he couldn’t “get ahead of the White House” but that his department had been providing technical support to Congress members who are weighing how to support the Olympics with funding.
But, so far, there hasn’t been a commitment. Mayor Bass, who is heading to Paris next week for the Olympics, said she was confident that President Biden, who is facing a bruising campaign, will help Los Angeles.
“The White House has been supportive from Day One,” she said Thursday on a grassy area outside the Coliseum. “There is an individual staff person there that focuses on the Olympics that we stay in constant contact with. And so I feel very encouraged.”
Then-Mayor Eric Garcetti, who secured the ’28 Games, sold it to the public as a monumental event that would generate millions, not burden taxpayers. But transportation is proving to be tricky. One tabulation of the cost to double the number of buses so fans can better transverse the city on public transit is estimated at upward of $1 billion.
And the buses purchased from the federal grant won’t expand the fleet or get the agency to its goals of going electric. There are too many roadblocks for that to happen, including a lack of chargers and a shrunken pool of manufacturers that can deliver electric buses.
For now, Bass and many of the rest of the Metro board — which includes the Board of Supervisors — will go to Paris to watch how the city handles the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
And they are in wait-and-see mode when it comes to funding.
The incoming Metro executive board chair, Supervisor Janice Hahn, said she and Bass pitched Buttigieg as they rode the B Line on Thursday, stressing that the federal government should help with the Olympics.
“We wanted to make the case that we shouldn’t go it alone,” she said. “We could use federal dollars to help us.”
