Page 605 | Good Times

Was It Racist? Santa Cruz Bans Predictive Policing

Jacob Pierce

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June 30, 2020

Was It Racist? Santa Cruz Bans Predictive Policing

Before she moved to Santa Cruz in 2004, Brenda Griffin, the president of the Santa Cruz chapter of the NAACP, worked for a New England civil rights law firm in a big industrial city. The job left her with sad memories after witnessing the devastation caused by police violence and its aftermath. “The police officers were very brutal,” she says.

But Griffin says she had never seen someone be killed in cold blood until videos circulated in May of a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of a Black bouncer named George Floyd for more than eight minutes. The footage ignited protests around the country and prompted nationwide discussions about police violence and racial bias. All of that has given Griffin some semblance of faith that protesters may keep marching until U.S. leaders address the inequities facing the country.

“I am hopeful because the floodlights are on this issue—not just the spotlight, what the NAACP and other organizations do, but the floodlights—are on our racial inequities in healthcare and education and law enforcement. Not only in the United States, but throughout the world,” she says. “Seeing all the different ethnicities in these protests makes me hopeful that we’ll see some changes come about. I also hope that people will go the distance. We’re in a movement; we’re in a moment right now. And I’m hoping that we will continue this moment until we see systemic changes.”

The Santa Cruz City Council voted on June 23 to display the Pan-African and Black Lives Matter flags in front of City Hall every year during the month of July. That same afternoon, the council voted to establish two new groups to review police policy, preemptively ban facial recognition software, and to effectively ban a controversial predictive policing technology that Santa Cruz first started experimenting with nine years ago. Additionally, Police Chief Andy Mills announced changes to his department’s policies. He banned no-knock warrants, neck restraints and shooting at moving vehicles. He also modified parts of the department’s use-of-force procedures.

But it’s been the predictive policing decision that has received the most attention.

Santa Cruz Mayor Justin Cummings says there’s much work left to do to get bias out of police data before departments can start relying on such data to make patrolling decisions.

“If we have racial bias in policing, what that means is that the data that’s going into these algorithms is already inherently biased and will have biased outcomes, so it doesn’t make any sense to try and use technology when the likelihood that it’s going to negatively impact communities of color is apparent,” says Cummings, the city’s first-ever Black male mayor.

Santa Cruz became the first community in the country to take such action on predictive policing, which uses data to target law enforcement to areas where crime is statistically most likely to occur. Last week’s vote on predictive policing represents a significant plot twist for a high-profile invention that has garnered flashy headlines for Santa Cruz over the last nine years—and one that has deep ties to the county’s top politicians.

The technology’s future locally is not abundantly clear.

Brian MacDonald, CEO of Santa Cruz-based predictive policing company PredPol, says he doesn’t think of the council’s recent vote on the matter as a ban at all. He paints it as an opportunity for the city to press reset and make sure that predictive policing systems do not have any biases baked in. MacDonald is adamant that they do not.

According to the language in the City Council’s motion, however, the council would need to pass a new resolution to let the police start using predictive policing again.

PREDICTION MARKETS

In 2011, Santa Cruz became the country’s second community, after Los Angeles, to try predictive policing.

Although it’s impossible to ever pinpoint the reasons behind fluctuations in crime, Santa Cruz saw an 11% decrease in burglaries during a six-month pilot, compared to the six months prior, and a 4% decrease compared to the same stretch of time one year earlier. (Some contemporaneous news reports cited more significant reductions in crime, but MacDonald couldn’t confirm their veracity, as he wasn’t with the company at the time.)

The system operated based on the notion that property criminals are very often creatures of habit—that when they are successful, they tend to strike again in an area nearby. Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD) deployed predictive policing partly as a way to cope with increasingly scarce resources during a time of Great Recession-era budget cutbacks. The pivot earned nationwide coverage, including a spot on Time’s list of the 50 best inventions of 2011. Predictive policing promotional materials from that period wrapped up the system in the metaphorical language of earthquakes: After a quake strikes, seismologists can calculate the probability that an aftershock will happen in the area and when. Property crimes, the thinking went, would follow a similar pattern. Journalists often preferred to compare the system to Minority Report—Steven Spielberg’s science fiction thriller starring Tom Cruise, wherein suspects are caught before they commit crimes.

Researcher George Mohler, a one-time assistant adjunct professor for UCSC, developed the predictive policing system with UCLA anthropology professor Jeffrey Brantingham. Together, they created PredPol, which now counts about 50 community agencies—with a combined population of 10,000,000 residents—as clients, according to MacDonald.

PredPol, which is headquartered in Santa Cruz, uses three kinds of data: crime type, crime location and crime date/time. “These three data points are the closest we can come to truly objective crime data to work with,” MacDonald says via email.

The company uses those data points to create its “heat maps”—the 500-square-foot city blocks that officers should make sure to patrol through at certain times on a given day. MacDonald says PredPol never collects any racial, demographic or socioeconomic information, nor does it use arrest data. PredPol also limits its predictions to a rather narrow window of crime: vehicle theft, break-ins, burglaries, assaults, and robberies. He says the company has seen no evidence of bias in its data collection.

“If cars are being stolen on weeknights in a predominantly Black neighborhood, our prediction boxes would show up there,” he writes. “If they are being stolen in a predominantly white neighborhood, that’s where we’ll see boxes. In either case, officers will proactively patrol those areas to deter those thefts from occurring. It’s the presence of the officers that deters the crime.”

Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend was an SCPD crime analyst and spokesperson during the department’s predictive policing rollout. He knows full well that police nationwide have a tendency to show bias when on patrols, but he says that because predictive policing relied on data from police reports, the inputs were as sound as they could possibly be.

“In fact, the greater concern in that situation was, ‘Is there under-reporting in certain populations of crime because of concern with relationship with police?’ For example, you’re more likely to report a crime in the upper Westside than you are in the Beach Flats,” he says.

Friend says that, as he recalls, predictive policing resulted in fewer patrols going to neighborhoods that may have previously been oversaturated with policing.

One prominent critique of PredPol’s methods, though, came in 2015, as published by the Royal Statistical Society’s Significance magazine. Two researchers found that, when they plugged numbers for Oakland drug crime numbers into the PredPol algorithm, the heat maps fell disproportionately into neighborhoods with more people of color.

However, MacDonald notes that PredPol never used drug arrest data for precisely that reason. PredPol’s algorithm doesn’t predict for crime types that can result from officer-initiated actions, like drug use or prostitution—so as to avoid creating a statistical doom loop, where over-policed communities become increasingly over-policed as cops find more and more crime.

Santa Cruz County Supervisor and former Mayor Ryan Coonerty once served as director of government relations for PredPol. He started hearing about possible issues around racial bias in PredPol’s algorithmic data around 2014. Coonerty, who stopped working for the company in 2013, says he takes those concerns seriously and that they should be further vetted and addressed.

PROBABLE CAUSE

Another concern about predictive policing revolves around what happens when a cop shows up to an identified hotspot.

Does the officer simply circle once or twice around in their patrol car, make their presence known and keep an eye out for any obvious crimes being committed—as MacDonald and Friend indicate that they should? Or does the officer prowl around, emboldened by the heat map, looking for the slightest hint that someone might be homeless, poor or maybe even just nervous-looking?

The answers aren’t always clear. Some privacy scholars have raised questions about predictive policing based on Fourth Amendment concerns and also asked what constitutes grounds for reasonable suspicion in the era of highly targeted police operations.

In 2012, when then-Deputy Chief Steve Clark took a Santa Cruz Weekly reporter out on a predictive policing patrol, he compared a stop to one of PredPol’s hotspots to the act of “hunting.”

Four years later, Clark—a big supporter of predictive policing—ignited outrage locally when he took a cable news reporter out on a patrol and appeared to profile a Black man walking a bike as a possible criminal, before offering reasons why a white girl on a bike didn’t look suspicious at all. Clark, who could not be reached for comment, retired in December of 2016.

When it comes to perceptions of bias among recent SCPD leaders, Clark wasn’t the only culprit.

Former Santa Cruz Police Chief Kevin Vogel, who retired in 2017, recently took to Facebook to make what appeared to be a racist statement. Shortly after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings donated $120 million to support historically Black colleges, Vogel announced he was canceling his Netflix subscription because he said $120 million was “a lot of money for a charity that I am not interested in donating to,” as reported on GoodTimes.sc. (Vogel did not mention the colleges directly or respond to requests for comment.) In the comments below his post, the former chief added that he also disagreed with a $1 million donation from Hastings to a data-based research organization dedicated to fighting racial bias in American law enforcement. This happened on the evening of June 19, as activists were taking to the streets for Juneteenth to protest racial bias in law enforcement.

It’s no wonder activists have had concerns about a history of implicit bias at SCPD, dating back to predictive policing’s early days.

The alternatives to the data-heavy approach, however, aren’t always clear. Generally speaking, Coonerty has concerns about what it means when officers don’t rely on data to make decisions. A deputy’s habits and gut instincts may not be colorblind either.

“It’s always better to have people informed, rather having people going out and basing things on their own hunches,” Coonerty says.

He still believes the right data-driven solution could be effective to fight crime, assuming the data is sound and the algorithm bias-free. He gives the example of the recent rash of catalytic converter thefts from Priuses around Santa Cruz.

“That’s exactly what you could predict,” Coonerty says. “People’s habits are predictable. That’s an example of where [predictive policing] could be used.”

It’s also an example of where the line blurs between predictive policing and typical investigative work. Chief Mills says there is a predictive element to investigative work of his department’s crime analyst John Mitchell. But he says the focus is on solving crimes. Mills even framed Mitchell’s work as “predictive policing” in an interview with GT last year, when the term was less politically charged.

When and how exactly SCPD started to phase out PredPol’s software is unclear. Mills told GT in 2018 that he had incorporated the system into his neighborhood policing model. But a recent staff report indicated that SCPD stopped using the formula shortly after Mills arrived at the department in 2017. While on the phone with GT, Mills checked with a police sergeant to ask for his recollection of SCPD’s timeline, and the sergeant told Mills that many officers had pretty much stopped using the algorithm before Mills arrived because they didn’t feel it was working.

SARGE CARD

When it comes to doubts about predictive policing’s efficacy, Santa Cruz police sergeants would not be the only ones to feel that way.

Although Santa Cruz was the first city to pass an actual moratorium on predictive policing, police departments around the country, including in Palo Alto and Mountain View, have dumped the software in recent years because leaders said they weren’t seeing results. And in Los Angeles, after two years of pushback from activists, the Los Angeles Police Department cut ties with PredPol in April. LAPD officials said the reason was due to budget-related concerns, although an audit last year had created questions about the program’s success.

Given how civil liberties concerns have been front and center in discussions about the technology, a review of the academic and journalistic arguments against predictive policing finds them to be thinner on hard data than expected. Many of the articles look at non-PredPol types of predictive policing, including systems in place elsewhere in the U.S. that determine the likelihood that individuals would commit crimes in the near future—a practice that blatantly resembles racial profiling. (It’s a practice PredPol opposes.) Some articles conflate the various forms of predictive policing with one another or confuse them altogether. Others say PredPol relies on arrest or drug data for its algorithms, which MacDonald insists the company has never done.

MacDonald says PredPol is a small company that doesn’t have a public relations representative and that the business has chosen not to engage with its critics. He lists eight other companies—including IBM, Motorola and Cisco—that have been involved in the predictive policing space. He says he feels that many have received less flak, despite being, in his opinion, less transparent and more problematic in their business practices.

Hard data aside, it is the circumstantial evidence fueling activists’ deep-seated distrust of PredPol’s work that may be more compelling.

Critics of predictive policing often place it in the broader historical context. In many ways, the precursor to PredPol was a metric-obsessed approach undertaken in the 1990s by the NYPD called CompStat, which harmed communities of color and the efforts by law enforcement to work with them.

PredPol’s leaders may have a high-minded concept of how their data is divorced from the historical trends in faulty crime data of yesteryear, but given community concerns and the possible breaches of trust caused by former department leaders in the company’s hometown, it would behoove leadership to try to get out in front of the controversies and respond to questions from the community—especially in the midst of a nationwide conversation about reforming the police.

It’s also not unreasonable for critics to put the onus on PredPol to prove that its software helps vulnerable communities more than it hurts them.

MacDonald did not speak up at last week’s City Council meeting, nor did any other PredPol employees or supporters of predictive policing more generally. MacDonald says he sat down with Mills a couple times after the chief’s 2017 arrival in Santa Cruz. Other than that, MacDonald hasn’t talked with any city leaders lately.

“I haven’t taken the time to meet with other Santa Cruz city leaders because Chief Mills said he wanted to take a different approach,” he writes to GT. “At some point I’d like to sit down with [Mayor] Cummings and [City Manager Martín] Bernal to give them an overview of what we do and get their feedback on what we do and how it is perceived.”

UCSC professor emeritus of Sociology Craig Reinarman, who has followed the predictive policing news, isn’t surprised to hear that PredPol didn’t step forward to publically engage. He sees it as part of a larger trend.

“This is the same thing you hear from Silicon Valley all the time—whether it’s [President Donald] Trump and Twitter or Facebook ads that are lying and so on and so forth,” says Reinarman, who has concerns about predictive policing software, based on issues he’s seen with algorithms targeting probation and parole terms and also based on questions he has about how heat maps are both generated and interpreted. “Technology’s never really neutral, and they claim it’s always neutral. So I’m not surprised to hear the people who invented this didn’t want to come out and defend it in public. They may know the most about the ways in which there are risks about reifying preexisting conditions.”

FLEET EFFORT

Going forward, Cummings has ideas for other data that PredPol or another group could use to start tracking a different aspect of public safety.

He’s curious if police officers making arrests and those who file reports may be disproportionately targeting people of color. “Could it be used, not for predictive purposes, but for evaluating police departments?” says Cummings, who first brought forward the idea of the predictive policing ban in January with two colleagues—then-councilmembers Drew Glover and Chris Krohn—both of whom faced a successful, if divisive, recall election.

Although it’s the predictive policing element that earned international headlines last week, the City Council also voted unanimously to preemptively ban facial recognition software, which has been shown to be prone to major errors, particularly in identifying faces of Black and Asian people. The Santa Cruz County ACLU advocated for both changes. The city is additionally creating two new groups—a Mayor’s Community Advisory Committee and a City Council working group—to study police issues more closely.

On top of that, the council will take a close look at the city budget at a Thursday meeting, with the plan of fine-tuning the budget throughout the summer. Given budget shortfalls related to the Covid-19 pandemic and the recent protests about law enforcement, Cummings knows there will be calls to “defund the police.” And although it may sound like a small semantic nuance, Cummings has appreciated how some of the discussion in recent weeks has shifted away from defunding the police per se and toward the idea of reinvesting in the community. Big changes, though, won’t happen overnight, he says.

“We need to have all pieces in place before we start cutting funding from different departments,” he says. “And that’s what this conversation will be all about—how do we want to be policed, what does public safety look like for Santa Cruz, and how can we do so in a way that ensures equal protection for everyone?”

Update, June 30, 7:15pm: This story has been updated to clarify when Ryan Coonerty left PredPol.

Grant Summerland Explores the Creepy Side of Mountain Life

Aaron Carnes

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June 30, 2020

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Grant Summerland Explores the Creepy Side of Mountain Life

If you want to listen to local singer-songwriter Grant Summerland’s recently released debut album Bigfoot Museum in the most ideal setting, he offers a few suggestions. First, head out to Highway 9. Hit play at exactly 11:30pm and drive north up the highway for the duration of the record.

Summerland doesn’t think anyone will go to these lengths, but he did design the album with this optimal listening experience in mind. He came up with the concept for the record years ago when he was a teenager and would go on late-night drives up Highway 9. He wanted to capture the creepy vibe of the Santa Cruz Mountains at night, while also nailing the experience of listening to KZSC and other college radio stations in the off-hours when programming gets strange.

“Santa Cruz is a pretty weird place,” Summerland says. “I think that there is—in the mountains—definitely a dark undercurrent that could make for a good horror movie.”

Bigfoot Museum is a horror concept album featuring a wide range of musical genres like jazz, hip-hop, pop and indie rock. There is a narrator that drives up Highway 9 at night who is replaying the events of the summer that’s just ended, and his story involves evil forces, which may be real or imagined, that kept him locked in the house most of the summer. There’s also a sinister character named Charles that pops up now and again.

“Who he is, I will not say,” Summerland says of Charles. “What I think he is—he’s a really malicious figure. The narrator is constantly talking about how they’ve been inside all summer and they want to go out, but they can’t for some reason. Dealing with paranormal creatures, dealing with being trapped and shut-in.”

The record was also inspired by classic teen horror movies and shows that Summerland loved, especially the weirder ones like Donnie Darko and Twin Peaks. He wanted to make a distinctly Santa Cruz version of this horror style.

“There have been horror movies made in Santa Cruz like Us and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, but I wanted a different type of horror movie. Something more surreal, more of a psychological horror movie,” Summerland says.

The overriding theme of being stuck indoors all summer due to scary forces oddly was conceived years before anyone knew that Covid-19 would make this scenario a reality for people this summer. But Summerland wasn’t grappling with the realities of a pandemic shutting down society, he was thinking about the paradox of the “perfect summer,” a fictitious notion in films that’s impossible to achieve, and in many ways, hampers people from enjoying the summer they do get to have.

“You want to live life to the absolute fullest, and there’s a feeling that you’ll never actually get to live that full experience, ever. No matter what you do, there will always be something that prevents you from actually having the perfect summer,” Summerland says. “A lot of the album is coming to terms that there is no perfect summer. There is no perfect life. That’s not how you should think about life.”

The album’s title, Bigfoot Museum, is a reference to the very real Bigfoot Discovery Museum in Felton. However, there’s nothing in the album that has anything to do with the museum. For Summerland, the Bigfoot Discovery Museum was the perfect example of the weirder, creepier side of the Santa Cruz Mountains that he wanted to bring to his album, so why not name the album after it?

“There’s definitely the Santa Cruz summer. Usually, it’s images of surfboards, and the beach and burritos,” Summerland says. “I think there is a whole other side to the Santa Cruz experience, for people that live outside of the city. I wanted to flip the Santa Cruz summer upside down and show a different take on what that could even look like. And of course, it’s a really extreme take with monsters and the boogeyman and violence. That’s one part of Santa Cruz that I really wanted to include.”

Check out ‘Bigfoot Museum’ at grantsummerland.bandcamp.com.

James Durbin Returns to Live Music With Acoustic Show

Aaron Carnes

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June 30, 2020

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James Durbin Returns to Live Music With Acoustic Show

Every musician in town has a story about their sudden string of canceled shows amid the pandemic. But local singer-songwriter James Durbin had one of his shows shut down just hours before he was scheduled to take the stage.

He was booked to play Michael’s on Main on St. Patrick’s Day with his rock band Lost Boys. A few weeks earlier, his band members—who are all older than he, and at a higher risk for the coronavirus—decided to back out. Durbin still wanted to play, and changed it to “an acoustic night with James Durbin” event. But then the venue shut it down on the day of the show.

“We had a ‘Rockin’ Saint Patty’s’ party planned,” Durbin says. “That’s when all the venues were closing, and Michael’s was among them. It started with that and then the rest of my bookings. It looked like it was going to be a really good spring and summer of touring. It all just went to shit.”

Now Durbin’s getting a second chance to have his acoustic evening, as Michael’s recently started curating socially distanced “dinner and a show” events. Durbin, who will be accompanied by Mark Putnam on guitar, will be performing at the venue on Friday, July 3. It’ll be his first show in front of an audience since March.

“I cannot wait to perform in front of an actual audience,” Durbin says. “The livestreams are great, but I’m having to look at a little thin hole of a camera on an iPhone. I’m definitely looking forward to just getting back to being on stage and seeing people smile or cry or dance or whatever.”

The show is the only event Durbin has in the books at the moment. Like many other local musicians, he’s watching very closely how the loosening restrictions affect the scene. Prior to the pandemic, he was gigging nonstop with the Lost Boys, as a solo artist, and occasionally with local musician Nick Gallant and their joint Americana project Homeland Revival.

His steady strings of local gigs came after quitting Quiet Riot back in September last year due to creative difference, and an overall desire to gig more and devote more time to his own projects.

“I don’t feel like I could be pinned down to just playing with one group, especially if that group isn’t completely filling my calendar. I’ve got to do other things. Music is the job. Music pays the bills. If the calendar is not full, you got to fill it up in other places,” Durbin says.

Durbin is in the process of making the album he’s wanted to make his entire career: a solo album that goes deep into his ’80s power-metal influences and doesn’t hold back. His backing band includes such metal heavyweights as Barry Sparks (Dokken, Ted Nugent, Scorpions) and Mike Vanderhule (Y&T).

“It’s inspired by the works of Tolkien and J.K. Rowling,” Durbin says. “I got really into Roman and Greek mythology. And of course, the works of Ronnie James Dio, Judas Priest and Mötley Crüe.”

The pandemic has slowed down progress on the record, though he’s hoping to have the recording finished next month. He doesn’t yet want to give away too many details, but he does want it known that he wrote every piece of music.

“No co-writes. No outside writers. I’ve written every riff, which I’m also very proud of because I didn’t believe that I was a riff writer,” Durbin says. “I really wrote some fucking heavy kick-ass riffs.”

Ever since he started this album, he’s had big plans for an epic, over-the-top theatrical release show that recalls the most grandiose metal productions of yesteryear. It’s unclear what he will be able to do as the pandemic continues, but he knows he wants to do something.

“If I have to do it on private property and rent my own stage and sound equipment and inflatable dinosaurs and dragons, then so be it. We will do it,” Durbin says. “Everybody will get handed a turkey leg and a cup of mead and a bull horn. It’ll be great.”

James Durbin performs at 6:30pm on Friday, July 3, at Michael’s on Main, 2591 Main St., Soquel. $45 (includes dinner). 831-479-9777.

Rob Brezsny’s Astrology: July 1-7

Rob Brezsny

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June 30, 2020

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Free will astrology for the week of July 1

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries author Marge Piercy writes, “The people I love the best, jump into work headfirst without dallying in the shallows.” The Aries people I love best will do just that in the coming days. Now is not the right time to wait around passively, lazily hoping that something better will come along. Nor is it prudent to procrastinate or postpone decisions while shopping around for more options or collecting more research. Dive, Aries, dive!

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Calvin and Hobbes is a comic strip by Bill Watterson. It features a boy named Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes. In the first panel of one story, Calvin is seated at a school desk looking perplexed as he studies a question on a test, which reads “Explain [Isaac] Newton’s First Law of Motion in your own words.” In the second panel, Calvin has a broad smile, suddenly imbued with inspiration. In the third panel, he writes his response to the test question: “Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz.” The fourth panel shows him triumphant and relaxed, proclaiming, “I love loopholes.” I propose that you use this scenario as your victorious metaphor in the coming weeks, Taurus. Look for loopholes! And use them to overcome obstacles and solve riddles.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves,” wrote philosopher and activist Simone Weil. I’m hoping that this horoscope of mine can help you avoid that mistake. In the coming weeks and months, you will have a stronger-than-usual need to be seen for who you really are—to have your essential nature be appreciated and understood by people you care about. And the best way to make sure that happens is to work hard right now on seeing, appreciating and understanding yourself.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Some readers wish I would write more like Cormac McCarthy or Albert Camus or Raymond Chandler: with spare simplicity. They accuse me of being too lush and exuberant in my prose. They want me to use shorter sentences and fewer adjectives. To them I say: It ain’t going to happen. I have feelings similar to those of best-selling Cancerian author Oliver Sacks, who the New York Times called, “one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century.” Sacks once said, “I never use one adjective if six seem to me better and, in their cumulative effect, more incisive. I am haunted by the density of reality and try to capture this with ‘thick description.’” I bring these thoughts to your attention, my fellow Cancerian, because I think it’s important for you to be your lavish, sumptuous, complex self in the coming weeks. Don’t oversimplify yourself or dumb yourself down, either intellectually or emotionally.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Travel writer Paul Theroux has journeyed long distances by train: once from Britain to Japan and back again, and then from Massachusetts to Argentina. He also rode trains during part of his expedition from Cairo to Cape Town. Here’s one of his conclusions: “It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.” I’d like to offer a milder version of that counsel as your metaphor for the coming weeks: The funky, bumpy, rickety influences will bring you the best magic.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Philosopher Miguel de Unamuno declared, “Everything that exalts and expands consciousness is good, while that which depresses and diminishes it is evil.” This idea will be intensely true for and applicable to you in the coming weeks, Virgo. It will be your sacred duty—both to yourself and to those you care about—to enlarge your understandings of how the world works and to push your awareness to become more inclusive and empathetic. What’s your vision of paradise-on-earth? Now is a good time to have fun imagining it.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): What do you want to be when you grow up, Libra? What’s that you say? You firmly believe you are already all grown up? I hope not! In my vision of your destiny, you will always keep evolving and transforming; you will ceaselessly transcend your existing successes and push on to accomplish further breakthroughs and victories. Now would be an excellent time to rededicate yourself to this noble aspiration. I invite you to dream and scheme about three specific wonders and marvels you would like to experience during the next five years.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has advice that would serve you well in the coming weeks. She says, “Keep a little space in your heart for the improbable. You won’t regret it.” In accordance with your astrological potentials, I’m inclined to amend her statement as follows: “Keep a sizable space in your heart for the improbable. You’ll be rewarded with catalytic revelations and intriguing opportunities.” To attract blessings in abundance, Scorpio, be willing to set aside some of your usual skepticism and urge for control.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Author Malidoma Somé lives in the U.S. now, but was born in the West African country of Burkina Faso. He writes, “In the culture of my people, the Dagara, we have no word for the supernatural. The closest we come to this concept is Yielbongura, ‘the thing that knowledge can’t eat.’ This word suggests that the life and power of certain things depend upon their resistance to the categorizing knowledge that human beings apply to everything.” I bring Somé’s thoughts to your attention, Sagittarius, because I suspect that in the coming weeks, you will encounter more than the usual number of experiences that knowledge can’t eat. They might at times be a bit spooky or confounding but will mostly be interesting and fun. I’m guessing that if you embrace them, they will liberate you from overly literal and materialistic ideas about how the world works. And that will be good for your soul.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Pioneer Capricorn scientist Isaac Newton is often hailed as one of history’s greatest geniuses. I agree that his intellectual capacities were sublime. But his emotional intelligence was sparse and feeble. During the time he taught at Cambridge University, his talks were so affectless and boring that many of his students skipped most of his classes. I’ll encourage you to make Newton your anti-role model for the next eight weeks. This time will be favorable for you to increase your mastery of three kinds of intelligence beyond the intellectual kind: feeling, intuition and collaboration.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): When future writer (and Aquarius) Charles Dickens was 12 years old, his parents and siblings were incarcerated in a debtors’ prison. To stay alive and help his family, he took a job working 12 hours a day, six days a week, pasting labels on pots of boot polish in a rotting, rat-infested warehouse. Hard times! Yet the experiences he had there later provided him with rich material for the novels that ultimately made him wealthy and beloved. In predicting that you, too, will have future success at capitalizing on difficulty, I don’t mean to imply you’ve endured or will endure anything as harsh as Dickens’ ordeal. I’m just hoping to help you appreciate the motivating power of your challenging experiences.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Maybe you feel that the ongoing pandemic has inhibited your ability to explore and deepen intimacy to the degree that you would like to. But even if that’s the case, the coming weeks will provide openings that could soften and remedy your predicament. So be extra receptive and alert to the clues that life reveals to you. And call on your imagination to look for previously unguessed and unexpected ways to reinvent togetherness and tenderness. Let’s call the next three weeks your Season of Renewing Rapport.

Homework: Decide on three special words that will from now on serve as magic spells for you. Keep them secret! Don’t even tell me. realastrology.com.

The Buttery Shows How to Put Safety First for Customers

Christina Waters

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June 30, 2020

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The Buttery Shows How to Put Safety First for Customers

After three months it was finally time to visit with my longtime film companion, author and movie critic Lisa Jensen. And that meant a pit-stop first at The Buttery for two lattés and two enormous croissants, a chocolate and an almond ($4 each).

This place has its act together. Only four people are allowed inside at a time, so I felt confident stepping up to the masked attendant, placing my order, inserting my credit card and picking up the pastries and coffees. A temporary challenge was adding sugar to my coffee, but I used one of those cardboard bands used to pick up hot drinks, placed it around the sugar container and poured without touching the actual sugar jar. The rest—endless gabbing at a six foot distance, gossip, literary encouragement, and the swift inhaling of the Buttery’s excellent pastries—is history.

The Buttery, 702 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. Open daily 8am-5pm. 831-458-3020, butterybakery.com.

Reopenings Continue

Hula’s and Lupulo have expanded into half of Cathcart Street for outdoor seating as downtown continues to dip its toes into the next phase of restaurant opening. Abbott Square has opened most of its Market food shops for dine-in enjoyment, and hopefully by the time you read this the Cat and Cloud concession will also be open for dining on the spacious Abbott Square patio. The sit-down dining at Gabriella Cafe is “building slowly,” says proprietor Paul Cocking, and takeout is going strong.

Wine tasting is opening up too. At Alfaro Family Vineyards and Winery in Corralitos, wine lovers can now make Saturday tasting appointments from noon to 5pm. Sit overlooking the rolling vineyards to taste, purchase, and sip wines in groups of up to six people. I’m betting you’ll be charmed by Alfaro’s tangy estate Gruner Veltliner, or the house Syrahs and Pinot Noirs. Retrofitting the winery’s tasting facilities wasn’t a hassle.

“The changeover wasn’t too bad for us,” says winemaker Richard Alfaro. “We have the luxury of a lot of outside space, so we’re able to have 8-12 feet between tables.”

But every change comes at a price. “We did have to spend close to $5,000 for sanitation stations, Plexiglas barriers, flight carafes, dishwasher racks, and carts, etc.,” the winemaker admits. “Just the cost of doing business.”

If you haven’t enjoyed the spectacular view from the vineyard terrace, Saturdays are your chance to get away and discover some fine wine. Call 831-728-5172 to reserve your spot overlooking the Alfaro vines.

alfarowine.com.

Home Away Market

The house where chef Brad Briske cooks, Home restaurant in Soquel is not only open for in-house and garden dining, but it is now offering its wares at our local Farmers Markets—Downtown, Live Oak and Westside. Home Away Market offers lots of temptation, from ricotta gnocchi and big jars of bolognese sauces to castelvetrano olives, fresh sausages, and more. Sounds like pasta fixings to me.

homesoquel.com.

Odds and Ends

Plan ahead! Remember the infamous power shut-offs of last year? A gentle reminder: don’t overstock your freezer this summer unless you have a backup generator. Now is the time to thaw out that container of chile verde you made at Easter. Use up the frozen pasta sauce from time to time. You don’t want to watch $300 worth of steaks and stews head for the garbage bin if (I shudder) there’s an inconvenient outage.

Pantry check: When the virus hit, I loaded up my pantry. At last count I still had four jars of mayo, three of grey poupon, three jars of Hot Mango Chutney, a dozen cans each of tuna, sardines, and ranchero beans, and enough emergency sea salt flakes to infuse all the butter in Bad Animal.

Grand Jury Weighs In on Failures at Santa Cruz City Hall and More

Todd Guild

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June 29, 2020

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Grand Jury Weighs In on Failures at Santa Cruz City Hall and More

The Santa Cruz County Grand Jury has released its reports for the year, a sizable agglomeration of 10 investigations ranging from behavior at City Hall to fire services to voter information security.

The all-volunteer group convenes every year to take a deep dive into local governmental affairs, a process codified in California law.

“It’s about citizens really keeping their government accountable,” says Bruce Gritton, who served as foreperson for this year’s 19-member Grand Jury.

After a grand jury report is released, the agencies in question typically have up to 90 days to respond. These responses usually contain several agreements and disagreements with the allegations.

The agencies are not, however, bound by law to follow any of the recommendations.

But Gritton says that the jurors go into the year-long project knowing the reports do not carry any real legal weight.

“The real pressure for change needs to come from the citizenry that sees the reports,” he says. “They need to make sure their government is held accountable.”

As of press time, the Grand Jury had released seven of its reports (with the final three set for release this week); here is a look at each of their investigations:

A City Divided

In the latest chapter in Santa Cruz’s leadership soap opera, the Grand Jury slammed city leaders for not following or enforcing policies governing workplace behavior.

And even if it did, the City Council’s policies are not a sufficient tool by which to guide good behavior, the report states. In addition, those policies leave new city council members ill-prepared for the position.

City employees who reported harassment said they did not feel supported by management.

The City Council also took some heat for its inability to control disruptive behavior at meetings, which the Grand Jury says “increases meeting length and inhibits a representative cross-section of the public from participating.” Perhaps the most telling line in this report was the line, “The public has lost confidence in the City Leadership’s ability to function effectively.”

Risky Business

In a hefty 60-page tome detailing the county’s preparedness for risk from calamities such as financial catastrophe, natural disaster and global pandemic, the Grand Jury found that local government agencies are underprepared, and that cities should align their risk assessment framework with that of the California Auditor’s Office.

“Our findings indicate that all of our cities are just one economic shock away from serious financial distress, and that their current approach to risk management is not adequate to effectively manage and mitigate the range of risks that are typically confronted by local governments,” the report states.

The Grand Jury also urges the county’s jurisdictions to get a grasp on the risk associated with rising pension costs, and prognosticates that with Covid-19 having brought the world to a financial halt, financial calamity is likely on its way.

A Vote for Security

The Grand Jury made no allegations that the Santa Cruz County Elections Department has mishandled voter registration data. In fact, the report offers its praise, stating that its procedures “comply with all local, county, state, and federal laws and regulations governing Collected Data and Distributed Data.”

But it said the department should change the way it distributes publicly available voter registration data.

Rules governing such distribution, the report states, were established in 1994, long before identity theft and phishing attacks were a thing.

Those requesting such data could be doing so for fairly innocuous reasons, such as politicians contacting constituents or sending political mailings.

Under current procedures, however, voter data lists include personally identifiable information such as full birthdays, which can also be used for nefarious purposes such as identity theft, illegal sale of voter registration data, attempted election disruption, fraud, and cyber-extortion.

That should change to include only a birth year, the report states. The Elections Department should also ask those requesting voter data to include a narrative on why they are doing so.

Inspecting the Inspectors

After looking at six of the county’s 13 fire agencies responsible for performing safety inspections, the Grand Jury found that Santa Cruz and Watsonville Fire departments, along with Santa Cruz County Fire, have not “adequately inspected all schools, hotels, apartments, and licensed residential care facilities for fire and safety,” as required by state law.

Felton Fire District, meanwhile, has not accounted for its inspection of those facilities, the report states.

The agencies should tell their governing agencies what resources they would need to perform the necessary inspections, the Grand Jury recommends, and should all publish annual reports of their inspections.

The Aptos and Central Fire Districts, meanwhile, received praise for the “persistence shown” in performing their inspections and reporting the results.

Caught in the Web

The county’s website is replete with “missing, out-of-date and inaccurate” information, along with several broken links, the report says. The lack of updates makes it harder for citizens to inform themselves and to navigate county services.

This includes missing information from public meetings, among other things.

Furthermore, the county lacks a process by which the website is reviewed and improved, and does not have a way for users to be alerted to website updates.

Finally, the investigation found that, while web content providers often know the reasons behind the missing or out-of-date information, such information is typically not provided to the public.

To ameliorate the problem, the Grand Jury recommends formal processes for evaluating content, including a quarterly review.

A Power Struggle

The Grand Jury excoriated the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office for being unprepared during a 26-hour power failure on Sept. 28, 2019, that affected the Main Jail and the Blaine Street Women’s Jail.

“Services were lost and backup failed to properly operate in several critical areas,” the report reads. “Clearly, the safety of inmates and jail personnel was compromised. This cannot be tolerated.”

The power outage killed all overhead lights in the jail housing units, along with perimeter security cameras and the ventilation system. In addition, fire evacuation doors were inoperable, the kitchen lost power and jail officials had to complete arrest records on paper.  The investigation revealed, among other things, that the backup generator lacked the power for “mission critical” operations, and in any case there was not sufficient fuel to run the generator.

The report blames jail personnel for a lack of communication before, during and after an emergency, and for the fact that the jail had no policy for its response to such an emergency.

All of this violated county policy that among other things requires a working generator capable of a “seamless transition in the event of a loss of power,” those responsible for the generators were unaware.

The jail has since gotten a new generator, but has not yet tested it, the report says.

A Hole Lot of Trouble

A half-century anniversary after DeLaveaga Golf Course was built, the Grand Jury’s investigation into the facility shows that it is a poorly managed and underutilized money drain, annually adding to the county’s deficit.

This could be abated, the report states, by marketing the course through such organizations as local chambers of commerce and the Northern California Golf Association.

The 18-hole, 6,010-yard course is owned by the City of Santa Cruz and managed by the City’s Parks and Recreation Department.

According to the report, DeLaveaga Golf Course has been operating at a deficit for the last several years, and it will keep doing so through at least 2023.

The course’s financial woes stem largely from senior maintenance personnel salaries—to the tune of $1 million annually—and from pension benefits. The yearly half-million dollar water bill also takes a bite.

A lack of routine inspections led to problems that took more than $1 million in recent repairs to bring the restaurant/lodge up to code. It’s set to re-open sometime this year.

The Grand Jury recommends that the course tweak its green fees and readjust its staffing system, among other things.

Man Arrested for Suspected Hate Crime in Santa Cruz

Alisha Green

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June 29, 2020

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Man Arrested for Suspected Hate Crime in Santa Cruz

A San Jose man was arrested early Sunday morning for allegedly attacking another man while using racial epithets, according to Santa Cruz Police.

Police responded around 2:37am on Sunday to a report of a fight on the 1400 block of Ocean Street in Santa Cruz in front of a motel. SCPD officers say they learned the suspect, 32-year-old Cody Chavez of San Jose, launched an unprovoked attack on a 46-year-old man from Jamaica and used racial epithets during the assault. The victim sustained serious but non-life-threatening injuries, including a fractured orbital and a laceration requiring stitches, according to the SCPD.

Chavez was arrested for battery with serious bodily injury, violation of civil rights causing violent injury, and resisting arrest. Santa Cruz Police said in a statement that they are “continuing to follow up on this case to determine the motive for the attack.”

People in Santa Cruz and across the country have been calling for action to address systemic racism in recent weeks following several high-profile killings of Black people.

“There is no place for this heinous behavior in our community or our country, and we will not tolerate it,” SCPD Deputy Chief of Police Bernie Escalante said in a written statement. “The Santa Cruz Police Department will do everything within our ability and authority to hold this person accountable through the criminal justice system. Our hearts go out to the victim and wish him a speedy recovery.”

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call SCPD’s Investigations Unit at 831-420-5820 or leave an anonymous tip at 831-420-5995.

Santa Cruz in Photos: The Creative Side of Social Distance

Tarmo Hannula

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June 29, 2020

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Santa Cruz in Photos: The Creative Side of Social Distance

A large chalk art work is shown in the courtyard of Abbott Square.

The piece, drawn by Janet Allinger, is one of several chalk works at the square that are part of an Open Studios project by five local artists who each drew a 6-foot “social distance circle.”

Janice Serilla got the project going. The chalk art will be around for about two weeks, or until the weather and foot traffic erase them.

See more of the art:

See more from the Santa Cruz in Photos series.

New Online Program Offers Classes, Connections for Older Adults

Johanna Miller

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June 29, 2020

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New Online Program Offers Classes, Connections for Older Adults

Elderday Adult Day Health Care, a program of local nonprofit Community Bridges, has for years aimed to empower seniors to live at home with independence and dignity.

But after Covid-19 hit and shelter-in-place orders went into effect, Elderday was forced to close. In the following weeks staff reached out to participants in any way they could: nurses made routine phone calls, activity packets were sent out and remote services put in place.

“What we do … our whole thing is about congregation,” said Elderday Program Director Lois Sones. “That’s the magic of the program—coming together. But our participants are the most vulnerable in the community [to Covid-19]. They are over 65 … they usually have a chronic condition. We had to stop on-site programming immediately.”

This prompted staff to start looking for ways to expand and adapt their usual classes and activities to an online format. Community Bridges Executive Director Raymon Cancino had the idea to coordinate with the city of Watsonville and the city of Santa Cruz’s parks and recreation departments to create a new digital senior center.

Senior Center Without Limits kicked off last week. Santa Cruz County residents are invited to participate in over 15 classes per week on Zoom, a video conferencing application. Classes include yoga, tai chi, art, music, meditation and more. Support groups and computer classes are also available, and Sones said they are developing ESL and citizenship classes as well.

“We’re trying to figure out how to provide people with as much mental, physical and social stimulation as possible,” she said.

Clara Muñoz, remote services coordinator for Elderday, said that developing the online center has been a major learning experience. Community Bridges worked closely with Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation, which had started its own digital program, to expand to Watsonville and hire more staff.

“We got started last week … seeing how we could make the classes available and getting the teachers used to working on Zoom,” Muñoz said. “It has been a big effort.”

To join Senior Center Without Limits, participants must have internet access and an internet-enabled device such as a computer, smartphone or tablet. Those who do not have a device may qualify to receive a free Amazon Fire tablet; applicants must be over the age of 60 and a low-income resident of Watsonville or Santa Cruz. Priority is given to those with disabilities.

Muñoz said that they were working with Nerd By Night, an IT firm based in Aptos, to set up the tablets to be as easily accessible as possible. Participants need only to turn on the device and open one of two applications.

“Some people are good with tech already,” she said, “but others need more help. We wanted to make it easy—one click, and you’re in the class.”

Seniors can visit communitybridges.org/SCWOL to apply for a device. Elderday is also accepting donations of tablets and cash to support the program.

“Isolation is a real problem for seniors, even before shelter-in-place,” Sones said. “What I hope is that this program will give them a sense of community and purpose.”

One woman, Muñoz said, has already become a regular of Senior Center Without Limits, attending every class that she can.

“It melts my heart to see her enjoying it,” she said. “It really shows how important that connection is.”

Watsonville, Latinx Community Hit Hard by Covid-19

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June 29, 2020

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Watsonville, Latinx Community Hit Hard by Covid-19

The demographics of Santa Cruz County’s novel coronavirus cases now mirror those at the state and national level, raising concerns about the county’s response to increasing numbers in Watsonville.

Though cases have remained relatively low compared to other counties around the state, Watsonville and its large Latinx community—80% of the population in the county’s southernmost city—has been hit the hardest during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As of Thursday, there were 106 known active cases in the county and 337 cases overall. More than half (184) of the county’s cases have been identified in the Watsonville area. Latinx residents make up 55.49% of the county’s cases despite being only 33.5% of the county’s population.

At the state level, Latinx residents account for roughly 56% of Covid-19 cases despite being only 38.9% of California’s population. And nationally the COVID Tracking Project—a volunteer-led organization started by The Atlantic—says that there is a racial/ethnic disparity in nearly all of the 49 states or territories who report their race and ethnicity data. Thirty-seven of those states or territories are seeing their Latinx residents being disproportionately affected by Covid-19.

In Nebraska, where Latinx residents account for only 11% of the population, that group makes up 62% of all Covid-19 cases, many of which have been traced back to meatpacking plants where laborers work shoulder-to-shoulder for hours. Other parts of “flyover country” such as Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Wisconsin have also seen their Latinx populations disproportionately impacted.

Many coastal states, too, have not had much success in protecting their Latinx populations. That population makes up 13% of Oregon residents but accounts for 40% of the state’s Covid-19 cases. New York does not report race/ethnicity data for confirmed cases, but has reported that Latinx residents have accounted for 27% of the state’s deaths—more than any other demographic in the state—despite being only 19% of the population.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that there are numerous factors as to why minorities are being disproportionately affected, including living conditions, work circumstances, underlying health conditions and lower access to health care. And Santa Cruz County health officials have confirmed that information during now-discontinued weekly press conferences.

In a press conference on June 11, Deputy County Health Officer David Ghilarducci said that the county’s residents of color have taken the brunt of the pandemic because many work in industries that were deemed essential by county and state orders such as grocery stores, gas stations and hardware stores.

In Watsonville, essential jobs are the lifeblood of the local economy. Industries such as farming, construction, maintenance and food service and preparation, as well as manufacturing, retail and transportation far outnumber tech, management and other white-collar industries that were able to make the switch to at-home work when Covid-19 started to spread. According to Data USA, only a quarter of the occupations in Watsonville are in industries such as office and administrative support, business and financial operations and architecture and engineering.

Watsonville City Councilman Felipe Hernandez said that the city’s economic profile, combined with the low wages and minimal benefits that are found in many of those industries, have created a dangerous landscape for Watsonville’s workers. While some industries closed their offices and moved online, many in Watsonville continued reporting to work despite health concerns because they had to pay bills.

“Everywhere you’re most likely to get infected with Covid, [Latinx residents] are there,” Hernandez said. “Unfortunately, they’re there for 8-12 hours every day for low wages, no paid sick days, no health care, no option to work from home. There is an underlying issue and it’s being illustrated right now.”

Cases in Watsonville jumped after four Covid-19 clusters related to Mother’s Day celebrations arose. Since then, the county and city have picked up their outreach and education efforts through media campaigns specifically targeted at Pajaro Valley residents. But cases continue to climb in Watsonville despite those efforts, and the age range of those positive cases has shifted into the younger population—with people ages 18-34 making up the largest amount (106) of cases.

Hernandez said he believes the rise in cases and shift in age are a direct result of Watsonville’s young people returning to the workforce as shelter-in-place restrictions have been peeled back over the last month.

County health officials, however, have attributed the increases to various factors, including holidays, group gatherings, reopenings and increased testing.

County data specifying where a person acquired the case is still slim, as the majority of known cases have not been publicly linked to a specific profession. Only farm and agriculture (32), health care workers (26) and first responders (6) have been separated from the all-encompassing “other” category on the county’s website.

County health officials have said they will expand the profession category when there are enough cases in other professions. Officials have also said those numbers do not indicate where a person contracted the virus—it is merely where a person works.

Santa Cruz County Health Officer Dr. Gail Newel at a press conference Thursday said very few cases are acquired while employees are working.

“Some of the cases are acquired in the breakroom at work, where people gather closely together and take their face coverings off to eat and drink and are often too close to other employees,” she said. “Those social gatherings are putting the greatest number of people at risk …. Gatherings in the work setting, but not the professional setting, per se. In the breakroom or outside in the parking lot, that’s where it seems where people are not physical distancing, not wearing their face coverings and being too close to each other.”

Good TimesGood Times

Good TimesGood Times

PREDICTION MARKETS

PROBABLE CAUSE

SARGE CARD

FLEET EFFORT

Reopenings Continue

Home Away Market

Odds and Ends

A City Divided

Risky Business

A Vote for Security

Inspecting the Inspectors

Caught in the Web

A Power Struggle

A Hole Lot of Trouble