More stories

  • in

    Protesters in L.A. Set Several Waymo Cars on Fire Amid Police Clash

    Protesters smashed the windows of multiple Waymo robot taxis and then set them on fire. The police warned of toxic fumes released by burning lithium-ion batteries.Protesters torched and vandalized self-driving Waymo taxis on Sunday during clashes with the police over President Trump’s immigration crackdown.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesWaymo, the robot taxi company, cut off service to the downtown Los Angeles area after protesters set multiple self-driving vehicles on fire on Sunday, sending smoke into the air.The protests in other parts of the city against President Trump’s crackdown on immigration have been largely peaceful, but law enforcement officers have reported that demonstrations have become “worse and more violent” since they began on Friday.A Waymo spokeswoman said that the company had cut off service to the downtown Los Angeles area and had removed the burned vehicles from the streets. After protesters smashed windows and spray-painted anti-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement messages onto the taxis and set them alight, some protesters threw electric Lime scooters into the flames, the Los Angeles Times reported.“Burning lithium-ion batteries release toxic gases, including hydrogen fluoride, posing risks to responders and those nearby,” the Los Angeles Police Department said on social media, urging people to avoid the area.Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has completed more than 5 million rider-only rides, according to the company’s website, and began operating in Los Angeles last year. Waymo’s robot taxis are ubiquitous on San Francisco’s hilly roads.The driverless taxis operate in San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin and Los Angeles, with prices similar to those of Uber and Lyft. The company plans to soon begin operating in Atlanta through a partnership with Uber. More

  • in

    After L.A. Fires, Edison Wants to Bury Power Lines in Altadena and Malibu

    Southern California Edison is echoing calls from homeowners to move spark-prone electrical equipment underground. Company officials estimated the cost at more than $650 million.Southern California Edison, the electric utility whose equipment has been the focus of investigations into the deadly Eaton fire in Los Angeles County in January, said on Friday that it planned to bury more than 150 miles of power lines in fire-prone areas near Altadena and Malibu, Calif.The project would require approval from state regulators, would take years to complete and would cover only a fraction of the utility’s vast service area. Still, underground lines have been among the top requests from fire-ravaged communities as Los Angeles looks to rebuild.In a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, company officials estimated the cost of the project at more than $650 million. That amounts to about two-thirds of the nearly $1 billion that the utility estimated it would cost to rebuild the infrastructure that was damaged or destroyed in the wildfires that began on Jan. 7. Much of that cost is expected to be passed on to customers.But, officials said, the project will address a significant risk in two of Southern California’s most fire-prone areas. Officials said at least 90 miles of power lines would be buried in Malibu, and more than 60 miles in and around high-risk fire zones in Altadena, where the Eaton fire burned.“SCE will build back a resilient, reliable grid for our customers,” Steven Powell, the president and chief executive of the utility, said in a statement.Officials said on Friday that any distribution circuits not buried underground would be “hardened with covered conductor.” Company officials said in the letter that the investigation into the cause of the fire was still in progress, but they “acknowledged the possibility of SCE’s equipment being involved in the cause of the Eaton fire.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    A $4 Billion Sex Abuse Settlement in L.A., After Childhoods of ‘Pure Hell’

    MaryAlice Ashbrook remembers the rain on the night the Los Angeles police retrieved her, the 8-year-old child of a pill-addicted mother, and took her to the MacLaren Children’s Center, the county-run foster home where she was preyed upon. Shirley Bodkin remembers the smell of the staff member there who would put her on his lap and make her hold a Raggedy Ann doll while he hurt her. J.C. Wright remembers the social workers who accused him, at age 7, of “fabricating” when he tried telling them what a doctor there had done to him. Those memories are decades old. Ms. Ashbrook is 65 now, a retired bookkeeper in Yuma, Ariz. Ms. Bodkin is 58, the mother of two grown sons in the Southern California beach town of Dana Point. Mr. Wright is 42, a truck driver and father of four in suburban Los Angeles.Whole chapters of their lives have gone by — marriages, children, careers — yet the memories have never ceased to torment them. Ms. Ashbrook tried electroshock therapy. Ms. Bodkin attempted suicide. Mr. Wright lived on the streets for years, ending up in prison. There was no escaping the nightmares, they said in interviews on Sunday. So they turned to the courts for some measure of relief.Last week, it arrived, for them and nearly 7,000 other plaintiffs who say they were sexually abused as children in Los Angeles County’s juvenile detention and foster care systems, in cases dating to the late 1950s. In a settlement that lawyers say is the largest of its kind in the nation, the county publicly apologized and agreed to pay a record $4 billion, dwarfing previous settlements in child sex abuse cases brought against the Boy Scouts of America and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The wave of claims — so immense that officials had warned before the deal that Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, could be bankrupted by it — came after California gave childhood victims a new window to sue, even though the statute of limitations had expired. The county’s Board of Supervisors is expected to formally approve the payout on April 29.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    L.A. Fires Death Toll Rises to 30 After Remains Are Found

    The discovery makes the Palisades and Eaton fires, combined, the second-deadliest wildfires in California’s history.Nearly three months after the January wildfires in Los Angeles, investigators discovered human remains in a burned lot on Wednesday in Altadena, Calif., raising the total death toll from the fires to 30.The Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office said a six-person team was sent to Altadena to investigate a report of possible remains. The team later confirmed the remains were human. The discovery came 12 weeks after the Eaton fire broke out on the evening of Jan. 7, burning more than 14,000 acres and destroying more than 9,000 structures.The remains found on Wednesday raised the death toll of the Eaton fire to 18 people. To the west in Pacific Palisades, 12 people died in the Palisades fire, which burned more than 23,000 acres and destroyed more than 6,000 structures.With their combined death toll at 30, the two fires make up the second-deadliest wildfire in California history. The Camp fire, which killed 85 people in Northern California in 2018, has the largest death toll in state wildfire history, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.Even separately, the Eaton and Palisades fires rank among the deadliest in California. The Palisades fire is the ninth deadliest and the Eaton fire is the fifth deadliest, according to state records.The death toll from the Eaton and Palisades fires could continue to grow. It was unclear how many people who were reported missing at the time of the fires were still missing. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department did not immediately provide an updated figure on Thursday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    Edison’s Power Lines Were Under Strain 14 Hours Before Eaton Fire

    New data suggests there were faults on Southern California Edison’s transmission lines early on Jan. 7 before the fire started that evening.About 14 hours before the Eaton fire started on Jan. 7 on the hills above Altadena and Pasadena, Calif., power lines in the area had signs of being under strain from intensifying winds.New data from a company that maintains electrical sensors suggests that the transmission network of Southern California Edison was stressed long before the most severe winds bore down on the Los Angeles region, adding to growing criticism that the electric utility did not do enough to prevent the blaze. Edison is already under review as the possible cause of the Eaton fire, which fire killed 17 people and destroyed more than 9,400 buildings.The data comes from Whisker Labs, a technology company in Maryland, and suggests there were faults, or electrical malfunctions, on Edison’s transmission lines at 4:28 a.m. and 4:36 a.m. on the day of the fire. Winds speeds at the time were sustained at 60 miles per hour, with gusts as high as 79 m.p.h., — strong enough for engineers to consider cutting power.Later in the day, Whisker identified two faults just minutes before the fire started, at about 6:11 p.m., on the transmission network near Eaton Canyon, where fire investigators have said the Eaton Fire began. Those faults matched flashes on the transmission lines recorded by a video camera at a nearby Arco gas station. More

  • in

    Southern California Braces for Storm Damage in Wildfire Areas

    An intense storm could cause flooding and debris flows in areas burned by wildfires. Some residents have begun to evacuate.A large swath of California was bracing Thursday for an intense bout of rain that could lead to flooding and cause debris flows in areas recently burned by wildfires.The Southern California regions scorched by flames last month were of particular concern because the soil in those areas can repel water and allow sheets of water to race downhill, collecting debris along the way.In the Los Angeles area, about two inches of rain was expected over the next two days, but some parts of Southern California could receive more than four inches, according to the National Weather Service office in Oxnard, Calif. A torrent of rain within a short period could pose particular problems.“It’s looking like we’re going to be seeing the highest amount of rain that we’ve had in a single storm so far this season,” Lisa Phillips, a meteorologist with the Weather Service, said. Some officials in Southern California began to issue evacuation warnings and orders on Wednesday. In Santa Barbara County, the sheriff’s office ordered evacuations in areas in and around the burn scar of the Lake fire, which burned more than 38,000 acres last year. Residents under the order were told to leave by 3 p.m. on Wednesday, and those who chose not to evacuate were told to prepare to sustain themselves for several days if they had to shelter in place.Track the Latest Atmospheric River to Hit the West CoastUse these maps to follow the storm’s forecast and impact.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    Panic at Pepperdine University in Malibu as Wildfires Threaten City

    No structures were damaged and no one was injured, but students spent a frantic night sheltering in place as thousands of nearby residents evacuated.The residence halls had lost power, and cell service was not working. Embers had sparked tiny flare-ups on the school grounds, setting palm trees ablaze. Helicopters were descending to extract water from a campus pond.And so the students gathered, many in their pajamas, in the library and in the campus center where the windows framed a distressing sight: Flames ravaging the mountains in the not so far distance; smoke spiraling in the dark sky.They called their parents. They prayed.So went early Tuesday morning for nearly 3,000 students, faculty members and staff members at Pepperdine University, a Christian school in Malibu known for its bucolic setting of rolling hills and ocean views.Around them, the Franklin fire, fueled by fierce winds, ravaged the Santa Monica Mountains and forced thousands of people to evacuate from Malibu — the famed affluent coastal enclave that boasts picturesque beaches and celebrity homeowners. Schools were closed, and residents were ordered to stay away.The blaze also shut down a portion of the Pacific Coast Highway, a key artery in and out of the city, as flames leaped across it and threatened the Malibu Pier, a popular tourist attraction. By Tuesday afternoon, the wildfire had burned more than 2,800 acres, and officials said that gusts as strong as 60 miles per hour had challenged the more than 700 firefighters responding to the scene.“But rest assured, we are going to have a coordinated air and ground assault on this fire for as long as it takes,” said the Los Angeles County fire chief, Anthony C. Marrone.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    As Prosecutors Revisit Police Killings, Charges Are Still Rare

    Pamela Price, a new district attorney in Northern California, is the latest to reopen cases that had seemingly been shut, including one from more than 15 years ago.Agustin Gonsalez was shot dead in 2018 by police officers in Hayward, Calif., when he refused to drop a sharp object during a confrontation on a dark street.Andrew Moppin-Buckskin was killed by Oakland officers in 2007 after he ran away following a car chase, hid under a vehicle and failed to comply with their demands.Two years ago, Mario Gonzalez died after he was pinned on the ground for more than five minutes by officers in Alameda, Calif.In all three cases, prosecutors determined that the police should not be criminally charged, seemingly closing the book.But shortly after she became the district attorney of Alameda County in January, Pamela Price initiated a new review of those cases and five others in one of the most extensive re-examinations of police killings launched by progressive prosecutors.Ms. Price’s review is notable because her predecessors had already cleared the officers of wrongdoing and two of the reopened cases occurred more than 15 years ago.As high-profile instances of police brutality shocked the public in recent years and raised questions about official law enforcement accounts, liberal prosecutors campaigned on the promise that they would review cases that they felt were hastily closed without charges. Their efforts to revisit old cases have won praise from the activists and liberal Democrats who voted for them.But the re-examinations so far have rarely led to criminal charges.“To reopen a police use-of-force case is, in many ways, a herculean task,” said Steve Descano, the commonwealth’s attorney in Fairfax County, Va. He lost in court after he charged two federal Park Police officers for the 2017 shooting of a man who fled a car crash, a case that the Justice Department previously reviewed and declined to pursue.The incidents almost never have evidence as stark as the bystander video showing George Floyd being pinned to the ground in 2020 for more than nine minutes by Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murdering Mr. Floyd.The circumstances often are more ambiguous, the footage less telling. And once a district attorney writes a lengthy memo detailing why criminal charges are unjustified against a police officer, it can be difficult for a successor to overcome those arguments, absent new evidence.“Everybody is going to go through it again, and the outcome in all probability is going to be the same,” said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “And what’s Einstein’s definition of insanity?”The biggest hurdle for pursuing criminal charges is the wide latitude that officers have to use force. State legislatures, including California’s, have tried to narrow that ability. But officers generally can still use lethal force when they feel they or others could be killed, a level of immunity that law enforcement officials say is necessary to ensure the public’s safety.Pamela Price, the new district attorney of Alameda County, Calif., announced this year that she would review eight police killings, including one dating to 2007.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAlameda County, Ms. Price’s jurisdiction, covers a large swath of the East Bay across from San Francisco, containing 14 cities and numerous police departments. In the county seat of Oakland, where the Black Panther Party emerged in the 1960s, a legacy of radical politics is intertwined with a troubled history of law enforcement. The Oakland Police Department has been under federal oversight for more than two decades.Ms. Price campaigned on a liberal platform that, besides reviewing old cases, included removing local residents from death row and resentencing inmates serving life sentences — an effort, she said, to restore public trust. Since taking office, she has directed her staff to seek the lowest possible prison sentence for most crimes.She said that in the past, prosecutors routinely gave officers a pass when they killed someone on the job, and she wants questionable police killings to face the same rigor that other criminal cases get.“Every case that we’re looking at now was determined under a double standard,” Ms. Price said in an interview. “Police officers received a different standard of justice than everyday people.”Ms. Price is among a growing cadre of progressive prosecutors elected over the last decade, beginning with the 2016 elections of Kim Foxx in Chicago and Kimberly Gardner in St. Louis, on promises of reducing jail populations and holding police accountable. The movement gained steam after Floyd’s murder.Some prominent district attorneys have since faced a backlash over crime concerns. Chesa Boudin was recalled last year in San Francisco, while Ms. Gardner resigned last week as she faced criticism for her handling of violent crime. Ms. Foxx is not running for re-election next year and has endured criticism from moderates and conservatives, especially for her support of eliminating cash bail statewide.In Maine, a police officer has never been prosecuted for an on-duty killing. But in July 2020, Natasha Irving, the district attorney for four counties, said she would seek charges for the 2007 police shooting death of Gregori Jackson, who was drunk and ran away after a routine traffic stop in Waldoboro, the town where Ms. Irving grew up.Three years later, however, Ms. Irving said that based on the attorney general’s review of the forensics from the case, she will not file charges.“It’s just not going to be a provable case,” she said in an interview.Karla Gonsalez stood at a memorial to her son at the site in Hayward, Calif., where he was shot and killed by police officers.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn the Virginia case pursued by Mr. Descano, Bijan Ghaisar, 25, was involved in a minor car crash and then fled in his Jeep, pursued by two officers who cornered Mr. Ghaisar in a residential neighborhood. When the vehicle moved toward a police car, they opened fire, killing him.Mr. Descano brought a case, but a judge dismissed the charges, ruling the officers reasonably feared they were in danger. His efforts to pursue the case further were rejected by the state’s attorney general and the Justice Department.Such reviews offer the possibility of justice for still grieving families but also may unrealistically raise their hopes. Karla Gonsalez, the mother of Mr. Gonsalez, the man who was killed in Hayward, said she was torn when she heard Ms. Price was reopening her son’s case.Television outlets began replaying the body camera footage of Mr. Gonsalez’s confrontation with police. For his family, all of the anger, grief and unresolved questions came rushing back. Why had the officers not tried to de-escalate the situation?“I was excited to know that it was going to be opened up again,” Ms. Gonsalez said. “At the same time, I was very nervous that it was going to be another roadblock, another failure.”Less than 2 percent of police killings result in charges, according to Philip M. Stinson, a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University. That figure has not budged since 2020. The number of people killed by the police is holding steady — last year it was 1,200, compared with 1,147 in 2022, according to Mapping Police Violence.“From where I sit, nothing has changed,” Mr. Stinson said.In Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who was elected district attorney in 2020, appointed a special prosecutor to reopen four cases in which his predecessor declined to file charges.Ryan Young for The New York TimesIn Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who was elected district attorney in 2020, appointed a special prosecutor to reopen four cases in which his predecessor, Jackie Lacey, declined to file charges. He also asked an independent team of experts to review more than 300 previous use-of-force cases to see if the evidence warranted criminal charges.The special prosecutor, Lawrence Middleton, had secured convictions in a 1993 federal trial against Los Angeles Police Department officers for beating Rodney King. In the new cases, he has secured indictments against two officers in the 2018 shooting death of Christopher Deandre Mitchell, who was driving a stolen vehicle and had an air rifle between his legs when he was confronted by officers in a grocery store parking lot. (“Both officers’ use of deadly force was reasonable under the circumstances,” Ms. Lacey wrote in a 2019 memo.)The re-examinations themselves take time, and liberal prosecutors may yet file criminal charges against more officers in past cases. But they said that charges should not be the only benchmark of whether their reviews are worthwhile.“I think there is huge value to reopening a case if there is probable cause, or if there is evidence that seems compelling in any way,” Ms. Irving, the prosecutor in Maine, said. “Yes, part of it is to send a message to people who would be bad actors. Part of it is to send a message to families that have lost loved ones, or individuals who have been harmed, that they count.”Ed Obayashi, a California-based expert in use of force who trains law enforcement, said in 2021 that Mario Gonzalez did not seem to be a threat to the public in Alameda and questioned why officers restrained him before he died. The police had responded to a call that Mr. Gonzalez, 26, was acting strangely in a park and talking to himself.Mr. Obayashi said this week that he did not fault Ms. Price for reviewing the case, but he also felt that if there was consensus in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office under her predecessor, Ms. Price should not have reopened it.“It’s a big concern to law enforcement because these types of decisions, to revisit old cases that former prosecutors have decided that no charges should be brought against the officer, it’s political,” Mr. Obayashi said. “It’s politically driven.”Ms. Price’s review also includes two cases from 15 years ago that occurred seven months apart and involved the same officer killing men who ran away after traffic stops, including Mr. Moppin-Buckskin. The officer, Hector Jimenez, was cleared in each case and remains with the Oakland Police Department.“For the life of me I can’t understand what Ms. Price thinks she’s doing with those kinds of cases, some 15 years after they occurred,” said Michael Rains, a lawyer for Mr. Jimenez.In Hayward, the city agreed to pay $3.3 million to settle a federal lawsuit with Agustin Gonsalez’s family but said it was a way to support his children rather than an admission of wrongdoing. The city said in April that there appeared to be no new evidence that warranted reopening the case.Mr. Gonsalez was shot in November 2018 after police officers confronted him. He was suicidal and was holding a razor blade. He refused to drop the blade and approached the officers with his arms outstretched. That’s when the two veteran police officers shot him 12 times.Karla Gonsalez recently sat in her sister’s kitchen and described her son as a father of two who was an Oakland sports fan and often drove nearly 400 miles south to Disneyland with his season pass. In the corner of her living room was a makeshift shrine, with a flickering candle and a crucifix draped over his portrait.Cynthia Nunes, Mr. Gonsalez’s cousin, said her family was grateful his case was being reopened. But they want more.“Charges actually have to be brought forward, too,” she said. “The system needs to change.”Julie Bosman More