Posts Tagged: police
Podcast
CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: Susannah Delano, Executive Director at Close the Gap California, joined us to talk about the work of identifying and preparing women to run for elected office, and about the very real challenges women face when they choose to enter public life.
Podcast
CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom released a proposal for a $3 billion bond measure aimed at the 2024 ballot, to fund housing for people with severe mental illness. At the same time, Newsom asked the legislature to revise 2004’s Proposition 63. Author and journalist Dan Morain joined us to talk about the two proposals, the half century of policy and politics that got us to where we are today, and shared his own personal story of a family member unable to live on his own after a devastating accident.
News
Roxanne is used to being harassed by the police. A trans woman, Roxanne – who uses only her first name – is an attorney. She owns two homes in San Jose about a mile apart and regularly walks from one to the other. Years ago, while exercising, she was arrested across the street from one of her homes, she said.
Opinion
OPINION: Debates about the Governor’s CARE Courts program have raged across the state in recent months. A major point of contention is whether Californians with mental health challenges will be helped or hurt by being pushed into the legal system.
News
Landmark legislation to improve California’s notoriously fractured mental-health system has been passed and sent to the governor in the waning days of a chaotic legislative session disrupted by the COVID pandemic. “This package of legislation is a game-changer,” said Maggie Merritt, executive director of the Steinberg Institute.
News
Police response to mental-health calls often ends – again and again – in chaotic, noisy hospital emergency rooms, where staff is stretched thin, and a heart attack is likely to take precedence over someone in the throes of a mental-health crisis. “Traditionally, people would be dropped off at the ER, and the only option was to transfer them to a psychiatric facility,” says Dr. Scott Zeller, a nationally known emergency psychiatrist and former president of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry.
News
Jackie Fielder is an activist and educator with her sights set on California’s 11th Senate District, hoping in an uphill race to topple incumbent state Sen. Scott Wiener, a fellow Democrat. Fielder is young (25), educated (Stanford University), a person of color (both Native American and Latina), an environmental protester and an activist with a background in grassroots organizing. She describes herself as a Democratic Socialist.
News
But one week into the lockdown, epidemiologists tracking rates of transmission in California and the United States worry that Newsom’s shelter-in-place order will be less effective in controlling new infections without stronger enforcement.
News
California’s 84 rape crisis centers are in a funding crisis. While California has experienced a steady rise in the number of reported rapes (over 5% per year since 2015), the state’s annual General Fund contribution to rape crisis centers over the past decade has been a miniscule $45,000.
News
The administration plans to modify an existing tax on phone calls to include a flat fee — estimated initially at 34 cents per line — on cellphones, landlines and other devices capable of contacting 911. More than $175 million is expected to generate from this in the first year, with the possibility of growing to $400 million in later years.