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SF Police Officials Greenlight Tasers After Long and Rowdy Meeting
Mission Local | 2017
Months of heated debate over whether to arm San Francisco police with Tasers came to a raucous conclusion late Friday night, as the city’s Police Commission voted 4–3 to approve the stun guns.
The meeting’s adjournment near midnight was met with thunderous cries of “shame, shame, shame” from a crowd of several dozen that had been left out of the meeting room.
Like a powder keg, the special Police Commission meeting only required the right spark to blow up — and it did so several times.
The vote was delayed for over an hour after one activist refused to relinquish the mic during public comment, bringing the hearing to a rowdy standstill.
Later, in a smaller room two floors up, commissioners endured relentless admonitions for abruptly shutting down and relocating the meeting.
Though the oversight body gave the weapon the thumbs up, it ruled that it cannot be deployed until December 2018, when new use-of-force policies will have been in effect for two years.
“I truly hope and pray we never have to use these devices — that de-escalation works,” said Commissioner Thomas Mazzucco, an appointee of former Mayor Gavin Newsom. “The reality is I’d like to see these devices used in that rare circumstance when the only thing left is to use a firearm.”
Mazzucco was joined in the aye column by Mayor Ed Lee appointees Sonia Melara and Robert Hirsch, and Newsom pick Joe Marshall.
Opposing them were the three Board of Supervisors appointees: commission president Julius Turman, Petra DeJesus and Bill Ong Hing.
While none of the votes were a surprise, opponents had hoped to sway Hirsch. Instead, those in favor of Tasers managed to accommodate his view that more time was needed by delaying the implementation of Tasers for over a year.
For the no vote, a year’s delay was not enough.
“We are in the middle of moving this process, moving this department in a more positive direction,” said Turman, who repeatedly lost his patience throughout the seven-hour meeting as he attempted to settle a disruptive, overwhelmingly anti-Taser crowd. He went on to say that use-of-force techniques are working within the department, and that use of force among SF officers has been declining.
Public comment and the commissioners’ questions for experts were nearly drowned out at times by chanting from the hallway by attendees furious at the restrictions Turman placed on the latter half of the meeting. The president allowed the steady stream of attendees to continue speaking, but officers at the door of Room 400 admitted only five in at a time for their two-minute remarks at the microphone.
The meeting’s resumption on the fourth floor — before a crowd made up mostly of journalists and cameras — came more than an hour after 67-year-old activist Maria Cristina Gutierrez refused to concede the lectern. Gutierrez was one of the Frisco 5, the group that staged a hunger strike in the Mission District last year that helped unseat Police Chief Greg Suhr.
She pressed on with her protest despite Turman’s demands for the next speaker. The powder keg blew with loud chants of “let her talk!”
“This is the people’s council!” activist Magick Altman yelled over the tumult. “If [the commissioners] won’t represent us, we’ll be the deciders!”
By the time another speaker took over for Gutierrez, the commissioners had retreated to a back room. An hour later, the halls of the top floor of City Hall rang with chants of “let us in!” and “show your face!” The new set-up didn’t sit well with Commissioner Petra DeJesus.
“Commissioner Turman, if I can implore you,” she said. “We have empty seats—”
“No,” he interrupted.
DeJesus, on crutches and in a medical walking boot, left the new dais to join speakers waiting in the hall. Right before the vote, she slammed her colleagues for considering Tasers.
“I think this commission has turned their deaf ears to the communities that are most affected by this,” she said.
The overwhelmingly anti-Taser crowd added their disgust at the meeting shake-up to their pleading that commissioners reject the device.
“I am absolutely shocked,” one woman said. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”
At one point, Turman, visibly impatient since the intermission, let loose.
“Do you think we don’t take this seriously?” he asked, lifting a hefty binder of Taser materials over his head.
The commission president said he didn’t want to hear the profanity lacing some of the comments, “or have my blackness or my gayness questioned.”
“I just need to hear the information and make a decision,” he said.
In a now-common refrain for police higher-ups, Chief Bill Scott emphasized Tasers’ adoption would be accompanied by robust accountability measures and that his department prioritizes de-escalation tactics.
“The reality is that there are times that de-escalation does not work, and officers have to use force as safely as possible,” he said at the meeting’s outset.
The often-acrimonious debate is nothing new for the liberal city with a police force that has been described an “old boys’ club.” Once in 2004 and twice in 2010, the commission shied away from greenlighting what are more formally called “conducted energy devices.”
Proponents argue Tasers are a less-lethal option for subduing a combative person, saving the lives of both suspects and officers. The swarm of attendees begged to differ, asserting that the stun guns are still lethal, especially for those on drugs or with certain medical conditions, and are used disproportionately against people of color. Critics pointed to studies showing some 50 percent of Taser deployments fail to make the targets comply.
According to Mike Leonesio, a Taser consultant who established Oakland’s Taser program, the effectiveness of a newer model the department has its eye is still wholly unknown.
“I have been searching and searching for more data to either confirm or deny the efficacy of these weapons, and there just isn’t any out there,” he told the commission.
Another major sticking point has been the price tag: City budget officials put the cost of each device at $2,300. When other expenses are factored in — including defibrillators, device testing, Taser instructors, medical transports, data collection, and the risk of lawsuits — the number balloons to an estimated $2.8 million to $8 million in one-time cost.
Sparking this most recent debate was a 400-page report handed down by the Department of Justice a year ago that picked apart SFPD’s policies and practices, and offered up 272 recommendations for reform. To “strongly consider deploying” Tasers was among them. Scott and his deputies have taken pains to remind residents that they’re working to implement the full spectrum of ways the feds think they could do better.
The meeting’s adjournment near midnight was met with thunderous cries of “shame, shame, shame” from a crowd of several dozen that had been left out of the meeting room.
Like a powder keg, the special Police Commission meeting only required the right spark to blow up — and it did so several times.
The vote was delayed for over an hour after one activist refused to relinquish the mic during public comment, bringing the hearing to a rowdy standstill.
Later, in a smaller room two floors up, commissioners endured relentless admonitions for abruptly shutting down and relocating the meeting.
Though the oversight body gave the weapon the thumbs up, it ruled that it cannot be deployed until December 2018, when new use-of-force policies will have been in effect for two years.
“I truly hope and pray we never have to use these devices — that de-escalation works,” said Commissioner Thomas Mazzucco, an appointee of former Mayor Gavin Newsom. “The reality is I’d like to see these devices used in that rare circumstance when the only thing left is to use a firearm.”
Mazzucco was joined in the aye column by Mayor Ed Lee appointees Sonia Melara and Robert Hirsch, and Newsom pick Joe Marshall.
Opposing them were the three Board of Supervisors appointees: commission president Julius Turman, Petra DeJesus and Bill Ong Hing.
While none of the votes were a surprise, opponents had hoped to sway Hirsch. Instead, those in favor of Tasers managed to accommodate his view that more time was needed by delaying the implementation of Tasers for over a year.
For the no vote, a year’s delay was not enough.
“We are in the middle of moving this process, moving this department in a more positive direction,” said Turman, who repeatedly lost his patience throughout the seven-hour meeting as he attempted to settle a disruptive, overwhelmingly anti-Taser crowd. He went on to say that use-of-force techniques are working within the department, and that use of force among SF officers has been declining.
Public comment and the commissioners’ questions for experts were nearly drowned out at times by chanting from the hallway by attendees furious at the restrictions Turman placed on the latter half of the meeting. The president allowed the steady stream of attendees to continue speaking, but officers at the door of Room 400 admitted only five in at a time for their two-minute remarks at the microphone.
The meeting’s resumption on the fourth floor — before a crowd made up mostly of journalists and cameras — came more than an hour after 67-year-old activist Maria Cristina Gutierrez refused to concede the lectern. Gutierrez was one of the Frisco 5, the group that staged a hunger strike in the Mission District last year that helped unseat Police Chief Greg Suhr.
She pressed on with her protest despite Turman’s demands for the next speaker. The powder keg blew with loud chants of “let her talk!”
“This is the people’s council!” activist Magick Altman yelled over the tumult. “If [the commissioners] won’t represent us, we’ll be the deciders!”
By the time another speaker took over for Gutierrez, the commissioners had retreated to a back room. An hour later, the halls of the top floor of City Hall rang with chants of “let us in!” and “show your face!” The new set-up didn’t sit well with Commissioner Petra DeJesus.
“Commissioner Turman, if I can implore you,” she said. “We have empty seats—”
“No,” he interrupted.
DeJesus, on crutches and in a medical walking boot, left the new dais to join speakers waiting in the hall. Right before the vote, she slammed her colleagues for considering Tasers.
“I think this commission has turned their deaf ears to the communities that are most affected by this,” she said.
The overwhelmingly anti-Taser crowd added their disgust at the meeting shake-up to their pleading that commissioners reject the device.
“I am absolutely shocked,” one woman said. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”
At one point, Turman, visibly impatient since the intermission, let loose.
“Do you think we don’t take this seriously?” he asked, lifting a hefty binder of Taser materials over his head.
The commission president said he didn’t want to hear the profanity lacing some of the comments, “or have my blackness or my gayness questioned.”
“I just need to hear the information and make a decision,” he said.
In a now-common refrain for police higher-ups, Chief Bill Scott emphasized Tasers’ adoption would be accompanied by robust accountability measures and that his department prioritizes de-escalation tactics.
“The reality is that there are times that de-escalation does not work, and officers have to use force as safely as possible,” he said at the meeting’s outset.
The often-acrimonious debate is nothing new for the liberal city with a police force that has been described an “old boys’ club.” Once in 2004 and twice in 2010, the commission shied away from greenlighting what are more formally called “conducted energy devices.”
Proponents argue Tasers are a less-lethal option for subduing a combative person, saving the lives of both suspects and officers. The swarm of attendees begged to differ, asserting that the stun guns are still lethal, especially for those on drugs or with certain medical conditions, and are used disproportionately against people of color. Critics pointed to studies showing some 50 percent of Taser deployments fail to make the targets comply.
According to Mike Leonesio, a Taser consultant who established Oakland’s Taser program, the effectiveness of a newer model the department has its eye is still wholly unknown.
“I have been searching and searching for more data to either confirm or deny the efficacy of these weapons, and there just isn’t any out there,” he told the commission.
Another major sticking point has been the price tag: City budget officials put the cost of each device at $2,300. When other expenses are factored in — including defibrillators, device testing, Taser instructors, medical transports, data collection, and the risk of lawsuits — the number balloons to an estimated $2.8 million to $8 million in one-time cost.
Sparking this most recent debate was a 400-page report handed down by the Department of Justice a year ago that picked apart SFPD’s policies and practices, and offered up 272 recommendations for reform. To “strongly consider deploying” Tasers was among them. Scott and his deputies have taken pains to remind residents that they’re working to implement the full spectrum of ways the feds think they could do better.
SFPD Puts More Officers of Foot Patrols to Curb Car Break-Ins
Mission Local | 2017
Six weeks after a Cadillac Escalade was robbed at an Ocean Beach parking lot, the San Francisco Police Department put out a press release asking anyone with information to speak up. Stolen in the Aug. 24 smash-and-grab was some $900,000 worth of jewelry.
The prospects of bringing the thieves to justice aren’t promising. Moreover, at the beginning of the year, smash-and-grabs — as auto-break-ins are known — were more popular than ever.
A different crime-fighting strategy was needed, and in August, new SFPD Chief Bill Scott decided the new approach would be to put more cops on the street.
In his announcement, Scott called foot beats “a visible deterrent to crime.”
To get more officers on the street, Scott dissolved the 18-member Patrol Bureau Task Force that, since 2015, had been investigating car burglaries and making arrests.
In a sense, Scott opted for deterrence rather than focusing on the crime after it has been committed. The District Attorney’s office will continue to work closely with police on prosecution, but it appears that Scott wants to see if he can stop some of the incidents from happening in the first place.
The wave of car burglaries first appeared on the SFPD’s radar in July 2014, and by 2015, more than 26,000 car break-ins were reported to police — an increase of 18 percent over the prior year.
The strategy, first devised in 2015, called for a plainclothes Patrol Bureau Task Force officer to investigate, make arrests and build cases that the District Attorney could make stick. Doing so is incredibly difficult because police essentially have to catch someone in the act or have video or eye-witness accounts.
Yet without ubiquitous eyes and cameras, “there are a lot of cases out there without a lot of evidence and suspect information,” SFPD officer Robert Rueca said. “If we don’t have any suspect information, how do we get to an arrest?”
The task force netted some 230 arrests between its start-up in late 2015 and Scott’s Aug. 31 announcement. The percentage of cases prosecutors take action on has hovered right around 80 percent since 2015, or about 32 cases a month, according to District Attorney’s data. In the end, an average of 68 percent of cases SFPD forwards result in charges. How many lead to convictions remains unknown.
All of this was somewhat effective. Auto burglaries dipped five percent between 2015 and 2016, and a grand jury looking at auto burglaries wanted to bolster the task force’s resources. The cross-precinct unit, the grand jury report said, “pioneered a tactic of tracking serial offenders through multiple break-ins before making the arrest,” which enabled “the possibility of bundling cases for the DA.”
Bundling refers to tying thieves to multiple cases. “We believe that the vast majority of those auto burglaries are committed by just a few number,” Rueca said.
While the charge rate went up by four percent, arrests proved stubbornly difficult, staying at the two percent of 2014. What’s more, after dipping slightly in 2016, auto burglaries surged in the first four months of 2017 — jumping by 30 percent compared to the same period of 2016.
Enter the new foot and bike patrols that started only a month ago.
Capt. Paul Yep, who runs the Central Police District in the city’s landmark and diversity-rich northeastern tip — where car burglaries were among the city’s highest — led the charge for more beat cops on his streets.
A three-pronged plan he shared with Mission Local included educating the public, revamping enforcement and more effective prosecution.
“When criminals are out there, let’s do our best to … not only apprehend them, but make sure we’re working with the DA’s office to prosecute,” Yep said. “I’m confident that to the best of our ability — and we’re outnumbered — we’re doing this.”
Rueca said the implementation of that blueprint in the other nine police districts varies, but in just a couple of months, they’ve seen an uptick in auto-burglary arrests. But Rueca cautioned that it’s too early to tell whether the increased number of beat cops is the reason.
It also remains to be seen whether the recent change will cut down on the number of break-ins.
The prospects of bringing the thieves to justice aren’t promising. Moreover, at the beginning of the year, smash-and-grabs — as auto-break-ins are known — were more popular than ever.
A different crime-fighting strategy was needed, and in August, new SFPD Chief Bill Scott decided the new approach would be to put more cops on the street.
In his announcement, Scott called foot beats “a visible deterrent to crime.”
To get more officers on the street, Scott dissolved the 18-member Patrol Bureau Task Force that, since 2015, had been investigating car burglaries and making arrests.
In a sense, Scott opted for deterrence rather than focusing on the crime after it has been committed. The District Attorney’s office will continue to work closely with police on prosecution, but it appears that Scott wants to see if he can stop some of the incidents from happening in the first place.
The wave of car burglaries first appeared on the SFPD’s radar in July 2014, and by 2015, more than 26,000 car break-ins were reported to police — an increase of 18 percent over the prior year.
The strategy, first devised in 2015, called for a plainclothes Patrol Bureau Task Force officer to investigate, make arrests and build cases that the District Attorney could make stick. Doing so is incredibly difficult because police essentially have to catch someone in the act or have video or eye-witness accounts.
Yet without ubiquitous eyes and cameras, “there are a lot of cases out there without a lot of evidence and suspect information,” SFPD officer Robert Rueca said. “If we don’t have any suspect information, how do we get to an arrest?”
The task force netted some 230 arrests between its start-up in late 2015 and Scott’s Aug. 31 announcement. The percentage of cases prosecutors take action on has hovered right around 80 percent since 2015, or about 32 cases a month, according to District Attorney’s data. In the end, an average of 68 percent of cases SFPD forwards result in charges. How many lead to convictions remains unknown.
All of this was somewhat effective. Auto burglaries dipped five percent between 2015 and 2016, and a grand jury looking at auto burglaries wanted to bolster the task force’s resources. The cross-precinct unit, the grand jury report said, “pioneered a tactic of tracking serial offenders through multiple break-ins before making the arrest,” which enabled “the possibility of bundling cases for the DA.”
Bundling refers to tying thieves to multiple cases. “We believe that the vast majority of those auto burglaries are committed by just a few number,” Rueca said.
While the charge rate went up by four percent, arrests proved stubbornly difficult, staying at the two percent of 2014. What’s more, after dipping slightly in 2016, auto burglaries surged in the first four months of 2017 — jumping by 30 percent compared to the same period of 2016.
Enter the new foot and bike patrols that started only a month ago.
Capt. Paul Yep, who runs the Central Police District in the city’s landmark and diversity-rich northeastern tip — where car burglaries were among the city’s highest — led the charge for more beat cops on his streets.
A three-pronged plan he shared with Mission Local included educating the public, revamping enforcement and more effective prosecution.
“When criminals are out there, let’s do our best to … not only apprehend them, but make sure we’re working with the DA’s office to prosecute,” Yep said. “I’m confident that to the best of our ability — and we’re outnumbered — we’re doing this.”
Rueca said the implementation of that blueprint in the other nine police districts varies, but in just a couple of months, they’ve seen an uptick in auto-burglary arrests. But Rueca cautioned that it’s too early to tell whether the increased number of beat cops is the reason.
It also remains to be seen whether the recent change will cut down on the number of break-ins.
SFPD Officer Recalls Devastation and Devotion in Fire-Ravaged Wine Country
Mission Local | 2017
It was a long day for Michael Andraychak. After commuting from the East Bay in the morning’s wee hours to check in with the San Francisco Police Department’s operations center, the sergeant drove north last Thursday with a cadre of colleagues. Marin County was relatively clear. Then they approached their destination: Sonoma County.
“As you got close to the outskirts of Santa Rosa—probably just north of Rohnert Park—you can begin to really smell the smoky smell,” Andraychak said. “The skies were darker with the overhang of the clouds and the smoke.”
At the Sonoma County Sheriff’s office, he and his fellow officers checked in, were briefed by the watch commander and a platoon of officers finishing their own shift, finalized their assignments, and deployed into one of the most deadly and destructive wildfire events in California history.
“The thing you walk away with is the sheer enormity of the devastation,” said Andraychak. “Speaking to firefighters we encountered throughout the day, they talked about it being just like a blowtorch.”
The SFPD is one of dozens of law enforcement, firefighting, and medical agencies across the western United States that have responded to a handful of fires that have burned their way through the state’s iconic wine country. Each 12-hour shift features 30 to 40 San Francisco cops enforcing road closures, patrolling for looters, and keeping an eye out for new flames.
By Thursday, several wildfires had charred some 150,000 acres in the Sonoma and Napa areas, destroyed thousands of structures and killed 42 people, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The worst of the blazes—the Tubbs, Atlas, and Nuns fires—have been mostly contained.
Andraychak described an apocalyptic scene in Santa Rosa, which bore the brunt of the destruction. He recalled patrolling neighborhoods where houses on one side of the street stood unscathed while those on the other side were burned to the ground.
Andraychak said officers found themselves with a myriad of tasks amid the havoc. At the behest of one woman, a set of officers drove her trailer up to her property, loaded up her mules, and hauled them back down to her. Another unit got a call to deliver a trailer-load of hay to a large animal rescue facility.
“We had some officers find a couple of cats, got them to veterinary care,” Andraychak said.
Currently, SFPD personnel are asked to stick around through early Monday morning. The first cops to rush north at the fires’ outset were on duty. But, “that first morning, when word went out that we were sending mutual aid, we had a lot of officers who were on their days off volunteering to come in and work,” Andraychak said.
“We just had to tell those folks, ‘Okay, for today, do not self-deploy. If you’re up in the area, take care of your family. If you’re not in the area and you want to help, give us some time to work out a schedule.’”
The department is still tabulating the bill for everything from officers’ overtime pay to the fuel needed to drive them up there, but it said those costs will be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.
At the behest of one woman who lost her home, cops took her trailer up to her property and hauled her two mules back down. Photo courtesy SFPD
First responders weren’t the only groups mobilized by the disaster. Andraychak recalled watching the very residents affected by the fires donate money, bring food to shelters, and round up everything from toothbrushes to pet food to baby supplies. Officers routinely encountered locals asking how they could pitch in.
“It’s like, ‘No, it’s not supposed to work that way, right? We’re here to help you guys,’” Andraychak said. “I think that’s really cool. That touched me.”
Even as firefighters prepare to finish off the blazes, the road to recovery for those civilian volunteers and their neighbors will be a long one.
“Those folks have a long haul ahead of them,” he said. “It’s going to be a long process before they can start rebuilding and trying to get back to some level of normalcy.”
“As you got close to the outskirts of Santa Rosa—probably just north of Rohnert Park—you can begin to really smell the smoky smell,” Andraychak said. “The skies were darker with the overhang of the clouds and the smoke.”
At the Sonoma County Sheriff’s office, he and his fellow officers checked in, were briefed by the watch commander and a platoon of officers finishing their own shift, finalized their assignments, and deployed into one of the most deadly and destructive wildfire events in California history.
“The thing you walk away with is the sheer enormity of the devastation,” said Andraychak. “Speaking to firefighters we encountered throughout the day, they talked about it being just like a blowtorch.”
The SFPD is one of dozens of law enforcement, firefighting, and medical agencies across the western United States that have responded to a handful of fires that have burned their way through the state’s iconic wine country. Each 12-hour shift features 30 to 40 San Francisco cops enforcing road closures, patrolling for looters, and keeping an eye out for new flames.
By Thursday, several wildfires had charred some 150,000 acres in the Sonoma and Napa areas, destroyed thousands of structures and killed 42 people, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The worst of the blazes—the Tubbs, Atlas, and Nuns fires—have been mostly contained.
Andraychak described an apocalyptic scene in Santa Rosa, which bore the brunt of the destruction. He recalled patrolling neighborhoods where houses on one side of the street stood unscathed while those on the other side were burned to the ground.
Andraychak said officers found themselves with a myriad of tasks amid the havoc. At the behest of one woman, a set of officers drove her trailer up to her property, loaded up her mules, and hauled them back down to her. Another unit got a call to deliver a trailer-load of hay to a large animal rescue facility.
“We had some officers find a couple of cats, got them to veterinary care,” Andraychak said.
Currently, SFPD personnel are asked to stick around through early Monday morning. The first cops to rush north at the fires’ outset were on duty. But, “that first morning, when word went out that we were sending mutual aid, we had a lot of officers who were on their days off volunteering to come in and work,” Andraychak said.
“We just had to tell those folks, ‘Okay, for today, do not self-deploy. If you’re up in the area, take care of your family. If you’re not in the area and you want to help, give us some time to work out a schedule.’”
The department is still tabulating the bill for everything from officers’ overtime pay to the fuel needed to drive them up there, but it said those costs will be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.
At the behest of one woman who lost her home, cops took her trailer up to her property and hauled her two mules back down. Photo courtesy SFPD
First responders weren’t the only groups mobilized by the disaster. Andraychak recalled watching the very residents affected by the fires donate money, bring food to shelters, and round up everything from toothbrushes to pet food to baby supplies. Officers routinely encountered locals asking how they could pitch in.
“It’s like, ‘No, it’s not supposed to work that way, right? We’re here to help you guys,’” Andraychak said. “I think that’s really cool. That touched me.”
Even as firefighters prepare to finish off the blazes, the road to recovery for those civilian volunteers and their neighbors will be a long one.
“Those folks have a long haul ahead of them,” he said. “It’s going to be a long process before they can start rebuilding and trying to get back to some level of normalcy.”
Storms, Powerful Waves Have Eaten Away Santa Barbara County Coastlines to Historic Levels
Heavy coastal erosion during the last two winters has caused problems for Goleta Beach Park and Isla Vista blufftop properties
Noozhawk | 2017
Anyone who’s recently visited Goleta Beach Park, Arroyo Burro Creek, Isla Vista or any one of a number of local beaches has seen what weather and water can do to the coast.
Between powerful storms and unrelenting waves, many spots along the Santa Barbara County South Coast have taken a pounding over the past couple years.
The poster child of this relentless natural process has been Goleta Beach Park.
Battling the erosion there has been a constant struggle for Santa Barbara County, which often has to jump through coastal-regulation hoops to implement fixes.
Brian Yanez, the county’s deputy parks director, told Noozhawk that about half an acre of parkland has been eroded due to high surf and storms.
Two solutions — sand berms and buried fabric mesh — have not done their job in the face of a determined Mother Nature, he said.
Rock revetments have also been used to protect the shore there, and excess sand from Santa Barbara’s West Beach was recently trucked over to the county’s most-visited park to maintain its sand cover.
An emergency Coastal Commission-sanctioned rock revetment was recently put in place after February’s powerful storm, which combined with strong waves to damage the Goleta Beach pier’s connection to shore.
Its northernmost planks were removed as that section of the pier is reconstructed.
Another area constantly monitored for erosion is Isla Vista, where popular properties sit alongside — and in some places, over — the bluffs.
The soft shale bluffs erode at a rate of several inches to a foot per year, due to wave action along their base and rain and water runoff along the tops. In response, Del Playa Drive property owners have to cut back their buildings every so often.
In January, one landlord decided to demolish four of his Del Playa Drive units after a chunk of the cliffs fell away and took part of the 6600-block building's backyard and balcony with it.
Only a month or so later, a tree in the backyard of a 6500-block house dropped onto the beach, leaving a chunk of that backyard missing.
And just last week, 15 residents in two 6700-block units found new housing after the back bedrooms of both apartments came within 5 feet of the cliff edge.
“We lost a matter of about 3 feet during (the Feb. 17) storm,” Chris Mercier, senior property supervisor at Wolfe & Associates, told Noozhawk at the time.
At least one other Del Playa property is being scaled back in response to erosion.
The recent storm that damaged the Goleta pier and the 6700-block Del Playa property also tore up a small portion of the recently-completed upper Arroyo Burro Creek restoration project in Santa Barbara's Barger Canyon.
In addition to what has so far been the wettest winter since the start of California’s record drought, recent wave action has been stronger than usual.
While last winter’s El Niño came as a bitter disappointment for Southern Californians hoping for much-needed rain, the perennial weather event was one of the most powerful on record in terms of wave energy, according to a study published last month in Nature Communications.
The result, researchers found, was shorelines along California retreating beyond historical extremes after being pounded by powerful waves.
Local coastal erosion has “definitely been getting worse,” said Patrick Barnard, a coastal geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and the study’s lead author. “We’ve seen kind of a steady decay in a lot of the sites we’re monitoring over the last 20 years in the area.”
Most Santa Barbara beaches are at “the most-landward or most-eroded position they’ve ever reached,” he said.
Barnard told Noozhawk that this “means that recovery is more difficult, and it leaves these areas more vulnerable to subsequent winter storms, like what we’re seeing right now with Goleta getting hammered.”
The drought has only exacerbated the erosion situation, he said. Rivers and creeks have been depositing less sand at beaches as well.
Barnard said he doesn’t expect waves and winters to changing dramatically, but projects more El Niño events to be stronger ones.
David Hubbard, president of Santa Barbara-based Coastal Restoration Consultants, explained that the width and thickness of beaches fluctuate during the year as they respond to stronger waves in the winter.
Depending on a beach’s natural characteristics and width, its seasonal narrowing can be anywhere from 30 to 150 feet, said Hubbard, an associate specialist with UC Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute who was involved in the USGS-led study.
However, there’s no long-term trend of beaches themselves shrinking as coasts decay, he added.
“The beach adjusts to the coastal erosion, and the beach moves,” he said. “The beach is not fixed — it’s dynamic.”
Hubbard emphasized that something like coastal erosion cannot easily be attributed to one or a few factors.
“For something that looks so simple, it’s actually a complicated system.”
Hubbard and Barnard agreed that sea-level rise poses a long-term risk to coastal habitats and human urban areas.
The county’s long-range planning division has been modeling sea-level rise through the year 2100 and is beginning the difficult task of laying out policies to address the issue, said county supervising planner Mindy Fogg.
She said that the worst-case scenario puts sea-level rise over that timespan at 4 to 5 feet, though the effects of any rise over the next several years would be negligible.
Barnard characterized the erosion situation at places like Isla Vista and Goleta Beach as “acute now,” but noted that there’s still time to make careful, forward-looking decisions about local coastal resources.
“It’s something we really have to approach holistically and from a regional context, and not a site-by-site band-aid approach,” he said.
Between powerful storms and unrelenting waves, many spots along the Santa Barbara County South Coast have taken a pounding over the past couple years.
The poster child of this relentless natural process has been Goleta Beach Park.
Battling the erosion there has been a constant struggle for Santa Barbara County, which often has to jump through coastal-regulation hoops to implement fixes.
Brian Yanez, the county’s deputy parks director, told Noozhawk that about half an acre of parkland has been eroded due to high surf and storms.
Two solutions — sand berms and buried fabric mesh — have not done their job in the face of a determined Mother Nature, he said.
Rock revetments have also been used to protect the shore there, and excess sand from Santa Barbara’s West Beach was recently trucked over to the county’s most-visited park to maintain its sand cover.
An emergency Coastal Commission-sanctioned rock revetment was recently put in place after February’s powerful storm, which combined with strong waves to damage the Goleta Beach pier’s connection to shore.
Its northernmost planks were removed as that section of the pier is reconstructed.
Another area constantly monitored for erosion is Isla Vista, where popular properties sit alongside — and in some places, over — the bluffs.
The soft shale bluffs erode at a rate of several inches to a foot per year, due to wave action along their base and rain and water runoff along the tops. In response, Del Playa Drive property owners have to cut back their buildings every so often.
In January, one landlord decided to demolish four of his Del Playa Drive units after a chunk of the cliffs fell away and took part of the 6600-block building's backyard and balcony with it.
Only a month or so later, a tree in the backyard of a 6500-block house dropped onto the beach, leaving a chunk of that backyard missing.
And just last week, 15 residents in two 6700-block units found new housing after the back bedrooms of both apartments came within 5 feet of the cliff edge.
“We lost a matter of about 3 feet during (the Feb. 17) storm,” Chris Mercier, senior property supervisor at Wolfe & Associates, told Noozhawk at the time.
At least one other Del Playa property is being scaled back in response to erosion.
The recent storm that damaged the Goleta pier and the 6700-block Del Playa property also tore up a small portion of the recently-completed upper Arroyo Burro Creek restoration project in Santa Barbara's Barger Canyon.
In addition to what has so far been the wettest winter since the start of California’s record drought, recent wave action has been stronger than usual.
While last winter’s El Niño came as a bitter disappointment for Southern Californians hoping for much-needed rain, the perennial weather event was one of the most powerful on record in terms of wave energy, according to a study published last month in Nature Communications.
The result, researchers found, was shorelines along California retreating beyond historical extremes after being pounded by powerful waves.
Local coastal erosion has “definitely been getting worse,” said Patrick Barnard, a coastal geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and the study’s lead author. “We’ve seen kind of a steady decay in a lot of the sites we’re monitoring over the last 20 years in the area.”
Most Santa Barbara beaches are at “the most-landward or most-eroded position they’ve ever reached,” he said.
Barnard told Noozhawk that this “means that recovery is more difficult, and it leaves these areas more vulnerable to subsequent winter storms, like what we’re seeing right now with Goleta getting hammered.”
The drought has only exacerbated the erosion situation, he said. Rivers and creeks have been depositing less sand at beaches as well.
Barnard said he doesn’t expect waves and winters to changing dramatically, but projects more El Niño events to be stronger ones.
David Hubbard, president of Santa Barbara-based Coastal Restoration Consultants, explained that the width and thickness of beaches fluctuate during the year as they respond to stronger waves in the winter.
Depending on a beach’s natural characteristics and width, its seasonal narrowing can be anywhere from 30 to 150 feet, said Hubbard, an associate specialist with UC Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute who was involved in the USGS-led study.
However, there’s no long-term trend of beaches themselves shrinking as coasts decay, he added.
“The beach adjusts to the coastal erosion, and the beach moves,” he said. “The beach is not fixed — it’s dynamic.”
Hubbard emphasized that something like coastal erosion cannot easily be attributed to one or a few factors.
“For something that looks so simple, it’s actually a complicated system.”
Hubbard and Barnard agreed that sea-level rise poses a long-term risk to coastal habitats and human urban areas.
The county’s long-range planning division has been modeling sea-level rise through the year 2100 and is beginning the difficult task of laying out policies to address the issue, said county supervising planner Mindy Fogg.
She said that the worst-case scenario puts sea-level rise over that timespan at 4 to 5 feet, though the effects of any rise over the next several years would be negligible.
Barnard characterized the erosion situation at places like Isla Vista and Goleta Beach as “acute now,” but noted that there’s still time to make careful, forward-looking decisions about local coastal resources.
“It’s something we really have to approach holistically and from a regional context, and not a site-by-site band-aid approach,” he said.
Venoco Bankruptcy Ends Major Source of Tax Revenue, Philanthropy — and Eases Environmental Worries
Oil company's generosity engendered appreciation in some, but its operations spawned concern in others
Noozhawk | 2017
Venoco, Inc. has had an interesting relationship with the Santa Barbara community.
The Denver-based energy company has engendered appreciation in many for its philanthropic involvement locally, but its operations have spawned concerns from residents opposed to oil development in their environmentally sensitive backyard.
The company’s second bankruptcy filing, announced last month, effectively ended offshore oil and gas drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel’s state waters, as well as a steady stream of tax revenues and philanthropy.
Dozens of jobs and plenty of tax revenue are being lost, though the possibility of an oil spill or gas leak will be mitigated.
The bankruptcy announcement came almost two years after the May 2015 rupture of a pipeline near Refugio State Beach that spilled more than 123,000 gallons of crude oil along the coastline and into the ocean.
Venoco used the Plains All American pipeline to transport oil and gas to refineries, and shutting down the pipeline curtailed more than 50 percent of its production. The company's principal assets are oil facilities located offshore and onshore in Southern California.
Just before initiating the bankruptcy process, Venoco quit-claimed its leases in the channel back to the State Lands Commission, along with Platform Holly and its infrastructure of piers off the shores of Goleta.
At one point, Venoco employed about 80 people in its Carpinteria office, and had 80 to 90 people out in the field, including those who had worked for ExxonMobil before Venoco took over the oil giant’s leases. Now, there are fewer than 20 employees left in Carpinteria, according to the company’s operations manager, Larry Huskins.
Before the Refugio spill, he said, Venoco was consistently one of Santa Barbara County’s top three tax generators. He put the total revenue the state has received in royalties at over $150 million.
According to the Santa Barbara County Treasurer and Tax Collector’s Office, Venoco has paid more than $20 million in property taxes going back to 2010.
“Venoco’s renowned from the state, as well as the federal authorities, as one of the best operators in California,” Huskins said of his company’s safety standards and procedures.
Venoco’s community partnership manager, Marybeth Carty, described to Noozhawk a corporate culture of volunteerism. Employees will continue their volunteering and involvement with nonprofit boards “right up into the bitter end.”
Carty said Venoco would match employee donations and volunteer hours with its own dollars.
The company benefited Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital’s remodel and expansion, the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Barbara, Girls Inc., the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County and the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara.
“Over 20 years, we’ve donated $12 million and reached well over 200 organizations,” Carty said, noting that lost revenue after the Plains spill increasingly curtailed her company’s philanthropic reach.
“There are organizations that will definitely feel the pinch.”
Partners in Education, a county program that leverages corporate, foundation, government and individual resources to prepare students for post-school life, received ongoing support from the company.
“Venoco has consistently stepped up to the plate for education, giving nearly half a million dollars to our organization since 2001,” the organization’s executive director, Chelsea Duffy, told Noozhawk in an email.
“Venoco was especially instrumental in ensuring that our Computers for Families program — which has delivered more than 11,000 refurbished computers to local families — could continue in perpetuity.”
Duffy called out Carty as an especially dedicated volunteer and board member who has “personally volunteered nearly 200 hours through Partners.”
Carty called the bankruptcy procedure “a process of actively liquidating and selling assets,” many of which are not necessarily headed back to the State Lands Commission.
The fate of facilities off the Carpinteria coast and the Ellwood Onshore Facility near Haskell’s Beach and Sandpiper Golf Club in Goleta, which processed the oil and gas extracted by Platform Holly, will be determined during that process, which Venoco has estimated will take six months to a year.
The city of Goleta has for a while been looking to shut down the EOF. The facility is considered a legal-nonconforming use of land that is zoned for recreation, and many residents fear it could cause some sort of spill or leak.
Now, with Venoco throwing in the towel, oil and gas production in the Santa Barbara Channel’s state waters has come to an end.
“This is definitely something that is a huge relief to the community,” said Linda Krop, chief counsel of the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center.
Even as environmentalists hail the end of Venoco’s production, Krop said there are 23 other platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel region, 15 of which are still operating.
“You can plan and have the best measures in place to try to prevent an oil spill, but accidents do happen,” said Jenna Driscoll, watershed and marine program associate with Santa Barbara Channelkeeper. “Anytime we can move away from extraction techniques to more sustainable development is a good thing.”
Venoco’s bankruptcy was also the final nail in the coffin for the company’s proposal to alter the boundary of its lease in the channel. If approved, it would have allowed the company to end its operations after about 25 years instead of the anticipated 40 years.
The tradeoff would have been allowing Venoco to extract 40 million more barrels of oil than it otherwise could have — a big driver of residents’ oil spill concerns.
It now falls on the state to decommission Platform Holly, which will take an estimated three years, depending on funding and the environmental review process.
Especially with the platform sitting in a state marine sanctuary, the overarching consideration is what course of action would be most environmentally friendly.
Completely removing Platform Holly down to the seafloor would disrupt the marine ecosystem that has developed around the platform’s submerged infrastructure, said Milton Love, a UC Santa Barbara research biologist who studies fish populations around reefs and platforms.
Those in shallow waters like Platform Holly serve as nursing grounds for hundreds of thousands of young fish in addition to a multitude of invertebrates such as sea stars, Love said.
Platforms also enable the comeback of over-fished species, with Holly likely aiding bocaccio, widow and canary rockfish.
Completely rooting out the platform would be expensive and require running charges down to its base, more than 200 feet below the surface, and blowing it all up. The huge amounts of destroyed materials — covered in dead sea life — would then have to be lugged somewhere that would accept them.
That would kill off virtually all of the life attached to the platform, with repercussions for the wider ecosystem.
Love said the idea of shearing off the top 100 submerged feet of Platform Holly has been tossed around, which should save the fish nursing below, but kill the mussels and associated organisms above.
The task is further complicated by having to make sure large ships can coast over the remains without scraping their hulls, or, should the whole platform stay, the money it would take to maintain the above-surface infrastructure. That’s an option Love said he hasn’t heard anyone raise.
“All the platforms off of California harbor many species of fishes, and then this very robust invertebrate life,” Love said. “It’ll be intellectually fascinating to see how this whole process starting with Holly plays out.”
Krop told Noozhawk that the State Lands Commission informed her that the first step will be immediately plugging the 30 wells. She said the Environmental Defense Center is committed to the facility’s full removal — the course of action she said she expects the state to propose.
She said there are too many competing uses in the water there for partial or no removal to be entirely safe.
The Denver-based energy company has engendered appreciation in many for its philanthropic involvement locally, but its operations have spawned concerns from residents opposed to oil development in their environmentally sensitive backyard.
The company’s second bankruptcy filing, announced last month, effectively ended offshore oil and gas drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel’s state waters, as well as a steady stream of tax revenues and philanthropy.
Dozens of jobs and plenty of tax revenue are being lost, though the possibility of an oil spill or gas leak will be mitigated.
The bankruptcy announcement came almost two years after the May 2015 rupture of a pipeline near Refugio State Beach that spilled more than 123,000 gallons of crude oil along the coastline and into the ocean.
Venoco used the Plains All American pipeline to transport oil and gas to refineries, and shutting down the pipeline curtailed more than 50 percent of its production. The company's principal assets are oil facilities located offshore and onshore in Southern California.
Just before initiating the bankruptcy process, Venoco quit-claimed its leases in the channel back to the State Lands Commission, along with Platform Holly and its infrastructure of piers off the shores of Goleta.
At one point, Venoco employed about 80 people in its Carpinteria office, and had 80 to 90 people out in the field, including those who had worked for ExxonMobil before Venoco took over the oil giant’s leases. Now, there are fewer than 20 employees left in Carpinteria, according to the company’s operations manager, Larry Huskins.
Before the Refugio spill, he said, Venoco was consistently one of Santa Barbara County’s top three tax generators. He put the total revenue the state has received in royalties at over $150 million.
According to the Santa Barbara County Treasurer and Tax Collector’s Office, Venoco has paid more than $20 million in property taxes going back to 2010.
“Venoco’s renowned from the state, as well as the federal authorities, as one of the best operators in California,” Huskins said of his company’s safety standards and procedures.
Venoco’s community partnership manager, Marybeth Carty, described to Noozhawk a corporate culture of volunteerism. Employees will continue their volunteering and involvement with nonprofit boards “right up into the bitter end.”
Carty said Venoco would match employee donations and volunteer hours with its own dollars.
The company benefited Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital’s remodel and expansion, the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Barbara, Girls Inc., the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County and the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara.
“Over 20 years, we’ve donated $12 million and reached well over 200 organizations,” Carty said, noting that lost revenue after the Plains spill increasingly curtailed her company’s philanthropic reach.
“There are organizations that will definitely feel the pinch.”
Partners in Education, a county program that leverages corporate, foundation, government and individual resources to prepare students for post-school life, received ongoing support from the company.
“Venoco has consistently stepped up to the plate for education, giving nearly half a million dollars to our organization since 2001,” the organization’s executive director, Chelsea Duffy, told Noozhawk in an email.
“Venoco was especially instrumental in ensuring that our Computers for Families program — which has delivered more than 11,000 refurbished computers to local families — could continue in perpetuity.”
Duffy called out Carty as an especially dedicated volunteer and board member who has “personally volunteered nearly 200 hours through Partners.”
Carty called the bankruptcy procedure “a process of actively liquidating and selling assets,” many of which are not necessarily headed back to the State Lands Commission.
The fate of facilities off the Carpinteria coast and the Ellwood Onshore Facility near Haskell’s Beach and Sandpiper Golf Club in Goleta, which processed the oil and gas extracted by Platform Holly, will be determined during that process, which Venoco has estimated will take six months to a year.
The city of Goleta has for a while been looking to shut down the EOF. The facility is considered a legal-nonconforming use of land that is zoned for recreation, and many residents fear it could cause some sort of spill or leak.
Now, with Venoco throwing in the towel, oil and gas production in the Santa Barbara Channel’s state waters has come to an end.
“This is definitely something that is a huge relief to the community,” said Linda Krop, chief counsel of the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center.
Even as environmentalists hail the end of Venoco’s production, Krop said there are 23 other platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel region, 15 of which are still operating.
“You can plan and have the best measures in place to try to prevent an oil spill, but accidents do happen,” said Jenna Driscoll, watershed and marine program associate with Santa Barbara Channelkeeper. “Anytime we can move away from extraction techniques to more sustainable development is a good thing.”
Venoco’s bankruptcy was also the final nail in the coffin for the company’s proposal to alter the boundary of its lease in the channel. If approved, it would have allowed the company to end its operations after about 25 years instead of the anticipated 40 years.
The tradeoff would have been allowing Venoco to extract 40 million more barrels of oil than it otherwise could have — a big driver of residents’ oil spill concerns.
It now falls on the state to decommission Platform Holly, which will take an estimated three years, depending on funding and the environmental review process.
Especially with the platform sitting in a state marine sanctuary, the overarching consideration is what course of action would be most environmentally friendly.
Completely removing Platform Holly down to the seafloor would disrupt the marine ecosystem that has developed around the platform’s submerged infrastructure, said Milton Love, a UC Santa Barbara research biologist who studies fish populations around reefs and platforms.
Those in shallow waters like Platform Holly serve as nursing grounds for hundreds of thousands of young fish in addition to a multitude of invertebrates such as sea stars, Love said.
Platforms also enable the comeback of over-fished species, with Holly likely aiding bocaccio, widow and canary rockfish.
Completely rooting out the platform would be expensive and require running charges down to its base, more than 200 feet below the surface, and blowing it all up. The huge amounts of destroyed materials — covered in dead sea life — would then have to be lugged somewhere that would accept them.
That would kill off virtually all of the life attached to the platform, with repercussions for the wider ecosystem.
Love said the idea of shearing off the top 100 submerged feet of Platform Holly has been tossed around, which should save the fish nursing below, but kill the mussels and associated organisms above.
The task is further complicated by having to make sure large ships can coast over the remains without scraping their hulls, or, should the whole platform stay, the money it would take to maintain the above-surface infrastructure. That’s an option Love said he hasn’t heard anyone raise.
“All the platforms off of California harbor many species of fishes, and then this very robust invertebrate life,” Love said. “It’ll be intellectually fascinating to see how this whole process starting with Holly plays out.”
Krop told Noozhawk that the State Lands Commission informed her that the first step will be immediately plugging the 30 wells. She said the Environmental Defense Center is committed to the facility’s full removal — the course of action she said she expects the state to propose.
She said there are too many competing uses in the water there for partial or no removal to be entirely safe.
More Santa Barbara County Kids Receiving Vaccinations After New Law, Outreach Efforts
A ban on personal-belief exemptions and revamped messaging helped raise local student vaccination rate 1.5 percent over the last year to over 96 percent
Noozhawk | 2017
Reversing a recent trend, vaccination rates in California have quickly climbed again, a trend medical and school officials credit to new community outreach efforts and a recent state law barring personal-belief exemptions.
In Santa Barbara County, the number of kindergarten students receiving all their shots rose 1.5 percent over the last year to 96.4 percent for the 2016-17 school year, according to the California Public Health Department.
Following a 2014 measles outbreak that started at Disneyland, state legislators passed and Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill 277, which mandates that all public or private school children receive the required vaccines before starting kindergarten or advancing to seventh grade. The law also applies to child-care centers and nursery schools.
Though valid medical exemptions are allowed, personal-belief and religious-belief exemptions are no longer permitted.
Senate Bill 277 went into effect last July, making California the third state behind West Virginia and Mississippi to prohibit personal-belief exemptions.
State Public Health officials posited that the law, public awareness after the measles outbreak, and outreach efforts by local public health departments, schools and medical providers were behind the jump in immunizations.
Over the last two years, the state’s overall rate rose 5.2 percent to 95.6 percent.
Santa Barbara County’s kindergarten vaccine rate currently ranks around 18th out of California’s 58 counties, not all of which have full data available.
Students with personal-belief exemptions in the county peaked at 3 percent during the 2013-14 year, but now the number is below 1 percent, according to state data. Another 0.6 percent of students are reportedly exempt for specific medical reasons.
The law’s effects on local school districts has varied.
The transition was fairly smooth at the Santa Barbara Unified School District, which held “robust communication with families” about the changes, according to spokeswoman Lauren Bianchi Klemann. The district's vaccination efforts were focused on parents who waited until the last minute to immunize their kids, she said.
For the 2015-16 school year, only 84 percent of Montecito Elementary School kindergarteners had received all their vaccines, according to Shots for School, a website that collects data on school vaccination and personal-belief exemption rates. Another 11.3 percent had personal-belief exemptions on file.
“Montecito Union had an issue a few years back with parents not wanting to immunize with the personal-belief exemption,” district Superintendent Tammy Murphy said.
But in the year since, she said, “100 percent of kindergarteners are in compliance” with vaccine requirements.
Though SB 277 played an important role in the dramatic turnaround, Murphy credited school nurse Cassandra Ornelas for an all-out push to inform parents and solicit their compliance.
For the 2015-16 school year, just fewer than half of local schools had rates above 95 percent, while over three in four do now, according to Dr. Steven Barkley, a neonatologist at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
The real goal of vaccines, he explained, is not necessarily to prevent the vaccinated individual from having to spend a week in bed with the flu, but to protect those with immune-system deficiencies that make catching a preventable disease a life-threatening ordeal.
This concept of “herd immunity,” where there are enough immunized people to halt the spread of a disease between susceptible individuals, generally requires at least 95 percent of people to be vaccinated and spread out at least somewhat evenly in the population, though the rate varies with each disease.
While SB 277 certainly played a critical role, he said, a dedicated public outreach effort spearheaded by Dr. Daniel Brennan, a pediatrician with Sansum Clinic, was crucial to turning the tide toward greater immunization.
“From the point of view of a practicing physician, we were concerned that many of our schools were below the herd immunity rate of 95 percent,” Brennan told Noozhawk.
Sansum, Cottage, the Santa Barbara County Education Office, local schools and the county Public Health Department quickly jumped on board his grassroots campaign, dubbed Strive for 95, which put on TV and radio ads, social media outreach and a symposium at the Lobero Theatre.
Most of the campaign revolved around “sharing the scientific data that’s available and letting people read through and feel comfortable.”
But there was also a social approach: Stickers similar to the “I Voted” ones handed out at the polls were available to parents when they took their kids in for shots.
Brennan posited that if moms and dads saw their peers at school pick-ups, PTA meetings and other outings wearing the stickers, they may feel more comfortable vaccinating their own kids.
One factor in parents’ decision not to immunize was a loss of “cultural memory,” Barkley said.
He recalled that his mother had made him wait in line in the sun for two hours to receive his polio shot when the existential threat the crippling disease posed was still a fresh memory. Society’s improved health has diluted the perception of the dangers even rare diseases still pose, he said.
At the root of many personal-belief exemptions is a discredited 1998 study by a British doctor who claimed a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the onset of autism.
Despite all the time, money and effort put into thoroughly debunking the idea, a significant quirk of psychology means that skeptical parents become even more doubtful of vaccines even when presented with irrefutable data showing their safety and efficacy. Chastising them for their erroneous beliefs has been shown to only strengthen their skepticism, Barkley said.
“You don’t need too many people convinced that the behavioral change in their child was temporarily related to their immunizations to really scare a lot of people,” he said.
Rather than focus on the potentially disastrous consequences of opposing vaccination, Barkley explained, a more effective approach is the “take one for the team” mentality of protecting the vulnerable — communicated on a more personal level.
Though lawmakers and health professionals have cheered SB 277’s effectiveness, it quickly prompted a local lawsuit filed by 17 parents and four nonprofit organizations representing parents who say they were affected by the law.
The plaintiffs sued then-Santa Barbara County Public Health director Dr. Takashi Wada; Public Health Officer Dr. Charity Dean; the state Department of Education; its superintendent, Tom Torlakson; the state Board of Education; the state Department of Public Health; and its director, Dr. Karen Smith.
Though the plaintiffs argued that the law denied children access to school and violated parents’ right to bring up their children in accordance with their personal beliefs, they voluntarily dismissed their lawsuit soon after, in August.
Five days before that decision, a U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of California denied the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction that would have barred the state from enforcing the law.
“Maintaining a high vaccination rate among children in our community is the most effective way to protect them against vaccine-preventable disease,” Dean said in a statement. “And, it also protects the most vulnerable community members.”
In Santa Barbara County, the number of kindergarten students receiving all their shots rose 1.5 percent over the last year to 96.4 percent for the 2016-17 school year, according to the California Public Health Department.
Following a 2014 measles outbreak that started at Disneyland, state legislators passed and Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill 277, which mandates that all public or private school children receive the required vaccines before starting kindergarten or advancing to seventh grade. The law also applies to child-care centers and nursery schools.
Though valid medical exemptions are allowed, personal-belief and religious-belief exemptions are no longer permitted.
Senate Bill 277 went into effect last July, making California the third state behind West Virginia and Mississippi to prohibit personal-belief exemptions.
State Public Health officials posited that the law, public awareness after the measles outbreak, and outreach efforts by local public health departments, schools and medical providers were behind the jump in immunizations.
Over the last two years, the state’s overall rate rose 5.2 percent to 95.6 percent.
Santa Barbara County’s kindergarten vaccine rate currently ranks around 18th out of California’s 58 counties, not all of which have full data available.
Students with personal-belief exemptions in the county peaked at 3 percent during the 2013-14 year, but now the number is below 1 percent, according to state data. Another 0.6 percent of students are reportedly exempt for specific medical reasons.
The law’s effects on local school districts has varied.
The transition was fairly smooth at the Santa Barbara Unified School District, which held “robust communication with families” about the changes, according to spokeswoman Lauren Bianchi Klemann. The district's vaccination efforts were focused on parents who waited until the last minute to immunize their kids, she said.
For the 2015-16 school year, only 84 percent of Montecito Elementary School kindergarteners had received all their vaccines, according to Shots for School, a website that collects data on school vaccination and personal-belief exemption rates. Another 11.3 percent had personal-belief exemptions on file.
“Montecito Union had an issue a few years back with parents not wanting to immunize with the personal-belief exemption,” district Superintendent Tammy Murphy said.
But in the year since, she said, “100 percent of kindergarteners are in compliance” with vaccine requirements.
Though SB 277 played an important role in the dramatic turnaround, Murphy credited school nurse Cassandra Ornelas for an all-out push to inform parents and solicit their compliance.
For the 2015-16 school year, just fewer than half of local schools had rates above 95 percent, while over three in four do now, according to Dr. Steven Barkley, a neonatologist at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
The real goal of vaccines, he explained, is not necessarily to prevent the vaccinated individual from having to spend a week in bed with the flu, but to protect those with immune-system deficiencies that make catching a preventable disease a life-threatening ordeal.
This concept of “herd immunity,” where there are enough immunized people to halt the spread of a disease between susceptible individuals, generally requires at least 95 percent of people to be vaccinated and spread out at least somewhat evenly in the population, though the rate varies with each disease.
While SB 277 certainly played a critical role, he said, a dedicated public outreach effort spearheaded by Dr. Daniel Brennan, a pediatrician with Sansum Clinic, was crucial to turning the tide toward greater immunization.
“From the point of view of a practicing physician, we were concerned that many of our schools were below the herd immunity rate of 95 percent,” Brennan told Noozhawk.
Sansum, Cottage, the Santa Barbara County Education Office, local schools and the county Public Health Department quickly jumped on board his grassroots campaign, dubbed Strive for 95, which put on TV and radio ads, social media outreach and a symposium at the Lobero Theatre.
Most of the campaign revolved around “sharing the scientific data that’s available and letting people read through and feel comfortable.”
But there was also a social approach: Stickers similar to the “I Voted” ones handed out at the polls were available to parents when they took their kids in for shots.
Brennan posited that if moms and dads saw their peers at school pick-ups, PTA meetings and other outings wearing the stickers, they may feel more comfortable vaccinating their own kids.
One factor in parents’ decision not to immunize was a loss of “cultural memory,” Barkley said.
He recalled that his mother had made him wait in line in the sun for two hours to receive his polio shot when the existential threat the crippling disease posed was still a fresh memory. Society’s improved health has diluted the perception of the dangers even rare diseases still pose, he said.
At the root of many personal-belief exemptions is a discredited 1998 study by a British doctor who claimed a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the onset of autism.
Despite all the time, money and effort put into thoroughly debunking the idea, a significant quirk of psychology means that skeptical parents become even more doubtful of vaccines even when presented with irrefutable data showing their safety and efficacy. Chastising them for their erroneous beliefs has been shown to only strengthen their skepticism, Barkley said.
“You don’t need too many people convinced that the behavioral change in their child was temporarily related to their immunizations to really scare a lot of people,” he said.
Rather than focus on the potentially disastrous consequences of opposing vaccination, Barkley explained, a more effective approach is the “take one for the team” mentality of protecting the vulnerable — communicated on a more personal level.
Though lawmakers and health professionals have cheered SB 277’s effectiveness, it quickly prompted a local lawsuit filed by 17 parents and four nonprofit organizations representing parents who say they were affected by the law.
The plaintiffs sued then-Santa Barbara County Public Health director Dr. Takashi Wada; Public Health Officer Dr. Charity Dean; the state Department of Education; its superintendent, Tom Torlakson; the state Board of Education; the state Department of Public Health; and its director, Dr. Karen Smith.
Though the plaintiffs argued that the law denied children access to school and violated parents’ right to bring up their children in accordance with their personal beliefs, they voluntarily dismissed their lawsuit soon after, in August.
Five days before that decision, a U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of California denied the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction that would have barred the state from enforcing the law.
“Maintaining a high vaccination rate among children in our community is the most effective way to protect them against vaccine-preventable disease,” Dean said in a statement. “And, it also protects the most vulnerable community members.”
Santa Barbara's State Street Sees Uptick in Vacancies Amid Changing Retail and Consumer Landscape
City looks to enhance downtown retail mix as businesses cope with challenges of high rents and online competition
Noozhawk | 2016
In addition to the lights, decorations and holiday spirit, locals doing their holiday shopping along Santa Barbara’s State Street may have noticed something else: dark and empty windows.
Despite being the city’s iconic commercial corridor and a tourism hotspot, State Street has seen a small but recent uptick in vacancies, particularly in the heart of the city’s downtown zone.
Businesses have various reasons for closing up shop, but high rents and competition from online shopping can make even prime real estate like Lower State Street difficult to hold on to.
In November, there were roughly 30 vacancies on State Street, with about half coming along the half-mile stretch between Victoria and De La Guerra streets, according to data from Radius Commercial Real Estate and Investments.
“Our current retail vacancy is Santa Barbara is at 1.6 percent, which gives you the impression that it’s very healthy, vibrant and a very strong market,” said Jim Turner, an agent with Radius.
Walking up and down State Street, however, “paints a little bit of a different picture,” he said.
Places over 2,000 square feet take much longer to lease and are harder to lease because of the higher overall monthly rent, Turner told Noozhawk. About two-thirds of November’s vacant spaces are at least that size.
The average asking rate among the 30 addresses was close to $3.70 per square foot. Many spots have been open for several months, including a handful from 2015 and earlier.
In November, some 73,000 total square feet of retail space was vacant on downtown State Street.
“I think quite frankly you have a lot of long-standing property owners on State Street whose tax bases are very low and they probably have no debt on the property,” Turner said. “There’s not much motivation for them to re-lease their space. They’ll wait until the next Apple store comes knocking on their door.”
He said the costs and time needed to obtain a permit for tenant improvements has also contributed to the difficulty of opening a retail business in the city.
“Retail is, unfortunately, a rather cyclical industry,” said Ken Oplinger, president and CEO of the Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce. “We’re in a period right now on State Street where we’ve had a number of people who have left their facilities for a pretty wide variety of reasons.”
Included is the ever-growing “Amazon effect” — competition from online shopping sites that offer a wide array of products that don’t require one to leave the house.
“We have a very niche retail sector here in Santa Barbara,” Oplinger said. The relative lack of broad-based, big-box retailers that keep consumers coming back year-round contributes to the cyclical nature of local business, he told Noozhawk.
The struggle isn’t universal, he noted. Some businesses, like artisanal home-goods store Plum Goods Santa Barbara of 909 State St., are actually expanding.
Owner Amy Cooper now sells what she calls ethical and sustainable men’s and women’s clothing in the space next door, products she said are not currently offered elsewhere in town.
The key to her success, she said, is providing customers, many of whom are from out of town, shopping and retail experiences that they can’t have back home or online.
“They’re looking for a one-of-a-kind experience, and there are fewer and fewer of those on State Street. … We hear that every day from customers: ‘Where are the other local stores?’”
After State Street’s recovery from the recession, she said, “in the past year and a half, two years, there’s just a dramatic increase in vacancies, especially on my block.”
Kenny Slaught, the founder and president of Investec, a real estate company and State Street landlord, says that although there has been a small uptick in vacancies, the notion that there are an exceptional number is overblown.
Investec, he told Noozhawk, has received many inquiries from businesses looking to come in, though very few are mom-and-pop stores, who “rarely have a budget to compete with national retailers for State Street space.”
The main complaints Investec hears from tenants, he added, regard the homeless, downtown parking and the time, effort and money it takes to get through the city’s permitting processes.
Some State Street owners refuse to budge on their terms for a lease, Slaught said, but there are myriad other issues behind the scenes that lead to closures, like businesses not paying their bills on time or unrelated legal trouble.
According to Jim Haslem, a business leasing expert and founder and CEO of the consulting firm CS Advisors, dark stores suggest a disconnect between a landlord’s rent demands and what a tenant can actually afford.
“There’s a lot of talk about market rents, but market rents don’t correlate with the right rent,” he told Noozhawk.
“Dark stores imply the landlord has not yet priced the location in a manner that’s appropriate for the sales opportunity for that location. … I think the right rent for the tenant is often the right rent for the landlord.”
Landlords, he noted, still prefer a higher rent even though what “they think is fair-market” rent tends to cause “churn” — the revolving door of businesses coming in and dropping out of a location.
Many businesses, especially restaurants, work with only a thin profit margin and can’t afford to raise their prices to keep up with rent hikes because consumers will look elsewhere, Haslem said.
“The dark stores aren’t smart for anybody,” he added. “They signal blight, they’re negative for tourism, the city misses out on sales-tax revenue and landlords face higher insurance premiums.”
Insurance providers see vacancies as higher-risk, he said.
A year after opening in November 2014, sales began to gradually decline at Still — Elevate Your Ethanol, a cocktail-accessories and barware store that closed Dec. 24 at 37 E. Ortega St.
After the initial media attention wore off, most foot traffic continued to remain a short block away on State, and customers opted for online alternatives, said owner Jeremy Bohrer.
“Every single person I’ve talked to at Still about the state of State Street say the same thing: It’s awful. … There are too many places empty. The rents are too high.”
Though the customers who came in told them how much they loved Still, they also mentioned that they hadn’t previously heard about it, said Sayward Rebhal, who ran the business with Bohrer.
“There’s no way to get out the word because (media) advertising is unaffordable,” she said. “It’s just not in a small-business budget to advertise.”
Rebhal diagnosed the struggles of local small businesses as a lack of support from City Hall and little apparent willingness on the part of locals to support the businesses they lament are disappearing.
That the retail corridor is not meeting its full business potential has not escaped the attention of the Downtown Organization of Santa Barbara, a nonprofit membership organization that promotes and serves downtown businesses.
“We have retail most cities in America would kill for,” Executive Director Maggie Campbell said, adding that the area had never had much need to recruit businesses.
Her organization, however, is undertaking a study to understand how to improve the retail mix on State Street and its immediate surroundings.
Downtown Works, a retail market analysis consulting firm, will begin the study in January, performing a trade-area analysis and assessing the commercial zone’s current retail mix before recommending a strategy for how to improve that mix, Campbell told Noozhawk.
Downtown Works’ final report and vision is expected in May, and is paid for by private funds from contributors concerned about the present retail mix, she said.
The goal isn’t to just fill vacancies, but to bring in businesses that will be successful and good neighbors, Campbell said.
The results of the study, she added, could be a resource to real estate brokers as they bring in new businesses, and used to inform current retailers’ business decisions.
Bohrer, Rebhal and Cooper all agreed that the downtown organization has been a boon for small business.
“I have a lot of hope that State Street’s going to get better and go back to it how it used to be when I first moved here 20 years ago,” Cooper said.
Despite being the city’s iconic commercial corridor and a tourism hotspot, State Street has seen a small but recent uptick in vacancies, particularly in the heart of the city’s downtown zone.
Businesses have various reasons for closing up shop, but high rents and competition from online shopping can make even prime real estate like Lower State Street difficult to hold on to.
In November, there were roughly 30 vacancies on State Street, with about half coming along the half-mile stretch between Victoria and De La Guerra streets, according to data from Radius Commercial Real Estate and Investments.
“Our current retail vacancy is Santa Barbara is at 1.6 percent, which gives you the impression that it’s very healthy, vibrant and a very strong market,” said Jim Turner, an agent with Radius.
Walking up and down State Street, however, “paints a little bit of a different picture,” he said.
Places over 2,000 square feet take much longer to lease and are harder to lease because of the higher overall monthly rent, Turner told Noozhawk. About two-thirds of November’s vacant spaces are at least that size.
The average asking rate among the 30 addresses was close to $3.70 per square foot. Many spots have been open for several months, including a handful from 2015 and earlier.
In November, some 73,000 total square feet of retail space was vacant on downtown State Street.
“I think quite frankly you have a lot of long-standing property owners on State Street whose tax bases are very low and they probably have no debt on the property,” Turner said. “There’s not much motivation for them to re-lease their space. They’ll wait until the next Apple store comes knocking on their door.”
He said the costs and time needed to obtain a permit for tenant improvements has also contributed to the difficulty of opening a retail business in the city.
“Retail is, unfortunately, a rather cyclical industry,” said Ken Oplinger, president and CEO of the Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce. “We’re in a period right now on State Street where we’ve had a number of people who have left their facilities for a pretty wide variety of reasons.”
Included is the ever-growing “Amazon effect” — competition from online shopping sites that offer a wide array of products that don’t require one to leave the house.
“We have a very niche retail sector here in Santa Barbara,” Oplinger said. The relative lack of broad-based, big-box retailers that keep consumers coming back year-round contributes to the cyclical nature of local business, he told Noozhawk.
The struggle isn’t universal, he noted. Some businesses, like artisanal home-goods store Plum Goods Santa Barbara of 909 State St., are actually expanding.
Owner Amy Cooper now sells what she calls ethical and sustainable men’s and women’s clothing in the space next door, products she said are not currently offered elsewhere in town.
The key to her success, she said, is providing customers, many of whom are from out of town, shopping and retail experiences that they can’t have back home or online.
“They’re looking for a one-of-a-kind experience, and there are fewer and fewer of those on State Street. … We hear that every day from customers: ‘Where are the other local stores?’”
After State Street’s recovery from the recession, she said, “in the past year and a half, two years, there’s just a dramatic increase in vacancies, especially on my block.”
Kenny Slaught, the founder and president of Investec, a real estate company and State Street landlord, says that although there has been a small uptick in vacancies, the notion that there are an exceptional number is overblown.
Investec, he told Noozhawk, has received many inquiries from businesses looking to come in, though very few are mom-and-pop stores, who “rarely have a budget to compete with national retailers for State Street space.”
The main complaints Investec hears from tenants, he added, regard the homeless, downtown parking and the time, effort and money it takes to get through the city’s permitting processes.
Some State Street owners refuse to budge on their terms for a lease, Slaught said, but there are myriad other issues behind the scenes that lead to closures, like businesses not paying their bills on time or unrelated legal trouble.
According to Jim Haslem, a business leasing expert and founder and CEO of the consulting firm CS Advisors, dark stores suggest a disconnect between a landlord’s rent demands and what a tenant can actually afford.
“There’s a lot of talk about market rents, but market rents don’t correlate with the right rent,” he told Noozhawk.
“Dark stores imply the landlord has not yet priced the location in a manner that’s appropriate for the sales opportunity for that location. … I think the right rent for the tenant is often the right rent for the landlord.”
Landlords, he noted, still prefer a higher rent even though what “they think is fair-market” rent tends to cause “churn” — the revolving door of businesses coming in and dropping out of a location.
Many businesses, especially restaurants, work with only a thin profit margin and can’t afford to raise their prices to keep up with rent hikes because consumers will look elsewhere, Haslem said.
“The dark stores aren’t smart for anybody,” he added. “They signal blight, they’re negative for tourism, the city misses out on sales-tax revenue and landlords face higher insurance premiums.”
Insurance providers see vacancies as higher-risk, he said.
A year after opening in November 2014, sales began to gradually decline at Still — Elevate Your Ethanol, a cocktail-accessories and barware store that closed Dec. 24 at 37 E. Ortega St.
After the initial media attention wore off, most foot traffic continued to remain a short block away on State, and customers opted for online alternatives, said owner Jeremy Bohrer.
“Every single person I’ve talked to at Still about the state of State Street say the same thing: It’s awful. … There are too many places empty. The rents are too high.”
Though the customers who came in told them how much they loved Still, they also mentioned that they hadn’t previously heard about it, said Sayward Rebhal, who ran the business with Bohrer.
“There’s no way to get out the word because (media) advertising is unaffordable,” she said. “It’s just not in a small-business budget to advertise.”
Rebhal diagnosed the struggles of local small businesses as a lack of support from City Hall and little apparent willingness on the part of locals to support the businesses they lament are disappearing.
That the retail corridor is not meeting its full business potential has not escaped the attention of the Downtown Organization of Santa Barbara, a nonprofit membership organization that promotes and serves downtown businesses.
“We have retail most cities in America would kill for,” Executive Director Maggie Campbell said, adding that the area had never had much need to recruit businesses.
Her organization, however, is undertaking a study to understand how to improve the retail mix on State Street and its immediate surroundings.
Downtown Works, a retail market analysis consulting firm, will begin the study in January, performing a trade-area analysis and assessing the commercial zone’s current retail mix before recommending a strategy for how to improve that mix, Campbell told Noozhawk.
Downtown Works’ final report and vision is expected in May, and is paid for by private funds from contributors concerned about the present retail mix, she said.
The goal isn’t to just fill vacancies, but to bring in businesses that will be successful and good neighbors, Campbell said.
The results of the study, she added, could be a resource to real estate brokers as they bring in new businesses, and used to inform current retailers’ business decisions.
Bohrer, Rebhal and Cooper all agreed that the downtown organization has been a boon for small business.
“I have a lot of hope that State Street’s going to get better and go back to it how it used to be when I first moved here 20 years ago,” Cooper said.
Santa Barbara Pharmacists Surrender Licenses for Filling, Mishandling Dr. Julio Diaz Prescriptions
Board of Pharmacy investigations revealed shoddy recordkeeping, lost inventory at pharmacies that filled orders from doctor convicted of overprescribing painkillers
Noozhawk | 2017
Four Santa Barbara pharmacists have been accused by the California Board of Pharmacy of ignoring red flags indicating prescription drug abuse among patients, dispensing excessive controlled substances and duplicate pain therapies, filling prescriptions too early, and not keeping track of drug losses and overages.
The accusations of negligence and mishandling controlled substances stem from prescriptions written by a former Santa Barbara physician, Julio Diaz, who in August 2015 was convicted of 79 felony counts related to over-prescribing painkillers. Diaz was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison.
Starting sometime after Diaz’s 2012 arrest, the board investigated Sanjiv Bhalla of the former Medicine Shoppe at 1435 State St.; Peter Caldwell and Abdul Yahyavi of the former L.M. Caldwell Pharmacist of 1509 State St. and 235 W. Pueblo St.; and Steven Cooley, former owner of Sansum Clinic Pharmacy at 317 W. Pueblo St.
Although Diaz’s patients traveled all over Southern California to fill his prescriptions, the four Santa Barbara pharmacies were found to have serviced considerably more than other pharmacies in the city, according to the state board.
Late last year, Caldwell, who owned L.M. Caldwell Pharmacist, agreed to surrender his pharmacy license, as did Yahyavi, who supervised the Pueblo Street pharmacy. Caldwell also paid $15,000 to cover the costs of the board’s investigation and discipline.
Caldwell, who declined to comment for this story, closed both his pharmacies in early January, citing retirement.
Still pending are the accusations against Bhalla and Cooley.
At his trial in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, Diaz — known to patients, authorities and some pharmacists as “the Candyman” — was found guilty on all 79 charges against him. He has appealed his conviction.
An affidavit accused Diaz of prescribing “profound” doses of drugs, including strong painkillers such as OxyContin, fentanyl and Dilaudid to patients. Authorities linked his prescriptions to 11 overdose deaths and hundreds of drug-related emergency room visits.
In the Board of Pharmacy complaints, the four Santa Barbara pharmacists are accused of ignoring or not adequately checking CURES, a database accessible to all licensed pharmacists in California that tracks controlled-substance prescriptions.
According to investigators, the CURES database showed clear evidence of doctor and pharmacy shopping, multiple pain therapies being prescribed, duplicate treatments, patients driving tens of miles to fill prescriptions, the same or similar prescribing patterns, and proof of other nearby pharmacists filling next to none of Diaz’s prescriptions.
The complaints allege that other red flags were ignored, such as potent drug combinations being prescribed, patients paying in cash for expensive prescriptions, and patients returning sometimes weeks early for refills.
In some cases, the investigations found, patients had no known diagnosis or the accused pharmacist did not know of a diagnosis.
Records and notes were found missing for some prescriptions and for some inventory sales, acquisitions and dispensations.
Although Caldwell surrendered his license in December, the board’s investigation started much earlier, said Virginia Herold, the Board of Pharmacy’s executive director.
She signed the original complaint against him, Yahyavi and the two L.M. Caldwell pharmacies in January 2014, two years after Diaz’s arrest.
“Sometimes it takes a long time to discipline a licensee,” she told Noozhawk. “It’s very much like the court system.”
The investigation found that, between late 2009 and early 2013, the pharmacies could not account for inventory overages of 187,927 tablets of hydrocodone/acetaminophen and 165 tablets of oxycodone.
Over that same period, they could not account for the loss of 14,160 tablets of hydromorphone and 6,050 tablets of oxycodone.
Herold said tiny irregularities in inventory are expected, though nothing near the losses and overages discovered at L.M. Caldwell Pharmacist.
A loss of, say, two pills in six months would show a pharmacist is keeping close tabs on his or her inventory, she said. Many, however, don’t check that closely for such a small loss.
The board requires lost controlled substances to be reported to it within 14 days. Substantial losses must be reported to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration within 30 days.
According to the complaint, Yahyavi told a Board of Pharmacy inspector in 2013 that he knew of Diaz’s “Candyman” nickname. It also alleged that Caldwell was aware that Diaz was not a pain-management physician.
Yahyavi, who was the Pueblo Street drugstore’s supervising pharmacist until October 2014, could not be reached for comment.
The investigation into the Sansum pharmacy and Cooley began the month Diaz was arrested. Herold’s complaint, dated May 2015, contends that the store “dispensed one of the highest volumes of controlled-substance prescriptions written” by Diaz — 1,840 prescriptions totaling 269,224 dosage units.
Cooley, who is scheduled to appear at a hearing on May 23 at the Los Angeles location of the California Office of Administrative Hearings, could not be reached for comment.
A Sansum pharmacist told Noozhawk that Cooley had retired a couple of years back and no longer owns the pharmacy.
Herold is seeking to revoke or suspend Sansum and Cooley’s licenses and require them to cover the costs of the investigation and enforcement efforts.
The complaint against Bhalla of the former Medicine Shoppe seeks the same discipline as it does for Cooley and Sansum. That complaint was dated December 2015 and also signed by Herold.
Last December, Bhalla had a settlement conference at the Office of Administrative Hearings, and has further hearings scheduled this week in Los Angeles.
While a Medicine Shoppe at 3605 State St. is still around, Bhalla’s Medicine Shoppe closed abruptly in 2013, and he now works for another pharmacy in Westlake Village.
He, too, declined to comment for this story.
The DEA and the Board of Pharmacy maintain that pharmacists, like doctors, have a responsibility to ensure that prescriptions are filled for legitimate purposes, and that patients’ drug therapies are suitable for them.
“Frequently, in a case where there are substantial violations of corresponding responsibility, (discipline) could be revocation of a license,” Herold said.
She added that, if he wanted to, Caldwell could re-apply after three years to have his pharmacy license reinstated. The board’s recent case against him, however, would have to be considered during the application process.
She confirmed, however, that if pharmacists are not acting responsibly, and no individuals come forward with concerns, improprieties like those found during investigations of L.M. Caldwell, Sansum and The Medicine Shoppe can continue unabated.
If serious misconduct is suspected, the board investigates it, an accusation is filed, and the licensee can either go to an administrative hearing or settle with a stipulation, as Caldwell did when he agreed to surrender his license.
The board then evaluates the charges and the proposed discipline or stipulation, and votes on whether they’re appropriate.
“Unfortunately, Caldwell’s case is not unique,” Herold said. “We find pharmacies where this happens.”
The accusations of negligence and mishandling controlled substances stem from prescriptions written by a former Santa Barbara physician, Julio Diaz, who in August 2015 was convicted of 79 felony counts related to over-prescribing painkillers. Diaz was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison.
Starting sometime after Diaz’s 2012 arrest, the board investigated Sanjiv Bhalla of the former Medicine Shoppe at 1435 State St.; Peter Caldwell and Abdul Yahyavi of the former L.M. Caldwell Pharmacist of 1509 State St. and 235 W. Pueblo St.; and Steven Cooley, former owner of Sansum Clinic Pharmacy at 317 W. Pueblo St.
Although Diaz’s patients traveled all over Southern California to fill his prescriptions, the four Santa Barbara pharmacies were found to have serviced considerably more than other pharmacies in the city, according to the state board.
Late last year, Caldwell, who owned L.M. Caldwell Pharmacist, agreed to surrender his pharmacy license, as did Yahyavi, who supervised the Pueblo Street pharmacy. Caldwell also paid $15,000 to cover the costs of the board’s investigation and discipline.
Caldwell, who declined to comment for this story, closed both his pharmacies in early January, citing retirement.
Still pending are the accusations against Bhalla and Cooley.
At his trial in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, Diaz — known to patients, authorities and some pharmacists as “the Candyman” — was found guilty on all 79 charges against him. He has appealed his conviction.
An affidavit accused Diaz of prescribing “profound” doses of drugs, including strong painkillers such as OxyContin, fentanyl and Dilaudid to patients. Authorities linked his prescriptions to 11 overdose deaths and hundreds of drug-related emergency room visits.
In the Board of Pharmacy complaints, the four Santa Barbara pharmacists are accused of ignoring or not adequately checking CURES, a database accessible to all licensed pharmacists in California that tracks controlled-substance prescriptions.
According to investigators, the CURES database showed clear evidence of doctor and pharmacy shopping, multiple pain therapies being prescribed, duplicate treatments, patients driving tens of miles to fill prescriptions, the same or similar prescribing patterns, and proof of other nearby pharmacists filling next to none of Diaz’s prescriptions.
The complaints allege that other red flags were ignored, such as potent drug combinations being prescribed, patients paying in cash for expensive prescriptions, and patients returning sometimes weeks early for refills.
In some cases, the investigations found, patients had no known diagnosis or the accused pharmacist did not know of a diagnosis.
Records and notes were found missing for some prescriptions and for some inventory sales, acquisitions and dispensations.
Although Caldwell surrendered his license in December, the board’s investigation started much earlier, said Virginia Herold, the Board of Pharmacy’s executive director.
She signed the original complaint against him, Yahyavi and the two L.M. Caldwell pharmacies in January 2014, two years after Diaz’s arrest.
“Sometimes it takes a long time to discipline a licensee,” she told Noozhawk. “It’s very much like the court system.”
The investigation found that, between late 2009 and early 2013, the pharmacies could not account for inventory overages of 187,927 tablets of hydrocodone/acetaminophen and 165 tablets of oxycodone.
Over that same period, they could not account for the loss of 14,160 tablets of hydromorphone and 6,050 tablets of oxycodone.
Herold said tiny irregularities in inventory are expected, though nothing near the losses and overages discovered at L.M. Caldwell Pharmacist.
A loss of, say, two pills in six months would show a pharmacist is keeping close tabs on his or her inventory, she said. Many, however, don’t check that closely for such a small loss.
The board requires lost controlled substances to be reported to it within 14 days. Substantial losses must be reported to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration within 30 days.
According to the complaint, Yahyavi told a Board of Pharmacy inspector in 2013 that he knew of Diaz’s “Candyman” nickname. It also alleged that Caldwell was aware that Diaz was not a pain-management physician.
Yahyavi, who was the Pueblo Street drugstore’s supervising pharmacist until October 2014, could not be reached for comment.
The investigation into the Sansum pharmacy and Cooley began the month Diaz was arrested. Herold’s complaint, dated May 2015, contends that the store “dispensed one of the highest volumes of controlled-substance prescriptions written” by Diaz — 1,840 prescriptions totaling 269,224 dosage units.
Cooley, who is scheduled to appear at a hearing on May 23 at the Los Angeles location of the California Office of Administrative Hearings, could not be reached for comment.
A Sansum pharmacist told Noozhawk that Cooley had retired a couple of years back and no longer owns the pharmacy.
Herold is seeking to revoke or suspend Sansum and Cooley’s licenses and require them to cover the costs of the investigation and enforcement efforts.
The complaint against Bhalla of the former Medicine Shoppe seeks the same discipline as it does for Cooley and Sansum. That complaint was dated December 2015 and also signed by Herold.
Last December, Bhalla had a settlement conference at the Office of Administrative Hearings, and has further hearings scheduled this week in Los Angeles.
While a Medicine Shoppe at 3605 State St. is still around, Bhalla’s Medicine Shoppe closed abruptly in 2013, and he now works for another pharmacy in Westlake Village.
He, too, declined to comment for this story.
The DEA and the Board of Pharmacy maintain that pharmacists, like doctors, have a responsibility to ensure that prescriptions are filled for legitimate purposes, and that patients’ drug therapies are suitable for them.
“Frequently, in a case where there are substantial violations of corresponding responsibility, (discipline) could be revocation of a license,” Herold said.
She added that, if he wanted to, Caldwell could re-apply after three years to have his pharmacy license reinstated. The board’s recent case against him, however, would have to be considered during the application process.
She confirmed, however, that if pharmacists are not acting responsibly, and no individuals come forward with concerns, improprieties like those found during investigations of L.M. Caldwell, Sansum and The Medicine Shoppe can continue unabated.
If serious misconduct is suspected, the board investigates it, an accusation is filed, and the licensee can either go to an administrative hearing or settle with a stipulation, as Caldwell did when he agreed to surrender his license.
The board then evaluates the charges and the proposed discipline or stipulation, and votes on whether they’re appropriate.
“Unfortunately, Caldwell’s case is not unique,” Herold said. “We find pharmacies where this happens.”