The Weekly Tally 04.06.17

WHO’S IN TOWN?

The top cops of California gather this week for the 40th annual California Police Chief’s Association Training Symposium. The chiefs of Monterey County’s police departments are hosts of the five-day event in Monterey, where CPCA members will take a closer look at topics like managing the media in an era of controversial videos; preparing for duty-related deaths; new law enforcement technology; handling mental health and homelessness issues; maintaining the emotional well-being of police executives; and training for spouses and second-in-commands. The closing session features Orlando Police Deputy Chief Eric Smith speaking about the Pulse Nightclub shooting.

Sun-Thurs April 9-13. Portola Hotel and Spa, 2 Portola Plaza, and Monterey Marriott, 350 Calle Principal, Monterey. $475-$800. Open to CPCA members or law enforcement employees only. (916) 325-9005, californiapolicechiefs.org.

FREE SPEECH

Readers have grown accustomed to newspapers shrinking in a challenging business climate, but a daily newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, announced on April 2 it was closing for a different reason: the safety of its journalists. “Today, dear reader, I am speaking to you to inform you that I have decided to close this daily because the guarantee for the safety for us to continue journalism does not exist,” Norte executive Oscar A. Cantú Murguía wrote in Spanish. The decision comes after a violent month: Miroslava Breach Velducea, a correspondent for La Jornada, was shot while leaving her home in Chihuahua March 23; Armando Arrieta Granados, editorial director of La Opinión, was shot and wounded in Poza Rica March 29; columnist Ricardo Monlui Cabrera was shot to death as he left a restaurant in Veracruz on March 19; and Cecilio Pineda Birto, a crime writer and the founder of La Voz de Tierra Caliente, was killed at a carwash in Ciudad Altamirano on March 2, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

GOOD WEEK / BAD WEEK

GOOD:

Construction is set to begin in the week of April 10 on a long-needed bike path from downtown Castroville to North Monterey County High School that will run parallel to Highway 156, and include a ramp over railroad tracks. Presently, students who travel along the route have to cross over the railroad tracks and walk or ride through the dirt edge of a farm field. The project looked as if it might not happen last December, when the California Transportation Commission pulled its pledged $6.6 million for the project due lower-than-expected gas tax revenue. But in January, another pot of state money opened up, and the project was again green-lit. The first phase of construction will be driving about 100 steel pilings into the ground, a phase that is expected to last four to six weeks.

BAD:

On April 10, the Pacific Fishery Management Council convenes to discuss, among other things, whether to continue a moratorium on commercial sardine fishing off the U.S.’s West Coast for a third consecutive year. When conditions are optimal, sardines are capable of reproducing in mass numbers, but when they’re not, the populations can remain steadily low. Fishing sardines during low times, conservationists say, is equivalent to spending the principal of a bank account – it reduces their ability to bounce back when conditions improve. For this reason, marine conservation nonprofit Oceana, which had long argued the fishing limits for sardines were set too high, is lobbying the council to keep the moratorium in place. To make matters worse, anchovies, another key forage fish, are also in low numbers. “I won’t be surprised to see [sardines] remain low for at least a decade,” says Oceana Senior Scientist Geoff Shester. “Scientific studies show that during collapse, recovery takes a lot longer.”

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