South Bay Echo for June 10
Local elections, water restrictions, Redondo police case and Tarantino's new podcast
Hello friends… Welcome to the 33rd edition of South Bay Echo, your source of local hometown news with a real estate angle.
This Substack is brought to you by Rosetree Real Estate, a full service real estate brokerage dealing in residential and commercial properties to both own and lease. For more information visit RosetreeRealEstate.com. DRE# 02145024
Primaries set stage for November
Across Los Angeles County, and the South Bay in particular, primary elections decided this week have set the stage for a larger battle next Fall, which all goes to mean we will be subjected to way more television ads for Rick Caruso. God help us.
It might seem, however, that even a $23 million ad campaign and an electorate souring on liberal glad-handing are not enough to overcome the great blue wave that will forever crest in Los Angeles. Karen Bass and Caruso are heading for a runoff.
Meanwhile, the ever-more brazen LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva will rest a little less easy in the coming months as he prepares to meet former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna.
Manhattan Beach looks to have soundly lost by nearly 70% in early vote counts a bid to raise a parcel tax to pay for increased school funding while Torrance has secured, it seems, enough votes for a half-cent sales tax.
Also in Torrance, George Chen secured in early vote counts more than 50% of the needed to declare him the Mayor. The fiery Councilman Aurelio Mattucci appears to have also gained more than 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff.
For South Bay LA City Council seats, two attorneys, Erin Darling and Traci Park, will square off in November for the seat held by Mike Bonin in a district that covers Playa del Rey and Venice.
And the contest for Joe Buscaino’s seat, which covers San Pedro, will come down to Tim McOsker, businessman and chief of staff for former Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn and Danielle Sandoval, a former Harbor City Neighborhood Council President.
Water restrictions not equal
With Southern California once again in a historic drought, residents are being asked — and demanded in parts — to conserve water. But not all the restrictions are applied evenly.
While our local West Basin Municipal Water District is kindly asking people to conserve water, it’s not actually required. The restrictions put into play last week affect customers of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and several other inland municipal water districts.
These districts were selected for their dependence on Northern California water, where the drought is more severe, and less from the Colorado River. For LADWP customers in LA, they are being told not to water during the day and restrict their use of sprinklers.
It’s a small price to pay for having water in a coastal desert.
Case against Redondo Police moves forward
The parents of a young man shot by Redondo Beach Police won a significant legal hurdle recently when a District Court judge ruled their case could move forward. This is a sad story because we have a great police force in Redondo, but it seems that certain issues in policing can happen anywhere.
At dispute is whether police acted with excessive force when they shot Luke Carlson, who was involved in a shouting match with his parents in January 2018. The facts as they are laid out look pretty bad with Officers Ryan Crespin and Patrick Knox shooting an unarmed man in an apartment on the Esplanade with his parents just feet away.
At the end of it all, Carlson was shot with two bullet to his chest and one wound to his back and miraculously survived. To make matters worse was how officers handled the parents, who were distraught for obvious reasons.
So what do officers do? They physically grabbed the parents by their arms so forcefully the mom said it felt like officers “pulled her arm out of the socket.” Sergeant Mark Valdivia handled his dad so rough that both of his rotator cuffs tore and required surgery.
There is a lot to unpack in the judge’s ruling, which you can read here. Here is a particular zinger when it came to city policy.
“Based on Plaintiffs’ assertions and supporting evidence, a reasonable jury could find that the City has at least an unwritten policy of not investigating, redressing, or otherwise responding to excessive force incidents, which could constitute an unconstitutional policy.”
Now we’ll have to see how the city chooses to react.
Once upon a Manhattan Beach video store
If you are a movie buff and grew up in the South Bay, you are likely familiar with the story of how Quentin Tarantino used to work at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach in the 1980s. You can still find people who received one of his spirited recommendations back in the day.
Tarantino worked at Video Archives with Roger Avary who would become his writing partner on Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and go on to mount is own sizable film career as a writer and producer.
The two have a new podcast coming out that’s all about movies and hopes to invoke the same spirit the pair had together in those long past days behind the counter. Something to watch coming out later this summer.
All for now. Thanks for reading. Sorry it’s been a while
CORRECTION: Luke Carlson was shot by Redondo Beach police officers and survived. This article corrected a mistake that reported he died.
h2o. What do you think about desalination kiboshed by the coastal commission? Maybe that would help the rising seas of climate change. Per the Breeze today it's a remedy being used around the world (not for climate change, but as a h2o source.) Well, at least it's not the summer of '36 with high heat records and drought and people sleeping in the county court yards as my grandmother always talked about. They may have to shut off the a/c as well. People were dropping like flies from the heat. Glad to see you back. I was wondering when the next edition was coming.