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San Diego's "smart streetlight" program raises privacy concerns |Teri Figueroa, Lori Weisberg Jan 30, 2020

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Amid pushback following the revelation that there are data-gathering sensors on thousands of local high-tech street lights, a San Diego city committee will get its first look at a potential policy governing how all that data is accessed and used. On Wednesday, the proposed policy will be discussed by San Diego’s Public Safety & Livable Neighborhoods committee. It’s the first step to putting the policy in front of the City Council. The policy, if ultimately OK’d, will mark the first time the city codifies how the data is used and who gets to view surveillance footage the sensors gather. In a written report to the committee, Cody Hooven of the city’s Sustainability Department said the policy will “create guidelines for the data generated by the City’s streetlight sensors.” That, she said, includes “proper use, access and dissemination” of the data.

Exonerated of war crimes, Gallagher strikes back at SEALS who spoke against him | Andrew Dyer Jan 29, 2020

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A retired Navy SEAL whose war crimes trial made international news has launched a video attack on former SEAL teammates who accused him of murder, shooting civilians and who testified against him at his San Diego court-martial in June. In a three-minute video posted to his Facebook page and Instagram account Monday, retired Chief Special Operator Edward Gallagher, 40, referred to some members of his former platoon as “cowards” and highlighted names, photos and — for those still on active duty — their duty status and current units, something former SEALs say places those men — and the Navy’s mission — in jeopardy. Gallagher was accused of several war crimes by some of his platoon subordinates, including that he shot civilians and stabbed a wounded ISIS fighter in the neck, killing him, while in Iraq in 2017. He pleaded not guilty and was acquitted of most charges, but was convicted of posing for a photo with an Isis fighter’s corpse, a crime for which the jury reduced his rank.

Can this San Diego startup do what Theranos promised?| Mike Freeman Jan 28, 2020

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San Diego life sciences executive Jeff Hawkins is trying to bring credibility back to field rocked by scandal. A former Illumina vice president, Hawkins heads startup Truvian Sciences. The 5-year-old company is developing a compact blood testing machine that promises to deliver 40 standard health and wellness screening results in about 20 minutes, compared with up to a week turnaround time for similar tests processed at centralized labs. The desktop device, which targets retail health clinics such as those popping up in Walmart and CVS, medical offices and corporate wellness centers, also requires less blood than is commonly drawn for tests sent to large labs. And Truvian expects prices to be significantly lower as well. The company’s technology is still in development. While experts say Truvian is well prepared to meet accuracy and precision targets on its machines, it hasn’t proven its devices work yet.

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station's dismantling starts now | Rob Nikolewski Jan 25, 2020

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Seven years after the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station officially went offline, the eight-year process of physically dismantling the plant and knocking down the domes that have loomed over the landscape of Camp Pendleton for four decades is about to begin. The plant’s operator, Southern California Edison, has mailed notices to about 12,000 residents in a five-mile radius of the plant that initial work will start no earlier than Feb. 22. The first jobs include erecting staging areas and temporary trailers in the plant’s parking lots and removing materials containing asbestos in the Units 2 and 3 domes. By the time work is complete, all that will remain will be two dry storage facilities housing canisters of used-up nuclear fuel from the days when the plant still produced electricity, a security building with personnel to look over the waste enclosed in casks, a seawall 28 to 30 feet high, a walkway connecting two beaches north and south of the plant and a switch-yard with power lines.

The CA-50 race begins to get ugly with attack ads | Michael Smolens, Charles Clark Jan 24, 2020

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The March Primary is just weeks away, and the race to fill the seat vacated by former congressman Duncan Hunter is starting to heat up. This week, Darrell Issa released a campaign ad attacking Carl DeMaio for previous statements made about President Donald Trump -- it also featured newspaper clippings mentioning DeMaio’s sexual orientation. The reaction to the ads was negative among San Diego area-electeds, but in one of the most conservative parts of California -- it’s unclear how attacks like this pan out.

A decade after the McStay family murders, a death sentence for the killer | Teri Figueroa Jan 23, 2020

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A 62-year-old welder convicted in the bludgeoning deaths of a Fallbrook family of four, including two young children, was sentenced Tuesday to the death penalty. Moments before learning his fate, Charles “Chase” Merritt, 62, tearfully told the judge he was innocent in the 2010 killings of business associate Joseph McStay, 40, wife Summer McStay, 43, and the couple’s two preschool sons, Gianni, 4 and Joey Jr., 3. “I don’t deserve this,” Merritt said. “I did not do this. As God as my witness, I will be back here and prove to everyone that that is true.” The sentence was handed down by San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Michael Smith, who last year presided over Merritt’s trial. The jury convicted Merritt of four counts of murder. On Tuesday, Smith said the verdict was “supported by substantial evidence.”

San Diego knew a La Jolla sea cave could collapse, but waited months to seal it | Lauryn Schroeder Jan 22, 2020

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The city of San Diego waited nearly two months to plan and announce emergency construction on a La Jolla cave that geologists said could collapse at any time, city records show. City officials announced in August their plans for emergency construction to reinforce Koch’s Cave and the roadway above it — Coast Boulevard. According to the city’s statement, issued Aug. 9, geology experts had discovered a weak zone in the La Jolla sea cave and recommended that immediate action be taken. “With public safety as the top priority, the city of San Diego today will begin an emergency construction project to stabilize a cliff area and roadway in La Jolla following an analysis by geology experts,” the news release said. City officials hosted a news conference at the site and invited the media to attend.

Fewer people are being killed by cars, but "Vision Zero" remains elusive | Joshua Emerson Smith Jan 21, 2020

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Laramie Logan answered the door at her Coronado home one afternoon in early December to be greeted by a chaplain with the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office. “He told me the devastating news that my brother was hit by a car and didn’t make it,” said the 40-year-old mother of three. “I just dropped to my knees and cried.” Her brother, David Henry Hill, was one of 24 pedestrians killed in traffic-related accidents in the city of San Diego last year — compared to 25 in 2016 after the city first pledged to eliminate such fatalities as part of the nationwide Vision Zero campaign. Lt. Cmdr. David Henry Hill, 37, was killed crossing India Street near West Olive Street and an off-ramp from north I-5 in Bankers Hill on Dec. 2, 2019.(Courtesy of Laramie Logan) The city has invested in a number of safety improvements in recent years, overhauling dozens of streets and crosswalks at crash-prone intersections, as well as launching a public awareness campaign. Those efforts appear to be paying off to a certain degree. In 2019, officials recorded the lowest number of traffic-related deaths and injuries, including motorists, in the last four years, according to data from the San Diego Police Department. That comes after a bloody 2018 when pedestrian deaths and injuries spiked to 127 up from 92 the previous year.

Developers look to San Diego neighborhoods for the next apartment boom | Phil Molnar Jan 18, 2020

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There might be fewer construction cranes downtown, but that doesn’t mean the region’s apartment frenzy has halted. Much of 2020’s apartment construction will be in neighborhoods outside of downtown San Diego, which has made up the lion’s share of new rentals the past few years. More building is now occurring in North Park, Hillcrest, Pacific Beach and throughout the county. There are around 3,500 new apartments planned to open in 2020. That’s down from 4,500 expected at the start of last year, but early numbers show that total was likely not reached. Predicting how many apartments will open at the start of the year can be tricky because delays are frequent and one large project being postponed a few months can skew a yearly total.

Faulconer gives final State of the City address | Michael Smolens Jan 17, 2020

Show notes

Solving San Diego’s housing crisis with less neighborhood backlash, partnering with the county on new homelessness efforts and reforming state law to keep drug addicts off the street are some of Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s top priorities for 2020. Faulconer used his sixth and final State of the City address on Wednesday to lay out those goals and several others for his last year, which he said would be “a year of action” before he’s forced to leave office by term limits. The mayor also reflected on his six years in office during the half-hour speech, declaring that he’s helped write a “comeback story” by making San Diego a national leader instead of a scandal-ridden city with crumbling infrastructure. “San Diego is back,” said Faulconer to several hundred spectators gathered in downtown’s Balboa Theatre. “It is recovered, reformed and revitalized. Now, San Diego is leading.”

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