At the scene of the April 25 shooting | Photo: Andrew Goff
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office has released more info on the officer-involved shooting that took place in Cutten on April 25, revealing Lieutenant Conan Moore to be the deputy who fired the shot that would result in the death of 32-year-old Kevin Burks in a hospital two days later.
The sheriff’s office notes in the release below that Lt. Moore, a 15-year law enforcement veteran, is currently on paid leave.
The Humboldt County Sheriff Deputy involved in the April 25, 2024 officer involved shooting is
Lieutenant Conan Moore. Lieutenant Moore has over fifteen years of law enforcement service
with the Sheriff’s Office. Lieutenant Moore remains on paid leave.
On April 27, 2024, suspect Kevin Jeffrey Burks (DOB 06/30/1991) succumbed to the injuries he
sustained during the critical incident. A forensic autopsy has been performed and Burk’s
immediate cause of death was due to a gunshot wound to the chest.
Immediately after the incident occurred, the involved 75-year-old female victim was transported to
an out of the area hospital for treatment. She has since been released to the care of a
rehabilitation facility where she is undergoing continued treatment.
This case is still under investigation by the Humboldt County Critical Incident Response Team
(CIRT).
Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the
Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707)
268-2539.
Assemblymember Tri Ta was one of several California lawmakers of Vietnamese descent who protested Los Angeles County’s designation of Jane Fonda Day. Photo by Rahul Lal for CalMatters
As Saigon was falling, Janet Nguyen’s uncle – an officer in the South Vietnamese Army – was taken before his village and executed. After the city fell on April 30, 1975, the communists put Nguyen’s father and mother in jail. Their “crime?” They got caught trying to escape the country.
After Saigon fell, Tri Ta’s father spent years in a re-education camp prison. His “crime?” He wrote books critical of communism.
Both Nguyen and Ta eventually made it to California with their families. She became a California state senator and he became a member of the Assembly. The Republicans represent Orange County districts home to the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam.Forty-nine years after the Fall of Saigon, April 30 remains a solemn day for Nguyen and Ta as it is for many of 2.3 million Vietnamese-Americans in the U.S. They call it Black April.
“It’s a day that we mourn,” Nguyen said.
Which is why Ta and Nguyen were outraged when leaders of neighboring Los Angeles County declared April 30 “Jane Fonda Day” to honor the celebrity for her environmental activism. The lawmakers immediately began pressuring officials to rescind the recognition.
To many Vietnam veterans and refugees, Fonda more than earned her pejorative nickname “Hanoi Jane” when she traveled to North Vietnam during the war, was interviewed for communist radio broadcasts and had photos taken with North Vietnamese Army soldiers and their anti-aircraft guns.
On Thursday, the Los Angeles County Supervisors announced they would change the date to another in April during Earth Month “out of respect for the community voices who have spoken up.”
The decision to honor Fonda on such a solemn day for Vietnamese Americans wasn’t intentional, said Constance Farrell, a spokesperson for Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who chairs the Los Angeles County board. Rather, Farrell said that date was chosen because it fell on a scheduled meeting where board members routinely issue proclamations honoring people and organizations.
Why Vietnamese-American lawmakers were upset
Ta and his Democratic colleague, Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen of Elk Grove, wrote a letter last week signed by nearly every Republican Assemblymember urging the L.A. County supervisors to rescind the proclamation.“This honor for Ms. Fonda is an affront to the service and sacrifice of American and South Vietnamese soldiers who gave everything in the cause of freedom,” their letter said.
Stephanie Nguyen, a daughter of Vietnamese refugees who grew up in Sacramento’s Little Saigon neighborhood, didn’t respond to CalMatters’ interview requests.
Fonda didn’t return CalMatters’ request for comment sent to her publicists, but Fonda has since apologized for the photos with the anti-aircraft guns that may have been used to shoot down American pilots, saying she never intended to appear to be against American troops, merely against the war.
Ta and Janet Nguyen said they were relieved the board chose to change the date honoring Fonda, but they said it was nonetheless frustrating how easily the leaders of the state’s most populated county forgot the shared experience of Vietnamese-Americans families that escaped an oppressive communist regime. There are 521,100 Vietnamese Americans in California.
“I was really, really upset because (Black April) is a really sad day for almost every Vietnamese American here,” said Ta, who recently appeared on the Assembly floor in a dark blue traditional Vietnamese outfit.
Janet Nguyen was dressed in black when she attended Black April services in her district. When she learned of the Los Angeles County supervisors’ decision, she said she quickly began calling and urging them to reconsider.“I pleaded to them that, you know, if you’re not going to rescind that, you at least change the date,” Nguyen said. “April 30 is not the day.” She said she’d prefer the supervisors pick a day that wasn’t in April.
Janet Nguyen opposes communism
It’s not the first time California’s Vietnamese-American community has pressured politicians to rescind measures that Vietnamese Americans found offensive.
In 2017, then-Assemblymember Rob Bonta authored legislation that would have repealed a 1953 law that allows California governments to fire communists.
At the time, Janet Nguyen called Bonta’s bill “an incredible insult to Californians who have escaped communism.”
State Sen. Janet Nguyen, a Huntington Beach Republican, votes during session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Aug. 30, 2022. Photo by Rahul Lal, CalMatters
Bonta, now California’s attorney general, apologized and rescinded his bill.
“Through my conversations with veterans and members of the Vietnamese American community, I heard compelling stories of how AB 22 caused real distress and hurt for proud and honorable people,” Bonta said at the time. “For that, I am sorry.”
Janet Nguyen is running for Orange County supervisor. But before she leaves the Senate at the end of the year, she’s made it a point to introduce anti-communism measures in a state known for its leftist politics.
She introduced a resolution declaring Nov. 7 “Victims of Communism Day, in memory of the 100 million people who have fallen victim to communist regimes across the world.” The resolution passed the state Senate last year. She also has a bill pending that would allow a nonprofit organization to construct a memorial to the victims of communism on the state Capitol grounds. It passed the Senate in April. Neither measure had any opposition.
“Vietnamese refugees coming here, we treasure democracy and freedom,” she told CalMatters. “And we treasure our voice. And so we don’t want anybody to have to live through what we’ve lived through.”
Desperate for a way to help the tens of thousands of people living in tents, cars and RVs on California’s streets, lawmakers are attempting to upend a key tenet of the state’s homelessness policy.
Two new bills would allow state funding to support sober housing — a significant departure from current law, which requires providers to accept people regardless of their drug and alcohol use.
“If people want to get off of drugs and away from drugs, we should give them that option,” said Assemblymember Matt Haney, a Democrat from San Francisco who wrote Assembly Bill 2479. “They shouldn’t be forced to live next to people who are using drugs.”
There are at least 12,000 sober living beds in the state, but more than twice that many Californians who would qualify for those services, according to data from the California Research Bureau quoted in the Assembly Health Committee’s analysis of the second bill, AB 2893.
As state law prohibits spending housing funding on sobriety-focused programs, many are funded by private donations.
The lawmakers behind the two bills say they aren’t trying to alter the key idea that everyone deserves immediate housing, even people struggling with addictions. Instead, they’re attempting to give more choices to people who want to be sober. But some experts worry that, because California has a shortage of homeless housing, people who relapse in sober housing or who don’t want to stay sober would have nowhere to go but back to the street.
The bills come as California’s homelessness population is skyrocketing, having increased from about 118,000 in 2016 to more than 181,000 last year. Some critics blame and want to overturn the state’s inclusive housing policy. At the same time, as public fears about crime soar, voters in some liberal cities are putting limits on who can receive public assistance.
San Francisco voters this year passed an initiative mandating drug screenings for welfare recipients. In San Diego County, Vista Mayor John Franklin recently introduced a measure pledging not to support “any program that enables continued drug use” and criticizing housing first for precluding sober housing.
“I think we are seeing a cultural shift,” said Christopher Calton, a research fellow who studies housing and homelessness for libertarian think-tank the Independent Institute. “People are starting to say these permissive policies aren’t working.”
California’s ‘housing first’ homelessness policy
At issue is the state’s adherence to “housing first,” a framework where homeless residents are offered housing immediately and with minimal caveats or requirements, regardless of sobriety. The housing should be “low-barrier,” meaning residents are not required to participate in recovery or other programs. After someone is housed, providers are then supposed to offer voluntary substance use and mental health treatment, job training, or other services. The idea is that if people don’t have to focus all their energy on simply surviving on the streets, they’re better equipped to work on their other issues.
Some Republicans and conservative-leaning groups now are pushing to overturn California’s housing first framework, saying it hasn’t successfully reduced homelessness. Assemblymember Josh Hoover, from Folsom, is trying to completely repeal housing first with AB 2417. That bill has yet to be heard by a committee, and likely won’t advance this year.
But with more than 180,000 Californians lacking a home, even Democrats want to see changes. The bills by Haney and Assemblymember Chris Ward of San Diego would allow up to 25% of state funds in each county to go toward sober housing.
Neither Democrat wants to upend housing first. Instead, they want sober housing facilities to operate under a housing first framework. Haney’s bill would require counties to make sure sober facilities kept people housed at rates similar to facilities without sobriety requirements.
Both bills specify that tenants should not be kicked out of their sober housing just because they relapse, and instead they should get support to help them recover. If a resident is no longer interested in being sober, the program should help them move into another housing program.
Having a sober living option for people who want it would be a good thing — but it would have to be their choice, said Sharon Rapport, director of California state policy for The Corporation for Supportive Housing. But homeless housing is so scarce in California, that it’s unlikely participants would be given a true choice, she said. And, these bills would divert already limited state money away from low-barrier housing.
“My worry is that we have one pie of funding for housing,” she said. “So it’s not like we’re saying, ‘Let’s add extra money and try this other approach.’ We’d be saying, ‘Let’s spend less money on harm-reduction housing.’”
Her organization has not taken an official position on the bills.
To make sure people don’t end up back on the street after a relapse, counties would have to keep spaces in low-barrier housing free, in case someone needs to move out of sober housing, Haney said. But that’s not explicitly mandated in the bill.
One key motivation for Haney to draft his sober housing bill is the surge of deaths caused by the opioid fentanyl.
“Our housing first policies in California do not reflect the realities of fentanyl and the need to provide pathways to get off of and away from such a deadly drug,” he said.
Overdose deaths are rampant inside San Francisco’s homeless housing, a 2022 San Francisco Chronicle investigation found. But the state doesn’t track those deaths in public housing, meaning if Haney’s sober housing bill passes, it will be all but impossible to tell whether it saves lives.
The state should track those deaths, Haney said, adding, “maybe I’ll do that bill next year.”
Does housing first work?
The argument against housing first is simple: Since California adopted the policy, the state’s homeless population has grown by more than half.
But experts say that’s because high housing costs are pushing people onto the streets faster than the state’s overburdened supportive housing system can pull them back inside.
Under immense pressure to do something about the crisis, politicians are pointing to housing first as a scapegoat, said Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. But that’s like blaming the emergency room for the number of COVID patients coming in during the pandemic, she said.
People Assisting the Homeless (PATH), which operates housing first programs in Southern California and the Bay Area, reported 94% of people who moved in were still housed a year later. Destination: Home in Santa Clara County, which spearheads the county’s housing first efforts, reported similar results.
“That is as much evidence as I think would be necessary to show that this model works really well,” said CEO Jennifer Loving, “and the problem is we haven’t been able to do enough of it.”
“The idea that William Shakespeare’s authorship of his plays and poems is a matter of conjecture…Should claims that the Holocaust did not occur also be made part of the standard curriculum?”
— Stephen Greenblatt
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Have you been following LoCO comments lately — especially following stories about the protests and subsequent “hard closure” at CPH? While many are sensitive and reasoned, the majority seem to be purely kneejerk, insults empty of content. Reminding me, oddly enough, of why I spent several weeks earlier this year researching and writing about the Shakespeare authorship question.
When I was asked why I was bothering with it, if memory serves, I first became intrigued by the question of “Who wrote Shakespeare?” about 20 years ago, on reading the letter excerpted above, published in The New York Times, from Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt. Until then, I suppose I’d been vaguely aware there was some controversy whether a wool-merchant William Shakspere (as his name appears multiple times in contemporary records in England’s Stratford-on-Avon) could have written the plays and sonnets attributed to someone using the name William Shakespeare or Shake-speare (hyphened, as the name appears on many title pages).
I got to wondering why a Pulitzer Prize-winning author would stoop to comparing people who question the authorship of centuries-old poems and plays with — get this! — Holocaust deniers. I could only suppose Greenblatt — a really good author, most recently of The Swerve (which I highly recommend) — was slinging abuse around because his arguments were too feeble to cite. (As Hamlet’s Mom put it, commenting on a ham actress, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”)
So his intemperate letter was the inspiration to do my own research, back then and more recently. I soon learned that this sort of vitriol was regularly heaped on those who doubted that the man from Stratford (who could barely write his own name—see his signatures) could have authored some of the finest writing in the English language. For instance, a recent book by Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies) — which questions the authorship while trying to understand the stubbornness of most university English departments (which won’t even allow discussion of the matter!) — garnered such reviews as “wrong-headed,” “widespread disinformation” (The Spectator); “pernicious,” “trutherism” (Slate); and “a farrago of wounded pride” (The Times). That paper’s lead writer, Oliver Kamm, later wrote that to question Shakespeare’s authorship is also to promote ”a spurious antisemitic conspiracy theory.” (Antisemetic???) Meanwhile, Britain’s leading Shakespeare scholar, Sir Stanley Wells, is on record as saying it’s immoral to question the authorship, declaring that the world’s two leading Shakespearean actors, Sirs Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, were “bonkers” for entertaining such heresy! (Immoral???)
The only signatures we have of William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon. (Public domain via Wikipedia)
Such invective only strengthens the counter argument: That it’s inconceivable (shades of Wallace Shawn) that a businessman from an English provincial town could, in the late 1500s, have amassed sufficient knowledge of the law, astronomy, philosophy, falconry, warfare, the geography of northern Italy, fluency in French, Italian and Latin (some of the writer’s sources hadn’t been translated into English at the time) as to write such immortal works as Hamlet, Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and all the rest. Not to mention the sonnets. Nearly a million words in all. In response, “Stratfordians,” hewing to orthodoxy, say that he was just a genius, before responding with mud-slinging. (Perhaps one can be born a genius, like Christopher Marlowe, but knowledge has to be acquired.)
As I say, I think about this “reversion to insults” when reading uncouth and/or fatuous comments on LoCO. So often, in the ten years I’ve been writing GOU, I see commentators reverting to abusive language, cheap shots, snarkiness and empty insults in lieu of actually debating, turning what could be opportunities to learn from each other in our small coastal community by engaging.
A crowd of around 200-250 people, including Cal Poly Humboldt graduates, their friends and family members, gathered at the Humboldt County Courthouse in Eureka today for a “Free Palestine” commencement ceremony to honor the lives lost in Gaza.
For many students, the alternative commencement ceremony was an act of protest against the Cal Poly Humboldt administration and its handling of the recent pro-Palestine protest on campus, which culminated in over 30 arrests after an eight-day occupation of Siemens Hall, one of the university’s administrative buildings. Over 300 Cal Poly Humboldt faculty and staff have condemned the university’s treatment of the students and called for the immediate termination of President Tom Jackson and his Chief of Staff Mark Johnson.
University officials imposed a “hard closure” on campus during the protest. Campus remains closed “due to clean-up work [and] concerns about maintaining the security of buildings,” according to a statement from the university. As such, administrators decided to move commencement ceremonies to three off-campus locations.
During today’s pro-Palestine commencement ceremony at the courthouse, participating graduates dedicated their commencement to a deceased Palestinian child who would never have the opportunity to graduate.
“I am a social work major, and I believed prior to all of this that reform was possible, that we could fix things if we fixed an individual’s circumstances,” Athena Burgess said to her graduating peers. “I don’t believe that anymore. I don’t believe that’s possible. I’ve witnessed and been a victim to how consuming these systems are – we all have. We are stronger together. We will rise and create a new world together, and that’s what we’re doing. Palestine will be free in our lifetime.”
Keep scrolling for more pictures from today’s ceremony.
Northern Lights captured on Table Bluff. Photo: Andrew Goff
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A rare solar storm filled Humboldt’s skies with dazzling, pink and purple auroras Friday night. Images of the celestial spectacle were captured all across the county, from Trinidad down to Shelter Cove.
If you missed last night’s stunning display, you’ll have another chance to catch the Northern Lights tonight. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center says the geomagnetic storm will continue through Sunday, although cloud cover will likely diminish visibility on the coast.
Image via NOAA
“Unfortunately, it’s not looking as favorable on the coast, so you probably won’t be able to see anything from here with the fog,” Matthew Kidwell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Eureka office, told the Outpost this afternoon. “There could be a few showers building up inland, but they should dissipate. … It’s certainly possible that visibility could be the same as last night, even better or worse.”
“Eureka got really lucky,” Kidwell added. “We don’t get that many clear nights here on the coast, and to have a clear sky during a once in a 20- or 30-year event is incredible.”
NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has a map on its website that provides a 30-minute forecast of aurora activity around the Northern Hemisphere, you can find it at this link. So far, it looks about the same as last night’s forecast.
LoCO readers have posted hundreds of pictures of last night’s display to our Facebook page. Keep scrolling for some of our favorites.
Happy stargazing, Humboldt!
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Captured at Camel Rock overlook near Trinidad. Photo: Luke Stott
Captured near Henderson Center in Eureka. Photo: Chrissy Geirek
Auroras at Woodley Island. Photo: Larissa Yates Wikizer
Captured near the coast in McKinleyville. Photo: Kevin Rardin
Auroras at Trinidad State Beach. Photo: Mikaela Alexander
Captured in Kneeland. Photo: April Alexander
Another capture near McKinleyville. Photo: MaryAnne Heffernan
The
Scott and Shasta Rivers were once salmon strongholds, but
over-allocation of water has made these rivers nearly uninhabitable
for coho and chinook. The State Water Resources Control Board
established emergency regulations that set minimum streamflows during
the
most
recent drought. But those will likely expire soon. Without new
permanent instream flows, both rivers could run dry.
A
coalition of tribal governments, fishermen and environmental
nonprofits are asking the State Board for new permanent instream flow
dedications. And new legislation, if passed, will strengthen the
ability of the state to protect those instream flows. Karuk
Vice-Chairman Kenneth Brink, Cody Phillips of the California
Coastkeeper Alliance, and Klamath advocate Craig Tucker join the
EcoNews to talk about what’s needed to save California’s salmon.
