California State University Chancellor Joseph Castro

​​In a stunning fall from grace, California State University Chancellor Joseph Castro has resigned from his post, effective immediately, over accusations that he mishandled sexual assault and workplace intimidation claims against a former colleague while president of Fresno State University.

Castro — who just completed his first year as the first Mexican American chancellor of the nation’s largest four-year public university system — submitted his resignation to the Cal State Board of Trustees this evening. The system’s governing body had met behind closed doors the entire day, debating his fate.

“The decision to resign is the most difficult of my professional life,” Castro said in a written statement Thursday evening. “While I disagree with many aspects of recent media reports and the ensuing commentary, it has become clear to me that resigning at this time is necessary so that the CSU can maintain its focus squarely on its educational mission and the impactful work yet to be done.”

The fallout stems from a February bombshell exposé by USA TODAY reporting that Castro was personally aware of at least seven complaints against Frank Lamas, the head of campus student affairs at Fresno State. The complaints against Lamas, at least 12 in all, detailed a pattern in which the senior administrator “stared at women’s breasts, touched women inappropriately, made sexist remarks, and berated, belittled, and retaliated against employees,” USA TODAY reported. Those complaints began soon after Lamas was hired and spanned the six years he was on the job.

Despite knowledge of the allegations, Castro still recommended Lamas for an achievement award and later — rather than firing or calling for his resignation — paid him $260,000 and full retirement benefits to leave his post. The settlement forbade Lamas from ever working again at the Cal State system, but promised him a letter of recommendation if he wanted to work at a different college.

Three weeks after the settlement, the Cal State Board of Trustees formally hired Castro as the 23-campus system’s next chancellor. Castro formally became chancellor Jan. 2021.

USA TODAY also reported that Castro said he conferred with then-chancellor Timothy White on how to proceed with Lamas. The report said both Castro and White agreed paying Lamas off was easier than enduring a potentially expensive legal fight with him.

Lamas “denied all allegations of wrongdoing,” he told USA TODAY.

Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer Steve Relyea will take over as acting chancellor until an interim chancellor has been named.

‘It caused additional pain’

The drumbeat for Castro’s ousting has intensified since USA Today published its report Feb. 3. The next day, state Sen. Connie Leyva, a Chino Democrat who heads the Senate’s education committee, called for an outside investigation against Castro and said that he should immediately resign if the allegations against him were true. Later that day, her counterpart in the Assembly, Riverside Democrat Jose Medina, also called for an investigation but stopped short of demanding Castro’s dismissal.

That same day Castro and Lillian Kimbell, who heads the Cal State board of trustees, both said that they welcomed an independent investigation into how Castro handled the assault charges against Lamas. Castro partially defended his actions at Fresno State: “While I followed CSU policy and took the steps to ensure this individual could never work on a CSU campus, I recognize that certain aspects of the process should have been handled better.”Castro further explained his rationale for offering Lamas a letter of recommendation in an “open letter” he shared with Cal State students and staff that night. “In hindsight, while my motives were to expedite Dr. Lamas’ permanent removal from the CSU, I regret agreeing to this aspect of the settlement, knowing that it caused additional pain,” Castro wrote.

At least one campus sexual assault proceedings expert said Castro was wrong to say his hands were tied from taking action against Lamas earlier. Castro’s core defense is that because no employee filed a complaint against Lamas, the university couldn’t act on the accusations: It wasn’t until campus investigators had credible evidence supporting one accuser that Castro could proceed to remove Lamas from his job.“It’s perfectly possible for schools to investigate allegations of harassment while treating everyone fairly,” Alexandra Brodsky, a civil-rights activist turned lawyer, wrote in an email to The Chronicle of Higher Education. She added that “schools can initiate their own investigations” independent of one started by someone filing a complaint.

Consternation continued to flow. Students had gathered protesting Castro’s handling of the sexual assault claims. The Visalia Times-Delta posted an editorial urging the university’s board to fire Castro. The systemwide academic faculty union sought an independent investigation, calling the USA Today report “disturbing.”. The faculty senate at Fresno State also expressed dismay over Castro’s time at Fresno through a vote of no-confidence.

Resistance spread to other campuses. By earlier this week, for instance, some 200 faculty and staff at Long Beach State had signed a petition demanding Castro’s resignation, effective immediately. “​​A system that touts diversity, equity, and inclusion as central values,” they argued, “cannot claim to pursue those values with Castro in place.”

At the upcoming March meeting, the Board of Trustees plans to vote to bring on an outside group that will conduct a systemwide assessment. The goal is to gain “insights, recommendations and resources to help advance CSU’s Title IX and civil rights training, awareness, prevention, intervention, compliance, accountability, and support systems,” a Cal State statement read. This assessment will begin this March at Fresno State University.

Raised by a single mother in the San Joaquin Valley town of Hanford, Castro once told CalMatters that the place was “core to my being.

“My family immigrated here 100 years ago. My great grandfather helped to build the railroad through the valley. My grandfather was a dreamer of his time. And they lived in tents along the railroad and began their lives in tents in my hometown. So my thinking has been shaped about, you know, giving opportunities to talented people who normally wouldn’t be given those opportunities — including people like me.”

He was a graduate of UC Berkeley and later Stanford University, where he received a doctorate in higher-education and leadership. In 2013 he became president of Fresno State, a valley campus which gained national recognition for graduating a high rate of low-income students.

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CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Unless the California Supreme Court or Legislature throws UC Berkeley a lifeline, the university will have to turn away 3,050 students the campus would otherwise enroll this fall.

That’s the result of Alameda Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman’s decision last year to cap enrollment at 2020-21 levels, after Berkeley citizens had sued the university, challenging the toll that its enrollment growth would take on city services, scarce local housing and noise. A Court of Appeals rejected UC Berkeley’s request Feb. 10 to undo that enrollment cap. Now the university is counting on the state’s highest court to intervene.

As if picking the best and brightest weren’t hard enough, the elite public university may now need to decide who to turn away from a rarefied group of 9,500 students — the number of high schoolers and community college transfer students UC Berkeley would newly enroll in a normal year.

At least one lawmaker with a say on higher-education finance matters has a preference: UC Berkeley should really just admit new Californians and deny entry to out-of-state students.

“If we did have to decrease the number of new admits, first-time freshmen or transfer students, at Berkeley because of this decision, we would absolutely prioritize California residents,” said Kevin McCarty, a Democrat from Sacramento who heads the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education.

Prioritizing resident students isn’t McCarty’s first solution to the problem — he called Seligman’s ruling “a devastating decision” and “an overreach.”

If the state Supreme Court doesn’t halt Seligman’s order, lawmakers may scramble for a fix that could exempt public university enrollment growth from the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act — the state law at the center of the university’s legal showdown with community activists.

If California residents get priority

But another remedy appeals to legislators who have pushed the more exclusive UC campuses to better serve California taxpayers. Rather than have UC Berkeley make cuts that, under existing admission ratios, would deny some 2,400 residents admission, state lawmakers could opt to prioritize in-state applicants and turn away out-of-state newcomers entirely.

The upshot: Only about 1,000 Californians would lose a spot in Berkeley incoming fall 2022 class.

Here’s the math: Without Seligman’s order, UC Berkeley’s incoming class of 9,500 students would include 2,000 out-of-state students, said UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof. If 21% of the incoming class was slated to be from out-of-state and that percentage applied as well to the 3,050 students UC Berkeley has to cut under Seligman’s order, then the university would have to turn away about 2,400 resident students.

If the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom agree, they could insist all the cuts be from non-Californian applicants.

The UC system and UC Berkeley argue there’s social, academic and economic value in having a geographically diverse student body. But lawmakers for years have bristled at the surge of out-of-state students enrolled at UC’s campuses, especially the three most sought-after in the system — UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego — where non-resident students make up between a fifth and a quarter of undergraduate enrollment.

The systemwide average is around 17%. Before the Great Recession, just 5% of UC students were out-of-state. After lawmakers slashed state support for the UC, the system recovered revenue with steep tuition hikes and a greater reliance on non-resident students, who pay three times as much tuition as in-state students do. State support for the UCs has been slowly bouncing back. In return, legislative leaders have pressured the UC to make room for more Californians.

McCarty said that he’d support a move by the Legislature and governor to buy-out the non-resident students UC Berkeley would forgo to make room for more Californians if Seligman’s ruling stands.

There’s precedent for that. Lawmakers and the governor agreed in last year’s budget that they will pay the UC to enroll fewer non-resident students and bring in more in-state students. The money for that plan, which Newsom proposed in January, is slated to appear in the state budget that’ll be finalized this summer.

It’s unclear whether a majority of lawmakers would follow McCarty’s lead. Asked whether they would be prepared to spare California students from potential UC Berkeley enrollment cuts, neither Assembly Budget Committee chair Phil Ting, a San Francisco Democrat, nor McCarty’s Senate counterpart John Laird, a Monterey Democrat, would address the question directly.

Different remedies, tight window

Time is of the essence. The university must send out admissions decisions to students by March 24, after already sending out a round of admissions offers Feb. 11. Now, how many students they admit is up in the air.

Also on the line: gobs of money. Cutting enrollment by 3,050 students leads to a loss of $57 million in annual tuition for at least four years, the university wrote in its appeal to the state Supreme Court. Because of a shortage of classroom space and available housing, UC Berkeley argues it cannot enroll an extra 3,000 students in a future incoming class to make up the revenue hit.

Lawmakers seeking a solution on UC Berkeley’s behalf have some wiggle room. A likely path, McCarty said, is through a budget “trailer” bill, which can be introduced at any time during the legislative session and get expedited treatment.

Meanwhile, there are early signs the state Supreme Court may take on UC Berkeley’s appeal. The high court on Tuesday asked the litigants in the case for legal material, said Mogulof, the UC Berkeley spokesperson.

But even if the university prevails, it still may lose once the whole case eventually goes before the Court of Appeals.

How did we get here?

At issue is whether a new academic and housing development UC Berkeley wants to build comports with the 1970 environmental law. Critics say the university hasn’t developed enough housing for its students. That leads to more students living off-campus, which drives up rents, displaces lower-income residents and increases homelessness.Despite its size, UC Berkeley has housing space for only about 10,000 students. Though UC Berkeley wrote in 2005 that its enrollment wouldn’t expand beyond 33,000 students in 2020, in actuality the campus now enrolls more than 45,000 students — including 32,000 undergraduates.

Phil Bokovoy, president of Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, which sued UC Berkeley, told the news outlet Berkeleyside in August 2021 that this “is how UC is behaving in lots of different places — forcing its impact on communities and not doing anything about it.”

Seligman’s order is the first time the state’s environmental law has been used to cap university enrollment at the UC, wrote UC Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore. Some legal scholars and lawmakers have said that if left unturned, Seligman’s ruling could be used by other groups to challenge any public college or university’s enrollment growth plans.

But if the hold-up over UC Berkeley’s expansion is insufficient student housing, the campus’s plans to build those are also in legal limbo. Two other UC Berkeley student housing projects have been challenged by community groups on environmental grounds. Those lawsuits are still pending, said Rebecca Davis, a partner with the law firm representing one of those groups suing, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299.

In the past year lawmakers have proposed or approved $7 billion in grants and interest-free loans for colleges to develop campus housing. It’s a pivot for the Legislature, which until recently didn’t take up student housing matters head on.

The environmental quality act has a “baffling consistency” in that “new population is regarded as pollution, anywhere,” said Christopher Elmendorf, a UC Davis law professor. He argues placing more people in the city of Berkeley is ultimately good for the environment: The city has a dynamic public transit system and keeps people from living in areas with sensitive habitats or that are prone to fires.

Supporters of the environmental act say it protects communities from pollution and is used as a boogeyman by public agencies and developers who want to build housing.

Prioritizing students if lower court decisions stands

At least one member of the governing body overseeing the UC system agrees that UC Berkeley should prioritize Californians if the campus is forced to pare enrollment.

“Because of the pressure from the state of California on us to try to increase the resident number, it would hurt us in that goal to take away a lot of resident spots,” said Alexis Atsilvsgi Zaragoza, a member of the UC Regents and a Berkeley undergraduate herself. She’d still want some non-resident students enrolled, however, such as low-income students and those who are the first in their families to attend college.

UC Berkeley doesn’t yet know how it will prioritize which students who’d otherwise be admitted would be denied entry, Mogulof said Tuesday. The campus also is considering having more students take classes entirely online, and paying for students close to graduation to finish over the summer.

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CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Dorothy Shaffer Scalvini was born on June 20,1932 and passed away peacefully on February 16, 2022.

Dorothy was born in Longview, Washington. Her family migrated south to Fortuna in 1949. She attended her last two years of high school in Fortuna and graduated from Fortuna Union High School in 1951. Soon after high school she met and married the love of her life, Rocco Scalvini. They were married on June 20, 1953 in Ferndale at the Assumption Church. They moved to Ferndale soon after where they had their own dairy. During this time, she worked for Primo Marca at the Bakery in Ferndale. Many years later, they bought J&W Liquors in Ferndale where she was affectionately known as Mrs. Rocco by the locals.

Dorothy’s favorite pastime was reading. Wherever she went, she had a book in her purse. Her other love was the ocean. She could spend hours walking along the shore looking for shells and rocks.

Dorothy’s greatest love was her family. She loved them more than life itself and was always there when someone was in need of her help. She was also known for her kind heart and her signature beautiful white hair.

Dorothy was preceded in death by her husband Rocco Scalvini Jr, her mother Frances Shaffer, step-father Stanley Shaffer, her father Lawrence Townsend, and her brother John Shaffer.

Dorothy is survived by her daughter Cathy Scalvini, her granddaughters Emma and Lauren Scalvini, her sister Helen Demello, and sister-in-law Joan Shaffer. She is also survived by many nieces, nephews, great-nieces and nephews, and great-great nieces and nephews who all meant that world to her.

The family would like to give special thanks to the Ferndale Fire Department for their quick responses and to Hospice of Humboldt for their amazing support during this difficult time.

The family is so blessed to have had her in their lives for so long. She will be greatly missed. Dorothy requested no funeral and will be buried with her late husband at Ferndale Catholic Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Hospice of Humboldt or the Ferndale Fire Department.

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PREVIOUSLY:

• Arcata City Council to Discuss Long-Planned Safety Improvements for Old Arcata Road; Project Construction Expected to Start in 2022
• OLD ARCATA ROUNDABOUT? Arcata Council to Consider Improvement Plans for Old Arcata Road, But Some Bayside Residents Aren’t Happy With the Design
• City of Arcata Takes a Roundabout of Its Own, Delays Decision on Old Arcata Road Improvement Plans to Address Wetland Impacts

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The long-planned Old Arcata Road Improvement Project is one step closer to reality after the Arcata City Council voted on Wednesday to approve the undertaking, which will make multiple upgrades to the road, including the installation of a roundabout at the intersection of Old Arcata Road and Jacoby Creek Road.

The vote was 4-0 with Councilmember Brett Watson abstaining because he felt he needed more time to review the project’s final environmental impact report (EIR). Watson also had some concerns over the potential threat of litigation from a local group of residents known as Bayside Cares.

Bayside Cares has written several letters of opposition to the project – specifically the proposed roundabout – bringing up multiple issues with safety, potential historic landmark impacts and wetland impacts, which have led to several delays in the approval process. The group’s latest assertion is that there was a potential conflict of interest for a member of Arcata’s Transportation and Safety Committee, Josh Wolf, who also is employed by the project’s consulting firm, GHD Engineering.

A letter sent to the City by Bayside Cares on Feb. 11, the group recommended that the council not approve the final EIR on the basis that “all the contracts that led to its preparation … are void because a public official or officer had a financial interest in all of them and participated in making all of the contracts,” Watson read from the letter during the meeting.

City Attorney Nancy Diamond spoke to the allegation, saying staff looked into the issue and concluded that Wolf had no conflict of interest because he had nothing to gain financially from the project’s approval.

In addition to his concern over the letter from Bayside Cares, Watson said that he did not feel he had adequate time to digest the 1,000-page EIR and complained that he was not granted enough access to staff to go over the document and have all of his questions answered prior to the council meeting.

Some tension arose as Watson brought up his complaint and some of the other council members seemed perturbed by Watson’s lack of preparation. (Watson brought up the same issue at another recent meeting and it was later revealed that the City is investigating allegations of misconduct against Watson and that “special protocols” have been adopted for him to interact with staff.)

Watson also asked staff to address some of the visual impacts brought up by Bayside Cares, whose members said the roundabout would compromise the character of the Bayside neighborhood and potentially impact some historically significant buildings, including Jacoby Creek School and Bayside Temperance Hall.

Mel Melvin of JRP Historical Consulting told the council that no significant historic impacts were found and that the location has already changed over time.

“The historic character of that intersection has already been compromised,” Melvin said. “The change would not be substantial enough that historic properties would no longer be able to convey their significance.”

Many community members spoke during the public comment period, most of them saying they supported the project because of the dire need for safety improvements to Old Arcata Road. Several commenters mentioned that they feel unsafe biking along the road or walking their children to school.

“While I certainly enjoy the benefits of Bayside and its character, I do think the safety of our residents should be paramount,” said resident Mary O’Brian.

Some folks did speak in opposition to the roundabout, saying that they felt more research and traffic studies needed to be conducted to determine if it was the safest option. Some also echoed Watson’s concerns over the potential for litigation over the project.

Alice Finen, an employee of the Mistwood Educational Center, which is very close to the proposed roundabout, was concerned that the project would limit access to the school by blocking one of its driveways.

But the concerns were not enough to sway the council and several council members did not want to delay the decision any longer. With the project only 30 percent designed, Mayor Stacy-Atkins Salazar mentioned, there will still be opportunities to address the community’s concerns — including the potential impacts on Mistwood — before the project design is complete.

With the council’s approval of the project and the EIR, the design and permitting processes can continue and the project’s funding will not be impeded. Arcata City Engineer Netra Khatri said the deadline for completion of the project design is January of 2023.

As far as the potential for a lawsuit, most of the council wasn’t bothered by that either.

“If you’re paying attention to public meetings, you’ll see that any type of project that goes through – pretty much the go-to these days is litigation,” Atkins-Salazar said before the vote. “And so I’m not going to be threatened by litigation to slow something down when this is the new go-to [strategy] to slow something down or stop it.”

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ADDENDUM: Following this article’s publication Watson contacted the Outpost to point out that we had failed to mention that during the meeting he said he has a learning disability. Due to his disability, Watson said, it takes him a long time to read and comprehend complex information. This is why he needed more time to review the documents and why it was particularly frustrating to him to be denied more time with staff to help him review the materials.

Vowing to be smarter after lessons learned over the past two years, the Newsom administration today gave a glimpse of what the next few months — and potentially years — may look like in California with COVID-19 likely to stick around.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s health secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, said the state’s new plan marks a shift in the handling of the pandemic toward preparedness, acknowledging that officials will have to be flexible to respond to any new variants of concern.

The state dubbed its new plan “SMARTER,” an acronym for its seven areas of focus: shots, masks, awareness, readiness, testing, education and Rx treatments.

“It is clear the virus will remain with us for some time, if not forever. It is less clear how often and how much it will continue to impact our health and well-being,” the state’s plan reads.

The strategy unveiled today includes preventive planning like stockpiling 75 million masks and bringing in 30 million over-the-counter tests, as well as the ability to increase the health care workforce by at least another 3,000 staff if there’s another surge.

It also includes building on current wastewater surveillance and genome sequencing to have a better understanding of the evolving virus, and pursuing a public-private partnership with a COVID-19 test manufacturer that can secure a supply chain for California.

The administration’s plan intentionally does not set thresholds that would trigger certain actions, like its controversial multi-colored tiered plan for closing and reopening businesses in 2020.

Instead, flexibility is important now, Ghaly said. For example, a deadly variant may require that the state focus on preventing cases, while a less virulent variant may prompt the state to focus on hospitalizations.

“Today is about balance,” Ghaly said. “Balance between a message of hope and successful adaptation but also prepared vigilance.”

The strategy comes as more than 20,000 new COVID-19 cases a day were reported in California, according to the state’s seven-day average on Wednesday. So far 8.2 million infections have been reported and 82,382 people have died since the pandemic began two years ago.

The administration promised to be more precise and targeted in its efforts to combat COVID: “We will be smarter than ever before, using the lessons of the last two years to approach mitigation and adaptation measures through effective and timely strategies,” the plan’s introduction says. “Throughout the pandemic, we have leaned on science and relied on tools that create protection.”

The strategy comes in the wake of two years that have prompted widespread criticism of the state’s handling of the pandemic:

• COVID-19 testing has been slow and fraught with shortages and long wait times — even now. Backlogs up to 65,000 people in the early months of the pandemic prompted partnerships with UC labs and the rushed building of a $25-million lab. The Valencia Branch Laboratory’s $1.7-billion no-bid contract has yet to deliver on its lofty promises of high-capacity testing.
• Booster uptake has been slow despite California making them widely available ahead of federal regulators. So far, 74% of eligible Californians have received two doses and 55% have received a booster, according to state data.
• Hospitals have struggled under the weight of the pandemic with staffing shortages and high case counts. The National Guard has been deployed multiple times, particularly in the Central Valley.
• Workers and the economy have taken a beating, with widespread omicron illnesses devastating many businesses.

Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at UC San Francisco, said the timing of the state’s plan is prudent. “There are two epidemics going on, there is the biological epidemic and there’s the epidemic of fear and angst. I think we may have aged out of that second one at a time when the biological epidemic is falling,” he said.

The plan sends a message of “we’re not going to be in the war room all the time,” he said.

Asked if the administration’s plan lacked anything, Rutherford said he thought the plan was comprehensive, and perhaps other states could look at it for guidance.

California — and the world — has been hit by four surges since the pandemic’s start. The winter 2020-21 surge killed the most people. Omicron at its peak recorded nearly three times as many cases in California compared to last winter, although fewer people have died.

Ghaly said Californians should expect seasonal upticks, like when school starts up or during the winter. With that could come masking rules and a need for more testing.

Experts predict that COVID-19 will eventually become “endemic.” To reach that phase, however, infections would have to stabilize, meaning no outbreaks or rampant upticks.

Endemic “means it’s at a constant level – that constant level may be low or it may be high, it may be somewhere in between, but it’s not going up and down,” Rutherford said.

Ideally, that case rate would be much lower than the current rates, county health officials say.

“Right now our case rate is on the high side. It is coming down, which is good to see, but it is still pretty high,” Fresno County’s public health officer Dr. Rais Vohra said in a press briefing last week. Fresno has a 7-day average daily case rate of 67.7 new cases per 100,000 people. Statewide, it’s 42.3 cases per 100,000.

“If the case transmission rate came down to say five in 100,000 people, that would be a really good sign,” Vohra said.

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CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

After experiencing the 12th driest January on record and an unseasonably dry February, Eureka is forecast to receive above normal rainfall in March, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center announced today.

Hydrologist Kathleen Zontos with Eureka’s National Weather Service Office told the Outpost that the 30-day March forecast shows a 50 to 60 percent chance of above-normal rainfall for the North Coast.

“The average rainfall for the month of March in Eureka is 5.75 inches,” Zontos said. “The climate Prediction Center March forecast is essentially saying there’s a chance we could observe more than 5.75 inches.”

The wet weather is good news for the drought-stricken Pacific Northwest. Despite Humboldt’s ample December snowfall, the county is currently in various stages of drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Most coastal regions of the county are in a state of moderate drought. The county’s eastern areas are experiencing severe drought. Northwestern Humboldt — along with much of Del Norte County — are observing abnormally dry weather.

Without the forecasted rain, California could see the driest three years on record — similar to the five-year drought that ended in 2016. However, the latest weather predictions offer hope that this year’s drought will be less severe for areas of Northern California.

“Any remaining potential rains will help with the drought status, but it wont totally remove it,” Zontos said.

The region also has a 33 to 40 percent chance of below normal temperatures for March. The colder temperatures are in line with the current La Niña weather pattern, which the Climate Prediction Center anticipates has a 77 percent chance of persisting into May. The weather pattern reportedly has a 56% chance of shifting back to ENSO neutral conditions (weather not associated with La Niña or El Niño) in the summer months.

• TODAY in SUPES: Board Talks Drought, Weed Irrigation Curtailment; Madrone Confronts a Geologist
• A BEACH DAY IN FEBRUARY?! Sunny Skies and Record High Temperatures Expected in Humboldt This Week
  

• SNOW! Highways 299, 36, 96 Currently Closed; More of the White Stuff Coming

Fortuna Police Department press release: 

Aaron Arlotta | FPD

On Wednesday, February 16th 2022, the Fortuna Police Department responded to the 800 block of Main Street to investigate reported drug activity. Fortuna Police Officers subsequently located a parked vehicle which was reported to be involved and was found to be occupied by 32 year old, Jerrica Hughes of Rio Dell and 32 year old, Aaron Arlotta of Eureka.

Arlotta was found to be on active parole and also had an active felony warrant for his arrest. Arlotta was also determined to be on active probation for weapons violations and domestic violence. When an arrest was attempted, Arlotta violently resisted arrest by physically fighting the involved officers and then fled a short distance on foot where he was caught, and again, he fought officers who were attempting to make the arrest. Arlotta unsuccessfully attempted to remove a Fortuna Police Officer’s firearm during the struggle and was ultimately apprehended and taken into custody.

Evidence seized by Fortuna PD | FPD

During a search of Arlotta’s property incident to arrest, over 13 grams of Fentanyl was seized along with a small amount of methamphetamine. As a result of the investigation, officer’s determined that the Fentanyl was possessed for the purpose of sales. The Fortuna Police are working tirelessly to identify and apprehend anyone poisoning our community with the dangerous drug Fentanyl, and ask that anyone with any information contact the Fortuna Police Department.

Aaron Arlotta was booked into jail for suspected violations of sections: 11351 HS-Possession of Narcotics for Sale, 11377(a) HS-Possession of Methamphetamine, 69 PC-Preventing an officer from performing his duty using violence, 148(a)1 PC-Resisting arrest, 1203.2 PC- Violation of Probation, and the outstanding Felony Warrant. Additional charges will be filed with the Humboldt County District Attorney.

The Fortuna Police Department remains committed to public safety and transparency. Any questions regarding this incident can be directed to the Chief of Police, Casey J. Day at (707)-725-7550.