Voice of San Diego

Most of my work while on staff at VOSD involved engagement, shorter blog posts, newsletters, and outreach along those lines. I did get to do some longer pieces here and there—you can find those stories below. 

The Black and White on Graywater

Published June 29, 2015, on Voice of San Diego

After six hours of handiwork and a trip to Home Depot one Saturday last year, Mark West had MacGyvered himself a low-commitment water-conservation system.

West, the 47-year-old chair of the Surfrider Foundation and a test director for the Navy, had only just heard of graywater set-ups, where residents reuse laundry or shower water to water their lawns and for other landscaping. A Surfrider event attendee sought West out and evangelized about the ease and utility of the systems.

“I’ve done a lot of irrigation throughout my house,” he said. “So I looked at it and thought, ‘Oh, I can do that no problem.'”

At the time, neither San Diego County nor Imperial Beach, where West and his wife Megan have lived since about 2007, had information available online about the systems, he said. Instead, West followed the event attendee’s tip to look at Los Angeles County’s site, which offered a how-to. He sprang for the option with the least amount of work involved, hooking up pipes and a three-way valve to his washing machine.

“The listing from L.A. County had everything you need,” West said. “I used that as a checklist.”

As California’s drought drags into its fourth year, conservation efforts have become increasingly advantageous for homeowners. To that end, graywater systems like West’s offer an attractive set-it-and-forget-it approach to saving water. And depending on which system a resident chooses, the investment can be negligible compared with replacing a lawn with turf (which, for the record, West has also done).

Aside from a three-way valve – the system’s most expensive piece, which he ordered on Amazon for $8 – West used PVC pipes, PVC glue and a hose clamp (in the photo above, it’s that small metal ring around the black tubing, which is the discharge from the washing machine). A little leaking around the clamp was the only snag he ran into at the start, he said. Teflon tape nipped that in the bud.

A yellow handle sticks out from the piping on the wall just above the machine.

West turns the yellow handle to the left if he needs to do a load of laundry with bleach, or some other plant-unfriendly contaminant; this directs the water toward the sewer system, along with the water from his shower, toilet and kitchen sink. When the handle is turned up, water generated from the washing machine flows under the floor boards through pipes and tubes to his backyard.

There, four purple discs on the ground cover hose outlets surrounded by mulch, which distribute the graywater to West’s lemon and plum trees and Phoenix palms.

West and his wife order Oasis detergent online, a biocompatible brand that goes easy on his plants out back. He estimates they do about three or four loads a week on weekends, generating 25 gallons of water each time. It’s more than enough to keep the trees and palms in his backyard happy.

“It’s so simple,” West told me. “The hardest thing to do was literally drilling through my tile [in the laundry room]. Any chucklehead can do this, swear to God.”

Apart from the physical work and supplies it takes to get the system going, though, there are the steps you must take beforehand to clear a project with the city.

Before jumping into the project, West said he reached out to Imperial Beach’s code compliance department to get the OK. Because there wasn’t any construction involved, he didn’t end up having to pay any fees or apply for permits.

Jack Holden, a building official with Imperial Beach’s Community Development Department, said the city allows a no-permit installation for a washing machine system as long as a few requirements laid out by the state’s plumbing code are met (check out page 5 of the code here).

“Sometimes a permit must be drawn if the washer is not on an outside wall or if a plumbing alteration is done, so every installation is different and we are here to help to make sure the owners’ plans will work,” Holden said in an email. “So we just ask that people come in or call and tell us their plans.”

The city of San Diego appears to be even more lenient. Jose Salcedo, an associate mechanical engineer for San Diego’s Department of Development Services, said the department doesn’t need any notification if you want to install a washing machine system, as long as you install it according to the plumbing code.

The only caveats the city lists for these no-permit systems are that they can’t include a potable water connection, use a pump (this isn’t referring to the one inside your washing machine) or affect other plumbing or electrical elements in the house.

But what if you’re dreaming a bit bigger? If you want to take greater advantage of your indoor water, incorporating your bathtub or shower, for example, you’ll have a few more hoops to jump through.

The Graywater Hierarchy

From easiest to install to needing the most intervention, the systems line up like this: First, the clothes-washer arrangement that West has. These are supposed to accommodate one- or two-family homes. That goes for simple graywater systems too, which incorporate showers or sinks and require more equipment than the washing-machine systems. Simple systems are supposed to discharge 250 gallons of water or less per day.

Next up are complex graywater systems, which are expected to discharge more than 250 gallons a day. To figure out your family’s projected output, check out page 7 of the California Plumbing Code, which appears to estimate you’ll do laundry every day, which we can all agree is insane.

Finally, there’s treated graywater – you’d have to go this route if you wanted to reuse discharged water to flush your toilet. Treated graywater has to meet minimum water quality requirements set by the county health department, and is still nonpotable.

Clearly there’s some more construction involved in simple and complex systems, not to mention requirements to measure soil depth and test the absorption rate in the beds around your plants. You’d have to apply for a construction permit with the city’s Development Services Department since these systems interrupt your usual plumbing.

Outside, graywater should be released underground, or at the very least covered by two inches of mulch, rock, soil or some kind of solid shield to minimize contact with humans or pets. The intended destination of the graywater once it’s outside your house is called an “irrigation field” – this could be a drip system like the one in the chart above, or a “mulch basin” that’s filled with mulch around the base of a tree or resembles a trough along a row of plants. These are in part to prevent runoff or a small pond forming because of your system – a big graywater no-no.

Fees and Plans

If you decide to install a washing machine system, you’re off the hook as far as fees.

For a simple or complex graywater system, you’ve got to get the all-clear from the city. Make an appointment at the Department of Development Services to submit a general application, along with two sets of: the plot plan (showing your property’s boundaries, nearby structures, the slope where drainage might flow down, etc.); graywater system plan (showing the anticipated size and location of your tank, water lines and waste pipes, valves, etc.); expected graywater discharge (as calculated using the California Plumbing Code); manufacturer specifications of those pieces; determined soil absorption rates and groundwater levels (the plumbing code dictates how to find the absorption rate, and a “registered design professional” needs to figure out and report your groundwater level for you).

You’ll pay $39 when you submit these plans, plus a $20 records fee. The fee for checking the plans is an hourly rate of $148.

You’ll need to undergo a minimum of two plumbing inspections at $127 an hour, and there might be further structural or geotechnical (examining the “earth materials” around your set-up) inspections for an additional hourly fee.

All of this can be found in more detail on the city’s site.

Dos and Don’ts

DON’T use your graywater system for water you just used to wash soiled diapers. It’s the same thing as water from the toilet, in the eyes of the city, so it needs to be directed to the sewer.

DON’T use your graywater for vegetable gardens. This water isn’t supposed to go on plants that yield veggies down in the dirt, where the surface skin you might bite into makes direct contact with the graywater. Fruit trees like West’s are a pretty perfect option instead, along with other trees, shrubs and lawns.

DON’T mix any hazardous chemicals in the water you’re planning to direct through your graywater system. This includes anything involved with cleaning car parts, washing greasy or oily rags or solutions from home photo labs – things like that.

DO keep your operation and maintenance manual handy. The person who installs your system is supposed to give you one once it’s up and running.

And DO warn the next tenant if you decide to move out of your graywater-abled abode.

Meet the Rookie Activist Leading San Diego’s Racial Justice Conversation

Published April 13, 2015, on Voice of San Diego

A silent “die-in” protest as San Diego City Council members were being inaugurated late last year was almost a victim of bad planning.

Barely two weeks after a grand jury declined to indict the Ferguson, Mo., police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, Mark Jones and a group of 20 or so San Diego protesters wanted to make a statement. The group would gather in public and mimic being dead to draw further attention to police brutality and the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

But they initially planned to show up at the federal building downtown, not knowing that on the day they’d chosen, the city’s VIPs and media would be packed inside Golden Hall to inaugurate newly elected city officials.

It was only the fourth time Jones had ever stepped out to demonstrate, let alone lead. The first was just days earlier at SDSU, as similar protests in Brown’s honor cropped up around the nation. Taking action felt like a “necessity,” Jones said – posting angry treatises on Facebook and nodding along with talking heads on the news weren’t enough.

When he showed up at a City Heights protest that week, he couldn’t help but notice his was one of the few black faces in attendance.

“It’s not that there weren’t blacks there, there just wasn’t enough,” Jones said. “I was marching with Hispanics and whites and Asians and they were more gung-ho about our issues than it seemed like my people were.”

One of the organizers from a group called United Against Police Terror warmed up the crowd. But when it came time to march, Jones took the mic and the lead.

It suited him. He tapped into skills gleaned from his four years in the Marine Corps.

“I can’t walk into anything and see it unorganized. It bothers me,” he said. “When I initially stepped into it, it just didn’t seem like I could find very many faces, especially amongst our leadership. So I decided to do something on my own.”

As the city grapples with racial justice issues including community-police relations and gang prosecutions, Jones has catapulted to the forefront of the conversation just a few months after dipping his toe in the activism pool.

Civic leaders are paying attention – and not necessarily the ones you’d expect.

♦♦♦

Growing up, the Jones household wasn’t much of a hub of social activism, just two military parents trying to raise three adopted sons right. They lived next door to what Jones called the projects of Statesboro, Ga., and knew which houses in town to stay away from by the fluttering Confederate flags out front. As he grew up and set out to make a life for himself, his focus had largely been building a personal training business, OneFitJam, which he still juggles.

The activism work doesn’t come naturally for him. But it’s no less driven.

“I just think my part in it is to be a voice for a voiceless people, like that don’t have the type of passion or drive that I would have to get stuff done,” he said. “I can fight on their behalf.”

In the days leading up to the die-in demonstration, another local organizer set Jones straight about the inauguration, and the group changed course. On Dec. 10, as police officers inside Golden Hall eyed them cautiously, the protesters filed into the room.

The demonstrators followed Jones’ hand signals, silently switching between raising their arms, a nod to the “hands up, don’t shoot” rallying cry used by protestors across the country, and clutching their throats, a reference to Eric Garner, a New York man killed when police used a chokehold move to subdue him, against department policy. Later, protesters collapsed to the floor.

The group was orderly but impossible to ignore. Jones had a list of demands he’d hoped to read, but didn’t see a clear opportunity during the ceremony to take the mic. He’d have to reach the Council members another way.

One problem: He couldn’t name them if he tried. Jones had to ask a reporter who’d been covering the group’s march that morning to point them out, eventually approaching Council members David Alvarez, Mark Kersey, Chris Cate and Myrtle Cole.

“It was only like a 30-second transaction,” Jones said. “‘We’re here, we’re the protesters that were just in your room.’ They looked like, ‘Oh, what’s he gonna do?’” But the Council members took copies of the demands.

He wouldn’t learn until later, when a KPBS reporter came calling, that remarks made by one of Councilwoman Lorie Zapf’s staffers were causing a stir. Shirley Owen, a community representative for Zapf, was overheard calling Jones and the others protesters “fucking idiots.” She said she wanted to shoot them.

The die-in and ensuing controversy reveals a lot about Jones’ activist awakening. It highlighted his inexperience: He never managed to seize the spotlight in order to read the group’s demands publicly; he couldn’t recognize the very people he needed to appeal to. But he orchestrated the event in a way that made it respectful but compelling, and he had the raw sense to seize on the Zapf staffer incident and use it to make a point.

The next week, Jones and a few protesters appeared again in front of City Council members. This time, they were calling for Owen’s head.

“How is she a community representative? What community is she representing that she’s thinking like that?” Jones said, recalling the incident. “And to me it was nothing personal. It just meant that she represented Lorie Zapf.”

The demonstrators wanted Owen fired, and cited other demands to confront police brutality, including appointing a special prosecutor to handle all deadly force cases.

Beginning with Cole, several Council members spoke up to thank Jones for being respectful during the previous week’s demonstration. Just after the meeting, Cole and Council President Sherri Lightner called Jones in to chat. They wanted to work with him on his demands.

Jones had just started the Black Student Justice Coalition a couple weeks after the City Heights protest. It functions as a network across campuses in San Diego, rallying students for demonstrations – to varying degrees of success, depending on the academic calendar. The group is now the primary vehicle for his activism, and core members joined Jones during meetings with Council members. In the last few months, he’s sat down with the mayor and SDPD Chief Shelley Zimmerman as well. When other students went home for the holidays, the 33-year-old SDSU junior went out for the meetings alone.

Councilman Todd Gloria talked numbers with Jones, and said if Jones’ group would be requesting resources from the city budget, they’d need to articulate their request soon. Jones said Cate was new to the Council, and cautious about promising much. But Jones took his notes from that meeting and, shrewdly, sent them to the other Council members.

“It was an accountability thing but it was also like, uh, we want more meetings,” Jones said, easing into a grin.

He got them. Councilwoman Marti Emerald asked Jones to speak at the Council’s Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee meeting. He was invited to speak in front of the Citizens’ Review Board on Police Practices, the city’s investigative body that examines complaints against officers, and smaller community groups.

Dwayne Crenshaw, a community leader and CEO of the nonprofit RISE San Diego, and former City Council President Tony Young asked Jones to appear on a panel on community-police relations for their organization’s urban breakfast series, “based on his recent high profile leadership and being impressed with it,” Crenshaw said. They weren’t the only ones.

Jones was by far the greenest member of the panel, but the event became his star turn.

“I’m very impressed with him,” Zimmerman told me. Before joining him on stage for the RISE breakfast, the police chief met with Jones to discuss his group’s concerns. “It was very evident to me that he very much cares. I think he saw that in me, that I very much care, our police department very much cares about our community. I don’t think he was aware of so much of the community outreach that we do.”

Zimmerman pointed out to Jones that certain policies already in place addressed some of the group’s demands, such as releasing the names of police officers involved in incidents of deadly force within 72 hours, for example.

Unfamiliarity with standing policies is another rookie mistake. But Jones said that he wants the chief to do more than merely clarify existing rules. In an updated list of demands presented to City Council on Jan. 15, Jones’ group wrote, “In meeting with Chief Zimmerman about the BSJC list of demands we find [that] she is an officer of conviction and high standards … While the BSJC appreciates the response to the demands by the SDPD we believe that stating the existing policy is not enough to protect the community from the above mentioned grievances.”

“She honors that badge,” Jones said of Zimmerman. “I can tell she does and she doesn’t want anybody on the force that dishonors that. So admitting that there’s a problem is very hard for her.”

♦♦♦

Jones’ newfound clout with city leaders has allowed him to broaden his agenda.

He and the coalition want to roll back section 182.5 of the state’s Penal Code, which Jones and others argue unfairly targets young men in poor, largely black communities. That effort started when San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis charged a group of men under the law for a series of shootings that they didn’t actually take part in.

“[Section]182.5 in my opinion is the most imminent threat I’ve ever seen against communities of color, specifically black young men,” Jones said. “There’s 100-plus documented gang members in Lincoln Park. If you can go and wipe out all those people with one swipe ofBonnie’s pen, literally wipe out an entire neighborhood of young black men … To us, there is no bigger fight here in San Diego than this.”

In some ways, wading into the battle over 182.5 felt again like the heated but unguided days just after the Ferguson ruling – with Jones waiting for leaders in the black community to step forward and offer some direction.

Early on, he was warned by a friend that he wouldn’t get much help from pastors in the black community, often influential agents for their congregations. Instead, Jones took his case to the faith-based community organization San Diego Organizing Project. He invited Aaron Harvey, one of the men being charged under 182.5, to tell his story to SDOP.

“It wasn’t really until SDOP came in that the pastors got involved,” Jones said. “I feel like I shouldn’t have had to go to them, you know? That should’ve been something automatic.”

Meanwhile, Jones is waging another battle to overhaul San Diego’s Citizens’ Review Board on Police Practices. The board, he says, lacks teeth in its current form. A better model, he believes, would be an independent review with subpoena power.

“That’s why we’ve been meeting with the City Council members to get their feel on it, let them see our faces on a regular basis, let them know this is important to us,” he said.

In both endeavors, Jones sees a fight to save San Diego.

“I really believe that San Diego is a ticking time bomb,” he said. “It could be the next Ferguson. There’s underlying racism here, and it’s not going away.”

He finds it frustrating that he hasn’t seen more action from the very communities he’s trying to empower.

“Maybe it’s not that they don’t care, it’s just they won’t make a stand,” he said. “Everything I was taught and how I was raised was, you stand up for your family, you stand up for the world.”

He’s the One-Man Band Running City Ballet’s Beleaguered Orchestra

Published March 24, 2015, on Voice of San Diego

Though it’s smaller than California Ballet, the city’s largest, City Ballet stands out among San Diego’s ballet companies. It’s the only one with a year-round orchestra to accompany its productions.

That’s thanks to conductor John Nettles, who corrals both funding and musicians for a professional-level orchestra from season to season.

Nettles is conductor, programming director, administrator, fundraiser. He straddles the line between left and right brains, the business manager and the artist. Above everything else – and what became apparent to those of us outside the pit these last few weeks – he’s the guy holding the baton when it all falls down.

When a major piece of funding fell through last month, forcing City Ballet Orchestra into an abrupt hiatus, cultural observers wondered whether it would be the next casualty of San Diego’s arts community. The U-T’s music and art critic practically eulogized it. Soon, though, a few donors offered their support, and now the orchestra is due back to start rehearsals Sunday for City Ballet’s production of “Don Quixote.”

This wasn’t the group’s first episode of emotional and financial distress. Both have punctuated the orchestra’s eight-year history. To Nettles, the hiatus gave the orchestra time to regroup.

But for the rest of us, it was a sudden peek at the fraying duct tape that’s holding together a valuable component of one of San Diego’s cultural institutions.

Let’s be clear: City Ballet doesn’t live or die by Nettles, or even the orchestra itself. The ballet company could easily keep performing with canned music or musician combos, as many companies do.

But as details of the orchestra’s drama trickled out, my interest was piqued. Who was this guy at the center of it all?

What I found after talking with Nettles, digging into his past and fielding complaints and praise from his colleagues and musicians, was a man with all the passion to solve the existential crisis of a traditional artform in the 21st century, but few of the practical skills to do so.

♦♦♦

City Ballet Orchestra’s growth and hiccups are intimately tied to Nettles’ own path. In 2004, he found himself at a crossroads. He left a safe, salaried job as a teacher and choir director at Vista High School, where he says he felt stagnant. He needed to stretch, to re-evaluate. After a year of freelancing – singing and directing, mostly – he stopped by City Ballet’s studios. He hadn’t seen the company perform since he’d been a specialty dancer in “The Nutcracker” in 1996.

The company had come a long way since then, and Nettles thought it was worthy of a professional orchestra.

By then, he had a full Rolodex of musicians he’d worked with around town, and about 10 years’ experience in conducting.

“I said you know, if we could get some funding together, I think I could start a music program from the ground up,” Nettles said. “I sold that idea to the board and we went for it in 2006.”

The orchestra, 35 players strong, had its inaugural performance during “The Nutcracker” that year. But the ballet company quickly made clear it didn’t have funding to support the orchestra.

“As a ballet company, our first priority is to our dancers,” City Ballet managing director Jo Anne Emery told me, “not musicians.”

In early 2007, Nettles took over a small singing telegram business called A Class Act.

“This was still when the economy was good, so novelty entertainment was actually working,” Nettles said.

He started to build it into a broader events entertainment company.

This was his next phase in life, he decided. He’d make money through A Class Act and put it toward funding the orchestra.

Essentially, A Class Act became a contractor for City Ballet. The ballet company paid Nettles a lump sum, and he took care of finding and training musicians. Having an orchestra attracts donations to the ballet, the thinking goes, so the ballet can afford to put money toward the orchestra. Meanwhile, Nettles would also coordinate gigs for his musicians at schools and nonprofits through A Class Act.

“It’s kind of like a win-win,” Nettles said. “The donors get to support this, they get their tax write-off here, the nonprofit gets a greater scope of services and all the people who are working for me get more work.”

Both Emery and Nettles acknowledge City Ballet’s orchestra arrangement is a little unorthodox. But the typical model, Nettles said, “is to cut it, to be honest.” Other San Diego ballet companies tend to save money by going without a year-round orchestra. San Diego Ballet, for comparison, collaborates with Grossmont Symphony Orchestra about once a year for its “Nutcracker” performances, but otherwise hires a handful of musicians here and there.

Even if Nettles had the fundraising savvy – which he’s the first to say he lacked – experience suggests City Ballet Orchestra would’ve had a rough go anyway.

“The mantra is, in Southern California, you have to work twice as hard to get half as much,” said Javier Velasco, artistic director for San Diego Ballet.

As Nettles hustled to keep his fledgling orchestra afloat, he got into the habit of tucking his own money into its funding, becoming a “de facto donor,” he said. On top of A Class Act, he held a part-time job as assistant music director for Corpus Christi Parish in Bonita. He bought a condo in Santee.

“And then,” he said, “everything went to hell for everybody in 2008.”

That year, Nettles fell victim to the subprime mortgage crisis, which would later prompt a two-year legal battle with Wells Fargo and several financial institutions. Nettles’ side jobs started to dry up. He lost his condo, and filed for bankruptcy four times.

As Nettles remembers it, the orchestra was the one thing going well as much of his personal life fell apart. It gradually added more concerts and performances to its season schedule, and expanded its operating budget from roughly $27,000 in 2010 to $60,000 for each of the last two years, half of which came from City Ballet.

Still, getting the checks out on time proved difficult.

“Everyone who has ever come or gone through City Ballet is able to attest to the madness that is the financial situation,” said City Ballet Orchestra manager Tiffany Sieker.

♦♦♦

Patricia Schenkelberg played flute for the orchestra for four years.

“We were never paid consistently. We were never paid on time,” Schenkelberg said. “There was one year, the last Sunday performance of ‘The Nutcracker.’ We all clean up, we get our stuff and go down into the green room and expect a check. And John is nowhere to be found. He didn’t have money for anybody so he went and hid.”

Nettles had the best intentions, she said, even if that was hard to keep in mind when he’d abandon his post as conductor after a performance, running up on stage to take a bow with the dancers.

City Ballet’s production of “Giselle” in March 2012 also stands out in musicians’ memories.

A grant to City Ballet from the city’s Commission for Arts and Culture didn’t come through, and musicians weren’t paid for over a month after closing night.

In his email updates during the lag, he tapped into a sense of trust he’s tried to develop among his musicians. He asked for patience and politeness, “no drama, panic, rumors, gossip.”

It’s a common theme in Nettles’ leadership. Written into the orchestra’s “rules, rates and rallying cries” document that’s given to musicians is this: “Negative attitudes are generally not welcome … Any gossip will always get back to the director (there’s no way to prevent it; it’s as certain as the law of gravity) and will carry consequences.”

Nettles seems always to have been anxious about the potential for hushed mutiny.

“The problem that I’ve had is, it’s 40 imaginations running wild,” Nettles said. “It’s just a much more possibly emotional, volatile situation when something goes awry, which is why I just dread it.”

More grumbling surfaced after this past December’s production of “The Nutcracker.” Another funding source fell through. Nettles was forced to pay musicians in installments.

“I’ve been contacted over the last two weeks by people who are letting me know their checks are rolling in for half the amount owed,” Sieker, the orchestra manager, told me earlier this month. “No one was ever told about the installment plan, nor was I ever given any direct knowledge, so as administrator, I’ve been fielding complaints right and left since Jan. 1.”

In his email to the orchestra on March 19, where he announced the hiatus was over, he also promised the last of back pay from “The Nutcracker” would go out “in the next few days.”

“We’re already getting new donations for the final production,” he wrote, “so it’s all good.”

♦♦♦

Another financial debacle came up frequently when I spoke with musicians, past and present, and Nettles’ colleagues: the time he tried to enroll the orchestra in a pyramid scheme.

In early 2013, Nettles brought in a representative from a company called Lyoness to make a pitch to the orchestra. The company gives rebates to members who shop through its online portal, use its vouchers or flash their Lyoness cards at participating retailers.

The Austrian company also came under investigation by Australian authorities last year for running a pyramid scheme. Nettles said there was nothing shady about the pitch.

“It’s just a little opportunity to use businesses and merchants to help make a little extra revenue, which doesn’t cost anybody anything … No, there’s nothing, nothing nefarious about it,” he said. “It’s actually quite legitimate and it works on certain levels and not many people know about it and again they’re trademarked and it’s not really, they work with all kinds of big companies that are respected throughout the world. That’s a total red herring, I must say.”

On his own, Nettles still works with Lyoness.

“In fact I’ve done a few trial runs with some other ventures. It’s actually worked a little bit and maybe in six months, there might be some interesting developments,” he said.

♦♦♦

Nettles has his defenders in the orchestra. “Honestly it’s sad that John is stuck fundraising,” said Mark Donnelly, who has played oboe with the orchestra for about a year and a half. “He’s an artistic type.”

Several musicians I spoke with, even those frustrated by delayed paychecks and disorganization, agreed Nettles was juggling too much. Conducting, chasing down donations, drumming up outside gigs – he should’ve gotten some help on the business side, they said.

“Unfortunately it’s so specialized right now, I’m the only one can make sense of it. The reality is, I’m the only person who could’ve gotten it this far,” Nettles said.

He’s perpetually optimistic, about both the future of the orchestra and his own ability to take it there. For years, he’s clung to the promise that firm footing for the group was just around the corner.

In an email to the orchestra back in October 2012, Nettles told members his goal was to “develop and grow a professional orchestra that plays together on a year-round schedule,” and “develop a compensation plan which helps facilitate that goal.” That was five years into the orchestra’s existence. Two and a half years later, it’s still struggling.

“Ultimately we’re all in the same boat, trying to do the same thing,” he said. “The real thing we’re up against is the apathy, the indifference, the ignorance. That’s the real enemy.”

When Police Can and Can’t Burst Through Your Door

Published February 16, 2015, on Voice of San Diego

Video footage of police barreling into a City Heights family’s store, having assumed a burglary was under way, surfaced some key problems.

A police report said one of the brothers tried to lock the door of the store to keep the police out. One report says the mother, Hedy Julca, held the door shut, that her other son assumed a boxer’s stance against police. The surveillance video shows otherwise.

The grainy footage shows officers pummeling a man in what turned out to be his home. If police struck him without provocation, that’d be a pretty clear instance of wrongdoing.

But there’s also plenty that’s murky in this story. The cops said Luis Lobaton was cursing at them during the exchange. Can police officers use force against you because you told them to fuck off? Can they rush into your closed business when it’s clear you don’t want them there?

I talked with Alex Kreit, an associate professor and director of the Center for Law & Social Justice at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, about some of the nuances in the Fourth Amendment. For a more complete picture of what your rights are during law enforcement encounters, check out these earlier explainers on when police can pull you over and what it means when police ask you if you’re on probation.

Catherine Green: When can police enter your home or business without permission?

Alex Kreit: The Fourth Amendment generally requires a warrant in order for the police to conduct a search, so to go into your home and go into your business. But they say a warrant is required unless an exception is met, and there’s kind of a laundry list of exceptions.

For the home, exigent circumstances is the exception that would typically apply. Exigent circumstances can usually cover one of three things: one, hot pursuit, which is probably the least common, like if the police are chasing after somebody who’s fleeing the scene of a crime, and they go into a home or run into some private business, the police can follow them in without a warrant.

The more common ones are if the police have reason to believe somebody’s in some sort of danger in the home or in a business. They hear somebody call out for help.

And then if the police have reason to think that somebody’s destroying evidence inside of a home. If they knock on the door to ask somebody questions and then they hear somebody say, “Flush that down the toilet” or something.

CG: And all they would have to do in their police report is explain what led them to get inside?

AK: If there’s a claim that there’s some kind of emergency, then the trial court really would be who decides that.

Just because a police officer says, “Well, I thought there was an emergency,” even if the court says, “I believe that you thought there was an emergency,” if they thought there was an emergency reason that was objectively not really the type of emergency that would justify a warrantless entry, it might still be unconstitutional. Even if (police) genuinely thought there was an emergency, a loud crash could mean (someone inside a home) just dropped dishes.

CG: Let’s say police are talking to somebody, asking them questions. What are someone’s rights when it comes to speaking in an aggressive way or swearing at officers?

AK: It’s not a bright line, that’s for sure. There is a free-speech right to say mean things to the police or use curse words. Just because you’re nasty with police, that does not justify the police arresting you or doing really anything else on its own, because you do have a First Amendment right to say to the police, “Fuck off” or whatever.

There’s a huge caveat to that, which is, if what you’re doing is in some ways, could be considered disorderly conduct or you are impeding the officers’ investigation in general, it’s not necessarily going to take that much before what would be protected free speech suddenly becomes a crime.

CG: On interfering with police duties and disorderly conduct – what do those specifically look like? Are the definitions pretty broad?

AK: A lot of that’s going to depend on what state law says.

One issue is well, is there some crime that the police are alleging this person committed, so by coming into my face and yelling at me, does that satisfy the elements of resisting arrest or disorderly conduct or whatever it might be?

Then there’s kind of the free speech issue. You can say as a general matter that there is a free-speech right to curse to the police or be nasty to them. But beyond that, it’s going to be a lot less precise. You don’t have a free-speech right to resist arrest or engage in disorderly conduct.

You do have a Fifth Amendment right to not answer police questions. People have a right to say, “I’m not going to say anything to you.”

CG: So what about filming with your cell phone while you’re being questioned? Is that less of a gray area?

AK: I think that is a little bit more clear. It’s still not been yet definitively resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court as to saying there is a First Amendment right to film the police, but at least a substantial if not overwhelming majority of courts that have taken up that issue … have said that there is, and the Ninth Circuit has said that there is.

It’s much harder for the police to say that filming them is disorderly conduct or is impeding their investigation.

If they’re trying to put handcuffs on somebody and you’re thrusting the phone in between or something, obviously there are those kinds of situations. But if you’re just filming them, even from a few feet away, it’s not going to be plausible for them to say this was actually “interfering with what we we’re doing.”

They could tell you to stop. If they start commanding you and ordering you to stop, then I think you’d probably have a pretty good argument that they’re now violating your First Amendment rights.

As a practical matter, you may very well be running a little bit of a risk that the wrong officer who doesn’t really necessarily know what they’re doing or understand what your rights are – I mean, ultimately they’ve got the immediate power. The fact that maybe that’s unconstitutional is not going to necessarily help you in the short-term.

CG: What bar do police have to clear to pursue something as “suspicious behavior”?

AK: It depends on what they want to do. If they wanted to do what’s called a “stop-and-frisk,” like they want to just temporarily detain you, and frisk you, ask you some questions, the courts say (they) need reasonable suspicion to stop somebody, that criminal activity is afoot. And if (they) want to frisk them, (they) need reasonable suspicion that the person’s armed and dangerous.

If the police were to go beyond that, arrest somebody, that you need probable cause for – which is like a higher-degree, more exacting standard of suspicion.

Reasonable suspicion is also not anything that’s been precisely defined because it’s just so many different circumstances where it can come up. The court says all the time, you think of the totality of the circumstances, meaning all of the facts that are in play – is that enough to meet that reasonable suspicion test? That’s really going to be the standard to stop somebody.

Let’s say the police come up to you on the street and say, “Hey, how’s it going? Can I ask you a few questions?” They don’t need reasonable suspicion to do that because courts say that’s just a consensual encounter.

The best advice is always: If you have any question about whether you’re free to go, just ask point-blank to the police officer. They’re going to have to end any ambiguity about whether this is a stop.

Very often they might say things to make you feel like somehow it’s going to be bad for you to leave, but one way or the other, if they really and truly are not detaining you, and they let you know that, you’ll kind of be like, “OK, I could just go.”

The test for determining if somebody has been stopped, which is in Fourth Amendment terms considered a seizure, would a reasonable person, in the shoes of the citizen, feel as though they were free to decline the officer’s request or otherwise terminate the encounter? In other words, do you feel like you’re free to go on your way?

If the police yell, “Stop, don’t move!” obviously any reasonable person would not feel free to leave. …

If the police come up to you on the street and say, “Hey, what are you doing over here? Can I talk with you for a minute?” courts may be inclined to say, “This is just all a consensual interaction, the police didn’t even stop you, seize you, so they don’t need reasonable suspicion at all.”

CG: Whether alleged or real, is gang affiliation ever justification for police to be more aggressive with a person?

AK: I wouldn’t say that it could justify being aggressive per se. When the police use any kind of force, they can’t really use force just for a punitive type of reason.

But where it could be a justification is if the police really think that some type of force is necessary, and the facts indicate that some level of force is necessary to secure the person if they’re lawfully arresting somebody or to prevent them from harming the police. Certainly if they think that this person is a gang member, that can factor into that type of determination.

(Police) might say, “I need to do a search, I know these people might be in a gang or whatever, so I’m going to handcuff people right now for just everybody’s safety while I do this” – that’s a completely different thing from saying, “Well, this guy might be in a gang so I’ve got to punch him in the face once or twice to show him who’s boss.” That’s not going to be acceptable.

If you’re talking about that use of force, I think being in a gang could still be a factor. If somebody’s getting in your face and making threats against you, and you know that they’re in a gang, that fact might very well be relevant to your saying, “I’m going to view this as a very real threat.”

Police Watchdog: ‘There’s a Lack of Transparency’

Published December 19, 2014, on Voice of San Diego

In San Diego, there’s a clear answer for who watches the watchmen – or at least who’s appointed to.

Yuki Marsden has been on the Citizens’ Review Board on Police Practices, or CRB, since 2008 and now serves as its chair. She and 22 other members are in part responsible for keeping San Diego’s police force in check, reviewing the evidence in complaints against officers and suggesting policy changes.

Marsden’s in a perfect position to call out kinks in the system – and she does. Transparency ranked high in her complaints about the process, in terms of both SDPD’s interactions with the public and with the CRB itself.

Marsden seemed narrowly focused, however, on what the CRB can and can’t do for now. When I asked for her thoughts on whether the public should have access to police body camera footage, an especially loud conversation nationwide and one the SDPD has been pressed on before, she said she hadn’t put much thought into it.

I sat down with Marsden to get a clearer idea what degree of accountability the CRB brings to San Diego’s shaky relationship with its police force, and what the future might hold for body cameras and more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Catherine Green: Let’s just make this super clear for people right off the bat. There are a few different oversight models for police departments. Which type is San Diego’s CRB?

Yuki Marsden: We’re the review. We don’t have subpoena power and I think it works for the city of San Diego because we have a department who’s willing to listen to us and make changes.

I’ll just walk you through the whole process: A citizen makes a complaint. They can complain directly to us, they can complain to the police, they can complain to their city councilman, who will forward it to us and then it gets sent to Internal Affairs.

Internal Affairs does the investigation. Our job and our role is to review the Internal Affairs report to make sure it was thorough, complete and accurate. And if we feel it’s not, then we have them reopen the investigation. They go back in, interview the people, look for additional evidence and present it back to us. And if we’re satisfied, we’ll make a decision.

A lot of discussion will go back and forth and we’ll find a common ground that we can go to. When people look at our findings, they see … close to 90 percent of the time, we’ll find that we have agreed with Internal Affairs. But what that doesn’t show is the amount of time that the team spent negotiating back and forth, getting Internal Affairs to change their finding.

One of the things why I think the review model works well is that, because it’s considered an administrative review, (under the Police Officers Bill of Rights) … (officers) are required to answer our questions. They can’t take the fifth, they can’t say no. They have to answer the question as it’s presented to them.

CG: What kind of complaints can’t you handle?

YM: We review what they call Category 1 complaints, which are arrest, force, discrimination, slurs or criminal conduct — like money is missing from my wallet or something like that. The other complaints, of procedure, courtesy, whatever else may come up, we don’t typically see those. So if you were to complain and say, “I thought the officer was rude to me, blah blah blah,” and that’s your only complaint, we would not see that.

CG: What changes would you want to see in the process?

YM: I think there’s a lack of transparency a little bit. Right now, the complainant gets a letter back that says, this was your complaint, this was how it was voted. It was either sustained, not sustained, exonerated or unfounded. But they don’t get, “it was exonerated because it fell within this policy.” They’re not given that information. And I think if I was a complainant, and I was to receive that letter, I would feel cheated.

For some reason, San Diego Police Department does not post its policies and procedures. I don’t know whether it’s the union or the department itself that is against it. I’ve been around almost seven years and I’m not sure. The discussion comes up periodically and they’re like nope, we’re not putting it up on the web. It just kind of gets dropped there.

The other thing I would like to see is sort of (an) electronic tracking system of all this. A complaint can come in, and we write up the complaint and we submit it over to Internal Affairs. Internal Affairs then makes a determination in Category 1 or Category 2 complaints. If it’s Category 1, it’ll come back through. If it’s Category 2, I never know what happens to that complaint.

I started this conversation a little over a year ago with (former SDPD Chief William) Lansdowne and he was like, well OK, we’ll look into it. Then he moved on and now we have the new chief and they just – it’s not a priority to them.

And I know they put a lot of money into the (officer body) cameras and into a lot of other stuff, but I think the information infrastructure at both the city and police department is very weak. Money really needs to be put in there, and the city will probably hate that I’m saying that as an unpaid city volunteer, but just the way that we track things is very manual. I have to try not to roll my eyes.

CG: What’s one thing you think the public doesn’t understand about the CRB?

YM: I don’t think that they understand that we’re a review process and not an investigatory process, and that we don’t go out and investigate a claim. But we welcome them to come in. If they see problems and deficiencies, we invite people to bring it into us and we can look into that and see if we can make change.

CG: You mentioned body cameras. Have you been able to review any footage? Has that come into play in any cases?

YM: Just starting to now, so we’ve seen two cases.

CG: In what situations do you think that footage should be available to the public? When should that be out?

YM: You know, I haven’t thought about that a lot. I know the department’s decision was that it is quote-unquote owned by the officer, so that it’s his. And again, this has to go back to the unions. I’m only speculating about it but it had to go back to the unions saying, this is his point of view, it’s what he’s doing, it’s his day basically.

CG: This has been part of this national conversation in light of these protests around police brutality and officer-involved shootings. When there’s a broader public safety concern, would that call for it?

YM: I haven’t thought about that at all because it hasn’t had anything to do with the board. I know that when it’s a piece of evidence, then we will get to see it. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other when others in the public could see it, I guess.

I’m willing to support either side – I could see an argument on both sides. So as long as we get access to it from the police board’s point of view, I’m happy with that.

CG: Are you able to share the broad category of what those two cases you saw footage on were?

YM: Most recently it had to do with force in arrest.

CG: Was it particularly persuasive?

YM: Yes. One of the things we’re noticing, and we brought it up last night at the meeting with the assistant chief … there’s an instant running loop, it’s running all the time but it doesn’t record until you hit the button, then there’s a 30-second buffer. It’s going to be a training issue because it’s not something that they normally do.

So we encouraged them, why aren’t we just recording constantly? More data, more information is better. And the assistant chief said yeah, we’re finding that.

I think they’re constantly looking at this policy, and they don’t know what it is and so if the public feels really strongly, they need to get in there and say this needs to be the change.

I haven’t thought it’s our role. I think when we see deficiencies, we can pass that on. The actual effect it’ll have, I don’t know.

San Diego VA Retreats on Reaching Out to Potential Patients

Published July 8, 2014 on Voice of San Diego

Faced with a growing patient load, San Diego’s VA health care system has quietly cut back its outreach efforts to veterans who might qualify for care.

Over the last several years, VA San Diego Healthcare System, or VASDHS, has seen higher numbers of patients at its La Jolla medical center and community clinics, even as veterans of WWII and Vietnam die off and the veteran population in San Diego and Imperial counties starts to shrink.

The widening pool of patients has contributed to long wait times for appointments, an issuethat’s plagued VA hospitals nationwide. That epidemic was thrust into the national spotlight when it was revealed officials at a Phoenix VA hospital were vastly underreporting the amount of time it took veterans to receive care.

The local decision to cut back on outreach came from CEO Jeff Gering well before the Phoenix scandal broke, said Cindy Butler, director of public affairs for VASDHS.

“Our growth is more than we can manage, and Mr. Gering’s the one who said we’re not going to go out anymore,” Butler said. “Our waiting time is getting longer, and we’re not getting more resources to manage it. So he doesn’t want to drum up more business.”

The health care system provides a range of inpatient and outpatient treatments at its main medical center and six community clinics in Chula Vista, Escondido, Imperial Valley, Mission Valley, Mission Gorge Annex and Oceanside. They do everything from surgical treatments to mental health services and geriatric care, and VASDHS is responsible for making its presence known to the veteran community.

Not drumming up more business means some veterans, most likely older generations unfamiliar with changing eligibility standards, might not know what care they’re entitled to.

VASDHS still does a considerable amount of outreach. It staffs booths at the Miramar Air Show, a military retiree fair, an annual veterans career and resource fair and is required by the Department of Defense to host day-long transition programs for groups of Marines, for example. Program specialists in mental health and women’s health do their own additional outreach at community events.

It’s primarily smaller community groups that VASDHS says it no longer has the time or resources for.

“If someone’s having an information table somewhere at a fair, we’ve just had to re-evaluate and say we have limited staff,” Butler said. “There is a lot of information out there because San Diego is a pretty robust veterans community. There’s a lot of resources on the web, Courage to Call with 2-1-1 – there’s a lot of ways that people can find out about their benefits.”

The question is whether they know where to look.

“I think the younger veterans are better informed as to eligibility for health care,” Butler said, “but particularly the older veterans like (from) Vietnam … If you go out in the community and have an information table, often the first thing they’d say to you is, ‘Oh, I didn’t know I was eligible for VA health care.’ Because eligibility has changed over the years.”

“We never said that we could not handle more patients, just that we were concerned about patients potentially waiting too long for appointments,” Associate Director Cynthia Abair wrote in an email.

“The truth is that the VA San Diego Healthcare System can handle additional patients,” said Gering.

Between October 2013 and May of this year, VASDHS saw 3,646 patients, a 6 percent increase over the same period last year.

Gering said there are many possible reasons for the influx of patients, “one which we believe is that the growth is due to the strong reputation of the San Diego VA in the community.”

According to the Veterans Health Administration’s national audit in mid-April, 334 new patients couldn’t secure appointments at VASDHS until after 90 days. As of June 15, the latest data available, there were 360 new patients on the Electronic Waiting List.

That number had fallen from June 1 data, which counted 375. The jump from the original count represents veterans who might’ve already been in primary care through the VA, but now need to see a specialist or visit a clinic, Butler said. But she said she couldn’t explain the difference in numbers because the data had come out of the national office, and “we don’t know how they were calculated.”

In an effort to tackle its backlog, VASDHS is using $11 million out of next year’s operating budget to pay for some new patients to be seen by private doctors outside of the VA.

Some San Diego veterans still might be in the dark about available services. Bill York is COO of 2-1-1, a service that wrangles resources for the local veteran community and communicates what’s available to veterans. “I would probably have to agree that older generations that maybe have not connected to the VA in the past might not be aware of these things that they’re eligible for,” York said.

Shrinking outreach efforts haven’t entirely been the local system’s fault. Toward the end of 2012, the federal VA began a gradual process to privatize its transition workshops for service members about to re-enter civilian life. In the workshop’s previous iteration, staff members from the VA benefits office were given four hours for their presentation on disability compensation, Butler said. VASDHS was given a half-hour of that time to overview care and services.

But when the privatized version, called Transition GPS, was rolled out last year, Butler and her team got the directive from Washington they would no longer be allowed to participate. Instead, federal VA contractors give a six-hour presentation on care and compensation during the last day of the five-day workshop, according to a spokesman for Navy Region Southwest, whose separating sailors are required to complete the workshops.

Both by its own hand and because of outside forces, VASDHS has narrowed the scope of its outreach. The impact of that shift might only be felt by those who aren’t actively engaged in San Diego’s veteran community – the ones who could benefit most from access and information.

“We’ve seen seniors not know about the benefits,” York said. “They just never connected in the first place. … Often non-wartime…veterans don’t always even identify and realize that they’re potentially eligible for benefits, so we do see some from those eras – the Cold War era, the mid-’80s, after Desert Storm.”

Even the term “veteran” can be alienating for these service members. “We even ask the question, ‘Did you serve in the military?'” York said. “Depending on when they served, ‘Yeah, well I am but I’m not connected,’ or ‘I’ve never been to the VA.’ There’s an opportunity there.”