Jose A. Del Real

But just before midnight Wednesday, a silence fell over the crowd.

For nearly seven hours, Puerto Ricans had gathered to protest their embattled governor, Ricardo Rosselló, in hopes that days of demonstrations and political unrest would culminate with his resignation.

But as the night dragged on, many had begun to worry that their activism would not be rewarded. Some believed he might not resign, perhaps plunging the country into further political divisions. And how would the crowds react if he did not step aside? A hot night. Mounds of empty beer cans. Weeks, months, years of pent-up energy.

When the governor finally began to speak, in a statement delivered on Facebook, hundreds of protesters huddled together to listen to their phones.

Some loud cursing, as he spoke at length about his accomplishments as governor.

Then, the sound of exultation pierced through the crowd: “RENUNCIÓ!”

A flurry of Puerto Rican flags flew into the air, strangers clasped arms, and friends began jumping in circles, singing “¡Oé! ¡Oé! ¡Oé!” Cars from all over the city began to honk and, as people danced, fireworks erupted overhead.

Some people cried, the emotion of recent days overcoming them as they realized something historic had happened. Their dissent mattered.

“We just changed history in Puerto Rico,” said Andrea Fanduiz, 25, a pharmacy technician who was among those celebrating. “Ricky the pig is gone,” she added, referring to the governor, “and whoever comes next had better listen to the streets.”

Throughout the night, the celebrations took on the feel of a music festival in parts of the old city, as some motorists blasted music from their car stereos. Some street corners resembled spontaneous dance parties as protesters celebrated the shift in Puerto Rico’s politics.

Over several days, the walls of Calle Fortaleza, the street leading to the governor’s residence, had gradually grown more and more covered with political graffiti that read like a wish list, with phrases like “Resign now!” and others too impolite to print.

But what would happen in the coming days remained unclear. Rosselló said his resignation would not take effect until Aug. 2, and many have already said his possible successor, Wanda Vázquez, is not a suitable replacement.

During a protest the night before the governor’s announcement, Alejandro Santiago Calderón, 30, had wondered if resignation would be enough. Would it be enough to convince him that the island was on a better path?

“This has to change, and it has to change from the top all the way to the bottom,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/san-juan-celebration.html" id="35b2c9e3-bd0e-38ae-af04-54f87a540722">The New York Times</a>.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — All day, the drums and the chants had blared through the streets outside La Fortaleza, the governor’s residence in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital.

'We Just Changed History': Cheers and Tears in San Juan

But Vázquez has a number of powerful political opponents, complicating any succession, and the island was enmeshed in intense political machinations on Wednesday to determine who would lead it.

Though nothing was certain, here’s a look at the woman who is, at least legally, on deck.

— Who is Wanda Vázquez?

Vázquez has been the island’s secretary of justice, the equivalent of a state attorney general, since January 2017. She is a member of the New Progressive Party, like Rosselló, who appointed her. She worked as an attorney specializing in domestic and sexual violence before her appointment to the top post at the commonwealth’s Department of Justice. She was appointed to lead the office of women’s affairs in 2010.

— Does that mean she would be an advocate for women in Puerto Rico?

Some women’s groups opposed Vázquez during her seven years as the head of the island’s women’s affairs office. (It was supposed to be a 10-year term, but she left early to become secretary of justice.)

“A lot of feminist groups were very critical of Wanda Vázquez,” said Saadi Rosado of the Feminist Collective, an advocacy group. “She failed to address gender violence issues and was another piece of government bureaucracy.”

Women’s groups have been fighting the governor’s administration — at one point conducting a sit-in outside his office — demanding that the governor declare a state of emergency because of a rise in gender-based violence.

“She has not even spoken out about this state of emergency that we have been asking for a year,” Rosado said.

— What is Vázquez’s political standing in Puerto Rico?

Her relationship with the legislative branch is fraught, to say the least. Her time as secretary of justice has been punctuated by criticism that she has dragged her feet on investigating controversies involving members of her own party. She has clashed especially with Thomas Rivera Schatz, the president of the Senate. Vázquez came under intense legal scrutiny herself last year amid ethical complaints filed by the Office of the Independent Special Prosecutor. In fact, a new term was trending on Twitter in Puerto Rico on Wednesday, echoing protesters’ demands for Rosselló to resign: #WandaRenuncia.

— What became of that controversy?

In November 2018, Vázquez faced allegations that she had improperly intervened on behalf of her daughter and son-in-law in a housing dispute. She was the first secretary of justice to face criminal charges, according to the Puerto Rican daily El Nuevo Dia. Vázquez was briefly suspended from her post as the investigation developed. But she was later cleared of any ethical violations by Judge Yazdel Ramos Colón, who said there was not sufficient evidence against her.

Vázquez was immediately reinstated to her post by Rosselló, a move that drew criticism because it came before the period of an appeal had passed.

The case at one point took a personal turn: Her husband, Jorge Díaz Reverón, a judge in Caguas, also came under investigation on matters related to the case. Díaz reportedly interviewed the agent investigating his daughter’s case and asked if he would be willing to testify on Vázquez’s behalf.

Díaz was ultimately cleared of any ethical violations by a Supreme Court judicial disciplinary committee.

— Could these political issues complicate things?

Definitely — especially Vázquez’s problems with the powerful Senate leader, Rivera.

He has been engaged in a public battle with Vázquez for over a year. He called for her resignation, accused her of committing crimes and criticized her handling of several cases. It began when Vázquez investigated allegations of corruption in the Senate leader’s office. The probe led to a federal indictment against a key Senate official, who was accused this year of submitting fake invoices that benefited Rivera’s political allies.

That was when a special counsel’s office, an office over which Rivera is believed to have influence, began the investigation involving Vázquez and her family.

The bad blood between the two politicians has long played out in the local news. Rivera has called Vázquez “the secretary of nothing.”

If Rosselló were to resign, would the Senate president be willing to see her become governor?

— Is there another succession scenario?

There are plenty of them. Puerto Rico’s constitution calls for the secretary of state to become governor in the event of a resignation. That can’t happen at the moment because the secretary of state recently resigned over his participation in the chat exchange at the center of the scandal that has enveloped the governor. Some have suggested that Vázquez, if she became governor, could immediately ask the legislative assembly to confirm a new person to the secretary of state’s position — and then hand the governorship over to him or her.

And it is also possible that the governor could announce he will stay in place until a new secretary of state is confirmed.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/us/puerto-rico-wanda-vasquez-governor.html" id="2ccacf07-fa24-38fa-a33b-b8a2159a3658">The New York Times</a>.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — After more than a week of political turmoil in Puerto Rico, calls are escalating for Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló to resign. In line to succeed him is Wanda Vázquez, the secretary of justice.

Who is Wanda Vázquez, Who is in Line to Become Puerto Rico's Next Governor?

“We kept running the tub, we turned on the sink, we flushed the toilet. All the water was coming out dirty,” Moralez said.

For more than a year, discolored water has regularly gushed from faucets in the family’s bathroom and kitchen, as it has in hundreds of other households in Willowbrook, California, an unincorporated community near Compton in South Los Angeles.

The brown water, provided by the Sativa Los Angeles County Water District, first drew public outrage and local news media attention last year when customers began protesting over unexplained stomach pains and skin so itchy it had scarred from the scratching.

Elected officials were soon jolted into action. Sativa’s elected board of directors was disbanded and Los Angeles County took control of the water district. The county is working furiously to replace dilapidated pipes and wells, and this week began new construction to reinforce Sativa’s system. But problems persist. Overhauling the district has taken far more time and money than anyone had expected because, by the time the county stepped in last fall, the district’s infrastructure was on the brink of collapse.

Sativa is just one case, which erupted into public view after decades of neglect. The rot in California’s water system probably extends far beyond it.

As many as 1,000 community water systems in California may be at high risk of failing to deliver potable water — 1 of every 3 — according to a previously undisclosed estimate by senior officials at the California State Water Resources Control Board, which regulates drinking water. These troubled districts, which include Sativa, often operate in mostly poor areas on thin budgets. With little oversight, they face problems like bankruptcy, sudden interruptions in water capacity and harmful toxins being delivered through taps.

Nationally, political leaders have struggled to reach consensus over how to rebuild America’s aging infrastructure, including the country’s drinking water systems, which the American Society of Civil Engineers gave a D rating in its 2017 report. In California, the abundance of small water districts, a fraught culture around water rights, and significant oversight gaps have exacerbated those problems.

California has one of the most byzantine drinking water systems in the country, and even in urban parts of the state some water systems are so small they struggle to sustain their maintenance budgets. The small districts are overseen by local boards — often with little to no expertise in water management — making it difficult for the state to keep track of them.

Already, more than 300 public water systems in the state are out of compliance with federal drinking water safety standards, according to publicly available data, and an estimated 1 million Californians are exposed to unsafe drinking water each year. Those are the ones the state knows about because their water quality has been tested as unsafe.

Often, the state water board does not collect enough information from public water systems to catch mismanagement until the systems are already failing, or are approaching that threshold like Sativa, according to interviews with several officials. The state agency does not keep a list of suspected high-risk systems. The limited information that is collected from water districts is often scattered across agencies and levels of government, including county boundary commissions, which may be reluctant to become involved or lack the authority to do so.

“We didn’t know how bad the problems were,” said Russ Bryden, an engineer with the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works, who took over day-to-day management of Sativa as an emergency administrator last fall. “You could not have known from the outside. Sativa was not supposed to be this bad.”

When Los Angeles County took control, officials discovered that the problems at Sativa ran even deeper than anyone knew. They found the system needed more than $10 million in urgent repairs to protect against it shutting down entirely, according to Bryden. They uncovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills and debts. And a rash of suspicious spending in 2017 had left the district with just $10,000, according to balances reviewed by The New York Times.

County officials have attributed the discoloration of the water to high levels of manganese from old pipes, but county and state health officials say the water in the Sativa district is safe to drink; the brown color is classified as a secondary, aesthetic violation, according to federal standards.

But no one wants to drink brown water, and residents have lost faith in the district’s promises that the water is safe to use. To them, the problems at Sativa are just another example of the growing inequality they see across California.

The seamstresses, chauffeurs and domestic workers who live in Willowbrook, a community in the district that is primarily Hispanic and where 70% of residents speak Spanish at home, maintain neat front-yard patios where bright purple and yellow flowers bloom. But their roads are lined with potholes, vacant businesses are a common sight and many street signs are so faded they are difficult to read.

Although 1 in 4 residents there live in poverty, those who do not want to drink from their taps — which they no longer trust, even when the water is not brown — spend more money on drinking water than many families do in Beverly Hills, 20 miles away. Moralez, a home health aide, estimates her family spends about $150 a month on bottled water in addition to the family’s $67 monthly payment to the water district, which it still must pay. The family lives on a single income.

Expecting another surge of brown water caused by the new construction this week, the county stockpiled huge amounts of bottled water to hand out to residents.

The distrust among residents was decades in the making, but there were few legal pathways for government intervention.

The district was issued various citations over the years, which were later enumerated in the state water board’s own October 2018 order taking control of the district, including for repeatedly failing to adequately test water quality.

Staff at the county commission that reviews municipal services began to raise alarms about Sativa’s management practices as early as 2005. By 2012, after another service review, the commission discovered that Sativa had not carried out any financial audits in seven years, and it began to push for the district to consolidate with another water utility, said Paul Novak, the executive officer at the Los Angeles Local Agency Formation Commission.

“They had no water meters, they had no computer systems, there were some extreme nepotism issues, and they were giving illegal holiday bonuses,” Novak said. “We don’t go into an agency and say, ‘You need to be dissolved or consolidated.’ But when you’re dealing with people who are, at best, incompetent, the rules have to change.’”

Despite signs of mismanagement, the agency’s commissioners feared becoming mired in a costly battle to dissolve the district.

In November 2015, E. coli was detected in one of Sativa’s three wells and it was shut down after a state recommendation, leaving Sativa with barely enough supply to meet its needs.

All along, the district’s leadership suffered from infighting and poor financial decision-making, said Elizabeth Hicks, who served on Sativa’s board of directors from 2003 to 2015. She described a toxic culture on the board.

“It was in shambles,” she said.

When the county took over day-to-day management of Sativa in November, Bryden, the emergency administrator, said he could not find any financial bookkeeping, including invoices, purchase orders or receipts. The county is conducting a broader audit of the district’s finances, which will be released later this summer.

The financial situation appears to have worsened in recent years. In June 2015, Sativa had nearly $600,000 in an investment fund it used as a savings account; by late 2018, there was just $10,000 left, yet the district had amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars of unpaid bills and debts. A loan from City National Bank for $1.6 million was taken out during that time to build a new well, but nearly $1 million remains unaccounted for.

Luis Landeros, the Sativa board president from 2016 to 2018, declined to comment. None of the other board members who served during that time responded to multiple requests for comment. Sativa’s former general manager, Thomas Martin, told the Los Angeles Times in September that he did not support the state’s ultimate decision to take over the troubled water district: “I was hoping it would be a different outcome,” he said. “We disagree with the legislators’ decision. We wish the best of luck to the customers.”

As the district fell into deeper financial despair over the past few years, Julia Hernandez and her family in Willowbrook became fearful of showering in the water because of intense itching they felt afterward. Hernandez said that last summer she gave her 4-year-old grandson a bath and he broke out in hives severe enough that she had to take him to a doctor.

On a recent day, she pointed to pockmarks on her own skin, leftover scars from scratching.

The inside of her bathtub is sometimes coated with wet silt, she said. Her washing machine sometimes gets clogged and last year she had to replace her boiler, which cost her family $700.

“You put your white clothes in the washer and they come out brown,” she said.

In Sacramento, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a budget plan in June that includes $130 million annually to help distressed water systems in the state. The money will help small districts fund desperately needed repairs.

But it is unclear how much that would help improve the oversight of troubled districts before they become dysfunctional and even more costly to repair.

For now, Los Angeles County has borne the brunt of the financial costs involved with rehabilitating Sativa. Of the estimated $14 million in repairs necessary, the county will probably pay for about $8 million. The rest will be covered by continued revenue — clients must still pay their bill despite the brown water — and state grants. The county is currently looking for a water utility to take Sativa over permanently, most likely a privately owned water company.

Many people in the Sativa district, even now, are skeptical that things will improve.

“People think this is the ghetto, so they don’t care,” Moralez said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/us/the-crisis-lurking-in-californians-taps-how-1000-water-systems-may-be-at-risk.html" id="0a9bb593-4499-3f9d-a1ea-e8bc7219f204">The New York Times</a>.

The Crisis Lurking in Californians' Taps: How 1,000 Water Systems May Be at Risk

COMPTON, Calif. — It was bath time and Rosalba Moralez heard a cry. She rushed to the bathroom and found her 7-year-old daughter, Alexxa, being doused with brown, putrid water.

There are plenty of them. Puerto Rico’s constitution calls for the secretary of state to become governor in the event of a resignation. That can’t happen at the moment because the secretary of state recently resigned over his participation in the chat exchange at the center of the scandal that has enveloped the governor. Some have suggested that Vázquez, if she became governor, could immediately ask the legislative assembly to appoint a new person to the secretary of state’s position — and then hand the governorship over to him or her.

For more than a year, discolored water has regularly gushed from faucets in the family’s bathroom and kitchen, as in hundreds of other households here in Willowbrook, California, an unincorporated community near Compton in South Los Angeles.

Elected officials were soon jolted into action. Sativa’s elected board of directors was disbanded and Los Angeles County took control of the water district. The county is now working furiously to replace dilapidated pipes and wells, and this week began new construction to reinforce Sativa’s system. But problems persist. Overhauling the district has taken far more time and money than anyone initially expected because, by the time the county stepped in last fall, the district’s infrastructure was on the brink of collapse.

Sativa is just one case, which erupted into public view after decades of neglect. The rot in California’s water system likely extends far beyond it.

As many as 1,000 community water systems in California may be at high risk of failing to deliver potable water — 1 out of every 3 — according to a previously undisclosed estimate by senior officials at the California State Water Resources Control Board, which regulates drinking water. These troubled districts, which include Sativa, often operate in mostly poor areas on thin budgets. With little oversight, they face problems ranging from bankruptcy to sudden interruptions in water capacity, to harmful toxins being delivered through taps.

California has one of the most byzantine drinking water systems in the country, and even in urban parts of the state some water systems are so small they struggle to sustain their maintenance budgets. The hodgepodge of small districts are overseen by local boards — often with little to no expertise in water management — making it difficult for the state to keep track of them.

Already, more than 300 public water systems in the state are out of compliance with federal drinking water safety standards, according to publicly available data, and an estimated 1 million Californians are exposed to unsafe drinking water each year. Those are the ones the state knows about because their water quality has already been tested as unsafe.

Often, the state water board does not collect enough information from public water systems to catch mismanagement until the systems are already failing, or are approaching that threshold like Sativa, according to interviews with several officials. The state agency does not keep a list of suspected high-risk systems. The limited information that is collected from water districts is often scattered across agencies and levels of government, including county boundary commissions, which may be either reluctant to become involved or lack the authority to do so.

Although 1 in 4 residents here live in poverty, those who do not want to drink from their taps — which they no longer trust, even when the water is not brown — spend more money on drinking water than many families do in Beverly Hills, 20 miles away. Moralez, a home health aide, estimates her family spends about $150 a month on bottled water in addition to the family’s $67 monthly payment to the water district, which it still must pay. The family currently lives on a single income.

Anticipating another surge of brown water caused by the new construction this week, the county stockpiled huge amounts of bottled water to hand out to residents.

All along, the district’s leadership suffered from infighting and poor financial decision-making, said Elizabeth Hicks, who served on Sativa’s board of directors between 2003 and 2015. She described a toxic culture on the board.

The financial situation appears to have only worsened in recent years. In June 2015, Sativa had nearly $600,000 in an investment fund it used as a savings account; by late 2018, there was just $10,000 left, yet the district had amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars of unpaid bills and debts. A loan from City National Bank for $1.6 million was taken out during that time to build a new well, but today nearly $1 million remains unaccounted for.

Luis Landeros, the Sativa board president between 2016 and 2018, declined to comment. None of the other board members who served during that time responded to multiple requests for comment. Sativa’s former general manager, Thomas Martin, told the Los Angeles Times in September that he did not support the state’s ultimate decision to take over the troubled water district: “I was hoping it would be a different outcome,” he said. “We disagree with the legislators’ decision. We wish the best of luck to the customers.”

But it is unclear, however, how much that would help improve the oversight of troubled districts before they become dysfunctional and even more costly to repair.

For now, Los Angeles County has borne the brunt of the financial costs involved with rehabilitating Sativa. Of the estimated $14 million in repairs necessary, the county will likely pay for about $8 million. The rest will be covered by continued revenue — clients must still pay their bill despite the brown water — and state grants. The county is currently looking for a water utility to take Sativa over permanently, most likely a privately owned water company.

Who is Wanda Vázquez, and Will She Be Puerto Rico's Next Governor?

For nearly a year, community members and activists have demanded police accountability for the death of Stephon Clark, 22, who was killed last March by officers Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet. The two officers had been dispatched to investigate a routine vandalism complaint. Within 10 minutes of their arrival, after a brief pursuit, Clark was dead.

The shooting sparked waves of protests in Sacramento that shut down busy streets, disrupted sporting events and overtook City Council meetings. Clark’s death took on national significance amid continuing tensions over discriminatory policing in black neighborhoods and excessive use of force by police officers.

“Was a crime committed? There’s no question that a human being died,” District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said Saturday in Sacramento. “But when we look at the facts and the law, and we follow our ethical responsibilities, the answer to that question is no. And as a result, we will not charge these officers.”

Schubert said the officers had probable cause to stop and detain Clark. She added that police officers are legally justified in using deadly force “if the officer honestly and reasonably believes” he is in danger of death or injury.

“We must recognize that they are often forced to make split-second decisions,” she said. “We must also recognize that they are under tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving circumstances.”

The officers fired their weapons 20 times in Clark’s direction within seconds of turning a blind corner. “Both officers believed that he was pointing a gun at them,” Schubert said. She added that police video showed Clark was “advancing” on the officers.

Clark was later found to be unarmed; his cellphone was found under his body.

An autopsy released by the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office in May found at least seven bullets hit Clark.

A comprehensive analysis of police video footage by The New York Times found that gunfire continued after Clark had fallen to his hands and knees. Six of the seven shots most likely hit Clark as he was falling or was already on the ground, according to The Times’ analysis. Three minutes passed after the shooting before police identified themselves to Clark, and he did not receive medical attention for six minutes.

Black activists have expressed long-simmering frustrations about how their neighborhoods have been policed by the Sacramento Police Department and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department.

After the shooting, the Police Department sought to swiftly quell public outrage. The department released body camera footage within days of the shooting. Daniel Hahn, the city’s first black police chief, reiterated that the department required training related to race-based discrimination and de-escalation tactics. The next month, the department issued new guidance about when officers can mute their body cameras.

In July, the department also instated a foot-pursuit policy that instructs officers to weigh “whether the need for apprehension justifies the risk to the safety of the officer(s), the public, and the fleeing suspect.”

Hahn and the department have not commented on Mercadal’s and Robinet’s actions specifically. The department did not return a request for comment Saturday.

In January, Clark’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city and the two officers.

During her presentation, Schubert noted that Clark had been accused of domestic violence days before his death. A review of his cellphone, conducted by the California Department of Justice, found text messages suggesting a tense relationship between Clark and the mother of one of his children.

The review also found that he had researched how to commit suicide, she said.

“All of this shows us that many things were weighing heavily” on Clark on the day of his death, Schubert said. She added that the facts were uncomfortable but relevant to her legal recommendation not to charge the officers because they would be relevant to a jury.

The officers, as she noted, did not know any of this when they were searching the neighborhood for vandals.

But even with that rationale, the district attorney’s presentation did not sit well with Clark’s family.

During a news conference Saturday, Clark’s mother, Sequette Clark, said “we’re outraged” that the district attorney decided not to prosecute the officers. She blasted Schubert for delving into details she said were irrelevant to the officers’ conduct, including personal text messages and a toxicology report showing that Clark had alcohol, codeine, marijuana, cocaine and Xanax in his system.

“She wants to go on a smear campaign on his character and his actions,” Clark said. “That is not a permit to kill him.”

Tanya Faison, who leads the local Black Lives Matter group, said in a statement released on Twitter, “I’m disgusted and it’s disrespectful. He was completely disrespected. The mother of his child was completely disrespected.”

On Saturday, Gov. Gavin Newsom called for criminal justice reforms to improve relations between the police and “the communities they serve.”

“We need to acknowledge the hard truth — our criminal justice system treats young black and Latino men and women differently than their white counterparts,” he said. “That must change.”

Anticipating more protests over the announcement, Schubert sought to strike a conciliatory tone throughout her presentation.

“I don’t think there’s any question that people will be very upset and very angry,” she said. “But I want people to understand the fact that no criminal charges will be filed in this case does not diminish in any way the tragedy, the anger, the frustration that we’ve heard since the time of his death.”

“We cannot ignore that. Me as an elected official, as a public-facing leader, me as a human being, we cannot ignore that there is a rage in our community.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/us/stephon-clark-police-shooting-sacramento.html" id="bd0114b2-581e-3cf2-a0f4-9c1115931de4">The New York Times</a>.

No Charges in Sacramento Police Shooting of Stephon Clark

LOS ANGELES — Two Sacramento police officers who shot and killed an unarmed black man in his grandmother’s backyard last year will not face criminal prosecution, the Sacramento County district attorney announced Saturday, stirring fresh outrage in a city roiled by protests over the killing.

But even with that rationale, the district attorney’s presentation did not sit well with local activists.

“I’m disgusted and it’s disrespectful,” Tanya Faison, who leads the local Black Lives Matter group, said in a statement released on Twitter. “He was completely disrespected. The mother of his child was completely disrespected.”

Clark’s family, reached through their lawyers, did not respond to a request for comment.

For nearly a year, community members and activists have demanded police accountability for the death of Stephon Clark, 22, who was killed last March by officers Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet. The two officers had been dispatched to investigate a vandalism complaint. Within 10 minutes of their arrival, after a brief pursuit, Clark was dead.

The shooting sparked waves of protests in Sacramento. Clark’s death took on national significance amid continuing tensions over discriminatory policing in black neighborhoods and excessive use of force by officers.

The police department released body camera footage within days of the shooting. Daniel Hahn, the city’s first black police chief, reiterated that the department required training related to race-based discrimination and de-escalation tactics. The next month, the department issued new guidance about when officers can mute their body cameras.

The department did not return a request for comment Saturday.

Two Sacramento police officers who shot and killed an unarmed black man in his grandmother’s backyard last year will not face criminal prosecution, the Sacramento County district attorney announced Saturday, stirring fresh outrage in a city roiled by protests over the killing.

The step to rescind state authorization for the border deployment is a sharp rebuke of President Donald Trump’s continued warnings that migrants entering the country illegally present a national security risk to the United States. It follows a similar move last week by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico.

Under a “general order” that Newsom plans to sign Monday, 110 California National Guard troops will be redirected to support the state’s central fire agency, Cal Fire, and another 100 will work on statewide “intelligence operations” aimed at international criminal drug gangs.

Newsom is also seeking to expand the state’s Counterdrug Task Force with 150 National Guard troops, which would require funding from the Department of Defense.

Since his election in November, Newsom has emphasized a progressive vision for California and the country, pitching his state as a leader on issues like immigration, climate change and income inequality. He promised last month to “offer an alternative to the corruption and incompetence in the White House.”

Newsom is expected to speak publicly about the redeployment during his State of the State address Tuesday, with sharp criticism of the president’s immigration policies and rhetoric.

The National Guard has had an expanded presence in California since April, when Newsom’s predecessor, Jerry Brown, agreed to add 400 troops to shore up border-related security at the request of the Trump administration.

At the time, Brown stressed that the deployment, which was financed by the federal government, would support efforts to go after criminal gangs, human traffickers and drug smugglers. He said the troops would not be used to enforce federal immigration policies.

“This will not be a mission to build a new wall,” Brown wrote in a letter to Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, and Jim Mattis, who was secretary of defense at the time.

“It will not be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life,” Brown wrote, adding, “There is no massive wave of migrants pouring into California. Overall immigrant apprehensions on the border last year were as low as they’ve been in nearly 50 years.”

Newsom and Brown are both Democrats. So is Grisham of New Mexico, though the predecessor whose deployment decision she reversed was a Republican.

Before the April deployment, there were about 250 National Guard troops serving in California, and 55 of them were stationed at the border. Under federal law, the troops are paid by the federal government but are under the control of the governor. It was not clear whether federal financing for the troops would continue after Newsom’s redirection order.

Brown’s letter authorizing the deployment was largely seen at the time as a denunciation of Trump’s immigration policies, but many activists and elected officials in the state sharply criticized Brown for agreeing to any Guard deployment at all.

Last summer, Kevin De León, who was then the state Senate leader, urged Brown to “not be complicit” in the administration’s hard-line immigration priorities, which he called “driven by racial animus.” De León, a Democrat, drafted the state law limiting coordination between local authorities and immigration enforcement agents, known colloquially as the “sanctuary state” law, which Brown signed in 2017.

Despite the criticism, Brown later extended state authorization for the National Guard presence at the border through March 2019.

Trump initially thanked Brown for the deployment, which was part of a national deployment of up to 4,000 troops authorized by Mattis. But to the confusion of many Californians, Trump later blasted the governor for placing limits on what the troops could do.

“Looks like Jerry Brown and California are not looking for safety and security along their very porous Border,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “He cannot come to terms for the National Guard to patrol and protect the Border. The high crime rate will only get higher.”

Illegal border crossings have been sharply declining for years. Apprehensions of migrants by border patrol agents are near historic lows. And undetected crossings have fallen to 62,000 in 2016 from 851,000 in 2006, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Several studies indicate that crime rates are lower among immigrants than among native-born Americans.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/us/california-newsom-national-guard-mexico-border-trump.html" id="e40d8ee3-e6ea-38c1-a59e-ef53f3e04a3a">The New York Times</a>.

LOS ANGELES — Gov. Gavin Newsom of California is expected Monday to withdraw nearly 400 of his state’s National Guard troops from deployment along the border with Mexico and assign them to other duties, according to aides to the governor.

California Is Expected to Pull National Guard Troops Out of Border Duty

As Trump delivered an ominous State of the Union address from Washington, which warned repeatedly about the dangers along the southwest border, Galeana dutifully tended to orders of tacos, horchata and micheladas at D’Poly, the Mexican eatery his family runs here about 10 miles from the Mexican border. What the president was saying on the screen behind him, said Galeana, would not help his small business, his family or his five dozen employees.

“What we need here is someone to help people looking for jobs,” said Galeana, whose wife and American-born children work with him at the restaurant. “The things he says, they make me laugh.”

Residents of El Centro and several other towns along the California-Mexico border have watched with curiosity and apprehension in recent years as the president has escalated his calls for a wall along the southwest frontier. Trump repeated his warnings about such perils again Tuesday.

“Republicans and Democrats must join forces again to confront an urgent national crisis,” Trump said during his speech, delivered not long after a bitter impasse over funding for a border wall that shut down the government for 35 days. “Congress has 10 days left to pass a bill that will fund our government, protect our homeland, and secure our very dangerous southern border.”

On a busy Tuesday night at D’Poly, patrons occasionally glanced at the screen that played the president’s address to the nation. Most paid it no mind at all. Galeana and others said they had largely tuned out what the president has to say because, too often, his rhetoric is disconnected from what their communities really want. They have struggled to reconcile the president’s warnings about threatening conditions on the border with their own experiences living in this quiet, largely agricultural hamlet.

“What he’s saying on the news is different from what we’re seeing here,” said Cecy Magallanes, 45, who is originally from Mexicali, not far across the border in Mexico, and works as a school bus driver.

She said Trump’s previous calls for a border wall seemed “like a strategy to get votes.”

“His wall — always his wall,” added Cesar Salas, Magallanes’s husband, shaking his head.

Located on El Centro’s Main Street, D’Poly and its clientele embody the biculturalism of border towns across the Southwest. Farm workers, white-collar professionals, big families and off-duty Border Patrol agents congregate here for tacos, sopes and flavored juices. Modern and minimalist, the restaurant’s gray walls and dark wood floors could be the backdrop of an elegant Crate and Barrel photo shoot — save for an arresting pink mural of Frida Kahlo that instantly sets the room apart. Flashes of pastel pop from behind a tiled bar, which includes a display of “Dia de los Muertos” statuettes.

English and Spanish are heard virtually interchangeably at table after table. Latin pop plays in the background, songs like “Dónde Estarás” by the Mexican electrocumbia musician Raymix.

Galeana, who owns the restaurant along with his wife, Teresa, said he and his family decorated with the idea of showcasing Mexican culture in a modern setting, a concept that “so often is lost” in Mexican restaurants in favor of stereotypical décor like sombreros.

“Our idea was to show that Mexico is not just what the stereotypes say: It’s so much more,” he said. “We are proud of our culture, and we want to show that.”

That is what many of those here say they wish the president understood: Immigration and cross-national exchanges are celebrated in these towns along the border.

Hildy Carrillo, the executive director of the Calexico Chamber of Commerce, has been sharply critical of President Trump’s immigration policies. She watched with exasperation last year when Trump called the replacement of the town’s border barrier “the start of our Southern Border WALL!” She said she feared the president’s remark would turn Calexico into an anti-immigration symbol and make it seem unsafe.

For that reason, Carrillo, a Democrat, chose not to watch the speech Tuesday — “one of the few I’ve ever missed,” she said. She went shopping instead, she said, because “I refuse to get stressed out having to listen to him.”

Such frustrations are frequently expressed in towns along the southwest border, which spans nearly 2,000 miles from California to Texas. Public officials from El Paso took to social media after Tuesday night’s speech to accuse the president of intentionally misleading the public after he said a border barrier had turned around high crime rates in the city. “Simply put, walls work and walls save lives,” Trump said.

“He lies. @POTUS is once again lying and using the #SOTU address to spread falsehoods about our beloved city of El Paso,” Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat who represents El Paso, said on Twitter.

A fact check by The El Paso Times on the matter, prepared in January but circulated heavily again on Tuesday night, found the city’s crime rate peaked in 1993, but by 2006 had sharply declined to its lowest level in decades. Construction on the border fence that Trump appeared to reference began in 2008.

The paper also pointed out that, before the Bush-era fence was approved, El Paso and Ciudad Juárez had been separated by a border barrier for decades.

Before the speech on Tuesday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, a Democrat, denounced “the president’s charade of border fear-mongering” and ordered the withdrawal of most National Guard troops stationed at the border in her state.

Many people living along the border, including Mexican immigrants, say they understand the desire for strong border security. But in conversations here in El Centro on Tuesday, even those who agreed with some of the president’s positions were quick to point out that his statements about immigrants, and Mexicans in particular, made them disinclined to support him.

Aleyda Montejano, 21, who is Mexican-American, lives in the town of Imperial but goes to hairstyling school in Mexicali because it is less expensive. She said that she agreed with the president that there needed to be a deterrent to illegal immigration. But she said that message was difficult to separate from his tone.

“The way he talks about Mexicans, I just don’t agree with it,” she said. “The reason people come here is to have a better life. But, about the border, there are some people that cross illegally, and that’s not right.”

Brian Arturo Posada, 19, a U.S. citizen who grew up in Mexicali, said that he was sympathetic to some of the things Republicans in Washington talk about, like preventing abuse of social benefits such as unemployment insurance. But he said the president’s tone in past speeches too frequently crossed the line when he talked about immigrants and Mexican laborers.

“The only thing that really I didn’t like was when he said all Mexicans are gangsters,” he said. “That’s not true, it’s not true. And when he was keeping those kids in jails, that made me really mad.”

Meanwhile, several Mexican laborers in the region said they fear that the president’s warnings about immigrants and crime exasperates discrimination against them.

Cristina Bejarano, 34, a Mexican laborer who picks cilantro and lives in Calexico, about 12 miles south of El Centro, said that life for her and other immigrants in the region can be difficult because of the nature of farm work. But she said she moved to the United States two years ago because, even if farm labor is backbreaking, her life and prospects are better here than in Mexico.

She said she wished Trump and others could understand that.

“A lot of people haven’t had a chance to meet any Mexicans,” Bejarano said. “They say we’re all criminals when we’re not. Just because we’re brown doesn’t mean we’re dirty.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/us/border-wall-caravan-mexico.html" id="fc4356b4-424c-3fc9-a118-36bd529e5082">The New York Times</a>.

President Trump Spoke, and These Border Residents Shrugged

EL CENTRO, Calif. — Donald Trump was on the television, but no matter. Ferdinando Galeana’s customers were watching their plates, not the president.

Though the region is heavily Democratic in numbers, there has been plenty of common ground between Democrats and Republicans on border security here in the past. Many people in the region, including Mexican immigrants, say they understand the desire for strong border security. But in conversations Tuesday, even those who agreed with some of the president’s positions were quick to point out that his statements about immigrants, and Mexicans in particular, made them disinclined to support him.

Last year, as Mike Alfaro shuffled through an old deck of the game — notable for its folk-art drawings — he blanched at one image of “La Dama,” the lady. The card showed an affluent woman in an old-fashioned full-length skirt-suit, weighed down by flowers and a clutch. It struck him as symbolic of antiquated views about gender and identity within the Latino community. How would this young Hispanic woman identify in 2018, in the United States? He looked at other cards, some with undercurrents of racism and classism. What about those?

So began the process of reimagining Lotería for a new generation in America, with new cards and a message to better fit the times. Drawing on nostalgia and humor, Alfaro’s parody project, rendered in Spanglish, has caught fire on social media. It has amassed tens of thousands of fans, enough to draw the interest of a publisher that is distributing a full version of the game.

“La Calavera,” the skull, is now “El Gluten.”

“El Paraguas,” the umbrella, is “El Safe Space.”

“La Campana,” the bell, is “El Notification.”

The New York Times spoke with Alfaro, 30, who is a creative director at an advertising agency by day, about how the version of the game came about and what he hopes to achieve. The Q&amp;A; has been condensed and lightly edited.

Q: How did you get the idea for something like this? Did it start as a grand concept, or did you go one card at a time?

A: This was definitely a reaction to the shift in culture we’ve seen in recent years. I was looking through the cards and I saw “La Dama” and it just seemed so outdated, especially when looking at #MeToo and this broader conversation going on. I thought, ‘That card would be so much cooler if this was ‘La Feminist.’ And I started looking at the other cards in there and realized, ‘Oh, this could be updated, too!’

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — There is a particular magic to Lotería, the card game, sometimes described as Mexican bingo and played by generations of Hispanic children, that lasts well into adulthood. It can transport you to an abuela’s house in Mexico, to a cousin’s birthday party in Texas, to a baby sitter’s backyard in California.

Jose A. Del Real

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