California lakeside oasis is overrun by outsiders
What they weren't prepared for was what tourists brought with them, including violent fights, drugs, illegal camping, parking, letting dogs roam around free, graffiti-covered bathrooms, among other disturbances. 'Personally, I rarely go to the lake on weekends anymore because we know what a mess it is,' said Martha Geiszler, who owns a cabin near the lake and manages the Friends of Pinecrest Facebook Group, told the San Francisco Chronicle. 'There's very little visitor information given and very little law enforcement presence, so every rule is broken,' she added.
Geiszler (pictured) isn't the only one who's noticed the uptick in chaos, as Tuolumne County Supervisor Anaiah Kirk told the outlet: 'There have been some apocalyptic weekends.' Locals and park workers have also had to deal with an influx of traffic, trash, cars parked in fire lanes, and even drownings. In October 2023, a 59-year-old man drowned while swimming in Pinecrest Lake. When officers with the Tuolumne County Sheriff's Office got to the lake, they questioned witnesses and reviewed video footage from the man's boat.
It was later determined that the man, Brian Campbell, jumped into the water without a lifejacket on, his friend told police. The friend managed to drag him back to shore after jumping in after him. Medics then performed life-saving measures on Campbell, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. With chaos at an all time high at the lake, the county has set up new measures to try and decrease the troubling behavior.
Kirk (pictured) said if those fail to help stop it, he is prepared to implement stricter rules that would make it harder not just for victors, but for locals, to enjoy the area. 'I'm ready to go full-bore and do a lot more things,' Kirk said. 'But we're slowing down and going to implement a few things at a time.' First and foremost, Kirk said the county will crack down on the slew of illegal parking around the lake. Just last summer, a number of emergencies were slowed down due to illegally parked cars lined up along Pinecrest Lake Road, Tuolumne County Sheriff David Vasquez told the outlet.
Hundreds of citations were written last year, with most of them related to parking violations, Vasquez added. In March, just before the summer months hit, the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors approved new parking violation fees for the lake to try to get the problem under control. A $35 ticket has since been hiked up to $100 for the first offense, and $200 for the second. The county has also gone on to install dozens of 'No Parking' signs along Pinecrest Lake Road to deter people from leaving their vehicles on the roadsides.
'People were looking at a $35 citation as an acceptable tradeoff. We need to create a psychological deterrent,' Vasquez said. Kirk, along with other supervisors, is keen about increasing the first offense penalty to $250 if parking issues persist. While staff has tried to crack down on the parking dilemma, furious locals have called for more beach patrols and rule enforcement at the lake. So far this summer, Geiszler said she has seen a lack of staffing at the lake - something she attributes to the recent cuts to federal land workers.
Pinecrest Lake is under the supervision of the U.S. Forest Service, an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. President Donald Trump has slashed U.S. Forest Service operations and funding for National Forest management by about $800 million. Shawn Winstead, the district ranger for the Forest Service's Sugar Pine District, said two staffers are assigned to patrol Pinecrest and clean the bathrooms there. Locals, including Geiszler, said that there are not at all enough employees to take care of the area. She recalled the approximately six bathrooms looking 'absolutely disgusting' during Memorial Day Weekend.
'You can't just have one or two people patrolling the beach every weekend with all those people,' she added. According to Vasquez, staffing in his office has increased over the past year and he is making sure his deputies are prioritizing calls from Pinecrest this summer to try and crack down on the mayhem. 'I stand behind everyone's constitutional rights to access that land, but we were receiving astronomical amounts of complaints about overcrowding and illegal parking,' he said. While many locals have brought up implementing restrictions across the park and lake at local town hall meetings, Winstead said the county has not decided on that just yet.
'Right now, we're not looking at restricting access in any way. We're trying to keep everything open for everybody,' he explained. 'But if there were some kind of restriction in that area, we'd have a carrying capacity and that would affect everybody — cabin owners, visitors, everybody.' Kirk said they have also considered bringing in metered parking spaces into the beach area, installing a gated tollbooth at the entrance that would not allow cars in when capacity is reached, and offering a parking shuttle to the beach. 'There are a lot of potentials. We'll have an evaluation after this summer,' Kirk said.
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The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
US lawmakers balance security and openness as threats of political violence rise
'Tell Eric Swalwell that we are coming and that we are going to handle everyone. We are going to hurt everyone. We are coming to hurt them.' The staff at representative Swalwell's California district office had heard the man's voice before. He had called twice in previous weeks to leave revolting, racist threats against the Democratic congressman and his wife in voicemails, according to an FBI criminal complaint released on Monday. 'So, I'm fine with anything at this point. I'm tired of it. I'll just set up behind my .308 and I'll do my job,' he said in one voice recording. The .308 is a reference to a rifle, according to the criminal complaint. 'You want a war? Get your war started.' Swalwell's staff reported the latest threat. This time, the FBI charged the caller with a crime. As threats of political violence escalate – and the impact of the political assassination in Minnesota reverberates across the country – lawmakers like Swalwell are re-evaluating how to manage the balance between openness and security. The instinct of security professionals may be to increase physical security and limit the availability of elected officials to the public. But that approach runs headlong into a conflict with the imperative for politicians to connect with their constituents. 'I'm not going be intimidated. I know the aim of this threat is to have me shrink or hide under the bed and not speak out,' Swalwell told the Guardian. 'This guy's terrorizing the members of Congress, law enforcement and staff, and it just has no place in our civil discourse.' Swalwell has had to spend nearly $1m on security over the last two years, he said. That money comes out of his campaign accounts. 'When they threaten you and you protect yourself, your family and your staff, you're dipping into your campaign resources,' Swalwell said. 'You have this decision calculus where you can protect your family or you can protect your re-election, but it's been costly to do both.' The caller, Geoffrey Chad Giglio, was no stranger to the FBI or to the public. Reuters interviewed him in October while looking at violent political rhetoric after the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life, presenting him as a provocateur and an example of the new viciousness. 'I push the envelope,' Giglio told Reuters, adding that he would never hurt anyone. 'If I have to go to jail because somebody thinks I'm really a threat, oh well, so be it.' Giglio's made his last call to Swalwell's office on 13 June according to the complaint, apparently undaunted after being interviewed by the FBI about previous threats only a few days earlier. Researchers have been tracking an increase in threats made against lawmakers for years, with the January 6 attack on the Capitol a way station on a dark road. 'We see an increase starting around 2017, 2018,' said Pete Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University, who in 2024 published a review of a decade of federal data on intimidation charges against federal elected officials. From 2013 to 2016, Capitol police charged an average of 38 people a year for making threats to lawmakers. By 2017 to 2022, the average had grown to 62 charges a year. 'It's hard to know whether there's an increase in threats to public officials or there's an increase in the level of enforcement that's producing more criminal investigations and ultimately more charges filed in prosecution,' Simi said. But surveys of public officials at both the state and federal level also indicate an increase in threats. In a survey of local lawmakers published last year by the Brennan Center for Justice, 'substantial numbers' said they thought the severity of the threats was increasing, said Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center's elections and government program. 'Lawmakers are reporting that it's kind of getting worse, the severity of what's being said in these voicemails, these emails, whatever messages people are getting,' Ramachandran said. Best security practices have begun to emerge, but the implementation is inconsistent across states, she said. One recommendation is for a specific law enforcement agency to take charge of monitoring and tracking threats against lawmakers, Ramachandran said. The US Capitol police are tasked with responding to threats to federal lawmakers, who may then refer cases to the FBI and the Department of Justice for prosecution. The responding agency at the state level is often less obvious to elected officials. 'A lot of lawmakers we spoke with didn't even know who they're supposed to report these things to,' she said. Many elected officials said they wanted to balance security with accessibility, Ramachandran said, citing interviews with dozens of local lawmakers in 2023 about security and threats. 'The vast majority of the lawmakers we talked to were really concerned about their constituents not feeling welcome, in terms of coming to visit their offices or going to the state capitol to be heard,' she said. 'There was a repeated concern, of course, for safety of their staff and their families and all of that, and the constituents themselves, but also with not wanting things to be on lockdown and wanting to be accessible to constituents.' But the assassination of state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their Minneapolis-area home last month, has provoked a reassessment of that balance. At the federal level, the committee on House administration doubled spending on personal security measures for House members last week, allowing congressional representatives to spend $20,000 to increase home security, up from $10,000, and up to $5,000 a month on personal security, up from $150 a month. The committee's chair, Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin, and ranking member Joseph Morelle, a Democrat from New York, also asked the Department of Justice to give the US Capitol police additional federal prosecutors to help investigate and prosecute threats against legislators. Federal campaign finance law, as revised in January, provides a mechanism for federal officeholders to spend campaign money for locks, alarm systems, motion detectors and security camera systems, as well as some structural security devices, such as wiring, lighting, gates, doors and fencing, 'so long as such devices are intended solely to provide security and not to improve the property or increase its value'. It also provides for campaign funds to pay for cybersecurity measures and for professional security personnel. Both Democratic and Republican legislators in Oklahoma sent a letter earlier this month to the Oklahoma ethics commission, asking if state law could be similarly interpreted, citing the assassinations in Minnesota. Lawmakers in California are also looking for ways to loosen campaign finance restrictions for candidate spending on security. California has a $10,000 lifetime cap for candidates on personal security spending from election funds – a cap that legislation doubled last year. A proposal by assemblymember Mia Bonta would suspend the cap through 2028, with a $10,000 annual cap after that. Enhanced home security for Minnesota legislators will be covered by a state budget appropriation for any member asking for it, lawmakers decided last week. This is in addition to state rules enacted in 2021 allowing $3,000 in campaign spending toward personal security. Minnesota and several other states – including Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico and North Dakota – almost immediately removed home address data from state government websites after the Minnesota assassinations. New Mexico had already largely restricted this data after a series of drive-by shootings at lawmakers' homes by a failed Republican candidate in 2022 and 2023. Restricting public information about lawmaker's residency can be a political headache in some states. Generally, an elected official must live in the district he or she represents. Residency challenges are a common campaign issue, but a challenge cannot be raised if the address of a lawmaker is unknown to the public. 'It is something that I think we as a society are going to have to grapple with,' said Ramachandran. 'It may not be the best idea to enforce those rules about residency requirements by just having the whole general public know where people live and to be able to go up to their house and see if they really live there, right?' Some states like Nevada are exploring long-term solutions. Nevada's secretary of state, Francisco Aguilar, is forming a taskforce to look at ways to restrict access to lawmakers' residential information without interfering in election challenges. 'Political violence has no place in our country,' he said in a statement. 'People, including elected officials, should be able to have differing opinions and go to work without fear of violence or threats.' The challenge for lawmakers and investigators is crafting a policy to deal with people who because of their behavior are unusual outliers. As angry as people can be about politics, only a tiny few will make a phone call to a legislator to make a threat, and even fewer will carry out that threat. 'The vast, vast majority of Americans are reporting on these surveys that they don't support political violence,' Simi said. 'So those that do are an outlier. But there's some question about whether that outlier is increasing over time. We don't have great data over time, so that's a hard question to answer.'
Telegraph
9 hours ago
- Telegraph
Pilots are too afraid to seek mental health treatment – and the consequences can be devastating
The name Joseph Emerson might not mean much on this side of the Atlantic. But over the past year, the California-based pilot has become somewhat of a controversial media personality in his native US, giving various television interviews about the 'most consequential' three seconds of his life. In this instance, 'most consequential' might be an understatement. In October 2023, Emerson was travelling on an Alaska Airlines flight to San Francisco. As a licensed pilot travelling off-duty, he was given a spare seat in the cockpit, in order to make room for more paying passengers. At some point during the flight, Emerson suffered what he says was a dissociative episode, which led him to attempt to cut off the plane's engines. Involuntary or not, Emerson's sabotage was unsuccessful, with the working pilots able to resume control and make an unscheduled landing. Almost two years on, Emerson is awaiting trial on a slew of federal and state charges (including 83 counts of attempted murder – one for every person on board), which could see him serving 20 years in prison. Free to speak about his case in the media, Emerson and his wife have founded their own campaign group, Clear Skies Ahead, which addresses what they say is a tendency of pilots to downplay any mental health issues in order to keep flying. In interviews, Emerson has said he was acting in a dream-like state, having taken magic mushrooms days earlier after a severe bout of depression brought on by the death of his friend. The case has been back in the spotlight, following the news that investigators are pursuing the possibility that the tragic Air India crash – in which 260 people lost their lives on a flight from Ahmedabad to London – could have been a case of pilot murder-suicide. If true, it could be the third or fourth such case in just over ten years. (The 2015 Germanwings tragedy is confirmed as being caused deliberately; pilot murder-suicide is a leading theory in the disappearance of 2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 370; the crash of China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 in 2022 may have also been deliberate.) For all the media attention on his case, Emerson gets short shrift from some aviation professionals. 'To be honest, I think that intentionally crashing a plane with hundreds of passengers on board has less to do with mental health and more to do with a psychopathic mind,' says one industry insider. At the same time, there is a growing consensus that mental health has become a critical issue for aviation safety – even if the kind of disasters seen in previous cases (such as the infamous Germanwings tragedy, in which 150 passengers died when a suicidal pilot crashed his plane into the French Alps) represent the most extreme end of the wedge. 'Pilots face a perfect storm of psychological risk factors' According to a paper published last year by the Royal Aeronautical Society, there are 'high levels of self-reported mental health issues' across the civil aviation sector. The paper cites an ongoing wellbeing survey from Trinity College Dublin, which has found that around 10 per cent of pilots report having poor mental health, with a third of that group (so 3 per cent total) describing their mental health as 'very bad'. 'Pilots face what I often call a 'perfect storm' of psychological risk factors,' says Dr Kultar Singh Garcha, an NHS GP and the medical director for mental health app Flow Neuroscience. 'You've got long hours, disrupted sleep cycles from constant time-zone shifts, chronic fatigue, and often a strange kind of emotional isolation – even though they're surrounded by people all day. 'It is also true that there's an incredible sense of responsibility. Most people don't go to work knowing that hundreds of lives literally depend on their performance. That level of pressure isn't inherently bad – some pilots thrive on it – but over time, it can wear down your nervous system. Especially if you're not sleeping well, or if there are things going on at home that you feel cut off from.' It's true that those factors might not be unique to pilots. But one factor that has become particularly pertinent in discussions around mental health and aviation is the increased reluctance of pilots to come forward about their issues, particularly given the risk (perceived or otherwise) that they could lose their licence or be suspended from duty. In 2022, a study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine suggested that 56 per cent of pilots avoided seeking medical help in case it resulted in them being removed from duty. That raises the risk that manageable mental health problems will worsen over time, or that pilots will turn to riskier strategies to 'self-medicate' and keep working. The issue was brought into sharp focus following the Germanwings crash, when it was revealed that the pilot in question, Andreas Lubitz, had previously sought treatment for suicidal tendencies, but had hidden this from his employer for fear of losing his job. Searching for solutions Following the tragedy, various regulatory changes were made, including stricter rules around having two pilots in the cockpit at all times. But while having an additional pair of eyes may prevent these specific cases, the more significant change – say pilots – has been the push to make it easier for pilots to come forward with any potential mental health issues. 'The biggest change has been the peer support programmes that you now see across all of the major airlines,' says a member of the British Airline Pilots' Association (BALPA), speaking on condition of anonymity. 'In the past few years, you've had hundreds of pilots contacting these programmes who would have otherwise been suffering in silence.' 'I know that BA has a confidential helpline manned by other staffers – sort of like an internal Samaritans,' says one industry insider. 'They are well aware that the stresses of the job can lead to personal crises – and not just for pilots.' They point to a case earlier this year when a crew member reportedly danced naked through the business-class cabin, following a suspected mental health episode. At the same time, though, the impetus still remains on pilots to come forward in the first place. 'We can see from recent studies in America that the same issues of fear of losing your licence are still very prevalent,' says Marc Atherton, an aviation psychologist and chair of the Royal Aeronautical Society's mental health specialist group. 'That tells me we still have a long way to go.' Solving that particular conundrum remains the trickiest question. In the immediate wake of the Germanwings tragedy, the airline's parent group, Lufthansa Group, suggested random psychological testing of pilots – though that suggestion was quickly dismissed as less than helpful. 'I think it was a case of the industry wanting to be seen to be doing something,' says the (anonymous) BALPA member and current pilot. Pilots who want to seek treatment shouldn't be so worried, they suggest, given that the number of cases in which licences are suspended for mental health reasons are vanishingly small. What they might have to contemplate, though, is the possibility of taking time away from work – which can bring complications in its own right. Sick leave policies will differ across airlines, but we have seen examples of airlines being very forward-thinking in terms of giving pilots a chance to still be involved with the company during that time while they're not flying,' they say. 'If someone is taking time away from flying for addiction issues, for example, having some positive experience of work during that time will be very helpful.' Over in the States, Clear Skies Ahead insists there are 'no easy answers' and that 'every pilot should get the care they need, because they are worth it and will be better for it'. With more than 300,000 airline pilots currently working across the world, the real changes will happen behind the scenes – rather than those horrific cases that make the headlines.
The Guardian
11 hours ago
- The Guardian
Delta co-pilot reportedly arrested on plane for child sexual abuse materials
A co-pilot with Delta Air Lines was reportedly arrested by federal agents at San Francisco international airport over the weekend on charges related to child sexual abuse materials, according to a senior official with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and multiple media reports. The arrest reportedly took place shortly after the flight – Delta Flight 2809 from Minnesota – landed at the California airport at about 9.35pm on Saturday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Several passengers who were on the plane told various media outlets that about 10 law enforcement officers, including agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), boarded the plane before passengers were let off. The agents reportedly arrested and removed one of the co-pilots from the plane. One passenger told the Chronicle that 'a group of people with badges, guns, and different agency vests/markings were pushing their way up through the aisle to the cockpit'. She said the officers 'stormed the cockpit, cuffed the co-pilot, arrested him, walked him down the aisle, and ushered him off the plane through the cabin doors located between first [class] and coach' class. The same witness said that a second group of officers returned to the aircraft shortly after to retrieve the co-pilot's belongings. The pilot has not yet been publicly identified. In a statement to the Guardian on Monday, a senior DHS official confirmed that HSI agents had arrested the pilot in question on charges pertaining to child sexual abuse materials. A DHS spokesperson also told the Chronicle on Sunday that the agency assisted local authorities in executing an arrest warrant. Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin on Sunday cited a senior federal source who said that the co-pilot had been taken into custody by HSI on allegations involving child sexual abuse materials. In a statement on Monday afternoon, Delta Air Lines said: 'Delta has zero tolerance for unlawful conduct and will fully cooperate with law enforcement. We are appalled by reports of the charges related to the arrest and the individual in question has been suspended pending an investigation.' Another passenger who was on the plane spoke with the travel outlet View from the Wing. They said that the officers 'stormed to the front' of the aircraft and 'grabbed/arrested' the co-pilot. The passenger added that the remaining pilot appeared to have 'no idea what just happened'. The outlet also published video footage showing agents leaving the cockpit.
