NORTH COAST, Calif. – The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office said it has arrested a Lake County man who was driving a stolen vehicle and in possession of counterfeit prescription pills containing fentanyl.
Mark Andrew Nielsen, 33, of Nice was arrested on Friday, according to Sgt. Jay Vanoven.
At 1:53 a.m. Friday a Mendocino County Sheriff's deputy was on patrol in Ukiah on Arlington Drive near North Pine Street when the deputy noticed a vehicle driving erratically down residential streets, Vanoven said.
Vanoven said the deputy caught up to the vehicle, a gray Dodge Charger, on Arlington Drive, where it suddenly pulled over and stopped.
The deputy contacted the driver, identified as Nielsen. Vanoven said that while speaking with Nielsen, the deputy learned the vehicle Nielsen was driving was reported stolen out of Lake County.
Vanoven said the deputy arrested Nielsen for being in possession of a stolen vehicle.
While searching Nielsen's pockets incident to the arrest, the deputy located a plastic bag containing three blue tablets, Vanoven said.
These tablets are known to be counterfeit prescription medications referred to as "M30" or "Fetty" and contain the dangerous narcotic, fentanyl. Vanoven said "M30" pills, and fentanyl in other forms, have been identified as the cause of many drug overdose medical emergencies and deaths throughout Mendocino County.
Vanoven said the three pills found in Nielsen's possession were seized as evidence.
Nielsen was transported to the Mendocino County Jail where he was booked for possession of a stolen vehicle and possession of a controlled narcotic, Vanoven said.
In accordance with the COVID-19 emergency order issued by the Judicial Council of California, Vanoven said bail was set at zero dollars and Nielsen was released after the jail booking process, on his promise to appear in court at a later date.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County tribes are set to receive Indian Housing Block Grant funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
On Thursday, HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge announced $450 million in Indian Housing Block Grants is being distributed to Indian tribes across the country to respond to COVID-19.
Of that total amount, $31 million will go to California tribes, HUD said.
“With the enactment of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, President Biden is making a clear statement that the Federal Government is committed to ensuring equitable access to communities hardest hit by the pandemic,” Secretary Fudge said in the announcement. “HUD understands the significance of our responsibility to serve American Indian and Alaska Native families, and the Department is dedicated to working in a government-to-government manner with Tribes to quickly bring much-needed relief to Tribal communities.”
This funding will be used to help tribes carry out affordable housing activities to protect the safety and health of their tribal members and communities, the agency said.
Indian Housing Block Grants primarily benefit low-income American Indian and Alaska Native families. HUD said the amount of each grant is based on a formula that considers local needs and housing units managed.
Eligible activities for the funds include housing development, operation and maintenance, modernization of existing housing, housing services to eligible families and individuals, housing management services, crime prevention and safety activities, and model activities that provide creative approaches to solving affordable housing problems in Indian Country, according to the HUD announcement.
All seven of Lake County’s tribes are receiving funding in this round of allocations.
Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians will receive the largest funding amount, $352,499.
“The Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians will be utilizing the funds from HUD to address housing needs, housing-related issues, and issues directly related to the pandemic,” the tribe said in a statement issued to Lake County News.
Robinson Rancheria will receive $255,128; the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake, $120,302; Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians, $106,222; Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians, $91,299; Elem Indian Colony of Pomo Indians, $48,302; and Koi Nation of Northern California (Lower Lake), $35,007.
Sherry Treppa, Habematolel’s tribal chair, said the tribe has developed programs around utilities assistance and home repairs and she believes the new round of funds likely will be used that way, but a formal decision hasn’t been made.
While this latest federal funding has specific requirements, the tribe last year was able to reach out into the community to offer assistance from the federal CARES Act.
Treppa said the tribe created its own CARES Act to assist first responders and educators to address costs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Habematolel gave $10,000 to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, $25,000 to the Northshore Fire Protection District and $30,000 to the Upper Lake Unified School District, Treppa reported.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County’s move earlier this month out of the most restrictive tier on the state’s COVID-19 Blueprint for a Safer Economy has allowed for more local schools to open up for on-campus instruction.
Since the start of the school year, only two local districts – Upper Lake Unified and Lucerne Elementary – started all grades in the “hybrid” model that allowed for in-person instruction as well as distance learning, as Lake County News has reported.
The Lake County Office of Education reported that its schools also have been open since August for in-person classes, as has the Lake County International Charter School.
The rest of the districts at that point were in the distance learning model, and had been planning to reopen in the winter but had to remain in distance learning due to the county going into the purple, or most restrictive, tier on the blueprint at the end of November.
Even before the tier adjustment, elementary schools were able to open under the governor’s State Safe Schools for All plan, which focused on bringing the younger grades back first and phasing in other grade levels through the spring. The plan’s phased-in approach was based on the understanding that younger children are at a lower risk of contracting and transmitting COVID-19.
Konocti Unified School District opened to in-person hybrid instruction for kindergarten through sixth grades on Feb. 22, with grades seventh through 12th returning to campus on March 22.
Kelseyville Unified School District’s kindergarten through fifth graders returned to school on March 8, and sixth through 12th on March 23.
Lakeport Unified School District reopened on March 8 for in-person classes for K-6 and on March 22 for seventh through 12th grades.
In the Middletown Unified School District, Minnie Cannon and Cobb Elementary School opened to in-person instruction on half-days on March 1, the same date that Coyote Valley opened to in-person hybrid instruction.
Middletown Middle School is open to in-person instruction – no hybrid – and students returned to campus on March 22. All other grade levels at Middletown unified are in the in-person hybrid mode.
All schools are still offering distance only learning to those families that choose it, said Jill Ruzicka of the Lake County Office of Education.
Kelseyville Unified Superintendent Dave McQueen said the district was able to reopen transitional kindergarten through fifth grades while still in the purple tier.
Once Lake County went into the red tier, the district reopened Mountain Vista Middle School and the high school for hybrid instruction, McQueen explained.
“All the sites are open,” he said.
He said half of the district’s students are back on campus and half remain on distance learning because they wanted to stay home.
In the Lakeport Unified School District, Superintendent Jill Falconer said the principals of the middle and high schools, which opened for in-person learning last Monday, “report that things are going well and that students are very happy to be back on campus.”
She added, “Students have been respectful of the new rules and guidelines. We are overall very pleased to have had a smooth transition to Hybrid and it is just awesome to have some of our students back on campus.”
In related news, federal officials reported $28.3 million in assistance from the American Rescue Plan is allocated to help Lake County’s schools.
The breakdown is as follows:
– Kelseyville Unified, $5,054,000; – Konocti Unified School District, $13,835,000; – Lakeport Unified School District, $3,239,000; – Lucerne Elementary School District, $944,000; – Middletown Unified School District, $2,454,000; and – Upper Lake Unified School District, $2,848,000.
“We don't have any idea when we will actually see the money,” Falconer said.
She said the district is using its current budget/Local Control and Accountability Plan advisory committee to help gather input from stakeholders and determine the best use of the money.
Special thanks to Jill Ruzicka of the Lake County Office of Education for assistance in confirming the dates of in-person instruction reopening of the county’s school districts.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Deborah Fuller, University of Washington; Albert H. Titus, University at Buffalo, and Nevan Krogan, University of California, San Francisco
A number of technologies and tools got a chance to prove themselves for the first time in the context of COVID-19. Three researchers working in gene-based vaccines, wearable diagnostics and drug discovery explain how their work rose to the challenge of the pandemic, and their hopes that each technology is now poised to continue making big changes in medicine.
Genetic vaccines
Deborah Fuller, Professor of Microbiology, University of Washington
Thirty years ago, researchers for the first time injected mice with genes from a foreign pathogen to produce an immune response. Like many new discoveries, these first gene-based vaccines had their ups and downs. Early mRNA vaccines were hard to store and didn’t produce the right type of immunity. DNA vaccines were more stable but weren’t efficient at getting into the cell’s nucleus, so they failed to produce sufficient immunity.
When COVID-19 struck, mRNA vaccines in particular were ready to be put to a real-world test. The 94% efficacy of the mRNA vaccines surpassed health officials’ highest expectations.
DNA and mRNA vaccines offer huge advantages over traditional types of vaccines, since they use only genetic code from a pathogen – rather than the entire virus or bacteria. Traditional vaccines take months, if not years, to develop. In contrast, once scientists get the genetic sequence of a new pathogen, they can design a DNA or mRNA vaccine in days, identify a lead candidate for clinical trials within weeks and have millions of doses manufactured within months. This is basically what happened with the coronavirus.
Gene-based vaccines also produce precise and effective immune responses. They stimulate not only antibodies that block an infection, but also a strong T cell response that can clear an infection if one occurs. This makes these vaccines better able to respond to mutations, and it also means they could be capable of eliminating chronic infections or cancerous cells.
The hopes that gene-based vaccines could one day provide a vaccine for malaria or HIV, cure cancer, replace less effective traditional vaccines or be ready to stop the next pandemic before it gets started are no longer far-fetched. Indeed, many DNA and mRNA vaccines against a wide range of infectious diseases, for treatment of chronic infections and for cancer are already in advanced stages and clinical trials. As someone who has been working on these vaccines for decades, I believe their proven effectiveness against COVID-19 will usher in a new era of vaccinology with genetic vaccines at the forefront.
Wearable tech and early illness detection
Albert H. Titus, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, University at Buffalo
During the pandemic, researchers have taken full advantage of the proliferation of smartwatches, smart rings and other wearable health and wellness technology. These devices can measure a person’s temperature, heart rate, level of activity and other biometrics. With this information, researchers have been able to track and detect COVID-19 infections even before people notice they have any symptoms.
As wearable usage and adoption grew in recent years, researchers began studying the ability of these devices to monitor disease. However, although real-time data collection was possible, previous work had focused primarily on chronic diseases.
But the pandemic both served as a lens to focus many researchers in the field of health wearables and offered them an unprecedented opportunity to study real-time infectious disease detection. The number of people potentially affected by a single disease – COVID-19 – at one time gave researchers a large population to draw from and to test hypotheses on. Combined with the fact that more people than ever are using wearables with health monitoring functions and that these devices collect lots of useful data, researchers were able to try to diagnose a disease solely using data from wearables – an experiment they could only dream of before.
Wearables can detect symptoms of COVID-19 or other illnesses before symptoms are noticeable. While they have proved to be capable of detecting sickness early, the symptoms wearables detect are not unique to COVID-19. These symptoms can be predictive of a number of potential illnesses or other health changes, and it is much harder to say what illness a person has versus simply saying they are sick with something.
Moving into the post-pandemic world, it’s likely that more people will incorporate wearables into their lives and that the devices will only improve. I expect the knowledge researchers have gained during the pandemic on how to use wearables to monitor health will form a starting point for how to handle future outbreaks – not just of viral pandemics, but potentially of other events such as food poisoning outbreaks and seasonal flu episodes. But since wearable tech is concentrated within pockets of affluent and younger populations, the research community and society as a whole must simultaneously address the disparities that exist.
A new way to discover drugs
Nevan Krogan, Professor of Cellular Molecular Pharmacology and Director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute, University of California, San Francisco
Proteins are the molecular machines that make your cells function. When proteins malfunction or are hijacked by a pathogen, you often get disease. Most drugs work by disrupting the action of one or several of these malfunctioning or hijacked proteins. So a logical way to look for new drugs to treat a specific disease is to study individual genes and proteins that are directly affected by that disease. For example, researchers know that the BRCA gene – a gene that protects your DNA from being damaged – is closely related to the development of breast and ovarian cancer. So a lot of work has focused on finding drugs that affect the function of the BRCA protein.
However, single proteins working in isolation are usually not solely responsible for disease. Genes and the proteins they encode are part of complicated networks – the BRCA protein interacts with tens to hundreds of other proteins that help it perform its cellular functions. My colleagues and I are part of a small but growing field of researchers who study these connections and interactions among proteins – what we call protein networks.
For a few years now, my colleagues and I have been exploring the potential of these networks to find more ways drugs could ameliorate disease. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, we knew we had to try this approach and see if it could be used to rapidly find a treatment for this emerging threat. We immediately started mapping the extensive network of human proteins that SARS-CoV-2 hijacks so it can replicate.
Once we built this map, we pinpointed human proteins in the network that drugs could easily target. We found 69 compounds that influence the proteins in the coronavirus network. 29 of them are already FDA-approved treatments for other illnesses. On Jan. 25 we published a paper showing that one of the drugs, Aplidin (Plitidepsin), currently being used to treat cancer, is 27.5 times more potent than remdesivir in treating COVID-19, including one of the new variants The drug has been approved for phase 3 clinical trials in 12 countries as a treatment for the new coronavirus.
But this idea of mapping the protein interactions of diseases to look for novel drug targets doesn’t apply just to the coronavirus. We have now used this approach on other pathogens as well as other diseases including cancer, neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders.
These maps are allowing us to connect the dots among many seemingly disparate aspects of single diseases and discover new ways drugs could treat them. We hope this approach will allow us and researchers in other areas of medicine to discover new therapeutic strategies and also see whether any old drugs might be repurposed to treat other conditions.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Clearlake City Council has approved new five-year employment services agreements with both the city manager and police chief.
The council unanimously approved the new contracts for City Manager Alan Flora and Police Chief Andrew White at its March 18 meeting.
The contracts can be found from page 51 to 72 in the agenda packet below.
Flora, who previously worked in the Lake County Administrative Office and as the county of Mendocino’s assistant chief executive officer, was hired as Clearlake’s assistant city manager and finance director in the spring of 2018. The council hired him as the city manager in March 2019.
White joined the city in July 2018, coming from the city of Suisun. He has an extensive background in both policing and technology.
City Attorney Ryan Jones went before the council to propose the new contract with Flora.
Jones said Flora had one more year on his original contract, and so the proposal was to replace that old contract with a new five-year contract, “which is a good length.”
The new contract increases Flora’s monthly pay by 7.5 percent to $13,785.63, or a total annual salary of $165,427.56.
Flora would receive a 3 percent raise each July 1 beginning in 2022 based on a favorable evaluation from the city council and the Local Economic Benchmark exceeding audited revenues from fiscal year 2019-20, Jones said.
There was no public comment before Councilman Russ Cremer moved to approve Flora’s new contract, with Councilwoman Joyce Overton seconding and the council approving it 5-0.
Flora, in turn, presented White’s proposed new contract to the council.
White has “served admirably” as police chief and made a number of improvements in the police department, Flora said.
White’s original contract was set to expire in July. Flora said he had discussed with White his interest in staying on with the city longer, and he agreed to the new contract’s terms.
The new contract for White also is for five years. It would also give White a 7.5-percent increase, bringing his monthly salary to $12,647.37 or $151,768.44 annually.
Like the city manager contract, White’s new contract also would give him an annual 3-percent salary increase starting on July 1, 2022, based on a good review from the city manager and the city meeting the Local Economic Benchmark.
There was no public comment. Cremer moved to approve the contract, with Overton seconding and the council voting unanimously.
Mayor Dirk Slooten said he’s so happy the city has a good team, joking that the city has Flora and White tied down for five years so they can’t leave.
Both of the new contracts go into effect immediately.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
A new U.S. Geological Survey study highlights the importance of homeowners testing their well water to ensure it is safe for consumption, particularly in drought-prone areas.
The first-of-its-kind national-scale study of private well water, conducted in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showed that drought may lead to elevated levels of naturally occurring arsenic and that the longer a drought lasts, the higher the probability of arsenic concentrations exceeding U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for drinking water.
Researchers estimate that during drought conditions, 4.1 million people in the lower 48 states who use private domestic wells are potentially exposed to unsafe levels of arsenic. This is an increase of 54% from the estimated 2.7 million people exposed to unhealthy arsenic levels in private wells during normal, non-drought conditions.
Arsenic is a metal that can occur naturally in bedrock and sediments around the world and is commonly reported in drinking-water supply wells.
However, chronic exposure to arsenic from drinking water is associated with an increased risk of several types of cancers, including bladder, lung, prostate and skin cancers. Other adverse effects include developmental impairments, cardiovascular disease, adverse birth outcomes and impacts on the immune and endocrine systems.
The study’s findings can help public health officials and emergency managers notify well owners in areas potentially affected and further refine their strategies for addressing the issue.
The EPA regulates public water supplies, but maintenance, testing and treatment of private water supplies are the responsibility of the homeowner.
Private well owners can work with their local and state officials to determine the best way to test and, if necessary, treat their water supply.
“The population potentially exposed to arsenic levels exceeding the EPA standard during simulated drought conditions amounts to roughly one-tenth of the estimated 37.2 to 43.2 million people in the conterminous U.S. who use domestic wells for household water supply,” said Melissa Lombard, a USGS hydrologist and lead author of this study.
This is the first national-scale study to assess the potential impact of drought on arsenic levels in private domestic wells. It is also the first to estimate the population of private well users who are potentially exposed during droughts to arsenic levels above EPA’s limits, which are intended to protect human health.
The study also estimated that 2.7 million people are exposed to elevated arsenic levels above EPA standards under normal conditions. This is an increase from a 2017 study by the USGS and CDC that estimated 2.1 million people were exposed to elevated arsenic levels. The increase reflects new estimates of well locations and the population reliant on private wells.
The new study, which did not examine private domestic wells in Alaska or Hawaii, includes maps showing where simulated drought conditions are likely to increase the probability of high arsenic levels and the number of people potentially exposed.
The states with the largest populations facing elevated arsenic levels in private domestic well water during the simulated drought conditions are Ohio (approximately 374,000 people), Michigan (320,000 people), Indiana (267,000 people), Texas (200,000 people) and California (196,000 people).
Even without drought conditions, relatively large numbers of people are estimated to be exposed to elevated arsenic levels in private domestic well water. Under normal conditions, the largest populations potentially exposed to high levels of arsenic are in Ohio (approximately 241,000 people), Michigan (226,000 people), Indiana (162,000 people), California (157,000 people) and Maine (121,000 people).
This study is the first to explore the potential large-scale impact of drought on naturally occurring arsenic in private drinking water wells,” said Lombard. “While the results suggest that drought will have a negative impact, the study cannot predict what might happen at an individual well, further highlighting the importance of testing.”
The occurrence of arsenic in groundwater is due to a variety of complex interactions, added Lombard. The reasons for the increase in arsenic during drought and as drought persists could vary depending on changes to groundwater flow, alterations in water chemistry and other factors.
Further exacerbating these challenges, climate models predict increasing temperatures and decreasing precipitation in portions of North America during the 21st century. USGS findings suggest that as the duration of drought increases, the probability of arsenic concentrations greater than EPA’s drinking water standard will also increase.
This study used an existing USGS statistical model that predicts the probability for elevated arsenic concentrations in domestic well water. In the new research, scientists used the model to simulate drought conditions by changing precipitation and groundwater levels. The researchers also used data from the drought of 2012, one of the worst on record in the U.S., to investigate how drought duration can impact arsenic levels.
Read the study “Assessing the Impact of Drought on Arsenic Exposure from Private Domestic Wells in the Conterminous United States” published in Environmental Science and Technology at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.9b05835.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The National Weather Service is reporting chances of early April rain beginning this weekend.
The forecast calls for warm and dry weather across the region Wednesday afternoon through at least Saturday.
Temperatures for the remainder of the week are expected to range into the high 70s during the day and the high 40s at night, with light winds of up to 9 miles per hour.
Beginning on Sunday, the forecast calls for chances of showers, continuing into Tuesday.
Over the weekend and into early next week, temperatures are expected to be slightly cooler, topping out in the low 60s in the day and low 40s at night, the National Weather Service reported.
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In honor of the men and women who served during the Vietnam War, the state of California will commemorate “Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day” on Tuesday, March 30.
The Vietnam War, which lasted from 1955 to 1975, claimed the lives of more than 58,000 U.S. service members, including 5,822 Californians.
In Lake County, there are 2,268 Vietnam, said County Veteran Service Officer Saul Sanabria.
In a proclamation issued on Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the commemoration pays tribute to the brave men and women who selflessly answered our nation’s call.
“Despite their harrowing sacrifices – many suffering for the rest of their lives from the physical and mental wounds of war – our veterans did not receive the support and gratitude owed them upon returning home, a shameful reality we vow to never repeat. California is proud to stand by our veterans and is steadfastly committed to connecting them and their families with the benefits they have earned many times over, through education, advocacy and direct services,” the proclamation said.
It concluded, “Today, we reaffirm one of our most fundamental obligations as citizens of this great country: to honor those who have served and those who continue to serve with the respect, care and gratitude they profoundly deserve.”
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The governor has announced the distribution of $50 million in Community Power Resiliency grants through the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, or Cal OES, funds meant to protect local communities and vulnerable Californians from the impacts of utility-initiated power shutoffs.
“Even amidst a global pandemic, we continue to prepare our state for the natural and man-made disasters that may lie ahead,” said Gov. Newson. “These grants are part of our continued commitment to make sure that no Californian is left behind when disasters strike.”
This is the second round of public safety power shutoff resiliency grants from successive budget cycles proposed by the governor and supported by the Legislature.
In FY19-20, the Legislature approved the governor’s proposal to allocate $75 million in resiliency grants to counties, cities, tribes and state agencies.
Over these two budget cycles, counties have received $39 million, cities have received $23 million, tribes have received $4 million, state agencies have received $37.5 million and special districts have received $20 million.
This latest round of funds, allocated through the 2020-21 state budget, are designed to maintain the continuity of critical services that can be impacted by power outages, including schools, county election offices, food storage reserves and COVID-19 testing sites.
The funds are being distributed to 225 recipients, including all 58 counties, 51 incorporated cities, 20 federally recognized tribes and 96 special districts.
The state said the allocations include $13 million to counties, with allocations based on population and the counties required to use at least 50 percent of their award to support public safety power shutoff resiliency for one or more of the following priority areas – schools, elections offices, food storage reserves and/or COVID-19 testing sites.
Lake County will receive $183,393.
Cities also will receive $13 million, which the state allowing cities to apply for up to $300,000 on a competitive basis. Cities are encouraged to allocate funds to one or more of the following priority areas: schools, election offices, food storage reserves and/or COVID-19 testing sites. Neither of Lake County’s two cities are on the recipient’s list.
The state said $2.5 million has been allocated to California federally recognized tribes, with tribes allowed to apply for up to $150,000 on a competitive basis.
The Robinson Rancheria Citizens Business Council received $150,000.
Another $20 million will go to special districts that have an identified critical facility or facilities, or provide critical infrastructure, pursuant to the de-energization guidelines adopted by the California Public Utilities Commission. Funds also were awarded on a competitive basis to special districts, which were allowed to apply for up to $300,000.
Middletown Unified School District was the only special district in Lake County to receive grant funds. It was allocated $300,000.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Authorities are investigating a fatal early morning house fire in Clearlake Oaks that claimed the lives of three people.
Lt. Rich Ward of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office said that at 8:14 a.m. Monday deputies were dispatched to the 700th block of Bass Lane in Clearlake Oaks for a reported structure fire.
Deputies arrived and spoke with personnel from the Northshore Fire Protection District and learned that fire personnel responded to the structure fire at approximately 7:30 a.m., Ward said.
Upon firefighters’ arrival, the structure was fully engulfed in flames. Once the fire was contained, fire personnel suspected there may have been victims trapped within the residence, Ward said.
Ward said deputies canvassed the area and spoke with several residents. They learned a family of three lived within the home where the structure fire had occurred and the family’s vehicles were still present.
Deputies remained on scene until the remains of the structure were safe to search. Ward said the deputies recovered the remains of two suspected male adults and one female adult.
He said potential next of kin have been notified, however, the victims’ identities are pending a forensic examination.
The autopsies are anticipated to be performed later this week, but the positive identification of the victims could take several weeks, Ward said.
The Northshore Fire Protection District remains the primary investigating agency to determine the cause and origin of the fire, Ward said.
He said the investigation is ongoing and anyone with additional information is encouraged to contact the Lake County Sheriff’s Office or the North Shore Fire Protection District.
Heavy caseloads, job stress and biases can strain relations between parole and probation officers and their clients, upping offenders’ likelihood of landing back behind bars.
On a more hopeful note, a new study from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that nonjudgmental empathy training helps court-ordered supervision officers feel more emotionally connected to their clients and, arguably, better able to deter them from criminal backsliding.
The findings, published March 29 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show, on average, a 13% decrease in recidivism among the clients of parole and probation officers who participated in the UC Berkeley empathy training experiment.
“If an officer received this empathic training, real-world behavioral outcomes changed for the people they supervised, who, in turn, were less likely to go back to jail,” said study lead and senior author Jason Okonofua, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley.
The results are particularly salient in the face of nationwide efforts to reduce prison and jail populations amid a deadly pandemic and other adversities. The U.S. criminal justice system has among the highest rates of recidivism, with approximately two-thirds of incarcerated people rearrested within three years of their release and one-half sent back behind bars.
“The combination of COVID-19 and ongoing criminal justice reforms are diverting more people away from incarceration and toward probation or parole, which is why we need to develop scalable ways to keep pace with this change,” said Okonofua, who has led similar interventions for school teachers to check their biases before disciplining students.
How they conducted the study
At the invitation of a correctional department in a large East Coast city, Okonofua and graduate students in his lab at UC Berkeley sought to find out if a more caring approach on the part of court-appointed supervision officers would reverse trends in recidivism.
Among other duties, parole and probation officers keep track of their clients’ whereabouts, make sure they don’t miss a drug test or court hearing, or otherwise violate the terms of their release, and provide resources to help them stay out of trouble and out of jail.
For the study, the researchers surveyed more than 200 parole and probation officers who oversee more than 20,000 people convicted of crimes ranging from violent crimes to petty theft. Research protocols bar identifying the agency and its location.
Using their own and other scholars’ methodologies, the researchers designed and administered a 30-minute online empathy survey that focused on the officers’ job motivation, biases and views on relationships and responsibilities.
To trigger their sense of purpose and values, and tap into their empathy, the UC Berkeley survey asked what parts of the work they found fulfilling. One respondent talked about how, “When I run across those guys, and they’re doing well, I’m like, ‘Awesome!’” Others reported that being an advocate for people in need was most important to them.
As for addressing biases — including assumptions that certain people are predisposed to a life of crime — the survey cited egregious cases in which probation and parole officers abused their power over those under their supervision.
Survey takers were also asked to rate how much responsibility they bear, as individuals and members of a profession, for their peers’ transgressions. Most answered that they bore no responsibility.
Ten months after administering the training, researchers found a 13% decrease in recidivism among the offenders whose parole and probation officers had completed the empathy survey.
While the study yielded no specifics on what prevented the parolees and people on probation for reoffending in the period following the officers’ empathy training, the results suggest that a change in relationship dynamics played a key role.
“The officer is in a position of power to influence if it’s going to be an empathic or punitive relationship in ways that the person on parole or probation is not,” Okonofua said. “As our study shows, the relationship between probation and parole officers and the people they supervise plays a pivotal role and can lead to positive outcomes, if efforts to be more understanding are taken into consideration.
Co-authors of the study are Kimia Saadatian, Joseph Ocampo, Michael Ruiz and Perfecta Delgado Oxholm, all at UC Berkeley.
Yasmin Anwar writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
This young male domestic longhair cat has a gray and white coat and gold eyes.
He is in cat room kennel No. 135, ID No. 14436.
Male domestic short hair cat
This male domestic short hair cat has a black and white coat and green eyes.
He has been neutered.
He’s in cat room kennel No. 142, ID No. 14386.
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