County expands power of civilian oversight board

S1: Welcome to KPBS roundtable. I'm Scott Rodd. San Diego County leaders are pushing for more civilian oversight of its jails in an effort to reduce in-custody deaths.

S2:

S1: Then we learn about how landlords use sophisticated pricing software to set rental rates in how the government is trying to rein it in. Plus , we discuss other stories from the week on the roundup. That's ahead on KPBS roundtable. San Diego County has some of the deadliest jails in California , according to investigative reporting and audits done in recent years. The county has an oversight board that's supposed to monitor the sheriff's office and probation department. It's called the Citizens Law Enforcement Review Board , but the board has struggled in recent years to exercise its full watchdog authority. Earlier this week , the county Board of Supervisors voted to expand its oversight powers despite protests from the county sheriff. Jeff McDonald is here to discuss the latest developments on this story. He's an investigative reporter at the San Diego Union-Tribune and has done extensive reporting on jailed deaths in San Diego County. Jeff , welcome to roundtable. Hello.

S2: Hello. Thanks for having me.

S1: To start , give us an overview , a brief overview of what the county Board of Supervisors voted on this week.

S2: Well , they voted to expand the authority of the Civilian Oversight board , known as Curb , in a couple of significant ways. The biggest is that the jurisdiction will now extend to the jail's medical and health care staff. A number of the deaths that have occurred inside the jails are due to lapses in medical treatment , or mental health treatment or nursing. Um , and the curb hasn't until. Well , and they still it hasn't been formalized. It got voted on this week. But that approval would extend now to not just health care workers , but also the contractors who deliver services inside the jails.

S1: And so let's take a step back. Tell me more about the Citizens Law Enforcement Review Board or curb.

S2: It was formed in the early 90s , 1990 , uh , at a time when the sheriff and the Board of supervisors weren't always , uh , in sync. Uh , and , uh , and it it has a lot of authority. Uh , but it over the decades , it's been underfunded and it wasn't exercising its , uh , subpoena power , for example , it would defer to , uh , deputy's written statements and , uh , wouldn't , uh , wouldn't , uh , do a lot of the investigative , uh , powers that it had. It would simply take information from the sheriff's department that was provided rather than doing its own , um , you know , first research , its own original research , uh , its recommendations or advisory. So it doesn't have any real teeth , but it can make disciplinary recommendations when they find examples of misconduct or , and , uh , policy recommendations when they think that sheriff's department practices or probation department practices need to be improved.

S1:

S2: This sheriff particularly , but also historically , uh , the supervisors haven't always , um , gone against the sheriff , uh , because they tend to defer to the sheriff , uh , on whatever he or she wants to do. We have , uh , Kelly Martinez now , uh , the clerk board. As I said , they've had to rely on information provided from the sheriff's , uh , rather than doing their own research. Uh , although in recent years , under the most recent , uh , uh , executive , they do have the authority to go to death scenes now. So if someone dies in custody , uh , club is notified and investigator can go out. They can't participate in the investigation because that's been done by homicide. Uh , sheriff's department homicide people. Uh , but they can observe , and they see that as a benefit. But these investigations take , you know , 12 to 15 to 24 months , and there's just not a lot of , uh , information that's turned over to , uh , either the club or the family members , for that matter , of the people who do die in custody. So it's a , uh , something of a black hole of information. Mhm.

S1: On the topic of in-custody deaths , you've done a lot of reporting on jail deaths in San Diego County over the last several years.

S2: I always try and point that out. Uh , there are people that don't always have health care on the outside. Uh , but it's important to remember they haven't been convicted. Uh , the vast majority of them , uh , for the crime for which they're being held. So they're innocent. They just haven't made bail. Uh , in most cases , um , the level of medical services , uh , is adequate in many cases , uh , but also it's often delayed. And in too many cases , it's substandard. And so they're pretty serious lapses in in health care. People die on the inside from diseases and sicknesses that are not deadly. You know , in , in outside jails. Uh , we had a case earlier this year where , uh , the medical examiner found , uh , found the cause of death to be homicide because a diabetes patient wasn't getting his medicine. And , you know , people don't generally die from diabetes these days. So these are the sorts of lapses in health care that lead to deaths that are often classified as natural causes. Uh , so that's why it's important to have an outside investigative body , like clear or the medical examiner or , uh , you know , state regulators look at these deaths and not just the sheriff's department.

S1:

S2: So they're down and the population is down as well. So the ratio hasn't gone down. The ratio of deaths this year we know of at least eight. I think there's a couple of more that haven't been reported that we haven't nailed down yet. Uh , some of the causes are difficult to to nail down. Uh , the circumstances , it's not always cut and dry. Uh , but the worst year was a couple of years ago. They had 20 , uh , over. And I've looked at two decades worth of data that I'm pretty familiar with , and they've averaged. Um , when I started looking 5 or 6 years ago , they were averaging over one a month , uh , which is a lot. This jail was having before Covid. They had , uh , 5000 , 5500 inmates. Uh , now it's down around 4000. So the percentage of people in custody has gone down a lot. That's , uh , you know , 30% , something like that. Uh , and the number of deaths has declined , but not that much. So the death ratio is still climbing. Uh , but , yeah , it's been more than one a month for 20 , 20 , 20 some years. It's not a good situation In.

S1: Those numbers have gotten the attention in recent years of lawmakers at the state and local level.

S2: Before , if somebody died and it was found that to be a health care related death would not even investigate because they didn't have jurisdiction. So that will change. That's a good response. The state's taken an interest of it , I think , because it's been getting a lot of publicity. A couple of years ago. It was about three years ago. They ordered the audit and the the state audit that was released in early 2022 was pretty devastating. They documented 185 deaths over a 15 year period. Uh , they they looked at a few more years than we did in a in an investigation the Union-Tribune published in 2019. That series sparked the interest from the lawmakers to get the audit going. But the imprimatur of the state auditor is pretty serious , and they documented some very serious lapses in jail practices. The deputies weren't conducting required safety checks , for example. Uh , so that generated a lot of attention. Uh , and that led to some legislation being introduced. The governor finally signed two bills last year that tighten up reforms a little bit. And , uh , and I think it prompted , uh , Supervisor Montgomery , uh , step to introduce what she introduced last week that got approved this week.

S1:

S2: Uh , and she to her credit , she has taken the issue , uh , notably more serious than her predecessor , Bill Gore. Uh , so , you know , I think she deserves credit for that. Uh , she has implemented some changes , spent money redesigning jails , done trainings for the , uh , for the staff. She's , uh , increased the health care staff , uh , notably , uh , so she's made some steps , and that's her position. Is she ? You know , she doesn't need more oversight. She thinks that oversight , she called it burdensome in her public statement this week , which I thought might be a little tone deaf. Uh , she said that , uh , it was being driven by people who want to abolish jails and that it wasn't that wasn't a serious public policy , because , of course , we need jails.

S1: Now , is there any evidence to support that claim ? Because it really did jump out to me.

S2: Uh , if there is , she didn't provide it , and I certainly don't know of it. I know a lot of the activists , uh , I've known the families of people who died in custody , in some cases going back years. Uh , and these aren't , um , you know , radical , uh , activists or agitators. These are people who are still grieving today , and they show up at the club meetings every , every month. And , uh , it's wrenching to to listen to their testimony. And there a lot of them , their identity is wrapped up into the loss of their son or daughter. Uh , and so , no , they want to see reforms and fixes. They don't they don't dispute that jails are , you know , they don't want to abolish jails. And so I don't know where that came from , from the sheriff. Uh , I think it was an unfortunate , uh , you know , position for her to have taken because it's it's there's no evidence it doesn't appear true.

S1: And when the sheriff says that this oversight is burdensome , uh , is it an argument that , you know , when the investigations happen from , uh , the the Citizens Law Enforcement Review Board that , you know , it takes time away from sheriff deputies where they have to respond to questions , I guess.

S2: And I think we link to it in our story. Uh , what she said is that these people are already subject to a number of venues of oversight and a number of avenues of oversight for police and sheriff's deputies. It's the , you know , the state standard of , uh , of police practices that they all have to adhere to for doctors. It's the medical board for nurses. It's the nursing board. All of these people have licenses that they need to , uh , you know , stay current. And to stay current , you have to prove your competency. You have to do trainings. And so all of that , she referenced saying that , look , we're all under enough , uh , microscopes , so to speak. I'm paraphrasing what she said. And , uh , this expanded level of oversight by Clare isn't going to , uh , isn't going to help , isn't going to make much difference. In fact , it's going to cost us time and money to respond to it. Uh , I don't think I'm not sure that's the case. Uh , I think , you know , vigilant citizen oversight of its police forces is always a good idea , in my view. And , uh , uh , you know , the families would certainly agree and and taxpayers might agree to these , uh , don't forget , these deaths cost a lot of money. They , uh , the county has spent tens of millions of dollars paying off the families of people who died in custody or what. Otherwise , you know , hurt or or harmed by sheriff's deputies , uh , misconduct or negligence. And and that's no small thing. That's I the last I counted up since 2019 , it was 80 million plus in legal fees , including a $15 million settlement the county agreed to just this summer. Wow. Uh , for one one death of a 24 year old girl. It's , you know , in these cases are wrenching. And they , you know , not everybody who is , uh , loses someone in jail has the wherewithal to find a lawyer or has can find a lawyer willing to take the case because it's hard to sue the government. I mean , they have deep pockets , uh , a lot of which they spend , you know , defending themselves from lawsuits. So , uh , that case I just mentioned , the $15 million settlement took five years to litigate. Um , so it's a situation that , you know , taxpayers should care about just for the dollar amount if they're not concerned about the the welfare of people behind bars.

S1:

S2: Uh , and then because the , uh , labor unions represent the nurses and doctors inside , uh , maybe not the doctors. Uh , some of the health care employees , they have to meet and confer , and that they need to arrive on some language. Uh , there might be some additional staffing that's coming up , and that would have to be budgeted for and approved in the next budget. All those things are in step two. Line up now in the coming months , uh , ahead of the next budget. So if this moves forward , as they voted this week , it should , uh , it could be implemented as soon as , uh , you know , a spring summer. Uh , certainly in the next fiscal year , which is July 1st. So we'll see how it goes.

S1: I've been speaking with Jeff McDonald , investigative reporter at the San Diego Union-Tribune. Thanks for joining our roundtable.

S2: You bet. Thank you for having me.

S1: When roundtable returns , we discuss how AI is creeping into the rental market and why some local leaders are looking to ban the use of price setting algorithms by local landlords. That's ahead on roundtable. You're listening to KPBS roundtable. I'm Scott rod. As San Diego continues to struggle with housing affordability. City leaders are looking to ban AI powered software designed to help landlords maximize rental revenue. They claim the technology amounts to modern day price fixing and that it drives up rent across the board. Wendy Fry covers poverty and inequality for Calmatters. She's been reporting on this algorithmic price setting technology used by companies like RealPage and the backlash against it. Wendy , welcome back to roundtable.

S3: Hi , Scott. Thanks for having me.

S1: First off , can you explain what real page is and how landlords use their software ? Sure.

S3: It is a revenue management system and it has a bunch of different products that what happens is landlords feed all of their data into this algorithm so they get , you know , their rental applications , their future occupancy , um , a bunch of different data that the that the old landlord has , they feed it in. And what it does is it calculates a price that they should set an available unit at. So if you think about it , if if , you know , I was sitting here and I decided to call every apartment complex in to Santa and ask each one , hey , what's a one bedroom apartment ? This place at this place , at this place. But this computer program does it on a massive scale with and collects much larger amounts of data than a person just calling on the phone could.

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S3: And so they have a bunch of information about particularly the non-public data that goes into the algorithm. And that's the part that they're particularly concerned about. Now real page says it's not price fixing because it it , uh , aggregates the data , it anonymize it , and it's not giving. You know , this apartment complex at this location is $1,600 a month. It's giving a kind of anonymous view of all the data , however , um , exactly how it calculates the price is not something that's really widely known or widely understood. And so I think that's part of what the lawsuit is kind of seeking to figure out , because they are trying to figure out why the prices are set sort of above , above the market rate. Right. And so one of the things that came out in the discovery , too , is real pages own documents say that it helps landlords take advantage of every possible , you know , situation to drive up rent prices. And so that's where some of the people that are pushing back , like the different , um , city officials and the Prosecutors are trying to figure out , you know , exactly how much is doing that.

S1: And yeah , so critics are claiming that the technology is driving up rent and exacerbating housing , the housing affordability problem beyond the federal lawsuit , which I do want to dive into more.

S3: RealPage disputes that completely. So they say that they don't have anywhere close to the amount of customers using it in any particular area , that it would drive up all of the rents in a particular area. The Department of Justice says otherwise. So , and the California attorney General has also come out very strongly against RealPage , saying , you know , people are trying to put a roof over their head , and this software is making it harder for people to do it.

S1: And what portion of landlords are using real page or similar software ? I know you said that there's a claim from RealPage is a claim from the federal prosecutors or the Department of Justice. What have you been able to determine ? Right.

S4:

S3: So that is a great question. The , um , real page says it's less than 30%. The Department of Justice says is more around the area of 80%. And so that's a big discrepancy. I was calling a bunch of landlords trying to figure out if they use RealPage , and I couldn't find one that would say that they were using it. There are two other products that are very , very similar. Um , Yardi and Entrada I think are Entrada. So , you know , I would love to hear from a landlord that's using it if just throwing that out there. If anybody is using RealPage to set rents , I would love to talk even just on background.

S1: Because it did jump out in your reporting to me that that RealPage was claiming that it only serves 10% of the rental market here in San Diego , and I think it said also up in San Francisco.

S3: So like I said at the beginning , there's different there's a term , there's yield star. These are different products within the suite. I think the other ones like on site. And so RealPage is saying that the Department of Justice got confused and calculated everybody using on site , which is a lot of people just it's a revenue management. Just like says when an apartment is going to become available and it just helps landlords be organized. These other products Ihrem , yield start. Those are the ones that the nonpublic data gets fed into. And those are the ones that the Department of Justice says is setting prices or is recommending prices that are above market value.

S1: Got it , got it. Um , you spoke with some folks who are struggling to find affordable rentals in San Diego. What were their thoughts on landlords using , uh , you know , this AI assisted algorithmic software to set rental prices.

S3: Definitely not too hard to find San Diegans who think maybe the rental prices in San Diego has gone up or is hard. What I found really interesting of the people that I talked to is that we're not talking about people who are necessarily low income , right ? We're talking about people who have pretty good jobs that pay pretty well , and they're struggling to stay in San Diego. And so if you think about if that's where they're at , then people on the very bottom are living 8 to 10 people in an apartment. I saw in one of the doors I knocked on , it was a family , like a huge family , grandmother , cousins , sister , brother in one tiny apartment to make the rent work for them , to be able to stay in San Diego where their job is. And so yeah , I do think no one would dispute that. It is hard to find an affordable rental in San Diego. I think what the issue of , um , discrepancy or the issue of dispute is , um , how much of that is because of this algorithm and corporate landlords taking over large properties ? Or how much of that is the lack of housing , you know ? The only way , the surefire way to bring down housing costs is to build more housing. Right ? And so that's what RealPage is saying is like , it's the lack of housing that's making you guys prices so high in San Diego. I don't think that the officials or the attorney general that's , uh , going against RealPage would argue with that. Like , yes , there is a housing shortage , but these algorithms and corporate landlords are maybe not necessarily making this situation any better. Also.

S1:

S3: They figured that I probably plays a role in a lot of transactions that they have , but they weren't aware of the specific software or the challenges to it , or that the city of San Diego was trying to ban it. Um , the person that I quoted in the story , he was aware of real pay. He had heard and read some stories about it before and just in general. How AI affects your life.

S1: Earlier this year , San Francisco enacted a first in the nation ban on this type of rental price setting technology.

S3: So that means that RealPage has to give the landlords an option to opt out of the non-public data that gets fed into any of the tools that they're using. So they're still free to use real page , but they can't use non-public data that's coming from , you know , in a in a way that they think is anti-competitive.

S1: And so unpack that a little further so it can still be used. RealPage is still being used by some landlords up in San Francisco , but there are just certain restrictions around it. It's not like hey RealPage you're out of San Francisco. Goodbye. They can still operate. They're just under certain restrictions. Right.

S3: Right. And I think that's a very interesting thing that the company did is um , giving the city or the landlords an option to opt out of having that non-public data. So , so , you know , the landlords that do choose to use it , are they at a competitive disadvantage now from the landlords that are choosing to maybe , you know , hope they don't get caught using it ? Uh , it kind of remains to be seen what kind of enforcement it's going to be around it.

S1: Last year , San Diego City Council announced plans that it would also look into banning RealPage.

S3: I think the city attorney is working on it. It was San Diego Councilmember Shawn Rivera who was brought or recommended that the city attorney look at drafting an ordinance. I think that's where it's still at. The subcommittee did say , yeah , go ahead , city attorney , look at doing this ordinance. And I think it's there for now. And of course , it will have to come back to this full council to vote , whether they actually want to take action and try to ban it.

S1: So it was an announcement that they're looking into this , but the particulars of the of any potential ban are still it still remains to be seen. Right.

S3: Right. The devil will be in the details. Right. Like what exactly they decide to. And actually I believe cities can't take action against a specific company , right. They have to frame it as like we're going to ban landlords using price fixing algorithms.

S1: So let's move now to the the federal lawsuit , the actions that the DOJ is taking. We touched on that a bit. Um , soup to nuts.

S3: One is anti competitiveness. So they are um giving landlords a way to collude to get together and say , hey , what are you setting your apartment at. What are you setting your apartment at. What are you setting yours at ? Okay. We'll all set it at this price. That isn't necessarily based on the market. That's their allegation. Um , RealPage says that's absolutely not true , that nobody makes the landlords accept the price that it recommends and that the landlords aren't colluding. Nobody has made any agreement to collude with each other in any way. They're also alleging that because they have such a large market share , that that's also a violation. And real Paige strongly , strongly objects to that and says that they they they calculated this wrong with the different tools and that they don't have anywhere near enough of the market to , to to drive up rents in any one market.

S1: And so RealPage has said , look as we mentioned uh , RealPage has said that our market share isn't anywhere near as big as you saying it is. What else is RealPage saying. What what other responses have they given to the DOJ. Uh , in terms of the allegations that federal prosecutors are making.

S3: So they've recently filed a motion to dismiss. So they want the judge to dismiss the federal government's case and all the states that have joined in to the case , they're also , you know , emphasizing that it's as we discussed , it's the lack of housing that is driving up rents. And the only way to bring down any , any price of anything is more supply , right. Um , so and they think that they have a very , very strong argument that the , the prosecutors or the plaintiffs in this case haven't met their burden of proving how much of the market they have and that there's any scheme going on behind the scenes with these landlords , you know , that they're scheming to try to set the rents higher than they're supposed to be. now there are some documents. It's interesting. There are some documents in the federal prosecutors case that it's like the company's own internal documents. Right. And it shows the steps that , um , if a landlord wants to disagree with the price , right , like it spits out a price , it says , hey , this apartment's going to be 2100 a month , right ? And if a landlord wants to say no , that seems high to me. Let's do 2000. It can't just do that in the system. Apparently , according to the company's own documents , it has to go through this process where like they have to get with a price advisor , and the price advisor might call that person's manager. And so , you know , while real page says , hey , nobody has to accept this price that we're recommending. There's also some documents that the prosecutors have found that show that they really do make it pretty hard for them to set it lower than what the algorithm recommends.

S1: Very interesting. I know federal lawsuits can take a long time to play out.

S4:

S3: Is a fairly new in terms of like the timeline for federal prosecutions. I think that they for they say in the court documents that there was a long pre litigation discovery process. So they've been talking the prosecutors , the DOJ has been talking with RealPage for quite a long time about this. Um but we'll see how it plays out. You know , there were class action lawsuits in Tennessee. And the judge did dismiss some some of the parts of that of as particularly related to how much of the market they have. So we'll see how it plays out.

S1: I've been speaking with Wendy Frye. She's a reporter at Calmatters , where she covers poverty and inequality. You can find her story about RealPage on our website at pbs.org. Wendy , thanks for being here. Thanks.

S4: Thanks.

S1: Coming up next , we check in on some other stories we've been following on the weekly roundup. That's next on roundtable. Welcome back to roundtable. I'm Scott Rod. It's time now for our weekly roundup of stories we've been following. This week joining me is Andrew Bracken. Andrew. Hey Scott. Start us off.

S5: It's facing , you know , over $200 million annual deficit at this point. And Mayor Todd Gloria announced a city hiring freeze. But they're also looking for , you know , 20% of budget cuts for the city as well. And there's been some reporting on this , the reasons why , from David Garrick from the UT , as well as Andy Keates from Axios , have both reported on it this week. And one thing that I thought was interesting is that some of the reporting notes , that there's been a real big rise in middle managers in the city , almost , you know , some over 400% increase over the last decade. And I guess there's certain reasons for that. But they get paid more , but there's more flexibility for some of those positions. So I think some of the municipal unions have brought this up , so it'll be interesting to see how all this shakes out there. Obviously doing the hiring freeze already , but there's still more to cut and they've got to find ways to cut it. And this does , you know , connect to the election. We just had measure E which would have increased city sales tax by 1%. Failed but just narrowly failed. Right. And that's kind of this is the result of that that measure E would have raised. They've estimated , you know , three $400 million to the city each year. So poof , that's gone. And now they're looking to kind of pick up the pieces and make it work. But again , it's just a reminder like the measure E I think it failed by about 4000 votes. So it was a pretty close , pretty close vote in the end.

S1: Yeah definitely close. Although there was some reporting from I news source , it's one of our partner organizations , an investigative news outlet here in San Diego. They took a kind of neighborhood by neighborhood. Look at how measure E fared , and their overall takeaway was essentially between neighborhoods that are the haves and have not neighborhoods , you know , the places that were higher income and had , you know , more resources dedicated to it. They tended to vote against it. And the spots that had a lower income , uh , lower income households and that maybe needed more city resources for things like infrastructure upgrades , sewer upgrades , road and road repairs , etc. voted for it. So definitely an interesting overview.

S5: And a lot of those areas were heavily impacted by the storms last year , right ? I mean , you mentioned the kind of stormwater , the repairs there , things like that. I mean , I think it'll be interesting just to see like how deep these cuts go and how they show up , you know , in the city , like on our streets , in our neighborhoods.

S1: I think it's $258 million. Uh , you're not going to find that in the couch cushions at , uh , City Hall. Sticking with the election , something that we've talked about before is just the amount of time that , uh , the election year elections in California take to tally up and finalize and certify. There's some news on that front. Right.

S5: Well , Calmatters you still use been covering this. There's , you know , been talk of potential state legislation , but there's just been a lot of talk on how long it took for some of these races to be called. I mean , the last congressional race in the state wasn't called until early December. And then there's another case in the Inland Empire of an Assembly member , actually , you know , being sworn into office before their race was fully called. So it just takes a long time. One thing is Secretary of State Shirley Weber , she's going to be certifying the election on Friday. But she did speak with reporters earlier this week. And basically just acknowledge that it's a challenge , you know , this this thing , you want the election to be super thorough. You want , you know , people to be able to vote accurately and with transparency. And they're doing really well at that. But it just on the back end , it just takes a long time. And one thing I took away , at least just for me , is maybe next time I can send in my mail ballot a little earlier and that that might help things , because that's one thing they noticed is , you know , if they look at the mail ballots earlier , it's easier , you know , quicker to count.

S1: My question would be , I wonder if the Secretary of state would be open to propose changes or what , what sort of appetite they would have for changes , because we saw a lot of , you know , shifts in how people voted during the pandemic and in the following years , and already just the election system in California has seen some pretty , you know , some substantive changes that they had to adapt to. So now if you go back and say , wait a minute , we kind of want to , you know , quicken the process. I wonder how much appetite the Secretary of State's office would have for that. Yeah.

S5: Yeah. And she didn't give much , you know , detail into that. She just kind of acknowledged that it's something that they realize , you know , people are you know , it's a problem and they need to kind of look into it. I mean , there is one Assembly member , I think , from Palo Alto that's looking to bring state legislation to , you know , help them count their votes. But that's kind of early on and we'll see where that goes.

S1: Switching gears , I'm going to talk about a story that I saw in The New York Times. This was from more than a week ago , but we haven't met to chop it up in a little while. So I wanted to get your thoughts on it for the New York Times investigation. It looked at how US zoos have given a fortune to protect pandas , but that's not how China has spent the money. So you know how these panda exchanges work. They're often seen as a win win , right ? We we being zoos here in the US , they get we get these cute furry bears from China. And you know , it offers this kind of diplomatic bright spot between the US and China. And part of that exchange involves zoos raising millions of dollars and sending the money to China in exchange for these pandas. And that money is supposed to be spent on protecting pandas in the wild. But this investigation found that millions of dollars have gone to building things like infrastructure , apartment buildings or buying computers , and millions of dollars also just went unaccounted for. And regulators here in the US have drawn attention to this , but it seems like no one really wants to make too much noise about it. No one wants to upset this delicate panda exchange balancing act. And obviously it's a big deal here in San Diego. Um , you know the pandas. When we got a new set of pandas here in August and , you know , the overused phrase was pandemonium. And it was accurate , right ? As annoying as it was to hear , it was accurate because people really love to go see these pandas hearing all of this.

S5: I think one thing that's interesting is it's , uh , you know , this is a real issue , and it does say a lot about the relationship between the United States and China. And as you mentioned , like San Diego is like an odd piece of it. You know , I remember when China's president visited California last year and met with the governor , you know , but he spoke , he mentioned San Diego Zoo and as you mentioned , like the pandas came back in August to a lot of fanfare. Um , I will say the story is part of a larger investigation into pandas and the whole thing , and it's really eye opening. I recommend people checking it out. Um , one note is , you know , it does make the case that it's like China has actually removed more pandas from the wild than than it is freed , which is really surprising to me. Um , and , you know , we see posters of the pandas all over town. It's a big part of our zoo and our culture. So it's a little disappointing to kind of have this perspective of it.

S1: I believe they titled the investigative series bamboozled. Actually , I don't know. I don't think that's true. All right. That's , uh , that's time to move on to another story , I think. Turning back to local politics. San Diego County , the Board of Supervisors here , they voted on a measure that our Katie Hyson covered for KPBS. And it looked at how they're looking to limit when county agencies are going to be working with or communicating with federal immigration enforcement. And basically , it's a blanket , um , blanket edict that says , look , we don't want any sort of cooperation or any sort of communication going on between local agencies , including the sheriff's office , with federal immigration agencies when it comes to enforcing civil immigration actions. This measure got a lot of attention. It did pass the Board of Supervisors , and in part , it got a lot of attention because Sheriff Kelly Martinez objected to this measure. And she said , look , there are already state laws on this that limit when agencies can interact. Local agencies can interact with these federal agencies. But there are times when it is allowed under state law. And she said , we're just going to stick with what the state law says. and it was widely viewed as kind of a pushback to this proposal by the Board of Supervisors.

S5: Yeah , and I think this is a part of kind of a lot what we're seeing in California and parts of San Diego. And this is an example of it , of this sort of preparation of , of the Trump administration , uh , kicking off next year. Um , and I know that's something that , you know , you've been reading a lot about this week. Yeah.

S1: Yeah. To me , this just is. A.

S4: A.

S1: Underscore , a double line underscore of how immigration is going to be so important for the incoming Trump administration in terms of , you know , San Diego is going to be ground zero for this , essentially , where a lot of these policies are going to be playing out , where a lot of potentially legal pushback is going to be happening. We saw that in the first Trump administration , uh , here in the federal court. A lot of the lawsuits flowed through here. Um , and just recently , uh , incoming President Trump's pick for border czar had , you know , essentially said , look , we're pushing this mass deportation effort ahead , and we're expecting that cities and local law enforcement will be complying with this push. And he had a quote recently and he said , he said , if they're not going to be helping us , then we'll just double the manpower in those cities.

S5: I mean , San Diego is sort of this where the rubber meets the road for a lot of this. I mean , it's really a lot is happening here. And just a reminder of how large the immigration topic is right now. And it's not , you know , definitely for 2025 , it's going to be , you know , a lot to follow and a lot to keep track of. Um , I mean , The New York Times had a lot of reporting on immigration and how it's been in the last few years , and that's really interesting as well. It noted this latest , you know , immigration surge since 2021. It calls it the largest in U.S. history. Um , it's slightly more than , you know , which is pretty surprising to me. It's slightly more than , you know , the the late 19th century , that sort of Ellis Island peak , early 20th century immigration that the US had. And it also notes , like our colleague Gustavo Solis , you know , often makes the case is that , you know , immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than , than Americans. So I think that's always important to mention. But , you know , there's a lot there. And it feels like something is just starting at this point. We'll have to see what actually kind of happens in January. Right ? Absolutely.

S1: This is like I said , there's going to be plenty more to come , plenty more to follow. Uh , and I'm sure we'll be talking about a lot more here on roundtable. That'll do it for the roundup this week. Andrew Bracken , thanks for being here.

S5: Thank you Scott.

S1: That's our show for today. You can listen to KPBS roundtable anytime as a podcast. Roundtable airs on KPBS FM at noon on Fridays and again Sundays at 6 a.m.. If you have any thoughts on today's show or ideas for a future one , you can email us at roundtable at PBS.org. You can also leave us a message at (619) 452-0228. Roundtable's technical producer this week was Brandon Truffaut. The show was produced by Andrew Bracken. Brooke Ruth is Roundtable's senior producer and I'm Scott Rodd. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend.