1 Fewer Deputy Will Be Patrolling PCH, As Deputy Is Transferred To School Cop Duty

Malibu High School will have a sheriff’s deputy stationed at the school this fall.

The city council Monday night decided to take one deputy out of the two-deputy car … that has been patrolling at night for oversize RVs parking on the Pacific Coast Highway …  

While everyone agrees that having a deputy on campus is a good idea … the question was … is it safe to take one deputy out of the roving late night car??

Sheriff’s Sgt Chris Soderlund answered that Monday night. 

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“We’ve discussed that at length … and you have two cars out there with two deputies in each car.

“You’ll still have the same amount of cars out there … you’ll just have one car with one deputy.

“The regular patrol deputies are one man cars.

“So the special assignment deputy who will be solo is the cream of the crop … so he’ll be able to do his job just fine.”

The plan is to have a school resource deputy stationed at the Malibu High School and Middle School joint campus … with a car to handle Malibu Elementary .. two miles away. 

Webster Elementary is seven miles away form the high school … parents there are working to make a deal with Santa Monica college to share one of the patrol officers from the SMC Malibu campus …  just down the street.

The Santa Monica school district supports the plan … but remains opposed to private security guards being hired for the schools.

Operations director Carey Upton said the school district supports bringing in sheriffs deputies … but … 

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“The district at this point is not interested in private security.  

“We find very many concerns around that idea.  

“There might be a longer conversation about that … but so far as we talk to our staff … our faculty … and many of our parents … there is not an interest in going there … and we do have some significant concerns about this.” 

Some parents have said they support hiring Covered 6 … a private security company … to also patrol campuses. 

Parent volunteerJake Lingo is one of them. 

He says the city could hire four private security guards for the same cost as one deputy SRO … student resource officer. 

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“I know that SMMUSD does not support this position. 

“But again I think it’s that they fail to understand how difficult… how different Malibu is from Santa Monica. 

“Malibu sheriff response times are not the same as than Santa Monica (police)…. 

“They are a seaside urban center … we are a rural community of 27 miles.

“We talk about this all the time.”

The district says the private guards do not have the same level of training … particularly for de-escalating incidents with teenagers … that sheriff’s deputies have.

The changes … though … will mean that a sheriff’s deputy will be stationed at the high school … shared by the middle school and available to Maloibiu Elementary School on Point Dume … starting month. 

Council Votes To Put Year-Round Car Impound Yard Next To Bulldozers Occupying Chili Cookoff Site

The City of Malibu held its annual round and round discussion abut towing away cars … and where to put them once they get towed.

Right now … the city only has the practical capacity to tow away illegally parked cars during summer months … when it can store them at Malibu High School.

During the school year that site is not available … the nearest tow yards are 45 minutes away … and sheriff’s deputies are unable to wait for tow trucks.

City council members have been trying for 10 years for find a year-round impound lot location.

Council member Monday night tossed the issue around … 

Cpouncilmember Doug Stewart:

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“We need to have a spot to do this … and let’s keep in mind … these are not damaged cars. 

“These are cars that … it’s just a parking lot, just cars parked.
“And they just need to be in a secure area, until somebody can pick them up, and if they’re not picked up at the end of the day, then they are towed out the central lot (in another city).”

Bruce Silverstein: 

“When you start out with something temporary, it tends to become permanent.  I just don’t se this going away once we allow it to start.”

Marianne Riggins:

“I just think it’s the responsibility of government yto make sure that things that our community, that we are responsible for providing, they are provided.

“You can go look back to council after council after council and they have been trying to solve this issue.”

The voices of council members Doug Stewart … Bruce Silverstein and Marianne Riggins. 

City council member Steve Uhring … he lives on the hillside above the site … that sunlight reflecting off windshields will bother people up there. 

And council member Haylynn Conrad wanted to find another site … if at all possible. 

Complicating the issue is the temporary use of the Chili Cookoff Site … also called the Ioki Site … as a construction storage yard for the fire rebuild effort.

The consensus Monday night was to fence off part of that construction yard as a a year-round fenced impound lot … until the construction vehicles can be cleared.

City staff will have to come up with a specific plan … no final council decision was made.

Some council members said their ultimate goal is to build ball fields on that site … west of the Malibu College campus at the heart of the city.  

Key NWS Forecast Desk At Oxnard Is Vacant, As NWS Malibu Radio Was Silent Before Malibu Fire

When the Palisades Fire roared into Malibu six months ago … one important local warning device may have been out of order.

Now comes a report that they forecaster in charge of the alerts has been eliminated by the Trump Administration.

The National Weather Service weather radio transmitter on Point Dume had been out of service for at least six weeks leading up to the Palisades Fires.

We do not know if it was still out of order when the fire hit … but we can tell you that KBUU did not receive any emergency messages.

In fact … KBUU has three of National Weather Service alarm radios … one of them an expensive EAS alarm receiver … connected to an outdoor antenna … that logs incoming messages.

We test the big one … the one that automatically cuts in to the radio broadcast …  every week. 

None of those EAS receivers went off.

That also means that the hundreds of radios handed out by LA County fire … radio that listened to Point Dume and were capable of waking people up … they remained listening to nothing.  

Now … KBUU was already on the air covering the fire … and the lack of the National Weather Service alarms did not affect us.

But … what about people who were relying on the NWS radios?

The Point Dume transmitter was repaired in December … and is on the air now. 

And now comes news that a key weather forecaster position in the Los Angeles forecast office … located in Oxnard … is vacant. 

That would be the position of warning coordination meteorologist at the Oxnard office … which is responsible for Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

President Donald Trump has downsized the National Weather Service by 14 percent. 

That means vacancies on key shifts … and that has a local impact.

The LA Times reports that warning coordination meteorologists are responsible for working with local government emergency managers on what specific types of weather alerts mean. 

They also conduct live weather briefings for decision-makers and reporters to ask questions.

The Oxnard office’s empty coordinator position means there is no person in charge of getting out information during major weather events, such as forecasts warning of fire weather and severe winter storms.

Lt Jim Royal Loses Suit Against Sheriff’s Dept After Being Sacked Following Malibu Sniper Murder

A judge Monday threw out a lawsuit from a former top ranking Malibu sheriff’s lieutenant … whose career was wrecked by department politics during the search for the Malibu Canyon murderer.

Lt. Jim Royal was handed the better legal setback Monday in Superior Court in Los Angeles. 

Royal has claimed that his superiors at the sheriff’s department had ordered him to lie … to the public … about the string of shootings along Malibu Canyon Road in 2018.

Those sniper attacks culminated in the murder of 35 year old Tristan Beaudette … an Orange County father sleeping in his tent with his two little girls at the campground in Malibu Creek State Park.

Royal was then a 24-year sheriff’s department veteran … he had repeatedly urged his supervisors to let him issue a warning to the public that people were getting shot at in the canyon. 

No advisory was given … Royal’s bosses reportedly told him it was a state park problem and not theirs.

After Beaudette was murdered …. Royal was instructed by his supervisors to state to tell the Malibu public that there was no sniper … no string of attacks … and that the prior shootings were unrelated to the camper’s death.

In retaliation for speaking out, Royal was transferred from the Malibu/Lost Hills sheriff’s station to the Santa Clarita station, a less prestigious assignment, and was stripped of his detective status.

But yesterday .. the judge said that retaliation was not illegal. 

The judge also said that the sheriff’s department had no legal requirement to warn the public of the serial shootings. 

The shooter, Anthony Rauda, was convicted in June 2023 of second-degree murder.

He was sentenced to 119 years to life.