Birthdays

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Ana Figueroa

Staff Writers Samuel Braslow Bianca Heyward

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Happy Belated Birthday THOMAS J. BLUMENTHAL

April 13

SIMU LIU

April 19 CAROLE DIXON

April 17

ANA LLORENS

April 19 CONAN O’BRIAN

April 18

ALI WONG

April 19 DAVID TENNANT

April 18

To our loyal Courier readers: Thank you for making our Birthday Page more popular than ever. Going forward, we want to make sure that we showcase our community at its best. Please send us a current birthday photo every year, along with your name and phone number in case we have any questions. All photos must be high-resolution, at least 300 dpi. Please send it at least two weeks in advance of your birthday, and we’ll do our best to include it on our Birthday Page. Send the photos to editorial@bhcourier.com and make sure to put "Birthday Page" on the subject line.

Astrology

BY HOLIDAY MATIS

ARIES (March 21-April 19). Fun is contagious, but it's also subjective. Your success will depend on your ability to read the room. If you're not in the room, as in an email or text situation, humor is a risk. The level of risk is commensurate with the payoff.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20). Your fantasy life is going strong. As for these castles in the air -- maybe you can't live in them, but some of the ideas are practical enough to apply once you touch back down to earth. GEMINI (May 21-June 21). Your mood: ambitious. You'll push yourself. Because going after the larger experiences of life takes a great deal of focus and energy, it will require you to cut out distractions and bring your lower appetites into control.

CANCER (June 22-July 22). Unless you are a DJ or a children's party character, it's probably not your job to make the people around you happy. So why not go where you're the happiest? Only you know the way.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). Life gets messy. The unexpected bumps, spills and overlaps are clues that we are, indeed, alive. Your mettle will be tested, and you'll get the opportunity to tidy up, compartmentalize and prove just how cool you can be. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). New projects gather steam. The work is really just beginning, but encouraging early results are a glimpse of what you'll get if you keep this up for the long haul. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). The stage is set for rivalries to play out. Emotions run hot, alliances have been formed and the stakes are high. Even so, it's not too late for mediation, negotiation and peaceful deal-making.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). Shared creativity is a bond. Writing can unite people. Art can flirt with your eyeballs. A song can pierce you straight through and connect you with invisible thread to the others who hear and love it. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). As for the burdens laid on you by society, there's always a way around it. If you can't see it from where you stand, seek a perspective shift. Reading, travel and interviewing others are all valid ways to get there.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). If no one asks a question, nothing gets done. And if people keep asking questions, nothing gets done. Progress is asking the right question at the right time and getting answers before you move on to the next question.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). You know what it's like to be the one who loves more, sacrifices greater and maximizes small returns. But don't worry; this will not be your destiny forever. Prepare for huge love.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). You will somehow be able to see things as your loved one does and though you may not entirely agree, your understanding of the other point of view will lift the relationship to a new level of ease.

Meet Pal, a 4-month-old husky-shephard mix who's looking for a new home. When he's full grown, Pal will grow into his ears to be about 60 pounds. To help him fi nd a loving new home, please contact Shelter of Hope at 805-379-3538. www.shelterhopepetshop.org

Private security contractor Covered 6 patrols along Rodeo Drive. Photo by Samuel Braslow

(Real Time Watch Center continued from page 1)

The city hopes the center will reduce the amount of time it takes offi cers to respond to calls, facilitate early intervention in criminal activity, and improve evidence and information gathering. Stainbrook said the department’s goal was to “reduce crime itself and the fear of crime.”

The city currently employs “three big technologies,” Stainbrook said, including Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras, automated license plate readers (ALPRs), and drones. The Watch Center will centralize these technologies along with new initiatives like BHPD Alert, Live911, and a new intelligence unit.

The city launched its CCTV camera program more than 15 years ago with the aim of achieving “ubiquitous coverage” throughout the city. The city currently has more than 2,000 cameras, prompting Chief Information Offi cer David Schirmer to say in 2020 that the city was “leading the pack” in cameras per capita globally.

“Currently, the way we operate is when a crime happens, we go back and we review the video footage from where the crime happened, try to identify vehicles and suspects and put our case together and make arrests,” Stainbrook said. “But what we want to get to in the future is live monitoring of the cameras.”

According to the plan laid out by Stainbrook, the watch center will tap the city’s existing private security contractors, Covered 6 and Nastec International, to monitor the cameras. The $500,000 allotment budgets for two pairs of operators working two eight-hour shifts each day. Stainbrook said he expects to “go live” with the camera monitoring by the fi rst full week of June.

The second technological pillar, ALPRs, will help the city intercept people driving stolen cars or suspects with active warrants and prevent them from committing possible future crimes, according to Stainbrook.

“To get ahead of that, the more license plate readers we have that can tell us that a stolen car is entering the city or a car that's already on a wanted list, the quicker we can respond and react to that vehicle in the city,” he said.

The department plans on adding the new ALPRs by the end of May, according to Stainbrook.

Lastly, the watch center would coordinate the city’s new drone program.

Currently, the department fl ies its drones four days a week for up to 10 hours a day. Stainbrook said that BHPD is training a dozen offi cers in the drones with the goal of moving up to 10 hours a day, seven days a week — a goal he hopes to reach by July.

The department hopes to use “drones as a fi rst responder,” he said.

“When the drone as a fi rst responder is not fl ying, our goal is to have offi cers that are trained to fl y drones have them in their vehicles and be able to launch them at scenes when they need them,” said Stainbrook.

In response to privacy concerns raised by the Council over the drone program, Stainbrook said that the drones’ fi eld of view could include backyards, for instance, but that drone operators “don't focus in on backyards or anything unless there's a call for service or there's a reason to.”

The Real Time Watch Center would work in conjunction with the department’s other new initiative, BHPD Alert.

“When the Real Time Watch Center has information, we can push it back out to the community,” Stainbrook said.

Stainbrook elaborated on another new law enforcement initiative announced earlier by Mayor Lili Bosse, Live911, which would send emergency calls directly to nearby offi cers in the fi eld. This would decrease response times by 30 seconds to two minutes, Stainbook estimated—a sizable chunk considering the department’s already fast response rate, Councilmember Dr. Julian Gold pointed out.

The program will not replace the current dispatch system. Stainbrook explained that offi cers would have the option whether or not to use it depending on their status.

“It's a tool that that they can use when they need it and how they need it to be used,” Stainbrook said.

While Stainbrook did not provide a concrete timeline for launching Live911, he said that AT&T must fi rst “provide connectivity and modem support.” After that, he said it would take four weeks to integrate the software.

The Watch Center will make use of a new intelligence unit, which will utilize a new crime analyst the department intends on hiring. The unit will use a “predictive, intelligence-driven model” for more proactive (Rabbi Wolpe continued from page 5)

At the start of the pandemic in 2020, Wolpe amassed thousands of followers on the audio-only social networking app Clubhouse, where he hosted a weekly Torah reading called “Clubhouse Torah” in lieu of services. The social media savvy rabbi announced his retirement in an April 7 post to Twitter and Facebook, reaching a combined total of more than 87,000 followers. While his contract runs through 2024, Wolpe felt it unnecessary for the congregation to wait another two years, given that his successors have already been named. “I thought that it was better for the synagogue to fi nd its way forward after the last couple of years of COVID, because clearly, all sorts of new directions will be needed to revitalize the synagogue, and I thought that new leadership was the right way to go,” Wolpe told the Courier regarding his early departure. “I think that we need to rebuild the community that has been absent for so long, to bring people back into the congregation, and to try to fi gure out what place the school has, which also endured a lot of diffi culty from the masking and the absence of in-person classes. Essentially, we are ramping up again, and I think that having people who are younger and starting out and full of energy is a good thing for the synagogue and for the community.” Sinai’s Board of Director’s is expected to confi rm Guzik and Sherman in the next month.

Much has evolved in the quarter century that he has helmed the pulpit, including Sinai

police work, according to the report.

“How we're using our technology is really going to revolutionize the way we secure the city.

As Councilmember Robert Wunderlich pointed out, “two people couldn't possibly monitor our 2000 cameras.” To that end, he suggested the city look into using artifi cial intelligence, which “would have the ability to monitor all of our cameras.”

The city currently uses an artifi cial intelligence program called BriefCam, which enables faster video review, facial recognition, multi-camera search, among other features. But the staff report acknowledges that BriefCam “may not be the best system for real time management, communication, and coordination for our combined technological resources.”

Councilmember John Mirisch touched on concerns about bias in artifi cial intelligence and facial recognition. Multiple studies over the last few years have made claims of racial and gender bias in facial recognition technology.

Nonetheless, Mirisch voiced support for the tools.

“Obviously, I'm in favor of using AI. I'm also in favor of using facial recognition, as long as it is unbiased,” he said.

Mirisch said he didn’t understand why the technology could be construed as a violation of somebody’s rights, describing it as a modern version of the most wanted lists found in post offi ces.

The American Civil Liberties Union has stood up as an opponent to facial recognition, saying the technology “presents an unprecedented threat to our privacy and civil liberties.”

“It gives governments, companies, and individuals the power to spy on us wherever we go — tracking our faces at protests, Temple’s digital off erings. When Los Angeles County Public Health restrictions prohibited in-person gatherings, Sinai gathered the Jewish community virtually and began streaming its programming on YouTube— which it continues to do.

“When I started, there was barely an internet, the community was a lot smaller than it is now, so it's changed in 1000 diff erent ways,” Wolpe told the Courier. “I think that the Persian community, which is a considerable part of the congregation, has both grown somewhat in the congregation and become a more integral part of the Beverly Hills and Los Angeles communities. There's a lot that has changed over the years, and I think that it's quite wonderful and exciting, and perfect for somebody to create a new model of the synagogue in a world in which all our services are now also online.”

According to Wolpe, Sinai’s membership peaked before the COVID-19 pandemic with close to 2,000 families; now, its membership is about 1,400.

“I think that the fi nal change, apart from it being online and the population, is that we live in a much more polarized world,” Wolpe said. “Therefore, religion ought to have a place to bring people together even more crucially than it did 25 years ago.”

While the role he will assume as emeritus rabbi at Sinai Temple has not yet been defi ned, “it will be more than symbolic,” Wolpe told the Courier. “But I don't know exactly what that entails right now.”

political rallies, places of worship, and more,” the organization has said.

Mirisch added that, in addition to catching criminals, the city should look at programs aimed at preventing recidivism and addressing the root causes of criminality.

Stainbrook anticipated that artifi cial intelligence companies will “want to test their technology” at the Watch Center because of the unique level of surveillance technology.

“My guess is we'll have plenty of opportunity to try diff erent AI systems and see how they improve our technology,” he said.

Drones cannot use facial recognition in California, per a state law that prohibits its use in cameras held by offi cers until 2023.

The department will locate the Watch Center in the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), the current base of operations for coordinating responses to large-scale events.

While the initial price tag comes out to nearly $500,000, the department estimates additional costs of roughly $2.5 million the following fi scal year, with annual recurring costs of about $1.9 million.

“It's a lot of money,” said Gold. “I do think that for the community, we just need to basically say, we're putting our money where our mouths are in terms of the security of the city.”

Bosse, who said she has been meeting with Stainbrook for the last few months to discuss the initiatives, praised the department for its speed in implementing the changes.

“This is April, and that within two months, everything that we're talking about will be up and running,” she said. “That's really extraordinary.”