Volume 28
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Issue 50
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June 1 - 14, 2017
YOUR COMMUNITY IN YOUR HANDS - YourBayNews.com LOS OSOS
MORRO BAY CAYUCOS
CAMBRIA
See Inside and Online
Dinner & A Movie Page 34
A pair of Cub Scouts salute during the National Anthem at Monday’s Memorial Day Celebration in Los Osos. More photos on Page 41. Photo by Neil Farrell
Pirates & Mermaid Parade Page 40
Mud Creek Slide Buries Hwy 1 By Neil Farrell
B
y now, Bay News readers have probably seen photos in the media and online of the massive Mud Creek landslide that buried Hwy 1 under a million cubic yards — about 5 million tons — of rock and debris, a few miles south of Gorda. But the sheer magnitude of the disaster and enormity of the task ahead really has to be seen to be appreciated. Last week, The Bay News joined journalists from TV and radio stations on a tour of the slide area, meeting up at Ragged Point, where Caltrans has closed the highway to all but residents and the engineers and workmen that will first study the slide and then go about clearing the highway again. The Mud Creek Slide, named after tiny Mud Creek (really just a confluence of natural springs that flowed through the mountainside coming together at the highway’s edge), was swallowed up by perhaps the largest landslide the highway — famous for landslides — has ever seen. See Mud Slide, page 12
Crime Was up in 2016 By Neil Farrell
M
orro Bay Police saw their call volumes increase in 2016 and arrests jump significantly, but the acting police chief doesn’t see it as a dangerous trend, more of a politically caused hick-up. Cmdr. Jody Cox, has been the acting chief since late last year and will be second in command behind the new police chief, who is slated to be sworn in this week. Calls in 2017 are up 9% from the 2016 numbers, when the department had 12,165 calls for service on the year. “The first part of 2017,” Cmdr. Cox said, “from January to March we’ve had 2,900 calls for service.” Why? “It’s hard to say,” he explained. There have been changes in the way society deals with habitual small-time scofflaws. AB 109, 47 and 57, which changed the way California adjudicates small time crimes, he said, had a lot to do with it. “Typically, a lot of these folks would be in jail but they don’t stay in jail and we deal with them repeatedly.” Along that same vein, arrests were up 40% in 2016. “Some of them are repeat violators and offenders because they’re not staying in jail.” See Crime, page 37
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