The Freddy Fire began around noon on January 8, 2025, above Leo Carillo State Beach, in Malibu, on the second day of the massive Palisades Fire blazing about 10-15 miles east. This was a small, three-acre fire that was rapidly suppressed.

The fire began in a small gully literally on the county line on the side of Pacific Coast Highway on the non-beach side above Leo Carillo. I've seen homeless camping out here or on the road next to it. I drove by about 10 minutes prior and saw nothing; came back to fire.

Arson is a definite possibility due to the proximity to the road and the ease of starting a fire, though it could have been just carelessness like dragging chains, cigarettes, etc. Personally I vote for arson because it's an easy access point to brush in a wind-sheltered area with no structures immediately around. Some jerk could have ignited it figuring it wouldn't really impact anything then fled the area.

Engine 56, 3/4 of a mile down the road, was not in quarters. A CalFire officer saw it, though. It took about 10 minutes after I first saw smoke for the first fire engine to arrive. State Parks rangers and lifeguards arrived, but couldn't do anything useful. It took about 20 minutes until the copter got on scene and made the first water drop. It was about 30 minutes total before meaningful water was deployed from the ground.

When seconds count, the fire department is many minutes away. This was a very remote area and it took time to get resources in place, even so, a "good" fire department response is 5-10 minutes in well-staffed suburban areas. Thankfully this was in a wind-sheltered area and the wind speeds had moderated by then so the spread wasn't too bad. But CHP took forever to show up (they are surprisingly lightly staffed apparently on the "one ranger, one riot" model) and the deputies even longer.

Drivers are also stupid. Many of them kept driving and went right around the fire trucks and through the smoke. More drove right up to the CHP officer blocking the road and had some inability to understand "TURN AROUND, THE ROAD IS CLOSED" (multiple times). Funnily enough, Malibu was DEAD this morning (seriously, there was more traffic on Christmas) but as soon as the fire starts, all sorts of traffic is coming down from Oxnard.

Update: The fire was indeed arson and the suspect, a 60 year old woman, was arrested by State Parks rangers; a solid hook by the squirrel police.

On November 6, 2024, the Mountain Fire, a fast-moving brushfire, tore through Somis and Camarillo, CA, destroying over 243 homes and damaging 127 others. While by acreage the fire burned largely wildlands and agricultural areas, the worst losses were homes in the Camarillo Hills.

This is the second time in a decade that a major wind-driven fire has traveled miles in the span of a few hours or less—in this case, 5 miles in about an hour, driven by 55 MPH gusts out of the northwest. In 2017, the Thomas Fire ripped through the county about ten miles to the north, becoming one of California’s largest, longest, and most destructive fires.

Camarillo got lucky because the wind was from the northwest, blowing west-southwest instead of from the north, which would have driven it into the city. The impact was where it did occur—in the middle of the Camarillo Hills rather than on the eastern flank (Somis). The National Weather Service issued a 'particularly dangerous situation' red flag warning for Los Angeles on November 6-7, the first since 2020.

With the fire spotting 2 miles ahead of itself, there was a very real danger of it impacting the suburbs. I can’t highlight this enough: the spread of the fire ahead of the fire front was enough that the suburbs of Camarillo were under direct threat for a bit. It was well within the realm of possibility that everything north of Las Posas could have been subjected to spot fires in the tract homes from W. Las Posas to N. Ponderosa.

Firefighters were overtaken by events, a common theme in wind-driven fires. They could not get enough resources in place fast enough to do structure protection. The initial response became lifesaving and evacuations, leaving the spread of the fire at the mercy of the wind and topography. Luckily, the fire ran into dense, modern neighborhoods with irrigated landscaping and fire-resistant homes. The fire ran out of highly receptive brush-covered hills and choked arroyos that would help feed and spread it. Even so, its reach deep into the hillside homes was bad enough.

Fires will often follow vegetated paths that ingress through neighborhoods, like creeks, arroyos, gullies, or greenbelts. So, while a neighborhood might not be directly adjacent to wildlands, one or two streets over could be a brush-choked drainage that spreads the fire well beyond the limits of the tract.

Again, we see that the fire moved faster than proper notifications. Ideally, the public should have a few hours to get ready and pack up, but not in many of these kinds of fires. When deputies and fire crews arrive to evacuate, you are already likely in mortal danger. Those who were paying attention to the weather and scanner traffic might have had an extra hour to a half-hour to pack. The rest were grabbing go-bags (if they had them), critical last-minute items, and running for their lives.

You are your own warning. Be prepared to evacuate without being told to by the authorities. If you see danger on the horizon—be it smoke, flooding, or zombies—use your own judgment and intuition. Leave early if you can; don’t be caught in the panicked horde that is leaving when the fire is at the door.

Awareness was key. The fire originated about six miles from where the homes were impacted but covered most of that distance in about two hours. For those who lost homes, they had at most four hours from the time the fire began to when it became too dangerous to stay.

The Watch Duty app gives excellent first notice of fires far in advance of official announcements. Remember, official announcements are most likely to come first in the form of police/fire on the street with sirens and PA announcements; electronic alerts come more slowly.

Once you’ve been alerted, assess the threat. In this case, extreme winds blowing directly toward a populated area is one point. Ordinarily, the sheer distance of irrigated orchards and fields in between would mitigate against an immediate concern. Yet from monitoring fire department radio traffic, it was clear that the fire was exploding, negating that. Once the firefighters began radioing probable impact to the Camarillo Heights area, the danger to the city was immediate.

Knowing what direction the wind is blowing and at what speed allows you to gauge factors like fire spread and your risk. You also need to be able to orient yourself on a map so you can make estimates based on the fire’s origin, its current location, and your location. Simple triangulation combined with spot reports or actual visual confirmation can tell you if you’re at risk or not. In this case, once the fire crested the hill, barring any wind shifts, the major fire front wasn’t going to enter the city.

My family was lucky because we are deep inside the city, and that part of town (unlike my people in Thousand Oaks) is not cut through with open spaces or vegetated arroyos. Thousand Oaks is different, where a tract of homes might be bordered by a very flammable area. This has caused some worry for friends/family up there some years ago and in some areas created inroads for fires to penetrate “safe” areas.

If you are inside or under the smoke, particularly with large pieces of burned material falling (not just white ash), you are in its path. Any flaming debris indicates immediate danger as you are within the ember cast. Flying embers can start spot fires well in advance of the main body of flames. These blow into soffits, eaves, vents, etc., and start structure fires. Embers landing in trees or landscaping help the fire spread.

For situational awareness, aerial shots from TV news helicopters are great for incident mapping and threat assessment. This is doubly so if you are physically inside the smoke and can’t see anything other than brown sky. Without aerial shots, get out from underneath the smoke, get photos from high points, drones, and from other perspectives around the region.

The power or Internet may go out, meaning you will not get security system or camera notifications. You won’t be getting security notifications or have the ability to remotely check conditions at home. This comes back to using scanners to hear emergency chatter directly, not waiting on official notifications. On-scene reports can take much longer to filter into official warnings rather than listening to observations and using your judgment.

Write down the address/cross-streets of incidents as you hear them. This can help you prepare a map to track spread and gauge risk. It’s better if you have someone out of danger doing this for you. I was listening to both sheriff and fire department traffic, and that was tricky to do.

Paying attention to two scanners is a lot of work. It’s very difficult to listen to two people talking at the same time and also try to hear through or over static. Even listening to one while trying to evacuate and communicate is hard, especially if you are unfamiliar with the geography or emergency responders’ terminology. You really would benefit from having someone in a safe location handling the monitoring and pushing information via phone, group chat, or radio to all parties.

If you are a first responder or using radios to communicate, watch your microphone. When critical radio traffic is coming fast and furious, you don’t want to be the guy with an open mic.

Radio played little part for the average citizen. Cell service was busy and overloaded but available. While congestion could have been overcome with ham/GMRS use for families to coordinate, there really was no need for radio comms outside of the emergency services. Given the terrain challenges, HTs (portable radios) would have struggled, and mobile (vehicle) radios and home base stations on VHF/UHF would have been best, if used. You could hear lots of broken and staticky traffic from deputies/fire in the hills. Even a little bit of terrain and distance can frustrate low-power radios.

I’ve been harsh on bug-out bags before. A camping-oriented bag would have been of no help here. There were Red Cross shelters and plenty of hotels to go to. A bag with important documents, photocopies, medications, and enough clothes, chargers, and toiletries to survive a week in a hotel before you can buy new stuff would be sufficient. Your mileage may vary.

My family’s bug-out plans are weak since we plan to “bug out” to my mom’s place in Camarillo. For the most part, it faces no fire or flood hazard, and the earthquake damage danger is low. Plus, it’s an extremely safe, mostly homogenous, middle-class community. Unless the house burns down from inside (or a plane crashes on it), the risk of being houseless is low. But spot fires burning two miles ahead have been a wake-up call. However unlikely, it is possible—just like those people in North Carolina never thought their placid, tiny stream would become a torrent or a wall of water would come washing down a dry hillside.

What is a “sad ham?” It’s an amateur radio operator, a “ham,” who is officious, condescending, and loves to yak on about their bowel movements, surgeries, or other mundane details of the senior citizen’s life. These losers, who often monopolize the air and discourage new users from getting involved have given ham radio a bad name. But could they be driven to kill?
Sad hams are the bane of amateur radio: officious, condescending, and obsessed with filling the airwaves with tales of surgeries and mundane trivia. These crusty operators monopolize frequencies, scare off newcomers, and—on rare occasions—take their grievances to shocking extremes. Just ask Walter and Vivian Langley.
 
One Southern California man, Walter Langley, and his wife Vivian of Camarillo made the mistake of not taking the high road. An evening of escalating miscalculations added up to a near-fatal confrontation with police.

CB is the little step-brother of ham radio. It doesn’t require a license and was wildly popular in the era before cell phones. It’s in the early 1990s that our story takes us to where one elderly couple who were crazy about talking into a microphone brings us to the subject of sad radio operators willing to pull guns over their hobby.
 
“Someone is using their CB radio wrong” and “they’re screwing up my TV reception” sounds like a nuisance call from someone who belongs in the looney bin, like Camarillo State Mental Hospital that wasn’t far away. Dispatch received a complaint from a citizen that his neighbor had a “high powered transmitter” and was interfering with his TV reception. When the reporting party confronted the neighbor, he had a shotgun pulled on him, or so he said.
 
Walter Langley was a CB operator and was well known locally for using an overpowered transmitter. It was so powerful, that back in the days of analog over-the-air TV, this caused interference with neighbors’ TV sets, radios, and phones. Now licensed amateur operators are allowed to cause harmful interference as licensed radio takes priority, but it’s always been considered a very unfriendly thing to do in the ham community.
 
CB radio, due to the ease of entry (no license and radios require no programming) along with the lack of FCC policing has made it into a notorious wildland of profanity, bizarre transmissions, and in some cases too congested to use. Illegally amplified transmitters capable of reaching across states have long been popular. Langley’s signal was so powerful that it was “blaring over the televisions, everything,” and could be heard clearly 10 miles away—not really all that special but the emphasis is enough to tell you it was overdriven.
 
This couple were not some clueless old people with no technical knowledge. Mr. and Mrs. Langley were avid CB radio users, their interest reaching back over 30 years. The night of July 6, 1991, they keyed up around 8 PM using sideband Channel 38. Mrs. Langley took offense when “young punks” kept cutting her off, using obscene language and playing music. Finally, she had enough and warned them “You are asking for it!”
 
None of this was a new occurrence. According to the couple, young people frequently engaged in this kind of thing. But the Langleys’ wanted revenge. Vivian, who went by the callsign “Little Rock Gal,” and her husband switched over to Channel 22 and started to play music to “get back” at the people who had interrupted her.
 
CB users can be territorial. They have channels that they prefer, in this case, 22 was a favorite of the “punks.” Apparently, at the time there was a group of young CBers who used their radios to play hide and seek. Mrs. Langley decided to hold the mic open and play music over the air. This is called a “lock up” and prevents anyone else from using the channel unless they have a more powerful signal. Mrs. Langley admitted she did this for about an hour.
 
Nobody likes a sad ham who is jamming his neighbors. Other local residents, possibly hams, tracked down the source of the interference to Langley. Because Camarillo was a fairly small town and many of the regular CB users knew each other, it was easy for this pre-Twitter “flame war” to happen in meatspace.

One CBer stopped by to entreaty the couple. Langley was not receptive and became hostile and verbally abusive.  Around 9 PM, a man who drove a red pickup, know to her as “Music Man” drove by. At some point, Walter said that he “didn’t care about TV reception and that he would key his radio all weekend long to get even.”  
 
Words were exchanged throughout the evening, with one of the visitors calling Langley a “dirty name,” perhaps another antagonist that supposedly had the callsign of “Dr. Magnum.”

Walter decided to open the garage and wait with a shotgun to see if anyone else would come by the house to confront them. One of the CBer’s who came by the house said they did so to ask Langley to turn down the wattage on his transmitter, which would reduce interference. He was confronted in the street by Langley who held a shotgun, who then threatened to kill the CBer.
 
It’s at this point that Langley allegedly brandished a shotgun at one of his rivals, though there was some question about what exactly happened. With tensions at an explosive point, Ventura County deputies from the Camarillo station responded to a “man with a gun call.”  
 
When uniformed deputies arrived, Langley claimed he didn’t know they were police. He was elderly and had health problems. After a long night of being antagonized, perhaps he assumed that the “punks” were putting one over on him. In the darkness, the deputies called out to Walter, who says didn’t believe them.
 
He replied to the deputies. “You sons of a bitches, I’m tired of you guys telling me what to do, I’ll sh—t and k—ll you bastards!” The suspect racked the slide, chambering a round, and raised the shotgun towards the deputies. In response, Langley was shot before he could fire on the approaching deputy.

What appears to have happened is Langley must not have seen the deputies, who were approaching cautiously because he did have a gun, after all. Langley, up late at night after hours of harassment, obviously felt that one of his harassers was going to physically confront him. But it has to be noted that he was the one who introduced a shotgun into a fairly silly, non-violent matter where his and his wife’s hands were just as dirty as those who annoyed him.
 
He survived the shooting and was not prosecuted as he was considered elderly, infirm, and the only charge misdemeanor brandishing. Walter lived another decade and a half, dying in 2007, Vivian in 2011. The deputies were cleared of any wrongdoing and the shoot justified. So remember the next time you confront a sad ham, there’s a non-zero chance he pulls a gun on you!

Edwige Mondesir, a Haitian resident of Moorpark, CA, engaged in a standoff with Ventura County Sheriff SWAT on Wednesday, 9/18/2024, over an eviction notice. He livestreamed his disjointed rant on YouTube, calling for the FBI to save him. I can't recall anyone doing this in the county yet; the livestream part, not the FBI. He also said he wasn't coming out alive, even though he had no firearms.

Based on his YouTube videos, he feels that he is being harassed because he is Haitian. I think it's more that he's probably quite seriously mentally ill and didn't pay his rent (or something). There are plenty of people who think the police are out to get them and pick X kind of racism as the reason.

After a few hours, SWAT entered and used OC (pepper spray) to subdue him. He was taken into custody without injury. His pet cat was safe and not eaten. There was little sympathy shown for him in the YouTube live chat. This guy is clearly off his rocker and his videos are apparently a catalog of imagined injustices against him.

While this could be any mentally ill nutbag in the state, it bears pointing out given the current Haitian controversy that this is another Haitian immigrant. Clearly, we are not getting the best.

Any self-respecting peace officer in the state of California now has the moral obligation to ignore concealed weapon violations by peaceable citizens. Beginning January 1, 2024, even licensed concealed carriers are effectively prohibited from carrying everywhere but some streets and sidewalks. Short version: good cops must ignore CCW violations by normal people.
 
After the Bruen SCOTUS decision, the California government decided to say “fuck you” to legal, law-abiding gun owners by crafting a law that basically made everywhere illegal to carry a firearm even with a permit. SB 2, as the bill is called, is just the latest law in Bruen revenge bills meant to nullify the shall-issue requirement that the decision required. Some major dick moves were pulled by the “justice” system:
 
An injunction against the law was placed before Christmas; of course the CA DOJ challenged it. Then a bunch of pro-gun lawyers were required to work on Christmas drafting a response, only to have the 9th Circuit judges summarily stay the injunction, putting the law back into place. If anyone is surprised, don’t be. The 9th Circuit continually plays partisan politics without any concern for how obvious their partisanship and bias is. But forget that; we know the California politicians and liberal justices are tyrants.
 
So how does this affect the average concealed carrier? There is no unlicensed carry, so you need a permit. Aside from some unusual places that most people don’t go, guns were formerly off-limits at basically just schools and government buildings with metal detectors (by law and by practical application). Sure, there were other terms and conditions, but little in the way of actual law.
 
Again, this affects only those with permits, not criminals and other scumbags, just the people who took the class, the tests, and passed the background checks. What this law does is like saying “Sure, anyone can get a driver license or own a car, but you can only drive your car on the racetrack.” Not “It’s illegal to drive without a license,” or “It’s illegal to drive drunk,” nor “No driving on crowded sidewalks.” Just “You can drive everywhere but the public roads.” Here's what’s off-limits:
 

• All public buildings and permitted public events
• All areas under control of an airport authority (public airports)
• Public transportation and certain private transportation
• Bars and restaurants
• Daycares and childcare facilities
• Playgrounds and parks
• State parks and land under the control of Dept. of Fish and Wildlife
• Gaming establishments
• Stadiums, libraries, amusement parks, and museums
• Churches and houses of worship
• Banks and their parking lots
• All private commercial property without specific permission of the property owner

 
Think this is “tolerable”? Often the parking lots are illegal to carry in, meaning the gun has to be already unloaded and locked in a container before you get there. The last one is the most insidious of all. Unless businesses specifically opt-in by posting the opposite of “no guns” signs, literal “concealed carry is ok” signs, it’s illegal.
 
A CCW permit has been made functionally useless by this law. It’s a literal “fuck you,” as in the sponsor and the whole tyrannical regime said “Okay, we have to let you have your carry permits now. Well fuck you, we’ll make it so they’re worthless.” The funny part? This law only applies to permittees; if you’re carrying without a permit it’s just a misdemeanor CCW violation now.
 
So why should cops ignore this? 
Your arrests will be meaningless. A simple violation of this law (gun where the law says there shouldn’t be one) is a victimless crime. Since this law will ultimately be overturned, it’s likely any convictions would be overturned. No one is hurt by this law, except peaceable citizens, and nothing but an arrest stat with a lot of paperwork will come from it.
 
No one will be protected by this law. Let’s face it, if a gun shouldn’t be there, like the secure area of the airport, or a courthouse (arguable), it will be detected. If there isn’t a way to screen everyone and there isn’t armed security present, people should be allowed to defend themselves. This law only targets people who have licenses to carry, so it would be a like arresting people with driver licenses for violating a law that said “no driving on Sunday.”
 
It only targets licensed concealed carriers. Read the law: it applies only to people with LTCs. The same people who took the tests, went to the classes, paid the fees, and passed the background checks. This specifically doesn’t apply to criminals, felons, prohibited persons, or normal people carrying without a license.
 
The law is tyrannical. Remember, this bill is revenge for the Supreme Court affirming the right to armed self-defense; thus, states had to become “shall issue” for CCW permits. California said “fuck that” and wrote this bill so that the permits would be meaningless. Then the courts said “We’re openly biased and partisan and we know that it’ll take forever for the plaintiffs to challenge this to SCOTUS and get a favorable ruling, so fuck you.” Don’t play the state’s tyrannical games.
 
Also, California has made it so agonizingly difficult to get a CCW with unnecessary hoops that it is hard, expensive, and discouraging to get a permit. That is part of the process to keep people from getting permits. None of that process stops criminals. It can also take months to over a year just to get an appointment. Plenty of normal, otherwise law abiding people who don’t cause trouble (i.e. peaceable) are carrying without a permit.
 
You know as a cop that California no longer cares about crime and punishment. From AB 109 from having to inform your traffic stopees why you pulled them over it’s about leftist bullshit, not safety. You have no obligation to enforce tyrannical laws, only to keep the public safe. You don’t keep the public safe by disarming normal people.
 
So, if you come across someone with a CCW, think really hard before giving a shit. If they’re a prohibited person or up to some nefarious stuff, of course do your job. But if you stop a guy who comes back clear for speeding and he’s got a pistol behind his waistband, let him slide. Don’t discuss it, don’t get it on body cam, and try to avoid patting him down. Don’t make problems for yourself.
 
If you are California peace officer and you care about the Second Amendment, you will ignore SB 2 but also any armed, peaceable citizen with a gun, whether they have a permit to carry or not. This isn’t about following the laws, it’s about letting citizens protect themselves and ignoring blatantly tyrannical, authoritarian laws contrary to American values.
 
 

Memes stolen shamelessly from a friends' website.

VC Star: Santa Paula police in crisis mode as Ventura County Sheriff's Office hires away 10 officers

Santa Paula PD is primed for a sheriff’s department office takeover. For years, the sheriff has been making proposals for the city to contract with the county.
 
Years ago, the old car-to-car channel, Ch. 4, was moved to Ch. 5, to create Ch. 4 as the “North” county frequency. The idea was that Fillmore and Ojai could be broken off Ch. 1 “West County” radio since no one could ever hear them except locally. Ojai is in a valley surrounded by mountains/foothills and Fillmore is deep inside the Santa Clara Valley, well away from the other cities.
 
Over a decade ago, everything went to all repeater traffic so the need for topographical accommodations to the radio network is smaller, but with the increase in traffic adding a new channel will help alleviate heavy radio traffic. Locals will know that East County has been on Ch. 3 for ages. So radio-wise, the channel is already there. In fact, this was intentionally done with the understanding that Santa Paula would eventually contract with the sheriff, though the chances circa 200_ seemed a lot greater than they turned out to be in the intervening years.
 
The new radio plan would look like:
Ch. 1 West County: Camarillo, David (Ventura/HQ) Station
Ch. 3 East County: Thousand Oaks, Moorpark
Ch. 4 North County: Ojai, Fillmore, Santa Paula
 
Fun fact: In the pre-all repeater days, I used to talk to one of my partners when he was working Fillmore by switching to (IIRC) Ch. 15 and using a simplex repeater on South Mountain. Then we upgraded to new radios all around and got a countywide repeater system, so everyone could hear everyone.
 
I don’t like SPPD and I don’t think departments that small should exist. SPPD doesn’t have a great reputation among local law enforcement and small agencies are mostly mediocre, as I’ve seen. But that’s neither here nor there and not the purpose of this post. No, the city council will have to stem the bleeding by paying officers what they’re worth, suffer substandard service, or contract with the sheriff. So far, local civic pride has been a factor and I’d imagine that right now it’s the only thing keeping Santa Paula separate agency.

When we think of catastrophic human events, it’s not often that we imagine they can happen in our own backyard. Despite being the author of books that literally prepare for a defense against civil unrest, I couldn’t imagine my native Ventura County, California, becoming the site of a high-profile incident.
 
On Sunday November 5, in the Los Angeles suburb of Thousand Oaks, a Jewish pro-Israel protestor was involved in an altercation of some sort with a pro-Palestinian protestor. The Jewish man somehow fell and struck his head; whether he just fell or was struck/pushed is a matter for the courts. This event has ignited local and national controversy over the current crisis in the Middle East and could serve as the igniting event of domestic unrest.
 
The victim’s memorial service was held at Temple Etz Chaim at Janss Rd. and the 23 freeway without incident. A suspect has been arrested on involuntary manslaughter charges, which might prove to be a catalyst for troublemaking. So far, the suspect has been cooperative but it isn’t him that the public should be worried about. Rather, it is outside agitators and terrorists that might exploit the situation for their own purposes.
 
Yes, “T. O.” is on the fringes of the Los Angeles metro as one of its suburbs, but the city is quite different from LA. It is a purple, predominately white, upper middle class city that has consistently been one of the safest large cities in America. The chances of some major social controversy erupting here seemed small, yet it happened. For those anti-California supremacists out there, I remind you that the people of Charlottesville, VA, or Kenosha, WI, never expected their towns would turn into the center of major civil unrest.
 
Any protests would likely be using the actual incident as an excuse to engage in civil disorder. We saw in 2020 the “causes” be supposed racism against blacks, George Floyd, and police brutality. In 2023, we are seeing protests and unrest over American support for Israel in the wake of the Hamas attack. It is possible that anti-Semitism wrapped up as “support for Palestinians” as a rallying cry. The incident and any prosecution would simply be a MacGuffin for protest.
 
Those concerned about emergencies or civil unrest (SHTF) need to do an area study of their location. I’ll leave it to Mike Shelby of Gray Zone Activity (and Forward Observer) to tell you how to do an area study, but I’d like to examine some important angles of intelligence preparedness. I’m going to skip over a lot of stuff, but where are the physical locations that are likely to experience unrest of some form should this explode into 2020-style unrest?
 
A benefit to this being real-world is that you can “follow along” so to speak and pull this all up on the map. In fact, I would encourage you to do so, which will allow you to better wargame your own scenarios where you live.
 
Potential protest locations

• Site of the incident (Thousand Oaks Blvd. & Westlake Blvd.)
• County seat (Government Center in Ventura)
• East Valley sheriff’s station
• Thousands Oaks civic center (city hall)

 
Additional points of concern:

• Oaks Mall
• Thousand Oaks Auto Mall
• 101/23 freeways, especially the 101/Moorpark & 101/Westlake exits
• Any Jewish house of worship

 
The site of the incident as a subsequent protest location should be fairly obvious. As Sheriff Jim Fryhoff said in a press conference, the intersection itself is popular for protests because it is a high-traffic location where two large arterial streets converge near a freeway. It is a natural place to hold demonstrations for sheer visibility. Any significance it has is about being seen or symbolic to the incident.
 
The Government Center (courthouse), where a hearing or trial may be held, along with the fact that the jail (where the suspect is incarcerated) is located in the same complex. The advantage to a protest here is greater open space and symbolism, plus potential juror intimidation. The civic center also serves a similar symbolic purpose and is about two miles from the site of the incident.
 
But this incident happened in Thousand Oaks, 30 miles away! Why would anyone protest in Ventura over a homicide that happened elsewhere over a conflict on the other side of the planet? Well, Ventura is the county seat, where the courthouse is, and most importantly, where the jail is. The suspect will be booked in Ventura and arraigned just across the Government Center campus. Court houses and jails have been the natural foci of protests.
 
As for the sheriff’s station, a loss of legitimacy (or fear) of police can precipitate protests. We’ve seen plenty of examples of police being targeted for protests or overrunning the station. Also, a large protest could paralyze the station would hamper any operations in response to unrest. Freeway on/off-ramps are points of concern because protestors seeking to cause disruption have frequently walked on to the freeways to disrupt traffic.
 
Looting targets include the auto mall and the large, indoor Oaks Mall. There are also many strip and outdoors malls proximate to the incident location as well that could be targeted by roving rioters/looters. Additionally, should law enforcement in the area be overwhelmed with responding to a protest/riot, this would make homes and businesses all over the city vulnerable.
 
The number of participants in the main focus of events (riot/protest) wouldn’t be enough to create a citywide threat, nor would the local population pose much risk of riot, but LA is not far away. Looting-prone riff-raff and organized criminals might come up to exploit the situation. This is the situation that happened in 2020 where areas with riots became looting magnets that pulled in opportunists from all over the surrounding areas.
 
However, there are only two freeway access points into Ventura County from Los Angeles County and those are easily closed. With more manpower, the smaller roads that provide access can be closed, deterring most criminals who would have to be local or make a very wide detour.
 
With houses of worship and any other targets, the neighborhoods nearby could become targets. The North Ranch, Westlake Village, and TO Blvd.-adjacent neighborhoods could face spillover looting, vandalism, harassment, and perhaps even direct attack on homeowners. At the very minimum, there would be major traffic disruption, noise, and security concerns. Furthermore, given the hilly and brushy/wooded topography of the city, unintentional ignitions and arson make brushfires a concern as well.
 
To conclude, again it is not to say that anything will necessarily happen in Ventura County, but it certainly can. If not here, then it will happen in another community in the US for other reasons. Even if this only becomes my personal case study rather than international headlines, the principals can be and should be applied to where you live. It might not be rioting, but it could be looting or something else. Use your imagination and start thinking about what around you might serve as the focal point for events in a human disaster.

About the author: Don Shift is a veteran of the Ventura County Sheriff's Office and author of the Suburban Defense/Rural Home Defense series, a cop's guides to surviving riots, civil war, or SHTF.

So what do you do when a high-profile event with the potential to grow into a social conflagration happens in your small town? We’re seeing Jerusalem becoming a burdensome stone in cities all over the world. Though the current crisis du jour is Israel, in 2020 it was a drug addict, and in 2024 it’s likely to be WWIII and the election. Industrial-grade civil unrest can come to you.
 
Thousand Oaks, California, is on the far western fringe of the urban sprawl that makes up the Los Angeles Metro area. I grew up in that city and helped police it. It is as white-bread boring as it gets, the epitome of middle class. The only major criminal events of note were the Borderline shooting in 2018 and actress Amanda Bynes’ schizophrenic freak out.
 
That was until this weekend when a Jewish man somehow fell and struck his head on the pavement—it’s unclear if he was struck, pushed, or fell exactly, but it’s being called a homicide. The background is a pro-Palestinian protest was happening on the corner of Westlake and Thousand Oaks Boulevards. The Jewish victim came into contact with the Palestinian protestors and the events resulting in his death a day later ensued. Now my hometown and agency is national news.

The victim, quite frankly, fucked around and found out. That doesn't mean he should have been assaulted and die as a result, but basic personal security common sense dictates you don't get involved with opposing protesters. Doubly so if you are a Jew and they are protesting against Israel. Protesting was a risky thing and the victim never should have gone near the others.

The victim, Paul Kessler, I'm guessing assumed that he would be perfectly fine. Ventura County, after all, is a pretty chill place. He likely went in with a normalcy bias where he thought the worst that could happen was probably some yelling. I'm sure the suspect didn't intend to kill anyone either, but here we are. Doing stupid things in stupid places is a recipe for disaster, even if you've lived for decades in literally one of the safest cities in the country. 
 
As for the exact events, those don’t matter for my readers. In times of turmoil, that an Archduke got assassinated does not matter when the troops begin to march. The odds of this event spiraling out of control until Thousand Oaks and the West Valley are in flames are not great. What is a possibility is that a pro-Israel rally or victim’s memorial is targeted by violent agitators and this leads to a violent confrontation. We saw how “peaceful protests” were coopted and spread beyond the initial goals of counter-protest or disrupting the original event.
 
Where the reader needs to be concerned is if something like this were to happen in their area. Not every reader lives in a tiny town miles from anything. What are the local catalysts that could lead to something like this in your backyard? For instance, the western San Fernando Valley and its outlying areas, like Thousand Oaks, have a relatively high population of Jews. International immigration in the LA area has also brought in many groups from the Middle East.
 
An area study would tell you things like the above. Perhaps in your case it might be radical activity on the commuter campus of the local state university in your county seat. What if militant environmentalists get wind of the big pipeline or other megaproject being built in your neck of the woods? “Stop Cop City” in Georgia or the Keystone XL pipeline are other examples. Again, what the spark happens to be is less important than the after effects.
 
For instance, let’s say that there is a pro-Israel protest at the Government Center in the county seat of Ventura. Deputies and the city police are called to mediate. However, counter-protestors show up and small confrontations, like as happened on Sunday, begin. Police mediate and keep things in control. Unfortunately, agitators show up and begin engaging the police, before harassing the crowd and vandalizing nearby property. It could end here with a skirmish or the police response could generate further controversy among the Far Left, creating an anti-police insurrection in a SoCal suburb.
 
That’s what you need to be prepared for. While it’s impossible to predict flashpoints (who woulda thought an old man falling down—grossly oversimplified, I know—would move the Arab-Israeli conflict to Thousand Oaks and put the city in the national news), the follow-on effects have to be planned for. The second order effect here is potentially disruptive protests. Again, we have ample examples of where that could go. While probably nothing will happen on that front locally here because of that, it bears watching.
 
“It” can happen to you in your small town. Now whether it is a Biblical feud, a drug addict becoming a cause célèbre, or a economic collapse leading to rioting, you need to be prepared. Living in a peaceful suburb or in a place where “nothing happens” is no guarantee. Remember, we prepare for contingencies, not certainties.
 
Now plenty of readers will take a dump on this because it happened in “Commiefornia” and in the suburbs of LA, but that doesn’t mean anything of substance. Even red and purple states have had high profile incidents that kicked off. But hey, Texas is trending purple. What I’m saying is this can happen anywhere and it has.

As always, since this event has the potential to blow up, I do not speak for VCSO, nor am I taking sides in the matter.

Craft breweries like to come up with clever names for their beers. Walk down the aisle of a place like Total Wine and you'll see all kinds of creative titles. A while ago, why not create a list of very un-politically correct but hilarious beer names?

As you can see, the AI struggles with text, but has come along very well. You can see I was able to trick the AI to generate some risque images but given the titles and the content filter, I was limited with what I could so. My own editing is very limited.

Alternates in odd years with:

Threesome-10% ABV triple IPA

If you are a brewery and want to license any names, let me know.

SB 553 legislation page
 
Short version: this bill requires employer policies that basically discourage a business owner from allowing employees to intervene in thefts, opening up the business to lawsuits from both employees and the criminals.
 
Decent newspaper article about SB 553
 
California business owners and retail employees are sick of being robbed blind. The Legislature, seeing all the violence involved in these incidents, decides to put the onus on the businesses. Rather than increase penalties to deter crime and punish criminals, the state wants to “make it safer” for employees through workplace safety standards.
 
Many of us had menial jobs like fast food or retail where boring training videos tell you basically to give up the cash if robbed. Makes sense from a liability standpoint and if the state will actually attempt to apprehend and punish the criminals. However, as the state has abrogated that duty SB 553 now wants to minimize bad press of shoplifting turning to robberies by blaming the victims.
 
The bill originally sought to force employers to create plans for non-security guard employees on how shoplifting (theft) confrontations. Such incidents would basically fall under OSHA regulations. This creates a perverse disincentive for businesses allowing employees to intervene; if an employee is assaulted, there is now an avenue of approach for a shady worker’s comp lawyer to sue the employer.

• Don’t have a policy? “That’s illegal and having a policy and training could have kept my client from being injured when they told that thief ‘Hey, you gotta pay for that!’”
• The policy says employes can intervene? “Now you’re liable for my client’s injuries inflicted by that robber because you said it was okay for them!”
• The policy is ambiguous? “If your policy was clear and you trained my client right, maybe this wouldn’t have happened!”

 
Now I’m not saying that’s what would happen in any case, but shysters will exploit anything to make a buck and businesses are wary of liability like this. So it becomes easier for a retailer to say “Just don’t do anything that could get someone hurt or the company sued.” Employees as a result do nothing, lowering the bar for theft. Combine this with a slow or no police response and prosecutors who don’t press charges and retail theft is basically consequence-free.
 
A major tenant of leftist, progressive policies is blame shifting. Blame the victim rather than the offender. By opening up potential workplace safety violations, the risk of employer liability increases, thus it creates the perverse incentive to require employees to do nothing. If an employer can argue that their training was for their staff to just let it happen, then the employee is responsible for their injuries as they broke store policy. That’s to say nothing of what the criminal’s civil attorney could do.
 
So without legalizing shoplifting, the state seeks to do that through the law of unintended consequences. SB 553 is the camel’s nose under the tent of actually prohibiting things like citizen’s arrest for property crimes. Mark my words: California will probably ban private citizens from arresting retail thieves which will really neuter businesses and de facto legalize shoplifting.
 
Sept. 7 update: The employer or union can seek a TRO on behalf of an employee; essentially banning repeat offenders from the business. As we all know, restraining orders are rather worthless, but hey, I guess CVS can get the crazy bums arrested now if they don’t stay away (assuming the cops care).