By U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of California
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Juan Valentin Manriquez, 21, of Antioch, was sentenced today to three years and eight months in prison for unlawful dealing in firearms, U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced.
According to court documents, co-defendant Andrew Jace Larrabure-Tuma used Snapchat to advertise narcotics and guns for sale. Law enforcement used undercover officers and a confidential informant to buy guns from Tuma. Tuma of Sacramento was 19 years old and could not legally purchase a gun in the state of California. Tuma ultimately introduced the informant working for law enforcement to his gun supplier, Manriquez. During the course of the following month, Manriquez sold the informant nine guns in exchange for cash.
This case was the product of an investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Sacramento Police Department, and the Western El Dorado Narcotics Enforcement Team. Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin Lee prosecuted the case.
Tuma pleaded guilty to unlawful dealing and manufacturing firearms and was sentenced to three years and four months in prison.
This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and gun violence, and to make our neighborhoods safer for everyone. On May 26, 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a violent crime reduction strategy strengthening PSN based on these core principles: fostering trust and legitimacy in our communities, supporting community-based organizations that help prevent violence from occurring in the first place, setting focused and strategic enforcement priorities, and measuring the results.
Two police officers stand near the downed motorcycle at the scene of the collision on Deer Valley Road near Prewett Ranch Road Thursday afternoon, Oct. 5, 2023. Photos by Allen D. Payton
Speeding driver of car determined at fault
The driver of the AMR ambulance witnessed the collision.
By Allen D. Payton
A 63-year-old Bay Point man riding a motorcycle on Deer Valley Road was rear-ended by a black sedan near the Prewett Ranch Road intersection in Antioch, at 2:08 p.m. Thursday afternoon. As an AMR ambulance was on its way to Kaiser medical center with a patient inside the driver witnessed the collision. But the ambulance was not involved in the collision. Antioch Police officers in the area and AMR personnel immediately performed CPR.
The motorcyclist was transported to the hospital with major head trauma where he later succumbed to his injuries.
The black sedan was damaged on both front sides and the back window blew out during the colission.
Two pickup trucks were also struck in the accident, with the sedan striking one and the motorcycle hitting the other after the first impact. The driver of the sedan remained at the scene and cooperated with Antioch Police Officers. An officer on the scene said she was emotionally distraught and had a difficult time communicating what happened. It was determined she was at fault as numerous witnesses claimed she was speeding.
The two pickup trucks damaged in the collision remained at the scene during the police investigation.
The driver has not yet been arrested as the police must do an inspection of her car before they can file a case with the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office.
Some of the roads leading to the intersection were closed for several hours causing those driving to Kaiser to make a detour through nearby neighborhoods. The roads were cleared and reopened about 7:20 p.m.
Banner displayed at Rio Vista Elementary School in Bay Point. Source: CCC Public Works Dept.
By Kelly Kalfsbeek, PIO, Contra Costa County Public Works Department
October is National Pedestrian Safety Month and it’s a reminder of the importance of safe streets for everyone. In 2021 there was a pedestrian fatality every 71 minutes and an injury every 9 minutes in traffic related crashes. That’s why the Contra Costa County Vision Zero team is working tirelessly to change these numbers. Our message is clear: “Slow Down for Our Families. Get there Safely!” You’ll find our banners on buses and at 11 local elementary schools, spreading the word throughout our county. Join us in making our roads safer for ALL. Learn more about our efforts at: www.contracosta.ca.gov/visionzero. For more pedestrian safety resources visit: Everyone is a Pedestrian | Traffic Safety Marketing
About Contra Costa County Public Works Department:
Contra Costa County Public Works Department (CCCPWD) maintains over 660 miles of roads, 150 miles of streams, channels, and other drainage and over 150 County buildings throughout Contra Costa County. CCCPWD provides services such as Parks and Recreation, Sandbag Distribution and Flood Control throughout the unincorporated areas of Contra Costa County. CCCPWD operates two airports, Buchanan Field Airport in Concord, and Byron Airport in Byron. For more information about CCCPWD, please visit us at: www.cccpublicworks.org
SEE 10/4/23 3:30 PM UPDATE: While bargaining ended without a contract settlement 5 tentative agreements reached
“Operations continue as normal”
Kaiser Permanente Statement on National Bargaining with the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions
Kaiser Permanente and leaders and members of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions were bargaining through the weekend to reach an agreement.
We continue to make progress on key issues such as a redesigned performance sharing plan with updated payout opportunities. Last week we reached tentative agreements in four key areas:, travel for continuing education, the use of temporary workers such as traveling nurses, tracking of staffing vacancies, and dispute resolution.
It is important to know that while the current national agreement expired at midnight PDT on September 30, operations continue as normal, and we will continue to honor all current contract provisions. Contract expirations do not mean a strike will happen. We remain optimistic that we will reach an agreement and avoid an unnecessary strike, which the Coalition unions have called for starting on Wednesday morning, Oct 4.
Wages
We lead total compensation in every market where we operate, and our proposals in bargaining would ensure we keep that position. In some places, a Kaiser Permanente employee leaving for a similar job at another organization would face a 20-plus percent pay cut, and lower benefits.
Included in our current offer are guaranteed across-the-board wage increases and a proposed $21 minimum wage in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, the Mid-Atlantic States (Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia), and Hawaii starting in 2024; and a $23 minimum wage starting in 2024 in California.
Hiring and Staffing
Despite the acute shortage of health care workers nationally, we have been able to hire more than 50,000 frontline employees in the last two years: 29,000 people in 2022, and another 22,000 so far this year. Included in this year’s new hires are more than 9,800 people hired into jobs represented by the Coalition. Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition agreed in April to a goal of hiring 10,000 new people for Coalition-represented jobs by the end of 2023. We expect to reach the 10,000 new hire goal by the end of October, if not sooner, and we won’t stop there. We are committed to addressing every area of staffing that is still challenging. Additionally, our attrition rate of 7% is roughly a third of the industry average and continues to fall. These achievements underscore the value of a Kaiser Permanente job and reinforce our position as a leading health care employer.
Potential Strike Starting Wednesday
In the case that a strike does begin on Oct. 4, we have contingency plans in place to ensure members continue to receive safe, high-quality care for the duration of the strike. Our hospitals and emergency departments will remain open. Kaiser Permanente members can get updates on appointments, pharmacy guidance and where to get care on kp.org.
We’ll continue to bargain in good faith until we reach a fair and equitable agreement to ensure Kaiser Permanente continues to attract and retain the best people in health care — and remains a best place to work and get care. And that includes meeting our responsibility to continue to balance taking care of our employees and being more affordable to our members.
October 4, 2023 3:30pm UPDATE:
After 6 months of bargaining with the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, including a marathon effort that went through last night and into today, our bargaining sessions unfortunately ended without a settlement, and the Coalition strikes began.
While we have not reached a contract settlement, we have been able to reach a number of tentative agreements in bargaining, and our offers to date address the unions’ priorities, including:
Across-the-board wage increases in all markets over the next four years.
Updating the Performance Sharing Plan to include a minimum payout opportunity and potential for up to a $3,750 payout.
Offering minimum wages of $23/hour in California and $21/hour in markets outside of California.
Continuing and enhancing our existing excellent health benefits and retirement income plans.
Renewing our strong tuition assistance and training programs, and increasing funding of the education trusts.
We remain committed to reaching a new agreement that continues to provide our employees with market-leading wages, excellent benefits, generous retirement income plans, and valuable professional development opportunities.
Together, we have faced the toughest challenges over the past three years. Kaiser Permanente, our industry, and our employees are now operating in a new cultural, labor, and post-pandemic environment that we are all working hard to understand. We are committed to finding workable solutions for this new environment that meet our responsibility to balance taking care of our employees and being affordable to our members.
We will coordinate with Coalition leaders to reconvene bargaining as soon as possible. We will work hard to reach an agreement so that together, we can all return to delivering on the mission of Kaiser Permanente for the benefit of our members, patients, employees, physicians, customers, and communities.
Meeting our shared staffing goal
On the same day that the Coalition strikes began, we’re pleased to confirm that we’ve met ourgoal of hiring 10,000 new Coalition-represented employees by year-end – and it is only October 4th. We’re not done yet. We are committed to addressing every area of staffing that is still challenging.
As a reminder: In April we agreed with the Coalition to a joint goal of hiring 10,000 people by the end of this year into jobs the Coalition cares about. We agreed this would be a great success if we could hire that many people into Coalition roles by the end of this year. We hit the goal three months early.
In total over the past two years, Kaiser Permanente has hired more than 50,000 people to join our teams.
Meeting our members’ needs
The health and wellbeing of our members and patients is our top priority. Because we are such a large organization, with multiple ways that members can access care, the impact of the strike is different at various locations.
We have robust plans in place to ensure members continue to receive safe, high-quality care during the strike.
All our hospitals and emergency departments remain open. Our facilities will continue to be staffed by our physicians, trained and experienced managers, and our great staff. Thousands of qualified and trained contract staff are joining our Kaiser Permanente teams this week as well, to help meet our members’ and patients’ needs. We thank those Coalition-represented employees who have chosen to come to work and care for our patients, members, and communities.
Members who need urgent or timely medical care should continue to seek it at our hospitals and medical facilities. A strike should not dissuade anyone from seeking necessary care.
We will contact members affected by any necessary changes in our services. We may need to reschedule non-emergency and elective services in some locations out of an abundance of caution. Our members can follow any important updates to our care delivery on kp.org.
By Renée Saldaña, SEIU,Press Secretary, SEUI –United Healthcare Workers West
OAKLAND, Calif. – Bay Area unions IFPTE Local 20 and OPEIU Local 29 have approved a sympathy strike in support of the unfair labor practices strike at Kaiser Permanente hospitals and medical offices in California being called for by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West between October 4-6.
A “sympathy strike” occurs when one union supports another union that is directly involved in a labor dispute.
“Kaiser’s unfair labor practices against SEIU-UHW in our local bargaining have not been remedied,” said Erica Chinchilla, a respiratory therapist at Kaiser Antioch. “A sympathy strike is a powerful act of solidarity where workers strike to support or aid another group of workers. We appreciate our Coalition partners’ willingness to stand with us as we protest these unfair labor practices committed by Kaiser in local bargaining against SEIU-UHW and its members.”
SEIU-UHW members include frontline workers such as respiratory care practitioners, dietary, environmental services, and nursing staff. OPEIU Local 29 represents office, technical and professional employees at Kaiser Permanente. IFPTE Local 20 represents clinical lab scientists, home health therapists, optometrists, genetic counselors, and other technical and professional employees at Kaiser.
Laboratory scientists provide information medical doctors need to properly diagnose and treat patients, as well as ensure correct blood products are given to patients during surgery or an emergency. Kaiser has not informed IFPTE Local 20 of coverage plans of this important work.
Unions in Oregon, Southwest Washington, Colorado, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., which are part of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, are also planning unfair labor practices strikes at the same time.
SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) is a healthcare justice union of more than 100,000 healthcare workers, patients, and healthcare activists united to ensure affordable, accessible, high-quality care for all Californians, provided by valued and respected healthcare workers. Learn more at www.seiu-uhw.org.
75,000 U.S. healthcare workers of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions protest claims of unfair labor practices
By Isaac Reese, 617 Media Group
10/4/23 7:00 P.M. UPDATE: “Frontline healthcare workers are awaiting a meaningful response from Kaiser executives regarding some of our key priorities including safe staffing, outsourcing protections for incumbent healthcare workers, and fair wages to reduce turnover. Healthcare workers within the coalition remain ready to meet at any time. Currently, the strike continues, and there are no sessions scheduled at this hour,” said Caroline Lucas, spokesperson, Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.
More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers in multiple states are now on strike to protest unfair labor practices and Kaiser executives’ failure to bargain in good faith over unsafe staffing levels at hundreds of Kaiser hospitals and facilities across the United States.
Over the course of just three hours, the strike at Kaiser facilities expanded from coast to coast, following months of bad faith bargaining activity by Kaiser executives and repeated appeals by frontline healthcare workers for Kaiser executives to make the kinds of investments in staffing that could help stem employee turnover and reduce growing patient wait times.
The strike began in DC and VA at 6AM ET this morning, expanded to CO at 6AM MT, then culminated with tens of thousands of workers striking in CA, OR, and WA at 6AM PT.
In the vast majority of locations, barring an agreement, the strike is expected to last for three days. It is already the largest healthcare worker strike in U.S. history.
Healthcare workers are taking the work action to protest Kaiser executives’ bad faith bargaining, which is getting in the way of finding solutions to solve the Kaiser short-staffing crisis by investing in its workforce.
In recent days, Kaiser executives maintaining aggressive threats of outsourcing became a sticking point in negotiations, especially at a time when the company is failing to retain key employees.
“Kaiser executives are refusing to listen to us and are bargaining in bad faith over the solutions we need to end the Kaiser short-staffing crisis,” said Jessica Cruz, a licensed vocational nurse at Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center. “I see my patients’ frustrations when I have to rush them and hurry on to my next patient. That’s not the care I want to give. We’re burning ourselves out trying to do the jobs of two or three people, and our patients suffer when they can’t get the care they need due to Kaiser’s short-staffing.”
Strike lines are set up at Kaiser Permanente hospitals and medical office buildings across the country, including California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Workers on strike include those employed as licensed vocational nurses, emergency department technicians, radiology technicians, ultrasound sonographers, teleservice representatives, respiratory therapists, x-ray technicians, optometrists, certified nursing assistants, dietary services, behavioral health workers, surgical technicians, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, transporters, home health aides, phlebotomists, medical assistants, dental assistants, call center representatives, and housekeepers, among hundreds of other positions.
BACKGROUND
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions represents 85,000 Kaiser healthcare workers in seven states and the District of Columbia. In April, the Coalition began its national bargaining process ahead of the September 30th contract expiration. On Sept. 22, Coalition unions representing 75,000 Kaiser healthcare workers gave Kaiser executives 10-day notices for an unfair labor practice strike beginning Oct. 4. The Coalition and Kaiser Permanente last negotiated a contract in 2019, before healthcare workers found themselves on the frontlines of the COVID pandemic that has worsened working conditions and exacerbated a healthcare staffing crisis.
At issue, healthcare workers say, are a series of unfair labor practices related to bargaining in bad faith, along with simmering staff concerns related to unsafe staffing levels that can lead to dangerously long wait times, mistaken diagnosis, and neglect. After years of the COVID pandemic and chronic understaffing, Kaiser healthcare workers are calling on management to provide safe staffing levels.
Workers say that Kaiser is committing unfair labor practices and also that understaffing is boosting Kaiser’s profits but hurting patients. In arecent survey of 33,000 employees, 2/3 of workers said they’d seen care delayed or denied due to short staffing. After three years of the COVID pandemic and chronic understaffing, healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente are calling on management to provide safe staffing levels.
Kaiser has reported $3 billion in profits in just the first six months of this year. Despite being a non-profit organization – which means it pays no income taxes on its earnings and extremely limited property taxes – Kaiser has reported more than $24 billion in profit over the last five years. Kaiser’s CEO was compensated more than $16 million in 2021, and forty-nine executives at Kaiser are compensated more than $1 million annually. Kaiser Permanente has investments of $113 billion in the US and abroad, including in fossil fuels, casinos, for-profit prisons, alcohol companies, military weapons and more.
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions unites more than 85,000 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente facilities in California, Colorado, Oregon, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington
Two stolen, damaged cars towed from St. Frances Drive near Contra Loma Blvd. following arrest of two juveniles Wed. morning, Oct. 4, 2023. Source chose to remain anonymous.
Antioch Police arrested two of three juveniles suspected of stealing at least two cars following multiple reports of erratic driving and the cars crashing into each other on purpose Wednesday, Oct. 4 about 8:15 am. Both stolen vehicles are wrecked. The subjects were detained on St. Frances Drive and Contra Loma Blvd.
Charged with 1 felony, 2 misdemeanors for being drunk, on probation for DUI, carrying concealed, loaded stolen weapon
By Brentwood Police Department
Last week, Brentwood Officers responded to the 1600 block of Ceylon Drive for a party complaint. Our Dispatch received additional calls reporting there was a fight and someone had a gun.
When officers arrived, they saw several partygoers in the street, including an adult female who matched the description of the suspect with a gun.
The female, identified as 24-year-old Zyann Chablis Martin of Antioch, was found to be in possession of a loaded stolen gun. Martin who was heavily intoxicated at the time officers contacted her, was also on probation for DUI. According to unicourt.com her DUI occurred early last year.
Martin was placed under arrest and transported to the Martinez Detention Facility. According to recentlybooked.com, Martin was charged with one felony and two misdemeanors: 25400(C)(2) PC – carrying a concealed stolen weapon (F), 496(A) PC – receiving/etc. known stolen property (M) and 647(F) PC – disorderly conduct alcohol (M). According to the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Department, as of Monday, October 2, 2023, she bonded out of custody.
