The Courts Beat
Nate Gartrell flipped through a fat stack of pages. “I’m basically just looking for homicides,” he said. Every week, Gartrell, a thirty-one-year-old reporter for the
East Bay Times, visits the records office of the Contra Costa County criminal courthouse in Northern California, where a young clerk greets him with a smile and two sets of documents. One lists all the defendants scheduled to appear in the coming days; the other contains police reports detailing recent arrests. In late October, the schedule alone was a hundred and sixty pages long nearly five hundred defendants. There were always more stories in the pile than Gartrell could cover, but he hated the thought of missing something important. So he scanned every sheet, tracing his index finger along each name and criminal charge, snapping a photo on his phone whenever a detail caught his eye.
East Bay city confirms Chick-fil-A will be coming to town [East Bay Times]
Jan. 30 Chick-fil-A, one of the nation’s largest fast-food chicken chains, will break ground Monday in Pittsburg on its first East Contra Costan restaurant.
The popular Georgia-based eatery will locate in Century Plaza in a renovated space where Big 5 once operated, with plans to open later this year, city officials have confirmed late Friday.
Jordan Davis, interim economic development director, said the city had worked with owner Sierra Pacific Properites to revamp the northeastern Pittsburg shopping center, but did not know until recently what business the developer had recruited for the space.
Transient in custody after breaking in to East Bay police station [East Bay Times]
Jan. 30 ALAMEDA A Colorado man wanted on a felony warrant broke into the Alameda Police Department building early Thursday morning, despite restrictions in place limiting public access due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alexander Charman, a 41-year-old transient, is also accused of struggling with two sergeants inside the red-brick building at 1555 Oak St. after he got inside about 2 a.m.
Police said Charman appeared to be dressed as a law enforcement officer and was yelling from inside the building when the officers confronted him.
Police suspect Charman is the same man who about 8:45 p.m. Wednesday or just a few hours prior to the break-in showed up outside the department, which is adjacent to City Hall, and tried to get in through the front door, which was locked.
Antioch temporarily halts new retail cannabis businesses [East Bay Times]
Jan. 27 To avoid saturating the market, Antioch has put a temporary halt to approving new retail cannabis businesses.
The City Council on Tuesday passed an urgency ordinance that will keep the ban in effect at least 45 days.
Antioch already has approved five such dispensaries and there’s another one that’s almost completed the permit process. Four are in the city’s northwestern green zone where such businesses are allowed and another is in the Wilbur corridor, another cannabis-allowed zone.
Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who asked for the emergency ordinance, said it’s needed to give the city’s cannabis committee time to consider other options, such as creating a new overlay district where cannabis retail could operate.
FAIRFIELD-SUISUN, CALIFORNIA
Share the Spirit: East Bay readers dug deep to donate record amount for those most in need [East Bay Times]
Jan. 24 Amid the tragedies and hardships wrought by a worldwide pandemic in a tumultuous year, generous East Bay Times readers reached deep into their pockets to help neighbors in need.
Readers have contributed a record-breaking $482,134 so far to this news organization’s annual Share the Spirit campaign which highlighted the devastating impacts of COVID-19 on so many lives benefiting nonprofits in Contra Costa and Alameda counties that provide critical services to the less fortunate.
That’s $216,490 more than last year, and the deadline for giving isn’t over, said Tom Tamura of the Contra Costa Crisis Center, which administers the program.