S1: Hey there , San Diego , it's time for KPBS roundtable. I'm Jade Hindman in for Andrew Bracken today. Local and national reporters break down the issues impacting your life. New reporting from the KPBS newsroom shows San Diego law enforcement are more likely to charge black San Diegans with resisting an officer. Katie Hyson joins us to explain what's behind that. Then the wrong man was linked to a crime because of a flock license plate reader. How that happened? Plus a conversation with LGBTQ plus journalist as pride season kicks off. That's ahead on KPBS roundtable. So about twice a day , San Diego law enforcement charged someone with resisting an officer and nothing else. Data shows it's nine times more likely to happen to a black person. My colleague Katie Hyson is out with a two part series about this. She covers racial justice and social equity for KPBS. Katie , welcome to the roundtable.
S2: Thanks for having me.
S1: So your reporting. First of all , great reporting , I should say. Um , it begins with a woman named Aisha Williams. And on a Sunday , a sunny day rather last September. Um , this all transpired , so set the scene for us. What exactly happened?
S2: So Aisha goes to her father's house in Emerald Hills. Anytime she and her daughter need to get their homework done , they use his Wi-Fi in the yard. And they put up this canopy to give them some shade. And she says it's never been an issue before. And no one had approached her and asked her to move it. So she was surprised when police arrived and they said the canopy was encroaching because it extended onto the sidewalk , which belongs to the city , and Aisha put the canopy away. But things escalated fast and bystanders gathered and started to film. And in those bystander videos , we see an officer put his hand , his hands on Aisha , and that upset her and she was expressing that frustration. And then her 15 year old daughter got upset , and another officer put hands on her daughter and began to steer her away. And the daughter was scared and started to cry. And the next bystander video we have , there are three officers holding Aisha down on the ground.
S1: We have a clip of video of that scene and listeners should know this may be a bit difficult to hear , but take a listen.
S3: Go to jail now. Go look at the rapper. Know where you are. You're gonna get rap now because you did it. See? I told you to stop. Don't listen. You want him to do this? No. We did it. Kenny.
S1: Kenny. What happened next?
S2: Officers then handcuffed her daughter and they woke up her 19 year old son , who was sleeping in her car , and they handcuffed him , too. They claimed that there was marijuana in the car , and they charged him with possession. Aisha says that charge was false and later dismissed , and they handcuffed Isaiah's girlfriend as well.
S1: After all of that , Williams was handed a charge. What was that charge?
S2: She was charged with only one thing resisting an officer.
S1: So break that down for me. I mean , on paper , what falls under the charge of resisting an officer and then nothing else?
S2: I asked NSD , a San Diego Police Department spokesperson , about this , and he gave three examples of how this might happen , though he said this wasn't an exhaustive list. So , for example , if a bystander interferes with an officer doing their job , if someone is detained under reasonable suspicion. So , for example , if they match the description of a suspect and they resist , or if someone resists during a traffic stop and the officer decides not to charge that traffic violation. But in all these cases we're talking about in that interaction with the police , the only crime they're being charged with is resisting.
S1: Did they offer? Did they offer explanation as to why an officer might decide not to charge for a traffic violation? Is it that there wasn't a traffic violation or.
S2: They did not specify.
S1: In going to that? Um , now , the charge never went to court. Uh , but how has the aftermath of that day affected Williams?
S2: She says she and her children were traumatized and her son needed a finger splint. After his arrest. She said that they were rough. And Aisha herself started therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. And she told me she made this decision that I hear all the time from people who've had these negative interactions with police , which is that if she and her family are ever in an emergency , they're going to have to handle it themselves because she's not going to call the police anymore. And here's her words about how this affected her.
S4: To to hear my daughter's scream. And , you know , there's nothing no one can do or , you know , there's nothing I can do at her. Saying it makes you hate the police. You know , it makes you hate them. Even though we were taught not to hate. Mm.
S1: Mm. You know , you also spoke with a man named Keshawn Shaheed Price. He was stopped by officers while leaving a football game in September. Tell me about his story. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. So Shaheed was driving away from this football game , and his 14 and 15 year old children were in the back seat , and he was pulled over and he was confused why he was stopped. The officer said it was for speeding , but Shaheed told me that that was impossible because they were behind two buses and the front passengers started filming. And you can see in the video Shahid is upset and he's expressing that to the officer that he didn't feel safe. And here's part of that video.
S5: I got my ID in my license , I got insurance , but but y'all stopping me and putting lights in my kids faces and all that. Y'all need to be doing that. Y'all need to be doing that.
S2: So he asks the front passenger to call the children's mother , and the officers then order him out of the car and he says , I don't have to exit the car. And at that point they handcuffed him and took him to jail , and they handcuffed his children as well.
S1: My God. And this was his kids first interaction with officers. How did he describe that situation to you?
S2: Yeah , he had some strong words for that experience. So here's that clip.
S6: I feel like I was being robbed and like my kids was being kidnapped , honestly. Like it made me feel like it was the worst feeling ever. Like just like not being able to do nothing. Like knowing like everything that they was doing was like transgressing on my rights.
S1: What did they say about did they say anything about cuffing the children?
S2: They refused to , or I should say , declined to answer any questions about specific cases , provide the body camera footage or the police reports. So we have no more information on why they would handcuff his children.
S1: What was he charged with? And where does his case stand now?
S2: So he was only charged with resisting an officer. And I think it's key to note his lawyer says they never charged him with any traffic violation. And his next court date is this month.
S1: And as you report , you know , price had already been looking into stand alone resisting charges. What did they find?
S2: He works for a nonprofit that assists people impacted by the justice system , and they had already been noticing this pattern of standalone resisting charges. And so when it happened to him , they decided to request the data from the city attorney. So they asked for all cases submitted by law enforcement where the only charge was resisting arrest. And that was over almost a two year time span. And I looked at that data and I found that on average , this is happening about twice a day. And black people were nine times likelier to have that standalone charge than a white person. And the city attorney ends up ended up rejecting the vast majority of those charges. So they never went to court.
S1: How did the San Diego Police Department respond to those findings when you reached out to them?
S2: They gave what has been their consistent answer. Whenever I reach out about racial disparities in policing data , they say those statistics don't tell the whole story and that each of these charges is based on probable cause , essentially , that this isn't an equity issue with their policing , but that instead it reflects the choices of the people being charged.
S1: You also spoke to a civil rights attorney to get his perspective on this. What did he tell you about the nature of these cases. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. His name's Scott Holmes , and he's done research specifically into resisting charges. And he thinks the fact that these charges tend to get dismissed is actually a big part of the problem. So here's a clip.
S7: The person's charge , it gets dismissed. A judge never sees it. And then rinse and repeat over and over and over. And no one is keeping up with the magnitude of the problem or quantifying it or presenting it to the public.
S1: And he compared this to a trend he's found in Durham , North Carolina. Tell me about that. Take us there.
S2: He found a similar but even more stark pattern in Durham. He found that there 90% of people charged with resisting and no other major offense were black. And like here , most of those charges were never prosecuted.
S1: So what questions then , does this raise about constitutionality as people are charged with just resisting arrest?
S2: He says many of these stops are Constitutional. Generally , law enforcement need a probable cause to stop someone in the first place , and if they don't have it , he says , citizens don't have a legal obligation to comply with their orders. And so he sees these standalone resisting charges as more a red flag of police misconduct than any real crime by the person being charged and his. His question was , look , if the person's only charged with resisting arrest , the question is arrest for what?
S1: What does Holmes the attorney , suggest as a possible solution to address the root cause of this pattern?
S2: He thinks when these charges are unconstitutional , when there's no probable cause in the first place , but the officer still handcuffs someone and charges them with resisting , he thinks they should be held liable. Here's how he expressed it.
S7: It's a crime. And if prosecutors started prosecuting it as crimes , then police would stop it the way criminals are supposed to be deterred by criminal prosecution. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. You know , after hearing all that , I want to spend a few minutes talking about your approach to this reporting because you really spend some time taking us into Aisha Williams story. So why did you want to center her perspective in that way?
S2: I think we see so often on the news or on social media , these clips of these forceful arrests of black people. And depending what a viewer's own life experience has been , it can be easy for someone without context to say , oh well , they must be using that force because that person did something to warrant it. But what happens before that camera starts recording is so important. There's always an escalation up to that point. And in my experience reporting on these issues , the officer is often driving that escalation. I also feel like I Aisha's story starts so reliably , like she puts a shade up in her family outside her family's house. They're doing homework. Most listeners have probably done something similar with their families , but many may never have had the experience of ending up in handcuffs after. Huh?
S1: Huh? How did you want to cover this in a way that captured the real trauma here? That comes from a police interaction like this.
S2: I included some really difficult tape for radio and for TV , and that wasn't a light choice. I think it'll be hard for many listeners to hear that , but just imagine how hard it was to live it. And I think sometimes we have to look directly at what's happening in these interactions. That charge may go away , but this experience stays with people forever , and it shapes every future interaction they have with police. And if people like Aisha are deciding that they can't call the police in an emergency , that makes us all less safe , not more.
S1: Since working on this story , what stayed with you?
S2: Honestly Hearing Aisha's daughter crying out for her mother. You. You can hear that she's a child and you can hear Aisha's helplessness , and I don't I don't think I'm ever going to forget that sound. And I'll let listeners choose whether or not they want to hear that piece. But you can find the full story on our website. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. What do you hope listeners take away from this?
S2: I hope they really think through what their rights are or should be with the police , and just think about whether all our neighbors are able to exercise those rights fully. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. Well , Katie , thanks for giving voice to this story and raising awareness. I've been speaking with Katie Hyson. She covers racial justice and social equity for KPBS , and you can check out her full story at KPBS. Katie , thanks again.
S2: Thank you.
S1: Still ahead. The wrong man was linked to a crime because of a flock license plate reader. How that happened when KPBS roundtable is back after the break. Welcome back to KPBS roundtable. I'm Jade Hindman in for Andrew Bracken. So this week , the San Diego City Council voted to continue using automated license plate readers despite a lot of backlash. The ALP system uses more than 500 cameras , you know , to capture millions of data points from cars around San Diego. And that includes things like the color and make of cars and where they're going. The police department contracts with FLoC , a third party vendor , to run that system , but new reporting this week reveals what happens when tech actually gets it wrong and an innocent person ends up in jail. Joining me now is Jesse Marks. He's a freelance journalist and student media manager at San Diego State University. Jesse , welcome back to the roundtable.
S8: Hey , Jade , thanks for having me.
S1: Glad to have you here. So before we get into the details of this case , give us a quick refresher on San Diego's Al PR network. I mean , how does it function? How does it work?
S8: So , as you said , it's the automatic license plate reader. So what the technology is technically called , it was developed decades ago , but it really has not become popular and widespread until maybe the last decade or two , pretty much more recently in recent years. But it is literally a camera that is hooked up to software that can read a license plate. And it does this day or night using infrared for things like toll booths or for fast pass lanes. Police and private companies also use it for parking enforcement , which is how they know that you've parked in a spot , say like a 15 minute spot for the last six hours. Right. And that's how they get you with their ticket. But it is used in a variety of ways in San Diego Police Department. A big fans of this technology , as you mentioned , it's run by flock and it's integrated into the city's so-called smart streetlights system. So sensors , cameras that are attached to the actual street pulse the city infrastructure throughout the city. And so if you drive by one , the machine is going to read your license plate number. But as you mentioned a second ago , it also can identify , model , make and color what are known as identifiers , which is what happened in this case.
S1: So many questions , but I'll stick with what we're talking about here. And that is your reporting. And it starts with an incident that took place last Thanksgiving. So tell me about what happened there.
S8: So it's the afternoon of November 26th , 2025. It's the day before Thanksgiving. San Diego Police Department gets a call about a attempted carjacking in Golden Hill. Somebody was trying to sell a car and set up a time for somebody else to come and look at it , and he claims that he was encountered by a car full of individuals , one of whom pulled out a handgun and flashed it in his direction. So the guy who was selling the car. The victim in this case , he took off. He calls the police department. Police show up in Golden Hill , and they find what they believe is the car that's involved in the attempted carjacking. It's a red Alfa Romeo with tinted windows , which is not very common. It fails to stop for the police officers. It flees onto the I-94 west , goes to the I-5 north , and then the police officers lose sight of it somewhere around there as it's getting off on an off ramp. Crucially , they didn't catch the actual license plate number of the vehicle that sped off , but they did have those identifiers. They knew that it was a red Alfa Romeo with tinted windows , so they ran that description of the vehicle through their flock system , and they got a hit to where they believe the car had ultimately been headed , which was an old town. So the police see this car separately pull up to a cigar lounge. But they waited until they actually got that hit from the flock before they moved in on these guys. And they ended up arresting three people who Go Parra , Ariel Beltran and Cristian Lopez. They didn't find a firearm , but they did confiscate their cell phones. And those guys were adamantly telling the police department we were not in Golden Hill. We did not come from there. We came from downtown , in fact. And so the cops all the time probably hear that , right? And so they just said to themselves , well , let's let's check this out. So they brought the victim from Golden Hill out for a curbside lineup. And that guy identified Parra as the person who flashed the firearm in Golden Hill. So the police basically said , all right , case closed. Book these guys on felony assault and evasion charges. Got him in front of a judge for bail , and then they just moved on with their lives.
S1: Well , and now the two men are suing , right? Yeah.
S8: Yeah. So what went wrong in this case is that the cops had a description of a fairly unique car. Again , it was a red Alfa Romeo with tinted windows. The victim had said that he saw a Hispanic male flashed the handgun. But for starters , the description that he gave of the clothing of the person who he saw did not actually match the clothing of what Parra was wearing at the time. They were both wearing hoodies. The man who was allegedly involved in the carjacking and then para sitting in a cigar lounge in Old Town. But they were different colors. But more importantly , the time stamps on SPD's own records didn't match up. If you looked at them very closely , you would have realized that Parra and Beltran , who were ultimately arrested and charged , could not have been in Golden Hill at the same time that they were in Old Town , nearly five miles away. Specifically , the dispatch records from the original call show that the police officers tried to stop the first Alfa Romeo at 4:45 p.m. and the flock hit in Old Town was at 4:44 p.m. , so they were 30s apart five miles away , and those guys could not have been in the same place at the same time. And then also consider that if the police officers had taken seriously Parra and Beltran story where they said they had just come from and the route that they had taken to get to the cigar lounge , they would have actually passed by a couple of flock license plate readers as well. The police officers also had their cell phones so they could have checked the location data , but I don't know if they ever actually did that. And I think what they did in this instance is they said , we've got enough. And they zeroed in on these guys in the heat of the moment , but they could have checked some of those details pretty quickly after the fact. And so I do think that they ultimately rush to judgment , and I think they deferred mindlessly to this technology that led them in a certain direction.
S1: How has all of this affected Beltran and Parra? You know , the two men who were arrested?
S8: Uh , Beltran bailed out pretty quickly , but Parra could not. And so he ended up spending three weeks in jail before the charges were dropped. And he was ultimately released. Uh , he was placed into a because he was charged with a violent felony. He was placed in what I guess would be a more sensitive prison population , a jail population. And so he told me that he woke up one morning and just found himself in a room full of people who'd been accused of homicides , and he had just been traveling to go to a cigar lounge to hang out with his buddies. And so he told me that that affected him psychologically pretty deeply. And for weeks , protesting and playing. His innocence had just gone absolutely nowhere. And so he he he said that this had an effect on him to this day , to the point at which if he sees a police vehicle or an officer , he gets very paranoid and it's affected him in that sense.
S1: Do we know how frequently cases like this are happening across the US?
S8: Unfortunately , no. That's an open question because , well , I can tell you that FLoC claims to have contracts with 5000 law enforcement agencies across the US , but I've yet to see a single database or repository that has all of the known false hits. I guess we could describe them as. So we're left with anecdotal examples , and primarily only those that are coming across the radar of the media because a lawsuit has been attached to it. So it's possible that the actual number is higher. But I can't tell you that CBS news tried to compile as many of these examples as they could last year , and they found 16 nationally. Um , Mostly because , well , not mostly , but in large part because the devices themselves had actually been misreading license plate numbers , which is a possibility in this case. That didn't happen. In this case , I believe it would have been human error. A series of compounding human errors. But there have been examples nationally of the license plate reader actually misreading the number and then pulling over a vehicle. Sometimes a family that is just getting on with its day , and then the next thing they know , there's an officer in front of them handcuffing their children at gunpoint.
S1: So is this being paired with facial recognition technology?
S8: It could be. To my knowledge , it is not in the city of San Diego. But there's it could conceivably be the case because the license plate reader is running through the smart street lights system , which is run by another company called ubiquitous. Ubiquitous sells facial recognition technology , so it is technically possible. But what the city of San Diego says is they're not using it in that way.
S1: That's what they say. Okay , so how does this really echo concerns by privacy advocates about the potential consequences of of mass surveillance in general?
S8: I think you got to go back to 2019 when the news broke about the smart streetlights system. If you remember , the media community members did not know that this mass surveillance system had been installed a couple of years earlier , or at least had been given approval to be installed a couple of years earlier. So the police department , in response to the backlash , they tried to take down the temperature by pointing to their use policies and some of the protections therein. But then what they also did , crucially , was they stated publicly , these tools are only going to be reactive , not proactive , meaning we're not building a real time center that's going to monitor public rights of way or individuals. We're only going to pull camera footage or data points after a crime has been committed and in the most extreme circumstances , like homicides and kidnappings. So I think what we've actually witnessed and experienced as a kind of mission creep over years , in which cameras and the data are being pulled for relatively minor stuff. And what the activists have been saying from the beginning is that the city is building out the infrastructure to effectively track whoever they want , even if they say that they're not going to do it at this moment in time. And what I think this case demonstrates is that they're starting to push more into that proactive rather than reactive realm. And I think a lot of people forget that during the initial discussions of the smart streetlights about a decade ago , it came out later. They didn't ultimately ended up end up doing this , but they talked about it as a system that could actually find people in real time and monitor them in real time.
S1: Well , you've been covering policing and surveillance in San Diego for a while now. How does this really fit into the bigger story of surveillance in San Diego?
S8: Here I understand why people want to feel safe. I want to feel safe. And I think it goes without saying that kidnap and murder are bad things , and those are crimes that should be investigated. But I also think we've rushed headfirst into the implementation of this technology without fully thinking through its its implications , and in part because we're on the border , we're home to a lot of defense contractors and tech companies , but I think we've effectively become lab rats for other parts of the country. And I don't think many of us have actually consented to that experiment. I my view of technology generally is that it should be viewed as a form of legislation , private or public , because it alters the way that we think and interact with each other. And yet no one's actually voted on it. And I think it breeds a certain type of paranoia. And I think those who are actually honest about its implementations will tell you straight up that they believe it is a way to pacify an otherwise restless and angry working class population , not just in San Diego , but just generally. And so my problem with it , and I think it fits into this broader story , because officials tend to contradict themselves and talk out of both sides of their mouth. They say it's not a big deal , it's just a tool. But yet at the same time , it's a game changer and it's huge and we have to spend money on it. And we couldn't possibly do our jobs without it. So there are social trade offs that we need to consider as well. I think mass surveillance is often portrayed as a kind of end all , be all , when in fact most of our problems are social and political. And I think if we're serious about addressing crime , then we would seriously consider the underlying root causes of crime rather than just the punitive measures here. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. And the question over whether or not it actually makes us safer is still out there.
S8: Still an open question. Right. 100%.
S1: All right. We'll link to Jesse's story on kpbs.org , where you can also find more KPBS stories about license plate readers. I've been speaking with Jesse Marks. He's a freelance journalist and student media manager at San Diego State University. Jesse , thank you so very much.
S8: Thank you. Jade.
S1: Up next , a conversation about pride and resistance with LGBTQ plus journalists as pride season kicks off. The roundtable is back after the break. Welcome back. You're listening to KPBS roundtable. I'm Jade Hindman in for Andrew Bracken. Pride month. It really invites us to celebrate LGBTQ plus voices across communities from San Diego to Washington , D.C. but telling those stories in a true , authentic way requires commitment beyond a single month. Today , we wanted to sit down with a panel of LGBTQ reporters to really highlight their recent work and to talk about their approach to journalism in today's environment. I'm here with Sam Barney Gibbs , a journalist with Daylight San Diego. Also , Drew Sitton , community reporter for Times of San Diego and Orion Rambler. They join us from Washington , D.C. there , LGBTQ plus reporter for the 19th News and Independent Newsroom reporting on gender , policy and power. Welcome to you all. Hello.
S9: Hello. Thanks so much for having us.
S1: So glad to have you all here. So first I want to start by having you all tell me about your beat and how you , you know , foreground LGBTQ plus stories and perspectives. Sam , I'll start with you on that one.
S9: Sounds good. Um , I will say I , as a semi recent graduate , I've been out of school for about two years. I've really been discovering kind of the topics I want to spend my time reporting on and LGBTQ stories , in addition to mental health stories , which often go hand in hand , have kind of been the ones that I've gravitated towards , especially as somebody who's interested in studying therapy in the future. Um , I just think that as an LGBTQ reporter , there's this , you know , um , misnomer that sometimes , um , you shouldn't report on the things that you are actively a part of. And I think that that's somewhat of an old notion that needs some revamping. Indeed.
S1: Indeed. Drew.
S10: So I am a community reporter , and I am focused on San Diego , and there are lots of LGBTQ people in San Diego , as there are everywhere. So I get to sometimes highlight those stories just to integrate it into my normal writing. And then in the summer , San Diego Pride , it starts in July and we put out a full pride guide. And that's a chance for me to move from reporter to editor and highlight some of the stories of our community the activists , the organizers , the leaders , and talk about what is fueling their work. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. All right. And how would you answer that?
S11: Thanks so much , Jade. Um , for me , I've been covering LGBTQ issues , uh , through a national lens for since 2021. Right now I'm focused on health , uh , which is important to me because the Trump administration has been rolling back a lot of health care access for queer and trans people. Um , and something I try to bring into my work , especially in this current environment , is writing stories that can hopefully reach people that may like , they may not understand or know how under attack this community is right now. And I also want to write stories that can provide a feeling of hope or resilience , or just to have a queer trans person read it and feel like they can relate to it , or to feel like they're not alone. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. I see. You know Sam , let's start with stories. Um rooted in San Diego here first because you recently wrote a piece about um or a piece of San Diego's LGBTQ plus history , and that was the liberation movement. So where did. Where did it get started?
S9: So I think that is a complex question or a complex answer. Um , because when I was first going about it , I think the first thought that came to mind is obviously this didn't just start with the beginning of the official pride organization in San Diego , even though they organize a lot of the amazing events that we have. It really starts with the history of California itself and the history of San Diego itself. So looking at the native cultures that were present , um , looking at the normalization of two spirit and just generally , um , more queer identifying individuals and then then the influx of Spanish colonization and then the , uh , the attributions of , of judgment and other things that , that allowed for that then to become taboo and then cause for people to then have to fight back. And I think a lot of that happened through just existing , through just being proudly queer. Um , especially in San Diego , that was a lot of , um , the wealthier individuals just being able to kind of use that as a way to , um , provide that space for others to uplift each other.
S1: And , drew , as you said , you're working on the upcoming pride issue for Times of San Diego , but you're taking that opportunity also to explore a lot of topics. What are some of those angles?
S10: So one of the stories I'm excited to write about is about LGBT seniors , and we're specifically looking at the generation that has survived the Aids crisis. And how is that affecting them , as they're accessing senior services for the first time and still have this very activist organizer mentality? Uh , and then I'm also talking to a romantic and asexual San Diegans. This is something that is an old experience , but it's new words for it. And so this is a group that has really sought to be part of the queer community and be identified as such , but often feels excluded. And this is the fifth time that San Diego Aerospace Group is marching in the pride parade. So we're looking at the last five years. How did that come about? How has the group grown? What are areas they still need help from the queer community? And then I have colleagues writing very interesting stories. There is a state stateless ballerina , meaning he does not have documentation because he was born to a refugee who fled ISIS and now lives in San Diego and Amsterdam. So we're doing a profile on him. We're talking about the return of the dyke march to San Diego that have been canceled for several years , and a lot of lesbian activists really fought to have that brought back. So we're having the first Dyke March in several years this year.
S1: All right , Ryan , I want to turn to you because your coverage of LGBTQ plus stories , it's from a national lens , specifically health. Related Stories. You've covered everything from gender affirming care to HIV care. One recent example is your story about FDA restrictions on chest binders. What did you learn from that reporting?
S11: Thank you so much , Jade. And also just have to say drew , I had no idea like March wasn't happening there. We have died march in D.C. and it's like a big event here. So I'm so excited that's coming back. And and to your question , Jade , um , the FDA story was interesting for me. And the approach I took to it was , um , so the FDA is trying to crack down on businesses that are creating modern chest binders for trans masculine like trans men , um , chest binders , uh , ten , 15 years ago. We didn't have good binders. I'll be honest , they were crap. So the ones we have now are actually quite good for you. I mean , they're uncomfortable to wear for a long time. Like , no one really likes wearing them for that long. But they used to be bad. And I spoke with trans men who were growing up in the 80s and 70s and what they were wearing , and a lot of times what they were wearing was like duct tape , electrical tape , like it was not safe. And the way I wanted to approach the story was to try to educate people. Um , so I talked with these older trans guys who used to bind uphill in the snow both ways , uh , who could talk about how it's not appropriate for the government to try and take away , uh , you know , like a a garment that is a lot safer than it used to be. Um , and it's quite interesting that the FDA wants to regulate binders , a piece of clothing as a medical device. There's a FDA log law blog that was talking about how this is really like. This is a really rare strategy that the FDA hasn't really done before to go after , like a piece of clothing as a medical device. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. With all of these stories in mind , I want to talk about how your beats have changed under the second Trump administration and how they're continuing to change. So. Ryan , I'll start with you on that one. Sure.
S11: Sure. I'd say for me , I used to do a lot more statehouse coverage. Uh , I especially Texas , Florida , um , a lot of anti-LGBTQ laws have fomented these states and become more extreme over the years. But as anticipated , once Trump took office , I , I just I haven't I don't have time anywhere to do like deep state House coverage , which is why I'm so grateful to local reporters like y'all who are in the States who know better than anyone else. Um , for me , it's been , you know , we did a lot of prep work. Me and other folks at the 19th to read through what's in project 2025. I read like 400 pages of it. Then I got brain worms , um , to preparing ahead of the Trump administration. Like , what is the Heritage Foundation wanting the administration to do? And then I've been tracking a lot of Trump's executive orders because , you know , most a lot of the restrictions we've seen , like millions of dollars leaving HIV Aids research and just general LGBTQ health research , which can even involve cancer research , like all this money that's being pulled out of this crucial health research can be traced back to these first executive orders from the Trump administration , which , you know , states that to this administration , trans people don't exist , and the federal government needs to act accordingly. Um , so keeping track of every thing , like all these federal agencies getting involved in anti-LGBTQ policy , it's a lot. Um , so that's a lot of what I'm doing these days. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. Sam , what about you? Yeah.
S9: Yeah. I think , um , I mean , I moved honestly to San Diego around the time that Trump came back into office. So I when I started working with daylight , which is around the same time I because daylight is focused on communities that aren't often heard in news media or have been heard but misunderstood. I think that what the Trump administration has been doing and targeting , as Ryan said , very well in regards to funding and just general rhetoric. Um , it affects the diverse communities of San Diego , the LGBTQ , diverse communities , the Bipoc communities in San Diego in ways that necessarily weren't necessarily. Weren't , as I think , tragic and as traumatizing as before. And so a lot of the. Things that I've been hearing and interviewing people locally is just that idea of burnout , the idea of not feeling comfortable speaking about what's going on , but really feeling passionately about it. And I think that that's what's drawn me more. As someone who used to focus more on politics and studied politics in college. I'm like , I need to switch to LGBTQ reporting. I care about this community , and they need to be heard in a way that is comfortable , in a way that is a well-intended and informed and kind of fights back against the idea that local news and local people can't change national rhetoric and issues.
S1: I mean , how are you holding up in all that?
S9: I mean , I think that I have a lot of privilege as a white Presenting , um , male presenting or a white male presenting individual. Excuse me. And um , but I think that honestly , it is tiring. It's it's hard to , you know , do a bunch of interviews back to back to back that have this general , um , just aura of , of just kind of like depression of , like this just sad talking a lot about youth and the difficulties they're facing. But I will say also , a big part of the interviews I'm having is community building , working and talking to local nonprofits and other centers just about what they're doing and how they're they're like , yeah , we are not stopping. We are fighting back more and more and more. Um , it also gives me hope. And I think it people are very appreciative as well , which fills my cup just personally about , um , you know , like , this is important. This isn't needed. Um , and it's something that isn't being done enough. And I'm so glad that I have other colleagues that are focusing on this. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. And Andrew , what about you? Because there , there are some through lines definitely between your reporting and specifically what Ryan was describing.
S10: For me my beat has not changed , but I think that the conversations I have with sources has changed a lot. I think ten years ago , a lot of the ways people were fighting for marriage equality and such was this idea that sharing their story and visibility would lead to them being humanized in the eyes of the public. And people have seen that that isn't universally true. And sometimes being visible actually just creates a target on your back. And so the conversations a lot of times , times in San Diego has a very , very high threshold for someone being an anonymous source. And there's a lot of times people who maybe have been out for decades but are still expressing , you know , I kind of regret how public I am on social media , in the media , and I'm very concerned about this long term safety. And I think because there hasn't , you know , been a lot of them are afraid of the future and afraid that having identifying details is going to lead to violence. Mm.
S1: Mm. How does safety show up in your your reporting approach? Orion. Is that something that that concerns you as well? Yeah.
S12: Yeah.
S11: I think what drew says really resonates with me. Um , because I definitely had , uh , families of trans youth , uh , parents of trans youth specifically talking with them. Um , a lot of them want to be off the record or anonymous , no matter if they live in a blue state where gender affirming care is protected by state law. Because obviously , we've seen the Trump administration is pressuring clinics in blue states to shut down like they don't really. And we also know the Justice Department is is sending subpoenas all across the country to access trans kids medical records. Judges are putting those aside , but there's a a criminal investigation and subpoena that's getting people scared in New York. So parents of trans youth are freaked out no matter where they live , which is definitely a change , because back in the day , you know , I was used to working with parents of trans youth in Texas who felt very afraid because of , you know , the environment , such as , uh , Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas , like back in the day , he was the one trying to investigate within the state , uh , these kids medical care. And now it's across the country. So working with these families , I really try to do a lot of work , like holding their hand through the process and , like , having a lot of off record check ins with people. Like , I'll frequently like , if I make contact with a parent of a trans kid , will just have a completely off record conversation where I tell him who I am. You know , what's my story? What are we going to do if they want to talk to me? I'll even ask people like , do you want to talk to your spouse about it? Like , do you want to , like , have more conversations as a couple before you talk to me? Um , so people are definitely nervous.
S1: I mean , let me ask you all this quickly. In the last , like , 45 seconds that we have here because , you know , there in all of these stories , they're there are , you know , there's a tax , there's policy changes , um , there's uplifting stories , there's resilience and there's resistance and there's joy. So how are you all really focusing in on those stories as well?
S10: It's a hard one. Joy. So you can focus on this is the joy and the celebration that happens. But it only came out of activism , of organizing , of fighting for your rights.
S9: Yeah , I'll say especially daylight is focusing on the concept that people are burnt out from the news in general. And I think that especially in LGBTQ spaces , that is very much true. So having stories that really uplift what people are doing that's good in the community spaces to uplift each other is really important.
S1: All right. We'll link to all of your recent reporting on our website that's on kpbs.org. I've been speaking with Sam Barney Gibbs , a journalist with Daylight San Diego , drew Sitton , community reporter for Times of San Diego and Orion Rambler , LGBTQ plus reporter for the 19th news. That will do it for this week's roundtable. Thanks for listening. If you have any thoughts on today's show , you can email us at roundtable at KPBS. You can also leave us a message at (619) 452-0228. I'm Jade Hindman in for Andrew Bracken. Enjoy your weekend , everyone.
