This Is Reno Radio
This Is Reno Radio is a podcast from Reno, Nevada featuring news, interviews, analysis and more. The hosts are Bob Conrad and Kristen Hackbarth, This Is Reno's editors.
This Is Reno Radio
Hawk Fire evacuations raise questions about emergency communication
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Kristen Hackbarth and Bob Conrad, editors of This Is Reno, discuss the massive wildfire evacuations in Reno’s North Valleys and why we believe emergency communication remains a serious problem for residents and local news media.
We also dig into Doral Academy’s proposed South Reno campus, a state audit raising concerns about charter school oversight, an ethics complaint involving former Washoe County Manager Eric Brown and new developments in the Jason Killinger facial-recognition lawsuit.
We wrap up with the Reno Satanic invocation at the Washoe County Commission, the latest in the Anna Scott federal murder case and downtown’s curious new Reno bike detour.
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Evacuations and media access
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to the This Is Reno Podcast, Videocast and Radio Show. I am Bob Conrad, and my comedian colleague here is Kristen Hackbarth.
SPEAKER_03We broadcast on KWNK Community Radio at 97.7 FM in Reno and on all the podcast apps.
SPEAKER_01Kristen, I was in a band about, I don't know, maybe 15 years ago. We did a cover of The Clashes London Calling, but we changed the lyrics or sorry, London's Burning, and we changed the lyrics to Reno's Burning. And I think that's very apropos for our conversation today, which is these massive fires that have basically torched and run over most of the North Valleys of Reno.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. This is the most, I think, evacuations I've seen. I don't recall ever seeing back evacuations this large in my life in Reno.
SPEAKER_01An estimated 90,000 people had to evacuate. And they're as as we're recording this podcast, today is Tuesday, August 25th. Keep that in mind when you listen that this might be a few days old, unless you're listening to it way down the road. But it we're still in the fire. There's still evacuation zones, but they are gradually being lifted as we speak, and people are returning home. Highway is back open and some other access roads are open. But I think what we need to talk about, Kristen, is here we are again. This is two years after the Davis fire, and we're seeing a lot of the same exact issues that we saw two years ago, which is, I don't know if it's deliberate obstinence, but the local governments are have not been sending information directly to the news media on these fires when they erupt. And it's causing a lot of concern, a lot of consternation, and a lot of confusion. And in this particular case, the level of evacuations was particularly hairy and dangerous. And we're hearing yet again, two years after the Davis fire, basically the same kind of complaints, which is people just aren't getting quick, accurate, and reliable information. But we are getting a lot of disaster porn reels and videos.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I want to put this into context for some of our listeners, because I understand that not everybody sees our inboxes, but I can't tell you how many press releases I get on a daily basis. We are always getting press releases from the county, from the city. The city's sending us out art updates and press releases about different city events, and they're sending out information on the county will send press releases about health updates or all kinds of different things. They have these channels available. They have our email addresses, they send out a press release about the senior Olympics, and they're not sending out the same kind of level of information about emergency situations. And I can understand that in an emergency it's stressful. There's a lot going on. But when you have that base of a database of media outlets that can quickly disseminate your information and to not use it is just, it's insane to me. And it just seems like it just seems like they just are running around with like chicken, chickens with their heads cut off. I don't know what's going on, but it's nuts to me.
SPEAKER_01And I don't know if it's it feels deliberate, it feels somewhat calculated because a lot of the official messaging, and we need to talk about the the confused messaging that that even is out there when these things happen on social media from official sources, but they're specifically telling people to go to what they call trusted sources of information. And guess what? It's all their own agencies that they're referring to, and not the news media that they have not been sending information to.
SPEAKER_03And I think that's such a disservice because we got an email from dangerous. Yeah, we got an email from one government agency, and they listed probably close to a dozen different sources that people can go to for information when 20, 30, 40 years ago, you go to one source, you pull up your radio station, or you pull up the the on, well, not 40 years ago, we didn't have online news like we do now, but you you turned on the television set or you turned on the radio and you were getting this information, and all of the information was synthesized by the news media, and that is just not happening. And so to ask people to bookmark multiple web pages, to
Emergency communication problems arise again
SPEAKER_03download multiple apps, and to just be checking them all on a regular basis to find little bits and pieces of information is just what are we doing here?
SPEAKER_01It's absolutely unreliable, and it's a dangerous way to try to put information out, emergency communications out into the to the to the public. I'll just give you a quote from somebody who commented we wrote an editorial about this related to the bug and Fred Mountain fires that we only sent to our subscribers. But I think what we're gonna do is update that and make it open and public for everybody to read here in the next day or two. But I published that on my personal Facebook as a way to explain to people why this is not good to be doing this repeatedly for years now. And somebody commented they're a restaurant server, and they said, I served the incoming national news affiliate team from LA an early dinner tonight at my work. I mentioned this as Reno as being the most reputable local news source and this specific issue that we're raising. They said normally when they come to cities to cover these types of fires that affect a community of our size, there is a type of emergency operations headquarters propped up where they can contact for in official intel, but they have not been able to like locate one here thus far. They said sites like Perimeter Map and WatchDuty are not official enough to even report on. And yet, this is what our local leaders are telling us to rely on for information is third-party apps and information that we have no way to essentially verify in the the early hours, or in this case, an entire 24-hour period after the 48 hours. Yeah, I think the first we got three news releases. We got one immediately from Reno Police that said, Don't call 911 because we're aware of the fire. That's number one. The other was the governor's office saying he's requesting an emergency declaration, but with no information for people trying to evacuate or anything like that. And I forget what the third one was, but it was really not related to anything tangible that people could rely on. So here we are repeatedly now. And I'll here's another quote, too, from Ty O'Neill, who some some of you should remember, he was our main photographer for many years at This Is Reno, and he's now a full-time videographer for the Associated Press and covers disasters all over the West Coast. He was in Lahaina. Anything goes down on the West Coast, he's there. In fact, I'm surprised he wasn't staying at my house over the weekend. But he said 100% fire communications is worse today than in 2020. And he also said the one thing about Nevada that's particularly stupid, my words, not his, is that we're barred from going into these areas to gather our own content to inform people. And he said essentially that other states need to adopt California, California's rules about press access to natural disasters. If they can't or won't tell us anything, we should be able to go and get that information ourselves. And I absolutely agree with that and put the onus of the risk onto the individual reporter or media outlet. Personally, you're not going to see me crawling around a fire line by any stretch of the imagination, but I should be able to at least go to a burned area and take some photos of what I've seen. Yeah. And people are now in this case, like for example, the we knew homes were probably burned. My old neighborhood, Horizon Hills, was completely torched to the ground. We don't know how many structures, but several that we could tell. And people found that out on a YouTube video, not from any official source. It wasn't until the next day that the county admitted that dozens of structures had been burned.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Imagine finding out your home burned on a YouTube video.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's that's pretty devastating. And Bob, the I'll put some context here. So my husband is retired after a 30-year career as a wildland firefighter. So when I'm talking about fire, I know enough to be dangerous because of my knowledge from him. And in the absence of some of this important news, news outlets have taken to looking for any sort of story that they can tell about these fires. And there was one that cropped up a few weeks ago related to the bug fire that wasn't a bad story. And I'm not bashing the reporter for writing this story, but I think that it's a door dangerous story to be telling because it was a story about a man and his wife who were told to evacuate. They were along the front lines of the bug fire. Their house was threatened with fire and they didn't leave, even though they were told to evacuate and their neighbors didn't leave. Their neighbor had a big thing of water and they stayed to fight off the fire. And they were able to save their home. And that's great for them. I'm not gonna bash them for wanting to save their home. But by telling this story and framing it as this kind of David and Goliath story or this hero is heroism of saving their homes, it sends the message to other people that if you stay, you can save your home, that you can fight off this fire and not to evacuate. And that's a terrible message to send because people will die. And someone did die because of the bug fire because they stayed too long and their fire, their car was overcome with fire. And the Forest Service now, their policy is they will tell you to leave. And if you refuse to leave, the firefighters are told to leave you and not try and help you. And firefighters aren't built that way. They are built to help people. And so they want to stay and get you out. And when people stay in their homes, when they're told to evacuate and refuse to leave thinking that they can fight off the fires, they're then putting firefighters in danger because those firefighters are trying to save them and they're not doing the work that they should be doing, which is stopping the fire and building fire lines. And so I think that that's the kind of storytelling we get in the news as a result of this kind of absence of other official information, absence of access. And I think I hope that people reflect on that and say, what stories can we tell? What stories can we help the media to tell so that we are helpful and not sharing these messages that it's okay to stay in an evacuated zone because it's not, it's incredibly dangerous, not just for yourself, but for all the first responders. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And we need to be clear. And I I feel like we don't shouldn't even need to qualify this. We're not digging on the people doing the hard work on the front lines. Absolutely not. Those people should be celebrated. But I think what is incredibly alarming is I personally had a conversation, a lengthy conversation with a county commissioner about this very issue. And she seemed concerned-ish. But the next day at the county commission meeting, she rather than acknowledge people's widely visible concerns about the lack of information, she stood up and said, basically, we need to give ourselves a round of applause for a job well done. And meanwhile, after that, after she said that, several people came up and said, No, we were missing basic information on about how to evacuate, who's in charge. We want to see the after action report. This is crazy. And just so people don't, and I want to, I need to add too, two years ago when this happened, I talked to the PIO for the Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District. And when I told him this, he bitched me out and said, You're the only one with this problem. And I tried explaining to him. I've talked to two, Channel 8, K U N R, the Reno mayor, and they all had the same concern about the crappy communications during the first part of these fires. And he said, You're the only one with this problem.
SPEAKER_03And basically the only ones willing to talk about it and complain.
SPEAKER_01Publicly. And this is where the my last point I think we should make on this. And by the way, we were going to read a bunch of quotes from readers and people commenting online. You can find those yourselves. The information was just lacking, and people are very concerned. Even now, we got a really lengthy message on our Facebook page, and we don't have the resource to respond to most of those messages that people were just absolutely frustrated. But elected officials are very aware of this. And we have yet to see a public response from any of them saying something needs to change. The only person who did say that was Councilmember Megan Ebert, who is one of the people who lives in the North Valleys who had to evacuate. And when I talked to her, she started crying about the loss that occurred in Reno's North Valleys.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And she said something has to change. And to my knowledge, she is the only one. All the rest are patting themselves on the back. In fact, I think we should do a content analysis of these press conferences and some of these videos online and find out how much of the actual words spoken were was information that people could use versus people patting themselves on the back. And I think I
Doral Academy’s potential expansion
SPEAKER_01have a suspicion we're going to find the latter was more prominent than the former.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So let's move on from this because I have a feeling that people are going to get tired of talking about fire. Hopefully we can put it to rest. But you've got a big story out on Durral Academy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I was made aware of this agenda item for the Washoe County School District Board of Trustees meeting, which is actually happening right as we're speaking. Yeah. So we will have a report on this in the very near future. But essentially the school district is pushing back against Durral Academy's proposal to build another campus in South Reno on the university's main station farmland. They've arranged and got a lease approved to do that. And I just want to summarize the issue. Kelsey Penrose, who was on our podcast last time, in 2024 did an investigative piece on charter schools in Nevada. It's actually, she built upon work that the Nevada Current had already done. There's a major for-profit company called Academica that has a branch or subsidiary here in Nevada that essentially operates many charter schools. And what has been reported elsewhere by the Nevada Current and even in national news outlets over the years is that Academica, essentially, based on best I can tell, it's all legal what they're doing, but they're essentially prof profiting off of public dollars by using money that comes in per pupil funding into charter schools and through some sort of complex arrangements via how they manage these schools, end up taking some of that money. And Kelsey wrote this a year and a half ago. It had built upon, like I said, other reporting. But right as this proposal was coming up in front of the school board of trustees, an audit came out, a legislative audit last week was publicized. And essentially what this audit found is what we reported a year and a half ago, and like I said, other outlets about the state public charter school authority has been lacking oversight into these charter schools. And I want to read you some of the findings in the audit because I think they're particularly alarming in a lot of ways. It really confirmed a lot of our reporting. And they basically found there's a lack of controls, there's mismatches of fees paid to these management groups versus what's reported and so on and so forth. Here's one. For one school, and by the way, they didn't identify academica or dorale in these. They picked five schools. They didn't identify them. So I want to be clear that we don't know exactly which ones they're referring to, but this is a quote from the audit report. For one school, the executive director and founder of the charter school was also the sole owner of this for-profit education management organization or EMO. For another school, the superintendent, who was also responsible for hiring staff and approving payments, was an employee of the EMO. Furthermore, the superintendent admitted they did not submit every contract to the charter school's governing board for approval. Another quote: the charter school authority indicated it leaves oversight of contract provisions to schools as part of their autonomy. However, the authority is tasked by law to provide that oversight to charter schools to safeguard the interest of pupils and the community and establish standards for the governance of each charter school, its sponsors. What the auditors found, crazy. One school paid its EMO an additional $991,000 to the executive director. And that amount included a $5,000 bonus and reimbursements of over $600 for golfing related expenses. Another used $20,000 in state education funds for a week-long cruise for leadership and personnel. You know, if the Washoe County School District officials did that, you can bet.
SPEAKER_03Heads would roll. People would be losing their jobs. There'd be ethics complaints left and right. That it would be considered theft from a federal and state program. And just because this is a private company and they can see fit to how they spend their money, this is taxpayer dollars.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I should say Dural's justification for this campus. And by the way, I need to be very clear. I am not, in fact, I would say I'm very supportive of the idea of charter schools, not necessarily how they're being rolled out in the year 2026, but their justification is they're at capacity already. They believe they can fill up a second school. I'm guessing within a few years, they've projected enrollment up to, I believe, 1200 or maybe according to the school district, as many as 1,700 students. The school's going to be a partnership with the university. They're going to connect students with a lot of opportunities. But the school district is saying they have all sorts of concerns about this. And they're probably, if I'm reading the tea leaves, going to draw us draft an opposition to this project. But they will, they don't have any authority. They tried to do this with the Mater Academy's second campus up in the North Valleys. And that was approved by the Reno City Council as part of an appeal, but it's been in litigation for quite some time. It's actually got appealed up to the Nevada Supreme Court. They want to build the school, I think, within two years, if I remember date correctly.
SPEAKER_03Very quickly, it would be open.
SPEAKER_01That's assuming that doesn't get tied up in opposition or litigation. And I think there's something tied to the lease with
A new ethics complaint
SPEAKER_01the university that means it has to happen quickly, but whether or not they can pull that off, I think remains to be seen. We will definitely be following this story because this is a big one. This really has a lot of different interests involved. And I know there's parent groups that are concerned about this. I know there's people at the school district concerned about it. And we'll see what happens.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So one of the other big stories that we have reported on that has been overshadowed by a lot of the natural disaster reporting is ethics complaint that came out against former county manager Eric Brown. And I think we saw this coming. And so he hasn't found been found guilty of these violations. These are just allegations at this point. But what the complainant alleged is that Brown used his position as county manager to secure a job at the Volunteers of America. And that he took that job, which he took that job within 12 months of leaving the county, retiring from the county, and that while he was county manager, he advanced an $8.2 million contract to VOA that he is now benefiting from. And so that's a big no-no. There's a one-year cooling off period that we don't know if that's true, by the way.
SPEAKER_01It could have just been a connection that was made after the fact.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. We don't know that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03These are all just allegations at this point. But there's a one-year cooling off period that's required of public officials for taking a job or representing or working at an organization that has business with that government. So basically, VOA runs that's Volunteers of America. They run the Nevada CARES campus. This other contract, this $8 million contract that they received in, I believe it was May of 2025, was to run our place, which is the Women and Children's Shelter. Some people are saying that contract award to the VOA for it was a little questionable. So a lot of people were questioning the award of this grant to VOA to run the Our Place Women and Children's Shelter because it was about $1.2 million more than the Rise. For yeah, the Rise Reno Initiative for Shelter Inequality, which had basically opened the shelter in 2020. They were the first contracted group to run it. They built all of the programs there and were doing a great job. So people were questioning why you are going to change operators of this shelter and pay more. Why not just keep rise? So we're not really sure. They said the county's purchasing process, their RFP process is very opaque. They don't really tell you how they're rating things, they don't tell you the rubric for scoring proposals.
SPEAKER_01I don't think that should be the case. It shouldn't be the case. That should be challenged. I think that's a pantload of nonsense. That's confidential.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, we don't really know all of the details, but the fact of the matter is that this big contract went to VOA. And then by March 2026, Eric Brown's LinkedIn profile said that he had taken a job at VOA. And then his LinkedIn profile was changed. It said that he was going to be taking the job July 2026, which would have been a year after he left the county, but the profile still says that he started work there in March. So we'll stay on top of that and see where it goes. He could always have a settlement with the ethics commission. There are other instances similar to this in the community. Neomajardity. Wound up paying $3,000 in a fine.
SPEAKER_01I think that was the last she ever spoke to me is that is before that story of politics.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I think one thing to point out is that these people are taking these positions that pay them a lot of money. And when it comes down to it, $3,000 might just be the cost of doing business.
SPEAKER_01You we've commented before that an ethics complaint is not so much a penalty, but more of a rite of passage for Reno officials.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. It's just the price that you have to pay to take the job that's going to pay you a lot.
SPEAKER_01So it's not necessarily ethics in Nevada, ethics rules are not a disincentive.
SPEAKER_03No. No.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. We'll see what happens. I think this could it could end up being like Doug Thornley. He got off for a very similar kind of thing. Uh former city manager, Reno City Manager Doug Thornley was hit with an X ethics complaint for representing a data center developer before his year cooling off period in front of the Reno Planning Commission. And the allegation was that he was privy to and probably oversaw the city of Reno's lack of any guardrails on data centers and basically allowed them via an administrative interpretation rather than any kind of requirements. And so they're allowed under a special use permit process, which meant when Doug Thornley went to go advocate for the data center on behalf of his client, he knew that they essentially had to approve it. But that was not an ethics violation. For there was a technicality that the ethics commission has since last we checked, proposed drafting a bill draft request to the Nevada's legislature to kind of close that loophole that allowed Thornley to get off on that technicality.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And then he would have had to pay his $3,000 fine and continue along his business.
SPEAKER_01Yes. I got to pause and give a pitch. We offer this podcast for free to everyone. There's virtually no ads yet. And what you may not know is that each of these episodes takes a considerable amount of time. It's going to take, if not a day, sometimes several days to just produce these. And we really could use your help. We really would appreciate if you became a paying subscriber to This Is Reno. People still think in the year 2026 that news should be free, assuming the reality is the same it was 30 years ago when news not wasn't quite free, but it was more freely accessible if you had to deal with a lot of not so fun ads. But local news, local community news outlets like ours do not make a lot of money. So we really rely on reader support. We don't like having a paywall, but it also is what allows us to pay the bills. So we hope you consider subscribing. You get exclusive content that nobody has access to. You also see a lot fewer of those annoying ads. And those are just some of the perks that you get when you become a pain. This is Reno subscriber. You can head over to thisisreno.com forward slash subscribe. And we really would appreciate your support. So we can continue doing this and producing free content like this, in addition to that paid content that you get. So how about we have a big
Jason Killinger and facial-recognition arrests
SPEAKER_01update on a case that's been in the news since we broke it a November a year ago? Yeah. Almost a year ago. Mr. Jason Killinger, the long haul UPS truck driver who was arrested at the Peppermill Hotel Casino in South Reno in 2016.
SPEAKER_03This crime was looking like someone else.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And I don't want to do a vague tease, but we're going to have another update on this story. But the one I want to very soon, the one I want to talk about though, is that there's been some developments in court. And essentially what the plaintiff's attorneys are alleging, Jason Killinger's attorneys, is that the city of Reno, they've discovered about 170 facial recognition-based arrests at the peppermill. About a dozen of those were before Killinger was arrested, and the rest occurred since. And so the plaintiff's attorney wants the information from the city about those arrests. And the city has protested and then produced the records, but redacted all the identifying information so that the plaintiffs can't contact these people to show whether or not this was a pattern and practice of falsely arresting people based on facial recognition.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I would say I guess one of my questions is having a doppelganger a misdemeanor or a felony? Because it seems crazy that this many people are being arrested based on AI. And they're being arrested for being someplace, it's trespass, I guess, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_01The reason the city attorneys are denying this information, they're using the Nevada Public Records Act, which is not applicable to federal court cases in discovery.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Keep in mind, these are the same attorneys that fabricated a conspiracy against me, claiming that I'm working hand in hand with the plaintiff's attorneys to get information out into the public that they claim was never put into the record, even when it was. This is crazy what these people are trying to get away with in this court case. And I don't know what's going to happen. However, I would not be surprised if at some point within maybe a year, if not sooner, the judge rules essentially in their favor on a motion that will then force the city's hand to go into some kind of a settlement agreement. And we may never be privy to that information. But I suspect that could be a likely outcome here.
Reno Satanic speaks again
SPEAKER_01So we're going to keep following that. Like I said, we're going to have another update in the near future. But Kristen, something else went down today at the county commission meeting. You want to tell the world about it?
SPEAKER_03Bob, I live for these Board of County Commission meetings, and there hasn't been one. It's August 25th. Today is the first day that they've had a commission meeting in over a month. They went on kind of a summer break. And boy, did they come back with the bang. Once a month they do this invocation, which I was against from the get-go. I just think that there's no place for any sort of religion in our government meetings. But whatever, we've got this invocation that they approved. And there's this thing called the First Amendment where you have to you can't, the government can't block someone's speech. And so if someone requests to give the invocation, they promised to do kind of a round robin. Guess whose turn it was? It was Reno Satanics. And we reported it again that it would be happening. And a lot of evangelicals showed up with their crosses and their Jesus t-shirts to stand against the message of the Church of Satan. And it was a totally benign statement. Absolutely benign statement. Really, it's he spoke more about patriotism than anything else. And what I think is hilarious is that all of the people who then went up and gave public comment afterwards, reading scripture and talking about the blasphemy, really have absolutely zero clue what the Church of Satan is about. They are an atheist organization, they don't believe in any God, they don't believe in the devil. They're really about self-determination and individualism. And so it just blows my mind that that people are so freaked out about this. And one lady, what the Church of Satan is, but ignorant about the founding of America. I'm cannot say enough that this country was not founded as a Christian nation. And yet people are getting up at county public comment as we speak, saying that we were founded as a Christian nation, which just isn't true. And I think it's just mind-numbing, but that's where we're at right now. So an enjoyable.
SPEAKER_01If you open the door, if you open the door to one, and Mike Clark, Commissioner Mike Clark, said this when they improved the invocations.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You open the door to one, you gotta open them to all.
SPEAKER_03Open it to all. Yeah. And so I think it just when we had other invocations, they go on without a hitch. And for some reason, the Church of Satan is just it's triggering, yeah. They do not get the same respect as all the other nation, all the other religions. And so I'm looking forward to their next invocation, but for now, that's what's cooking at uh let's watch the video.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Madam Chair. This morning we have an invocation that is provided by Reno Satanic.
SPEAKER_00May thee seek knowledge unfettered, free to discover with curious impulse new wonders of the world, and from understanding gained be released of unneeded fear to lift high a star of compassion, shining bright upon the morn, revealing neighbors plentiful of every color and creed, standing together beneath a shared dream. United as one in common endeavors, we can deny fists of iron, their oppressive rule, to stately declare, let freedom reign, whilst making more true and alive visions once written long ago along Atlantic shore. Hold fast thy freedoms and set thy eyes upon what benefits all, lest through self-deceived hearts the bells of liberty and justice fall silent, a once beautiful song absent from the land.
SPEAKER_01And there you have it. That I think was it just had a
Anna Scott’s tragic murder
SPEAKER_01completely disproportionate response that was unnecessary. In this day and age, people should know it's like the Streisand effect we talked about a few times ago.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Absolutely. Reno Satanic has gotten more visibility off of this and off of their reaction than anything that they've done in the community in quite some time.
SPEAKER_01Utterly predictable. And the solution is to just get that crap out of these government meetings in the first place. Frankly, the city of Reno doesn't do it. Yeah. Wisely. Plus, it's a waste of time. Who cares? Keep that stuff in the church.
SPEAKER_03All right. So, Bob, I feel like you've spent a lot of time in church era in church. I you've not spent a lot of time.
SPEAKER_01It's a different kind of church, yeah.
SPEAKER_03The church of law, which is the courtroom. You have been in the courtroom a lot lately. You've got more updates on the Anna Scott trial.
SPEAKER_01Kristen, I I feel uh my heart breaks every time I enter the federal courtroom in this case. And it's been three times in the month of August. And it's been three times in this case where, and for those of you who don't remember, and and you should remember, Anna Scott was a member of the tribal, the local tribe here who was tragically murdered in 2023. And it took four years for any information or solid information to be released to the community, and and and more than four years for an indictment in the case. And now that the in there's been two indictments now, one is the person suspected of murdering Anna Scott, who is also a member of the tribe or local tribe, and another suspect who's essentially been implicated as an accessory after the fact. And three times in court now, the judge has told the prosecution you need to produce evidence in this case, because the defense attorney for Del She Astor, who is the suspect being accused of murdering Anisg, Teresa Rissenpart, the attorney, in three court hearings in a row, has said that the federal government has failed to produce two things evidence that Astor committed the crime, and evidence that this committed what was committed on tribal land. They use the term Indian land that's part of their federal law that that would trigger this being in federal court. He it was essentially a motions hearing where he ruled against the defense on two key issues, and I'll talk about those very briefly here in a minute. But the for the third time, he told the federal government, you need to produce this evidence. And Teresa Ristempart, the attorney, opened up her statement in that hearing basically saying they finally turned over, I think it was 15 or 16,000 pages worth of discovery. I'm just going to say evidence because I think people understand that better than saying discovery, but technically it's discovery. And a few things she said had occurred was several, there were several blank pages that were marked as confidential because they allegedly contained personally identifying information. Maybe they were printed in white, I don't know. But she said that that was a problem. There were no FBI reports, which would be the thing that would indicate how the where and how and the the crime occurred. She said those were missing. And again, it was missing the key thing that has her client facing a trial in about a month for this. And also missing were, I think, a couple dozen pages related to witnesses. And the prosecuting attorney, which by the way, was the third different attorney in this case, in three separate hearings, admitted that there were pages missing, was unaware that the FBI files were allegedly missing, and did not say anything about those blank pages. But what he said was that they need to develop a safety plan for a couple of witnesses or witnesses in order to release those dozen or so pages. So that came out. Nothing was ruled upon other than the judge telling verbally at the end of the hearing, the prosecution again to turn over that information. He gave them an end-of-the-month deadline on that. What he did do, what Judge Denny did do was rule against Anna Scott, or sorry, he ruled against the defense. They were seeking two things. I don't want to get into the technical language, but one is essentially evidence that could be considered exculpatory to Del She Astor, the suspect. But the judge said they do have a responsibility to do that, but that doesn't mean that they have to necessarily turn over every scrap of evidence. So I find that fairly nebulous. And I'm guessing he based, he read a whole lengthy statement about this. And by the way, it's also very difficult to report on this case because there's no, you can't record and you can't take photos, you can't do video. So I have to go old school and write everything down. And I have to just do partial quotes and hope that I get it right. I hope somebody corrects me if I don't get it quite right. In fact, an attorney did message me and said, actually, you got the judge's title wrong. He's a different kind of judge than what I had listed. He's a magistrate, and I guess that's a technical difference. So Judge Denny ruled against them on getting this sort of exculpatory evidence, but they are obligated to produce it before trial. He said the reason that they don't have to produce it now is because they could, the defense could say, Oh, now we need to motion for a delay in the trial so we can examine this. And I guess it's like a procedural thing that they want to avoid. So that's number one. He ruled against them on that. The other issue that he ruled against was releasing the grand jury transcripts. And this case is nuts because apparently the first grand jury that was convened to indict Astor was either given incorrect information or not given the proper information. So they had to do another secret convening of a second grand jury to reindict him. And so the defense attorney wanted copies of those transcripts. And essentially, what I learned at this hearing is that typically those are never going to be released because they're considered essentially private. And it would be an extraordinary circumstance for them to. Release those prior to a trial. And the judge rolled against them on that said they really didn't cross that threshold of extraordinary that would grant the release of those grand jury transcripts. So that's the latest in that case. Again, we're going to keep following it. I'm going to sit in that courtroom on this case as much as possible. My personal feelings on this is that it's pretty sad, what I'm seeing from the prosecution. And some of the comments I'm reading online in response to our reporting is along the lines of the feds better not screw this case up. And that's what it's coming across like right now.
SPEAKER_03A little extra context for this case as well is that this is being prosecuted by the U.S. attorney's office. Correct. The state of Nevada does not have valid U.S. attorney. The head of the office was Siegel Chatta. She was acting. So she is not allowed to basically.
SPEAKER_01This is just it's tragic. And I'm not taking a position on guilt or innocence. I'm not pointing fingers on or placing any judgments on this crime and what happened to Anna Scott, but I have to say I really feel for the families in this case. And what I'm witnessing is just it's just a disaster. It's sad to watch. And I don't
Flock cameras and Reno data centers
SPEAKER_01know what's what else to say about it other than that. I hope my reporting on it is helping people stay informed about what's going on in that courtroom. The people who aren't there in attendance.
SPEAKER_03So, Bob, I'd like to do just a little bit of a roundup on some of the other stories. This week has been so overloaded with the fire reporting, and there are some stories that are happening that I just want to briefly go through for our listeners. There's been uh a deflock movement going on to get rid of flock cameras. People are talking about it at public comment consistently. And Reno has seen at least two of its flock cameras toppled. Do what you say, toppled. Thank you. That's an excellent word. They were toppled. There's a professional who says, no way this happened from the wind. Somebody's removing the screws. Other people are saying it's definitely the wind. We're not quite sure, but that is happening. We also have data centers there. A couple of weeks ago, the Truckie Meadows Regional Planning Agency held a community forum on data centers. They said that they presented some data from a community survey that had very low participation rate. And following that community meeting, the participation rate kicked into high gear. The last time I checked, they had over 9,000 responses to this survey, up from what, 160 or something. And so now they have thousands of responses. And we're hopefully going to get some information out of those responses to local electeds who are trying to figure out what to do about data centers. I'll give you a little bit of a hint, is that overwhelmingly, people responding to the survey do not want data centers in this community.
SPEAKER_01Can I stop you there?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01The term statistical validity was raised at that meeting at the Reno Public Market, and it was in conjunction with needing more people to fill out the survey. That is not going to lead to statistical validity. The only way to do that with a survey is to randomly sample people in the community, which is, by the way, very tedious and expensive to do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Just because you have more people filling out a survey, that's these people are self-selecting to take the survey. Exactly. And that that is juicing the outcome. It's not showing any kind of validity. And I and by the way, if you're one of the anti-data center people, I love you, but I need to be clear that what is happening here is not what people think is happening here. Just because more people filled out the survey, survey in opposition, that's driving the outcome and not in any sort of scientific or evidence-based way. So this is also another problematic process that I think people are not quite understanding, including presumably the people administering the survey.
SPEAKER_03And Devin Reese, I believe it was, actually questioned whether all of the people responding to the survey were actually from the community, which I thought was just crass that somehow we're going to be like bringing in outsiders to say that they don't like data centers. If you think that it's outsiders that are filling out the survey, he has not been listening to public comment. He isn't read the room, Devin. People don't want data centers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And Aaron Ford, who's running for governor against incumbent Joe Lombardo, actually came out last week and said that he was, if he gets elected, he would pause the abatements that data centers, their tax abatements that the data centers get through the governor's office of economic development. Ford was in the state legislature in 2016
Downtown’s unusual bike detour
SPEAKER_03when those were approved and passed. He has had a rethinking, largely because the data center of 2016 is a very different beast than the data center of 2026. And so we'll see if that is a good talking point for his campaign.
SPEAKER_01And in fairness to him, he was not a flip-flopper like the person you just mentioned, who was very much did not want to talk about data centers for a year plus, and then decided, oh, well, you better vote for me if you don't like data centers. Ford never did that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think he admits I approve this, but back in 2016, we did not foresee what's going on now. Things change.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Another story.
SPEAKER_01The bike lane.
SPEAKER_03The bike lane. Okay. So there is, okay, we've got the river, Reno River Rock, right? And we've got this pyramid trucky bikeway. And there's a path that goes along the river. And you used to be able to walk all along it. And there's an ATT building. It's what it's like the network building. I have never seen anybody in that building. It's just a building full of equipment right there on the river, prime real estate. And it has a little tunnel that goes behind it. The way the building's structured.
SPEAKER_01And it's part of the bike right away. Frank.
SPEAKER_03Part of the bike right away. It's part of the river walk, basically. And they fenced it off. And I'm under the impression that they fenced it off because there were people who were unhoused that were using that as shelter from the elements. God for me. They were. And so they fenced it off, and you can't get through there now, which has caused a problem for the right-of-way of bikes and pedestrians. And enter the city of Reno's solution.
SPEAKER_01So the city of Reno, I I will say Damien Cole, who goes by Rat Speed Online, and he's the one that's really trying to raise interest in this issue because he is a downtown resident. He's a cyclist, and he also is doing a lot of his own research and advocacy on a lot of issues like this. And so he dug into the archives and he's convinced that the city of Reno essentially, I'm not going to say this quite legally correctly, but essentially has control over access to that section of the so the city of Reno, yes, has an easement. And essentially the property owner can't shut people out of that section. The city's let it letting it be shut anyway. We know how the city feels about people who are unhoused. They shut down the Portland Loo, the downtown bathroom. They locked it or had it locked, forced it to be locked right before the peak of hot August nights, presumably due to drug activity. Who knows? And if I'm sure that could have been happening, but probably has continued since and well before that.
SPEAKER_03So as always, disservice to all those boomers who probably have prostate problems and need to use the bathroom.
SPEAKER_01Hey, now. Okay, thanks for interrupting my thought. The city is essentially saying, yes, go ahead and close that because we don't want people there anyway, because that means we have to deal with them. I'm sure that's the thinking. They won't respond.
SPEAKER_03The city attorney's office put out this memo to the council members, basically saying, Yeah, we have this easement, but it doesn't force the city to provide public access. It's the city's access to this if we need it. And so they're trying to figure out okay, what do we do about pedestrians and cyclists that want to get from point A to point B and they can't get through this passageway? They're just gonna tell you what they did. They're gonna detour, right? Tell me about the detour, Bob.
SPEAKER_01This is so fun, Kristen. There's sort of natural flow now that we know that gate is closed, is to cruise through City Plaza on your bike at a diagonal, not cruise past the belief sculpture and can go into the crosswalk before the stoplight. So naturally, you're gonna want to go to the stoplight, cross there, continue down first, go right on lake, and then down the bike path if you're taking the bike path. What they did is they assume that people are just gonna go to that crosswalk instead that's not at the intersection. And then on the sidewalk in front of that ATT building on Center Street, they spray painted yellow lines and turned the sidewalk into a bike lane. It is illegal to ride a bike on city sidewalks in downtown Reno.
SPEAKER_03So the city has built itself an illegal detour.
SPEAKER_01And then it kicks out immediately to the right onto First Street into now these, I don't know which there's kind of these barriers that have been propped up that were installed that, but now have effectively removed 10 parking spaces on First Street. It's a very curious design. And to the best of what I can tell, there was zero outreach to the community, zero outreach to business owners downtown, zero outreach to the cycling community. And I just want to read you some of the, I think it was about eight questions that we sent to the city that they said they didn't have time to respond to because of all their fire communications that nobody else is aware of, because we only got one press release that had no real information about the fire. One of the questions is what is the legal designation of the new bike pack section of that sidewalk? Is it a bike lane, a bike path, a shared use path, a sidewalk or something else? No response. Who authorized or designated this a bike path? No response. If it is a bike lane, how does that comply with the fact that bikes are not allowed on sidewalks in downtown? And if the city attorney or city whoever said, Oh, who cares? Do it anyway, have RPD officers been told not to ticket people in that section of downtown? And what legal opinion or administrative authority was used to do this? And again, was there any outreach to the local community in advance of these changes? Crickets?
SPEAKER_03Crickets. Very busy.
SPEAKER_01This is the second inquiry I sent to the media line, which by the way, they've man pretty much mandated we we use for years now, because that's the only way they're going to respond to us, presumably. But it's the second time we've done that where they've just the first time they didn't even respond in the recent past. And this time they just said, Oh, we're too busy doing fire comms. And your response back to them was what?
SPEAKER_03What fire communications? I haven't seen anything come through. I didn't get a response from that either.
SPEAKER_01And my response was, I don't see this as an onerous request. You go to whoever made this decision and hand them the questions and have them draft a response. Here's the legal authority, here's what we consider this, here's the outreach we did or didn't do, and away we go. But instead, now we have a what looks to be a kind of, and no disrespect to the artist who spray painted the these lines, but they look a little clumsy. And the section of the bike path now on First Street, where there used to be parking spaces, essentially mandates that a bicyclist heading from west to east is now riding in the gutter. I think that's symbolic in some way, shape, or form. Would you agree? The gutter level approach to bike lanes and communications. Absolutely. Maybe we'll get
Closing thoughts
SPEAKER_01a response. If we do, we'll update our story online. We will not update this podcast because you can't do that. I think we should call it a day and just wish everyone well. We hope those of you who were, and by the way, I had a my wife and I had a horse property in Horizon Hills, that community that was burned for 14 years. We had two horses, two dogs. We loved it up there. The people, by and large, were amazing. The North Valleys community is, I hate to say it, they're treated like the redheaded stepchildren of communities in the greater Reno area. I think they're wonderful, passionate people up there. And my heart is just broken for those who lost their homes.
SPEAKER_03I think it's a way of life that a lot of people don't understand out in the middle of nowhere in in some instances, but some people just crave that. And they don't want to be living right on top of their neighbors and they want to have a little bit of space to call their own. So I yeah, I feel terrible for the people who have been impacted by this.
SPEAKER_01Frankly, it's part of why why we why we moved from there was the fire danger and the the likelihood that homes are gonna burn. And it did happen a few years after we moved. A couple homes burned down in that neighborhood. But the the video that I saw online was I was just heartbreaking.
SPEAKER_03All right, Bob, let's wrap it up.
SPEAKER_01All right, sorry, folks. Thanks for sticking with us, and we'll see you next time.