Local:

  • Famed 1980s cop Bob Geary, who carried a ventriloquist dummy, has died. Geary and his sidekick played the classic “good cop/bad cop” routine to help diffuse tense situations. [Chronicle]
  • Recent Salesforce layoffs will impact 153 San Francisco employees. The company will be laying off over 1,000 workers by April 25th, as it continues to hire new salespeople to sell its AI products. [Chronicle]
  • Bike lanes along San Mateo’s Humboldt Street are scheduled for immediate removal after a unanimous vote during a recent San Mateo City Council meeting. The bike lanes were installed two years ago in response to serious crashes in the area and were funded through a $1.5 million federal safety project. [SF Gate]
  • Oakland’s budget crisis could lead to a cut in funding to police oversight agencies. The agencies were created in 2016 in response to scandals involving officer misconduct and lack of accountability. [Oaklandside]
  • A fifteen-year-old boy was arrested for yesterday’s shooting in Redwood City [CBS News]
  • The two men who were killed in the Sonoma County floodwaters have been identified. [KRON4]
  • The evacuation order for low-lying areas along the Russian River has been downgraded to a warning. [CBS News]

National:

  • Google has removed the pledge from its website at some point during the last week that proclaims that the company will not use AI for weapons or surveillance. Google responded in a blog post, “we believe that companies, governments, and organizations sharing these values should work together to create AI that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security.” [CNN]
  • Last weekend, the Army Corps of Engineers opened the dams of California’s Lake Kaweah and Lake Success, which are located near the Sierra Nevada and help store water for the farmland of the eastern San Joaquin Valley, releasing more than 2.2 billion gallons over three days. POTUS claimed that if the releases had happened earlier, the Los Angeles fires could have been prevented, despite the fact that the two waterways do not connect to the aqueduct that serves Southern California. [SF Gate]
  • Mark Pocan, a U.S. Democratic Representative from Wisconsin, has announced his plan to introduce a new bill with the apt title, “Eliminate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy.” “After more than $20 billion in federal contracts, there’s no way Musk can be objective in what he’s doing. Protecting the taxpayers has to be our number one priority,” says Pocan. [TechCrunch]

Video of the Day:

May your weekend be full of window pet sightings:

Image: Ferry Ride, 2023, Leanne Maxwell/SFist