Santa Cruz County Public Safety Articles

You have to be 18 to get divorced in California, but there’s no minimum age to get married. Child marriage survivors protested at the state Capitol, but the Legislature likely won’t act until next year.

At its most recent regularly-scheduled meeting, Scotts Valley City Council heard from a consultant that it didn’t do so well on the pavement condition index (PCI), with more than a third of its roads rating “poor” or “failed.” Scotts Valley …

Just two years after its formation, the Pajaro Regional Flood Management Agency is already at risk of splintering.

Gov. Gavin Newsom took to his Twitter account to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would regulate gun sales and use nationwide, in a way that courts cannot change.

CodeRED, the County’s community alert and warning system has been upgraded with new features and rebranded as CruzAware. The system provides information during emergency and non-emergency situations, including roadwork and neighborhood-level disruptions.  Users can select how they receive information whether …

Programs would dispatch mental health workers, not police.

California is unwinding the prison-building boom of the 1980s and 1990s. The cuts are falling on small towns that banked on government jobs to anchor their communities.

More than 4 percent of death penalty convicts have been wrongfully convicted, data shows. But courts including the U.S. Supreme Court have failed to provide protections for the innocent facing death at the hands of the state.

In 2020, the CZU fires ravaged the Santa Cruz Mountains, destroying 1,490 structures and an untold number of trees. A little more than two years later, many of those downed trees washed down streams into the ocean and, during the …

On Monday afternoon, a call came over police radio that emergency workers have become all too familiar with: a man had overdosed on Fentanyl and was unconscious. Watsonville Police found the man in an alley behind a shopping center. They …

Fentanyl overdoses continue to rise in Santa Cruz County and beyond; there’s only one silver bullet.

A new volunteer group called the Brush Brigade recently started to help seniors and other residents haul away brush or cut it into wood chips.

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY—The shooting that killed a man in Boulder Creek on Jan. 28 followed two mass shootings in California, which themselves came amidst a flurry of gun violence across the U.S. In response, several Democratic lawmakers have teamed up …

Communities like Ben Lomond and Felton depend on local first responders for everything, from earthquakes to the recent storms

Ten-month outreach tour kicks off.

How to effectively communicate actionable information for preparation before extreme events, and to disseminate vital information during and after disasters.

Prepare for disaster in Santa Cruz County by keeping crucial information at your fingertips—just one touch away on your smartphone.

PAJARO—A cadre of elected and public officials gathered in Pajaro late Sunday morning to issue a dire warning in advance of a rainstorm expected to begin Sunday night and bring possible major flooding to Monterey and Santa Cruz counties through …

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY—Watsonville and Santa Cruz County officials on Thursday lifted the evacuation orders and flood warnings issued during the dual atmospheric river storms that came on Dec. 30 and Jan. 4, allowing residents to return home and breathe a …

2022 was a year that needed a lot of explaining. And California Local was there. Here are our 10 most important explanatory journalism stories from the year gone by, from immigration to cryptocurrency to wealth inequality and more.