Los Angeles Wildfires | Sacramento District Attorney Thien Ho | CapRadio Sues Former General Manager Jun Reina

Insight With Vicki Gonzalez

An update on wildfires in Los Angeles. Also, Sacramento County DA Thien Ho’s priorities for the new year. Finally, CapRadio sues its former general manager, seeking nearly $1 million in connection to the public media station’s financial crisis.

Los Angeles Wildfires

Firefighters are battling multiple wildfires across the Los Angeles area, fueled in large part by life threatening winds across heavily populated residential areas. Officials have already confirmed a death toll, as well as a growing number of homes and structures destroyed. LAist Science Reporter Jacob Margolis joins us with a live look on the ground. We will also learn about the conditions that sparked unprecedented winter fire behavior.

Sacramento District Attorney Thien Ho

The new year brings new resources for California cities and counties to address public safety, ranging from the tough-on-crime Prop 36 to the new CARE Court system. Sacramento District Attorney Thien Ho highlighted the impact of some of these measures yesterday during his second annual “State of Public Safety” address, which touched on issues including homelessness, fentanyl overdoses, homicides and retail theft. District Attorney Ho joins Insight to talk more about the past year, and his criminal justice priorities for 2025.

CapRadio Sues Former General Manager Jun Reina

Capital Public Radio has sued its former general manager Jun Reina, alleging he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars for personal gain. The lawsuit is in connection to an extensive look into CapRadio’s finances, following a 2023 audit that found significant mismanagement at the public media station - which is an auxiliary of Sacramento State. A team of CapRadio journalists have been independently covering this financial crisis since the beginning. CapRadio Politics Editor Chris Nichols and Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez break down the lawsuit's allegations. We reached out to Reina’s legal team. They did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In addition to the lawsuit, on Wednesday Sacramento State also released a mostly-unredacted version of the forensic examination it first released in August 2024, which now includes credit card statements, email exchanges as well as the names of individuals and businesses included in the examination.

Following NPR’s protocol for reporting on itself, no CapRadio corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted or broadcast.
You can read our independent ongoing coverage of financial issues at Capital Public Radio here.