{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"KZYX News","title":"Don’t call them private security: privately owned companies hired as “safety managers,” “safety contractors,” and “Safety Specialists”","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":389,"description":"October 19, 2021 — As the difference between safety and security in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest is parsed with utmost refinement, one thing remains clear: the logging sites are dangerous. Two activists have complained of significant threats, one of them caught on video. EPIC, the Environmental Protection and Information Center, has sent a letter to Wade Crowfoot, the California Secretary of Natural Resources, asking him to restore peace.\r\n\r\nAnd, although Cal Fire’s chief legal counsel Bruce Crane wrote on July 2nd that “The current JDSF closure order prohibits any private security, armed or unarmed, from entering JDSF,” two unarmed private security firms have been present in two sites. One was hired by a private company, while the other was paid upwards of $110,000 by Cal Fire for just over a month’s work.\r\n\r\nCal Fire, the Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention, manages JDSF, where protests against logging have been vigorous. Mendocino Forest Products, the sister company to Mendocino Redwood Company, purchased the contract to log Soda Gulch. They hired Two Brothers Logging to fall trees and Lear Asset Management for safety. \r\n\r\nIn a press release, Mendocino Redwood Company described the contractors as “licensed and bonded Safety Specialists…(who) are simply filming and alerting trespassers to the active operations.” Lear is a private security company best known for armed raids on trespass grows. John Andersen, the public policy director for MRC, confirmed that the company had hired Lear as a safety contractor, but said Trouette and his staff are not carrying weapons on JDSF. \r\n\r\nKevin Conway, the Cal Fire forest manager in JDSF, said safety managers are permitted on logging sites, but did not lay out the parameters of their duties, other than to specify that they must be unarmed. \r\n\r\nThe presence of the safety manager, or the Safety Specialist, did not rule out the possibility of a non-accidental death, according to one unidentified logger in...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/xZpAumwbhFUpJUYcwaQ1-q6snzOyqAm13l7cW6AWPCM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mMzkz/NjAwNjc2OWMyZmFk/YWY2YTdmYjI5M2Mz/YWMxNy5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}