ICE agents have reportedly claimed to be police officers to gain consent to enter a person’s home – a tactic that is viewed as unethical, but within the powers granted to the officers. Civil rights groups supported Kalra’s bill, looking to stymie the Trump administration’s promise to use any and all available tools to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. Many groups fear Trump will expand deportations to include all undocumented immigrants, their families and relatives.   read more

Last year, lawyers from the state Attorney General’s office argued to the courts that an earlier court-ordered revamp of parole standards to reduce prison overcrowding would hurt the fire program and didn’t want to do it. The program rewarded low-level felons with 2-for-1 credits for days-served for working. Prison spokesman Bill Cessa said, “We currently have a sufficient number of inmates."   read more

Russia has been the subject of trade restrictions by the West because of belligerency in Ukraine and Crimea. This week, it was revealed that Russia's consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor has banned three California wines, although the reason given is health, not retaliation. Rospotrebnadzor said the wines were banned because they showed high levels of phthalic acid and pesticides.   read more

Clyde Trombettas, with the state Department of Industrial Relations (DIR), told the Torrance Daily Breeze, “It’s pretty rare for a compliance officer to issue one willful citation, let alone six willful citations. An employer has to be pretty egregious for us to do something like that. It’s trying to send a message that we need to take these things seriously.”   read more

For those who have a problem following the free-associated thoughts of the New York billionaire, he published his first formal position paper (pdf) on a subject that has netted him almost as much publicity as comments about Fox News host Megyn Kelly bleeding from her eyes “and whatever.” Although Trump’s blueprint on immigration doesn’t explicitly call for all undocumented immigrants to be deported, he reiterated his demand, on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, that they “have to go.”   read more

CalPERS lost $2.5 billion in oil and gas investments and $542 million in coal. The price of oil dropped by around 50%. CalSTRS dropped $1.8 billion on losing oil and gas investments and $333 million on coal. CalPERS lost $40 million on a single investment, Texas oil shale company Pioneer Natural Resources, according to Bloomberg.   read more

At the beginning of August, library Director Jeff Scott said the real number was around 2,200 out of the library's 450,000 books. Upon review, it has been determined that the library has weeded out more than 39,000 books. “I had the wrong information,” Scott said. “There was an internal process different to what I realized.”   read more

At least eight miles of the 14-mile urban river, including a stretch running through the heart of downtown San Jose on its way to the bay, are dry. That has been the case for a couple of months. That’s a shame. The 250-acre River Park and Garden was recently developed along the Guadalupe’s banks and its website still recommends that visitors “take a rest at one of the seven Sister City seating areas to simply watch the river flow.”   read more

As of June 30, the agency had issued 397,000 licenses to undocumented applicants out of a total of 759,000 people this year. By the end of July, the numbers were 443,000 licenses to undocumented immigrants out of a total of 883,000 licenses issued in 2015. The DMV expects to issue 1.5 million licenses to undocumented immigrants within three years. California is home to more undocumented immigrants than any other state, with approximately 3 million of them.   read more

The EPA resisted doing the air testing until breathing TCE was recently linked to higher incidents of birth defects and cancer. The first EPA readings are in on 107 homes and they are spooky enough that the agency ordered more tests. Another 40 homes are going to be tested later this year. Vapor intrusion—the migration of chemicals in soil or groundwater to the air inside buildings above the contamination—is an “emerging concept” of the EPA.   read more

Key data on long-term English learners is not posted online and, according to civil rights groups, is being denied to the public.Parents of English learners participate in the process of allocating school funds through District English Language Advisory Councils, but that’s a little hard to do without all the data. "Without it, parents and community members are unable to evaluate which English programs work and which ones are failing.”   read more

Federal authorities charged three DMV employees and three truck-school operators in three separate conspiracies that yielded 100 fraudulent licenses without a single test passed. The probe began as three separate investigations before they merged. “Allowing unqualified drivers to operate heavy commercial trucks on our highways is honestly quite chilling,” said Carol Webster, acting assistant special agent in charge of the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations office in Sacramento.   read more

Don Thompson of Associated Press reported that four women inmates killed themselves at San Bernardino County’s California Institution for Women (CIW) during the past 18 months. There was only one suicide at the prison between 1999 and 2012, one each in 2001, 2006 and 2012. The spike brought the prison suicide rate to eight times the national average and five times that of California’s horrendous state prison system for men and women, according to AP.   read more

Like Stingray, the device mimics cellphone towers to connect and monitor mobile devices. But dirtbox can monitor multiple signals at a time, breaking encryption as it goes, sweeping up data in a dragnet whose scale is unknown beyond its users. Devices like dirtbox were first developed for the military and intelligence agencies.   read more

The bill’s author was explicit about why she thought SB 227 was necessary. “The use of the criminal grand jury process, and the refusal to indict as occurred in Ferguson and other communities of color, has fostered an atmosphere of suspicion that threatens to compromise our justice system,” state Senator Holly Mitchell (D- Los Angeles) said in a statement.   read more

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) capped off dumping the last of 96 million black plastic balls partially-filled with water into the Los Angeles Reservoir. The two-year, $34.5-million program is a way to preserve the 175-acre reservoir, cut cleaning costs and even save a little water (300 million gallons a year) by preventing evaporation.   read more

The Office of Ratepayer Advocates (ORA) joined The Utilities Reform Network (TURN), another advocacy group that was a party to the settlement, in flipping its support after e-mails surfaced about backchannel talks between top PUC and Southern California Edison officials over how to structure a deal. The e-mails, along with state and federal criminal investigations, have lent credence to longstanding allegations that the agency was far too cozy with the utilities it regulates.   read more