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

Los Angeles has 5,000 registered garment manufacturers and 50,000 to 60,000 cutting and sewing operators. In the past year, 221 investigations found that 1,549 garment workers were stiffed an average $1,900 each (more than a month’s pay) by their employers. That’s $3 million and only includes those workers who managed to get the attention of government investigators.   read more

The applicants were placed in a lottery to pick out 400 finalists. The drawing was held in an auditorium in the Chronicle building and more than 100 people showed up. “A gold cylinder on a table held thousands of red tickets,” the Chronicle reporter wrote. “The wheel was turned, a ticket was picked and a number and name read out. Amy Anderson, who was attending her third apartment auction, said, “It’s like they are auctioning off hope.”   read more

The California Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report last week that said, although parole agents anecdotally report that GPS is a valuable tool, “There exists little objective evidence to determine to what extent, if any, GPS tracking is a crime deterrent. . . . While it may be tempting to think of CDCR’s use of GPS technology as a crime–prevention tool, it is more accurate to categorize it as a monitoring tool.”   read more

Two investors charged that Freedom was playing favorites by preparing to sell 14.3 acres of prime real estate near company headquarters for at least $45 million. That would benefit Silver Point Finance LLC, which holds the mortgage on all Freedom real properties. They accused Silver Point of having “undue influence” over the company. That kind of talk has the whiff of an owner and creditors jockeying for position before bankruptcy.   read more

Former PG&E senior vice president of regulatory affairs Thomas Bottorff left in September along with two other executives and a top PUC official after e-mails were released detailing suspicious contacts in the aftermath of the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people and leveled a neighborhood. Former PG&E CEO Peter Darby received a $34.8-million severance package six months after the blast.   read more

The project did not have a leader. The district did not have a good relationship with Microsoft, the software’s developer, resulting in unfixed bugs and missing functionality. “Staffing, training and stakeholder involvement for the implentation was insufficient,” so bottlenecks messed up everyone’s development schedule and forced a system rollout without proper testing. There were “red conditions” everywhere that should have triggered a stoppage. They didn’t.   read more

Users would legally purchase bitcoins and transfer them to their Silk 2.0 accounts. They could make purchases from numerous vendors anonymously through the Tor network, while paying a commission to the site operator. An FBI agent noted drugs, fake Danish passports for sale, fake New Jersey driver’s licenses, website hacking services and e-mail hacking.   read more

The map, from the California Geological Survey, is a follow-up to a draft map of the Hollywood fault released in January that shocked city officials and developers―of what would be the storied area’s tallest development in history―by estimating it lay directly in the fault’s path. The developer immediately hired his own engineers to trench the site, and their conclusion was that the fault should be removed from the map.   read more

California is still the bluest of blue states, with Democrats winning all the elections for statewide office and firmly controlling the Senate and Assembly. But no state is easily defined or color-coded and California is no exception. The following 10 electoral outcomes at the local level help reveal a fuller, more nuanced portrait of the Golden State.   read more

Despite outspending their political opponents 20-1, three Chevron-bankrolled candidates for the city council and one for mayor were defeated, giving progressives a 6-1 majority. Chevron spent about $72 per registered voter in the city of 107,000, blasting out TV ads, papering neighborhoods with mailers and decorating the town with billboards.   read more

Su exploited loopholes in the student visa system to secure permission from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for her unaccredited, for-profit Silicon Valley school to enroll foreign students while she disguised how many students she was collecting money from at any given time. Tri-Valley had no requirements for admission or graduation . . . and flourished. She targeted Indian students who were eager to enter the U.S.   read more

As expected, California galloped off in the opposite direction from the rest of the country Tuesday night, electing Democrats to run government, voting for a less muscular approach to crime and supporting funds for rebuilding public infrastructure. Jerry Brown won his fourth term as governor and Democrats were leading all eight statewide races late into the night.   read more

After three months of improvement in conservation over the past year, September’s gallons-per-capita use among residential customers served by 400 urban water agencies was 10.3% lower than the previous September, but August over August improvement had been 11.6%. Governor Jerry Brown had asked for 20% declines in his January Emergency Drought Proclamation.   read more

Wright was convicted of eight felonies by a jury in January and was sentenced to three months in lockup. He can thank his former fellow lawmakers for facilitating his jail break last Friday by failing to relieve the overcrowded conditions in the penal system that are forcing reduced jail time. California has been trying to meet years of federal court directives to reduce its state prison population by shifting the assignment of certain low-level offenders to already overcrowded county jails.   read more

Chevron claimed that the county should refund $3.5 million in property tax it paid since 2006 because the new drilling only preserved the land’s value, rather than increased it. “If this case had gone against us, and we could not put new construction on the assessment roll . . . in my opinion, this county would go broke very fast,” county Assessor-Recorder Jim Fitch told the Bakersfield Californian.   read more

The lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) tried to block construction of a highway project that would link the port directly to Interstate 405 until the welfare of the neighborhood was, at least, taken into consideration. The court said no. Federal law allowed local, state and federal agencies to ignore the impact of pollution on the Wilmington neighborhood and just use a regional analysis.   read more