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

Hazle’s attorney announced they had settled his lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and a substance abuse treatment firm a year after the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a lower court had screwed up. "The state defendants violated his constitutional rights," the court ruled. "We are aware of no cases in which we have affirmed a zero-damages verdict when, as here, the existence of actual injury was indisputable.”   read more

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) reviewed state documents that report at least nine of the wells, used to dispose of water loaded with noxious chemicals and materials extracted using hydraulic fracturing (fracking), contributed to the illegal disposal of 3 billion gallons of dangerous wastewater into Central Valley aquifers. Another 19 injection wells may also have contaminated aquifers, the state said.   read more

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is not happy. “We are not going to roll over and risk watching Prime Healthcare cut services, raise prices and lay off caregivers like they've done in so many other communities in California and other states,” Dave Regan, president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, said on the union’s website.   read more

The first Latino elected leader of the California state Senate since Reginaldo Francisco Del Valle in 1883, Democrat Kevin de León took over for the job of Senate Pro Tempore from Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) on Wednesday. The former political activist and community organizer was a leader of the huge 1994 march in Los Angeles that protested the passage of Prop. 187.   read more

An internal report by the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) Office of Inspector General (OIG) found ghost patrols “during multiple shifts at different times of day, involved officers of differing ranks, and was carried out differently depending on who was involved and where they were assigned.” Supervisors or other people assigned to a desk were logged in as on patrol. The patrol cars they were allegedly driving were parked at the stations.   read more

AP reviewed contracting records obtained via the state Public Records Act which showed $4.2 million of the contracts went to the Tori Group, a consulting firm with strong ties to CC Director Peter Lee. Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group promoting health insurance reform measure Prop. 45 on the November ballot, fired off a letter to the attorney general demanding an investigation. “This isn't about speed,” Watchdog president Jamie Court told the Sacramento Bee, “this is about being opaque."   read more

The trio that towed 89-year-old Sarah Cheiker across country and left her in a crummy Maine cabin never did jail time and no one ever definitively figured out how her home in Los Angeles was sold to pay for the three-year odyssey, according to Bob Pool, who spun the tale at the Los Angeles Times over the weekend. And there are no indications anyone will.   read more

Alon USA wants to re-animate its shuttered Bakersfield complex and transform it into a massive facility for accepting and refining shipments of oil by rail—instead of conventional pipeline or tanker delivery. The lawsuit, filed by Earthjustice on behalf of the Association of Irritated Residents, Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, alleges the county’s environmental impact report (EIR) severely underestimated the danger from air pollution and catastrophic train derailments.   read more

The government accused the son of amassing assets worth $300 million on an annual salary of less than $100,000 “through corruption and money laundering, in violation of both Equatoguinean and U.S. law.” The government did not get all of the son’s loot. The Los Angeles Times said he managed to ship half his property out of the U.S., including a Bentley, a Bugatti, a Rolls Royce and Jackson’s $275,000 white glove from the “Bad” tour.   read more

It started with a solitary clown spotted late at night wandering the streets of Wasco. The creepy clown was spotted multiple times just milling about in isolated locations and, as clowns often do, raised mixed emotions of bemusement and fear among local residents. And then it got weird, or weirder. Other clowns began appearing at night, dressed in different outfits.   read more

Online conservative websites lit up with complaints. “The damage this tyrant is causing America is incalculable,” one typical critic wrote. Presidents have named 110 national monuments, although not all of them retain the designation to this day. Republican President Teddy Roosevelt was the first in 1906. Sixteen presidents have gotten in on the action. Only Presidents Nixon, Reagan and George H.W. Bush have not.   read more

Around 10 armed members of the Tex McDonald tribal council took over the Chukchansi gaming commission office in the casino complex, controlled for the past month by the Reggie Lewis/Nancy Ayala faction. The McDonald faction said they were looking for, but did not find, critical audits of the gaming operation. At its core is a fight over who truly deserves to be considered a member of the tribe and share in its investments.   read more

Mellen was convicted of orchestrating the killing of her ex-boyfriend, Richard Daly, over his alleged theft of goods from her mother’s home. The jury believed the testimony of Mellen’s friend, June Patti, who said the accused had confided in her details of the crime. What they didn’t know was Patti, who had a lengthy arrest record, had been called an “unreliable informant” by the Torrance Police Department five years earlier after a series of tips from her proved to be false.   read more

Although the complex program would be impossible to effectively execute on a mass scale outside a clinical setting, it offered the possibility that memory erosion among sufferer’s of the affliction is not permanent. “I think we will look back on this as being the first report that really starts research down the correct road to finding answers to dementing diseases,” Dr. David Jones, president of the Institute for Functional Medicine in Federal Way, told the Marin Independent Journal.   read more

Despite years of controversy at the PUC, the former president of Southern California Edison Company was considered likely to be reappointed by Governor Jerry Brown. But the release of questionable e-mails during a court proceeding over the deadly 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion highlighted an overly cozy relationship with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) and specifically called into question some of his actions.   read more

After years of sticking charges on people’s wireless devices for services they never asked for and refusing to remove them, AT&T reached a settlement with 50 state attorneys general and the federal government not to do that anymore. Oh, and they coughed up $105 million, 0.32% of AT&T’s 2nd-quarter earnings of $32.6 billion.   read more