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

The Torrance resident, who has for years posted sometimes-contentious videos on his website of police shot with a hand-held camera, recently upped his game by deploying his own drone all around the Southland. He zooms in on police DUI checkpoints, traffic stops and other places where he suspects potential misconduct by the authorities.   read more

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, seemed to acknowledge for the first time that new technology was leading the court to move past long-established precedents and deal directly with issues of privacy that have morphed dramatically from even a decade ago. In response to the government’s argument that searching a cellphone was no different than searching a wallet, Roberts wrote: “That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.”   read more

While Whole Foods may “satisfy, delight and nourish” its customers, the company also weighs the salad bar containers with the salad, sells packages that weigh less than advertised and sells items by the piece instead of by weight. That is all illegal. City attorneys of Santa Monica, Los Angeles and San Diego pursued a civil protection case on behalf of the state after a yearlong investigation by state and county weights and measures inspectors.   read more

SB 1439 would have limited evictions by forcing new property owners to wait five years before invoking the 1986 Ellis Act, which lets landlords evict tenants and sell the apartments as tenant-in-common units, on their way to becoming condos. Ellis Act evictions in the city nearly doubled in the past year. A review of all Ellis Act evictions since 1997 revealed that 30% of Ellised units were by owners who had Ellised at least one other property. Tenants Together calls them “serial evictors.”   read more

SunTrust Mortgage, a subsidiary of the bank, misled borrowers about their foreclosure status and charged unauthorized fees while giving them false information about foreclosure alternatives and improperly denying them loan modifications. The company did not process applications correctly, lied to customers about what they were doing and used robo-signings to falsify documents.   read more

“The message is very clear: Women who are pregnant should take special care to avoid contact with agricultural chemicals whenever possible,” the study’s lead author, Janie F. Shelton, said in a prepared statement. That certainly might be one message. Shelton suggested another to the Times: "Instead of putting the onus entirely on women thinking of getting pregnant, I think the public should consider that regulators require this kind of testing.”   read more

The Chicago Tribune referred to the “bungled” San Francisco effort in its story announcing the decision Tuesday and the San Francisco Chronicle lamented the end of the “long and thorny saga.” The 93,000-square-foot-museum would have cost $250 million to build and house Lucas' $1-billion collection of American art and Hollywood memorabilia.   read more

The 38-year-old law that created the Coastal Commission empowered it to sue violators of California’s coastal laws, an expensive proposition that forces the agency to choose who it pursues carefully. That will still be the case for those who allegedly build without proper permits and damage wetlands, but the commission will have an additional weapon to take on those who illegally deny people public access to beaches.   read more

Lawmakers in recent years have balanced the state budget, in part, by slashing $1.1 billion from the court system since 2008. A plan offered by the judiciary calculated that it would need $1.2 billion over three years to restore justice to the system, including $612 million the first year. It would take $266 million just to “tread water.” Instead, the budget gives the courts $129 million in new revenue from the state’s General Fund.   read more

MonkeyParking drivers can use a smartphone app to auction off their parking space starting at $5 with default options up to $20. “Technology has given rise to many laudable innovations in how we live and work—and Monkey Parking is not one of them,” City Attorney Dennis Herrera said in a statement. He warned that $300 fines would be issued to motorists who violate San Francisco’s ordinance prohibiting companies or individuals from buying, selling or leasing public on-street parking.   read more

The government announced that it is freezing for 21 days the federal student loans and grants that are the company’s lifeblood, providing it with $1.4 billion a year in corporate revenue. Corinthian, which is the parent company of Everest Institute, Everest College, WyoTech and Heald brands, quickly announced that its survival was in doubt.   read more

Magruder is a politically active architect who thinks it was illegal and immoral to spend $1 billion of bond money earmarked for long-term capital improvements on a technology project of questionable value while schools fall apart. He was reinstated when the school board chairman flipped his vote after the legality of the move was questioned by Magruder's architect association sponsors and board critics.   read more

The lawsuit comes just one week after the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior issued an administrative cease and desist order telling both sides to the dispute to put their guns down after “the security force of one faction had barricaded the entrance to the Casino and that armed agents of the other faction covered the perimeter of the Casino property.”   read more

Tracks would run within half a mile of 135,000 people in Sacramento and 25,000 people in Davis. No new safety or emergency response measures are in place, the NRDC report said, and the aging “soda cans on wheels” are not built to handle the particularly volatile crude being fracked out of the ground in America’s rejuvenated oil fields and shipped to refiners.   read more

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled Thursday that the law was vague and unclear about what behavior it was prohibiting. Judge Harry Pregerson wrote that the law “criminalizes innocent behavior” and cited the example of plaintiff Chris Taylor, a homeless man who slept at a shelter (and could prove it) but was arrested for sitting in his car during a rain storm.   read more

An official state report released this week confirms news stories from a year ago that doctors in California prisons sterilized more than 140 female inmates over an eight-year period, many without proper approval for what probably amounted to an extreme form of birth control. The California State Auditor found that 39 of the patients underwent the surgical procedure, known as bilateral tubal ligation, from fiscal year 2005-2006 to 2012-13 and held both state and federal authorities accountable.   read more