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 five-day notice is intended to give journalists and publishers time to challenge the subpoena or narrow the scope of information the third party would be required to disclose. The new law, which was drafted by Democratic state Senator Ted Lieu of Torrance, also requires the notice to include an explanation of why the government wants the records and why it can’t obtain the information through alternate sources.   read more

The neighbor argued that the Romneys incorrectly exaggerated the size of their lot by 50%, to 18,000 square feet, by improperly including too much of the beach (out to the median high-tide marker) in computing how much home could legally be built. He also claimed the Romneys had privatized a public-access walkway and had a seawall that wasn’t up to snuff.   read more

Brown vetoed seven bills and signed 11, but still drew the wrath of the right-wing Washington Times, which decried “California’s great gun grab” and echoed a warning from critics that one of the signed bills “would effectively end hunting as a sport in California.” The seven bills he vetoed included Senate Bill 374, which would have effectively extended the definition of assault rifle by banning semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines.   read more

San Jose sued MLB after a four-year struggle to obtain the Oakland franchise. Baseball did not want the move and invoked a league rule that gave the San Francisco Giants territorial rights to the San Jose area in 1990. Each of the 30 league franchises has veto power over a club moving into its operating territory.   read more

Spalding was the subject of an intensive search inside and outside the hospital after she disappeared in mid-September, but the stairwell where she was found is rarely used for anything except as a fire escape and was apparently overlooked. Preliminary speculation is that she wandered away from her fifth floor room in a haze from medication and couldn’t get back through the self-locked, alarm-equipped door.   read more

On Thursday, California Attorney General Kamala Harris sued Corinthian Colleges, Inc., accusing it (pdf) of “predatory” activities that “targeted some of our state's most particularly vulnerable people—including low income, single mothers and veterans returning from combat.” The schools allegedly used “deceptive and false advertisements and aggressive marketing campaigns that misrepresented job placement rates and school programs.”   read more

On Thursday, Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation that implements a two-tier pricing program at selected schools during summer and winter terms, allowing students who have the cash to pay extra for “high demand” classes. If you have the money, you can get through the school quicker and easier. And the schools make a few dollars, too.   read more

A recently released report (pdf) by the Police Assessment Resource Center found that dogs caused more injuries than the combined use of batons, tear gas, guns and other weapons. It also found that the dogs wreaked more havoc in low-income minority neighborhoods serviced by five stations over the past nine years than 21 other agencies and stations combined.   read more

The 115-page review by CPS HR Consulting essentially said the department takes twice as long to do its job as it should because the staff has been decimated and very few people really know how the permit process works. The primary reason given for delays was staffing. The second main reason for delays was crappy management. Third, the staff doesn’t know how the permitting process works. The people who knew how it worked are gone and it’s not written down anywhere.   read more

Loyola Marymount University and Santa Clara University announced they wouldn't include coverage for elective abortions in policies made available to employees. Meanwhile, Governor Brown signed a bill allowing non-physician clinicians to perform abortions under certain conditions. He also signed a bill that orders the repeal of any section of the state building code that doesn’t treat clinics that perform abortions as any other primary-care clinic.   read more

The Los Angeles Times reported that more than 3,400 former NFL players have filed the workers’ comp claims in California since 2006. Most of them were from out of state. Taxpayers are not on the hook for the money, which mostly comes out of the pocket of employers and their insurance companies. So California’s new law is a windfall for team owners and their insurers.   read more

Exide Technologies has been battling state regulators and residents living near its battery recycling plant in the densely populated Los Angeles County city of Vernon since at least 2007. The company has been accused of poisoning more than 100,000 people, been temporarily shut down, been forced to test the surrounding area for arsenic and lead contaminants and compelled to make repairs to its plant.   read more

The FSIS, which is part of the USDA, has not been shuttered by the shutdown, but it is working with reduced staff, according to Reuters. The USDA website, itself, is down “due to the lapse in federal funding.” The Associated Press reported that the CDC has recalled some furloughed workers to help with the outbreak. The CDC coordinates multi-state outbreaks like this by organizing local and state resources to detect it, define its size and identify the source.   read more

Oakes, reportedly videotaped stuffing large amounts of cash in her bra at work, was charged with eight counts of embezzlement by a public or private officer and eight counts of a public officer crime. The initial probe by Stewart Investigations Services was said to implicate a number of people, according to the San Bernardino Sun, and put the suspected haul at $3.16 million.   read more

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Luis A. Lavin indicated he was loath to tear up the contract, opting instead to badmouth the commissioners, order the release of documents they were sitting on, require them to record their closed-door sessions for three years and issue an injunction barring them from doing what they’d already done.   read more

High school dropouts are 2.5 times more likely to go on welfare than high school graduates and earn $1 million less over their lifetime. There are early indications who those dropouts will be, the report says. First-graders with nine or more absences are twice as likely to drop out of high school.   read more