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 beleaguered Hanford company was shut down indefinitely on Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for “unsanitary conditions,” although there was no specific information immediately released about what triggered the action. But by Wednesday the No. 3 provider of meat products to the federal school lunch program was back in business without much explanation, according to the Fresno Bee. No product recall was involved.   read more

Last September, when San Mateo County Transit District (SamTrans) accountant David Ramires told NBC Bay Area that the agency was inflating its expenses by millions of dollars to justify its budget requests, officials claimed honest mistakes over much smaller amounts. When NBC reported last week that Ramires had a second set of books that substantiated his claims, SamTrans officials changed their story—and blamed him.   read more

Bay Area transportation officials are asking why the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) didn’t tell them about reports of potentially corrosive leaks from the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge much before the news became public last week. It would be cynical to think Caltrans was too busy making the final $49 million bonus payment to the project’s prime contractor, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. But the timing might not sit well with some.   read more

The FCC issued a citation to the managers of the Ernst & Young Tower on February 7 after asking them for nine months to do something about static that Verizon Wireless alleged was coming from GE fluorescent ceiling lights inside the Financial District building. The company said the static interfered with voice telephone calls and cellular data exchanges.   read more

Famously liberal California doesn’t have a single Republican statewide officeholder, and Democrats dominate both houses of the Legislature. So it comes as somewhat of a surprise to the casual observer that six of California’s seven sitting Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican governors. Last week, one of them, Justice Joyce L. Kennard, an appointee of Republican George Deukmejian, announced she would retire in April.   read more

Deputies receive up to 1,000 alerts a day. Most of the false positives are predictable and were actually predicted. An alert goes off when contact with the wireless ankle strap-on device is lost, even if the signal was just blocked by a building or lost to a dead battery. It also goes off if the wearer travels someplace he shouldn’t be, which is hard not to do.   read more

Five years after people in the city of Paramount began complaining about burning metallic odors and unusual illness, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) told the community that Carlton Forge Works has not been a good neighbor. At a town hall meeting last month, AQMD officials said testing at and around the metal parts manufacturing facility discovered elevated levels of nickel, chromium, hexavalent chromium and cadmium.   read more

It was the first significant haul of contraband since the 2011 California law banning the traditional Chinese delicacy was fully phased in last July. DFW Lieutenant Patrick Foy told the San Francisco Chronicle the fins came from “probably thousands of sharks.” Tens of millions of sharks die a slow death annually from “finning.”   read more

The Bee told Brown’s story in March 2013. He was given a one-way ticket and three days worth of meds for his schizophrenia, depression and anxiety. He was told to call 911 upon arriving at his destination, a bit of advice that, according to another class-action lawsuit filed by the city of San Francisco, was not given to a substantial number cut loose by the hospital.   read more

The history of the airport, as told by airport officials, roughly breaks down five decades starting in the ‘60s as: “Early Regulations and Litigation,” “More Controversy More Regulation and More Litigation,” “Continuing Controversy Resolved,” “Controversy Rekindled” and “Controversy Over Runway Safety.”   read more

“This behavior is the very definition of predatory and this website made a game out of humiliating victims for profit,” Attorney General Harris said. California is trying to extradite him. The website, WinByState.com, solicited photographs from scorned males and posted them, sometimes identifying the victim by name. Posters obtained the photos consensually, in better times, or by stealing them. Photos on the website were organized by locale, and California had more than 400 images.   read more

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District ruled 2-1 (pdf) that restrictions put in place by San Diego County under the California law violated the Constitution’s Second Amendment by requiring that an applicant show “good cause” to carry a gun. They should pretty much only have to indicate they want a gun for protection, the court said.   read more

The California Coastal Commission, scrambling to get up to speed on recently revealed offshore fracking activity, received a briefing from its staff Wednesday that showed, in passing, federal approval of four more previously unknown fracking permits. The new fracks, pending at Platform Gilda off the coast of Ventura County, would add to the 12 confirmed instances of hydraulic fracturing in federal waters.   read more

The reform would limit the amount of time a Death Row prisoner could pursue appeals, shift the initial appeals process from the state Supreme Court to Superior Courts, remove the threat of sanctions against doctors who administer lethal injections and fast track changes to the execution procedure. Theoretically, an inmate could be executed in five years, instead of the 12-15 years it typically takes now.   read more

The Los Angeles Times reported that 4,000 applications for nursing certification are lying on desks at the Board of Registered Nursing because the new system, booted up last October and designed to handle online data for 37 licensing boards and bureaus, isn’t performing as advertised. Some estimates go as high as 6,000.   read more

The New Yorker told his story this week, detailing the extensive measures Switzerland-based Syngenta took to protect its financial interest in a pesticide it produced by attacking its chief critic. A psychological profile was drawn up to pinpoint his vulnerabilities. Documents discussed his insecurities growing up poor and black in South Carolina (“scarred for life”) and how they could be exploited.   read more