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

Last week, in an unusual, although not unheard of, decision, jurors in a federal civil rights lawsuit found Sheriff Lee Baca had personal responsibility for the jailhouse beating of a prisoner and assessed his penalty at $100,000. It’s not clear if the county can, or will, pick up the tab, but the department has made it known the decision will be appealed.   read more

The California prison strike is over, but United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture Juan Méndez still wants to take a tour of the state’s solitary confinement facilities. However, he’s not getting any further now than he did in May, just before thousands of prisoners began a 60-day strike protesting indefinite isolation that sometimes lasts for decades.   read more

University of California researchers have gathered a list of 1,500 such buildings but don’t want to turn it over to the city because its raw data, underlying a larger study, is derived from public records and hasn’t been verified on the ground. Putting aside the question, “Why doesn’t the city already have the information UC gathered?” the question remains: Should this information be immediately made public?   read more

San Bernardino Councilman Chas Kelley pleaded guilty to felony perjury and resigned his council seat last week. And now the city has a newly-minted felon as a mayoral candidate on its November 5 ballot. Kelley wasn’t the only councilman in court on Thursday. Councilman Robert Jenkins was charged with 30 felony and misdemeanor counts in an alleged Internet revenge attack on an ex-boyfriend and a second man using Craigslist.   read more

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced two weeks ago that the tainted chicken, which had sickened people in 20 states, came from Foster Farms, but the law makes chicken recalls voluntary. Salmonella is legally regarded as a common contaminant in chicken that can be controlled by proper cooking.   read more

The city of Los Angeles has sued the contractors (pdf) who built a $250-million runway extension six years ago for shoddy workmanship that has left the 13,000-foot strip of concrete with cracks and other construction defects. Normally, runway construction lasts 20-25 years. The lawsuit cites steel rebar poking up through the concrete and dislodged chunks of concrete.   read more

It’s not known how many people or what type of information is involved, but as many as 500 growers paid $830,000 to participate in the landmark program, which had, at the time, assurances from the county that their participation was lawful. But that was before the federal government began a crackdown on dispensaries and growers in California at the end of 2011.   read more

What aging veteran wouldn’t want to knock back a few brewskies at a tavern and take a ride on a zip line at an adventure park right at the veterans’ home where he lived? Apparently that was what an administrator for the California Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was thinking when two contracts that ended up costing the state $652,919 were approved for the facility in Napa County’s Yountville, according to a report (pdf) from the California State Auditor.   read more

The mosquito was first detected in the Fresno-area cities of Madera and Clovis in June, It was found again in August in San Mateo County. The Associated Press reported that the mosquitoes have been trapped at more than 100 locations in Clovis. Its presence does not pose an immediate threat—the mosquito has been found, not yellow fever—but public health officials are concerned that the bug could be problematic if it gains a foothold in the state.   read more

The government relied upon national security claims to suppress evidence and convict Basaaly Moalin in February of funneling $8,500 to al-Shabaab. But after Eric Snowden revealed the extent of NSA phone surveillance, a cryptic government e-mail surfaced that seemed to indicate a desire to obtain “real time” coordinates of the man at the other end of a Moalin conversation—al-Shabaab leader Aden Hashi Ayrow, who was killed in a May 2008 U.S. missile strike.   read more

All 2,400 prisoners at the North Fork Correctional Facility in Western Oklahoma are from California, which shipped them there in 2007. The lawsuit alleges that CCA and its former warden, Fred Figueroa, didn’t train guards properly and left some positions understaffed, which led to the “severe and permanent physical and mental injuries” suffered by the four plaintiffs.   read more

Kreep was reassigned September 9 to a court that handles traffic disputes and small claims after repeated complaints from attorneys who boycotted his courtroom over his general conduct. He is best known for challenging the citizenship of President Barack Obama and the legitimacy of his administration,   read more

Last week, national GOP officials targeted a $10 million outreach campaign at California and 16 other states, with the hope of reconnecting with Latino voters they have long scorned. It could be argued that the GOP in California already started its outreach last week at its annual state convention, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.   read more

Senate Bill 598 would have made it harder for generic versions of expensive biotechnology drugs to be approved for use in the state by setting a standard for them that required they be “interchangeable,” i.e. near exact replicas, of the original drug rather than just similar. The bill also would have required pharmacists to inform patients when a biosimilar version of a product was being dispensed and send that information back to the prescriber.   read more

When officials at the Employment Development Department received an e-mail from an employee warning that the new computer system for processing unemployment checks was not usable, one of them responded, “Who is this guy?” The guy is Adolfo Jimenez, the Buena Park service center employee was blasting off dire warnings about the $188-million system's flaws as it rolled out on Labor Day, headed toward a meltdown that would cost 300,000 Californians their unemployment checks.   read more

Susan Masten, vice chairwoman of the tribe, told Reuters’ Jonathan Kaminsky before the government shut down on October 1 that the cutoff of federal funds would force her to suspend childcare for 50 families, stop paying college scholarships to 100 students, suspend tutoring for 1,900 students and furlough 60 of the tribe’s 310 employees.   read more