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

San Bernardino Residents for Responsible Government wants to recall Mayor Pat Morris, City Attorney James F. Penman, City Clerk Gigi Hanna and all seven council members for their role in the city’s financial collapse. The Southern California city of 209,000 declared bankruptcy in July 2012, facing a budget shortfall of $45.8 million.   read more

Etta Mae Lopez wanted to quit smoking in the worst way, and she may have found it—slap a cop. Campoy said Lopez told him that she couldn’t quit smoking and figured that she wouldn’t be able to light up in jail. Lopez picked an officer in uniform to make sure she nailed a cop and guaranteed jail time, Campoy said.   read more

The week after a federal judge in California fined a group of lawyers for trolling the Internet looking for downloaders of porn and then suing them, ostensibly, for copyright violations, one of the trolls argued in a Georgia court that the judge should ignore the ruling because the Golden State has gay marriage.   read more

Police Chief Howard Jordan surprised many in the department when he abruptly announced his retirement last Wednesday. Immediately after Jordan stepped down, Deputy Chief Anthony Toribio was named acting chief. Two days later, Toribio was demoted to captain and replaced by 17-year department veteran Sean Whent, who will remain acting chief while the city prepares to search for a permanent leader.   read more

Within a short time, eight homes in the 30-year-old, hilly volcanic subdivision had to be abandoned and around two dozen more were threatened. The assumption was that the hill was somehow being eroded by water, but a dry winter and groundwater shortages seemed to belie that notion.   read more

So where is California’s early-warning system? The answer is: partially deployed but mostly on the drawing board waiting for about $80 million and the will to put it in place statewide. State Senator Alex Padilla introduced legislation in January that would require the Office of Emergency Services, “in collaboration with various entities, including the United States Geological Survey, to develop a comprehensive statewide earthquake early warning system in California.”   read more

California brings in honey bees from around the country for pollination at its almond farms. Almonds are a $3 billion-a-year industry. The Monterey County Beekeepers told Central Coast News that nearly two-thirds of the nation’s bee colonies in the U.S., from as far away as Florida and the East Coast, are shipped to the state. The beekeepers group estimated that 65% of the bees died this past winter.   read more

The high court ruled in a case out of Riverside that although state law gives medical marijuana cooperatives and collectives a limited exemption from state criminal liability, “state law does not ‘authorize’ activities, to the exclusion of local plans.” The court said if the Legislature wants to prevent local jurisdictions from banning medical marijuana, it should pass a law that clearly does so.   read more

Apparently it has come as somewhat of a surprise that early predictions by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) that 97% of rail users would voluntarily pay their $1.50 fares proved to be unrealistic. Trial runs last year using locked gates that required a paid fare for entrance reportedly raised between 18% and 22% more revenue.   read more

What seemed like a slam dunk for Seattle a few months ago—when the Kings’ owner, the Maloof family, signed a relocation deal with a group in that city—has become far more competitive in recent weeks. Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA player himself, led the comeback effort that has, as the usual centerpiece in franchise fights, an offer to pony up taxpayer support for a new arena.   read more

San Bruno officials want PG&E to spend $1 billion on system improvements and pay a $1.2 billion fine to the state General Fund that makes it clear that the penalty for screwing up a job isn’t that you get to do it again. PG&E says it has already done enough.   read more

Smoke and ash swirling about as wildfires swept the Oxnard area of Southern California this past week proved to be too much for a group of 15 farmworkers on Crisalida Farms who sought refuge indoors on Thursday, complaining it was hard to breathe. That move cost them their jobs, according to NBC Bay Area.   read more

The rock was stored in an apparently abandoned office building in San Jose, kept under armed guard at an attorney’s office in Santa Barbara, and then transferred once again to a private vault in South El Monte. The emerald was then driven to Las Vegas, where it played a supporting role in the fall of fraudster Bernard Madoff and a shady deal between some Colombians that nearly ended in bloodshed in the desert.   read more

Los Angeles-area law enforcement agencies, which have photographed and scanned 180 million license plate images into a database, say the information is innocuous, and only car thieves and other bad characters have anything to fear from it. The ACLU and EFF are concerned that law-abiding people are having their movements tracked and stored without their permission for data mining purposes that have yet to be imagined.   read more

An analysis of data from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation by the Associated Press has found the application of Prop. 36 to be slow and uneven, at best. After five months, the law, which was approved by a majority of voters in every county, has resulted in only 16% of 2,847 eligible inmates being resentenced. The rate of resentencing varies wildly from county to county, where inmates apply for release based on where they committed their last crime.   read more

He’s not exactly prescribing bong hits for pets, but a California veterinarian may be the first in the country to formally offer consultations on how to medicate sick pets using marijuana. Dr. Douglas Kramer wants to see veterinarians take the lead in using marijuana to treat pets suffering painful and terminal illnesses, rather than rely on the corporate world or well-meaning, but misguided individuals.   read more