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

It has been an article of faith among proponents of legalized marijuana in California that it makes economic sense to decriminalize and tax the weed because, after all, it is the largest cash crop in the state. However, researchers from UCLA, RAND Corp., Pepperdine University and Carnegie Mellon University have published a book that raises the question: What are those folks smoking?   read more

High-profile hearings in the state Senate routinely receive television coverage, and the one scheduled for last week on controversial tax-related initiatives appearing on November’s ballot was to be no exception. And then Senate President Pro Tem Darryl Steinberg pulled the plug.   read more

Federal and state crime reports that rely on numbers from the San Francisco Police Department are almost certainly erroneous because of racial misclassifications that stretch back years. Many Latino arrestees have been classified as “white” and Asian arrestees have been classified as “other,” according to The Bay Citizen, which uncovered the mistakes.   read more

Proposition 36 on November’s ballot―which would revise California’s three-strike law to only apply to felonies that are serious or violent―is wildly popular, according to a recent California Business Roundtable survey. But even if the initiative passed and all 4,000 prisoners affected were instantly released (they won’t be) the state still wouldn’t avoid what the Los Angeles Times says is inevitable failure at making court-ordered deadlines for reducing its prison population.   read more

A recent finding by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that hospital-acquired infections had declined nationally in 2010 has been undercut by a California review of 100 hospitals that found up to one-third of cases were not reported.   read more

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) staff didn’t want to shut down Crescendo charter schools in 2011 after learning there had been widespread cheating on state exams that accounted for remarkable student improvements at its six campuses.   read more

Although California has the third-highest unemployment rate in the country, 93,000 long-term jobless residents had their benefits cut off prematurely in May when the state fell short of eligibility requirements for federal extensions. That contributed mightily to a 50% drop in unemployment payments from two years ago, bringing those expenditures down from $2 billion in June 2010 to $1 billion in June 2012.   read more

The Stringfellow waste disposal facility operated in Riverside County for 16 years, from 1956-1972, before it was determined that the former quarry made a poor toxic dump. The “acid pits” have been litigated over ever since. Last week, the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled that seven insurance companies who issued multiple policies spanning different time periods were liable for the policies’ full face values, not varying percentages.   read more

After spending more than $1.6 million leading the charge to overturn the state’s Senate redistricting plan by putting Proposition 40 on November’s ballot, the California Republican Party reversed its position and endorsed the changes at its convention Sunday in Burbank.   read more

The city of Anaheim, staggering through intense racial animosity after two recent fatal police shootings, resisted calls to create a district voting system that would almost certainly result in more diversity on its 5-member council. On a 3-2 vote, council members rejected the proposal and elected, instead, to create a citizens advisory panel on elections.   read more

Four years after Congress roundly criticized the Help Hospitalized Veterans (HHV) charity for wasteful and unethical use of funds, California Attorney General Kamala Harris has filed a civil lawsuit seeking $4.3 million from the Riverside County organization.   read more

If Richmond approves a November ballot measure and becomes the first city in the country to pass a soda tax, it won’t be because the soda industry didn’t get a chance to make its case. Financial records show that the industry has outspent tax supporters 10-1 since June.   read more

Fish and Game Commission President Daniel Richards—hunter, sportsman and 30-year veteran of the real estate industry—became the focus of intense scrutiny after he went cougar hunting in Idaho last January, bagged a big cat and sent a picture of himself posing with his dead prey to an online publication.   read more

A special team of investigators within the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has identified 1,000 files containing suspect testing data on roads and bridges, including critical work on the new $6.4 billion San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. At least 23 cases involve suspect radiation testing of reinforced concrete foundations in the Bay Bridge, Benicia-Martinez Bridge, Dumbarton Bridge and Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.   read more

When the Los Angeles Unified School District hired American International Group —the insurance giant, AIG—in 1999, LAUSD had just got burned for millions on construction of the ill-fated, environmentally challenged Belmont Learning Complex. The district decided to play it safe and took out a 20-year, $100 million insurance policy to cover future problems incurred while cleaning up potentially toxic school construction sites.   read more

Two months after filing a lawsuit alleging that more than 600 California Walgreen stores have been dumping hazardous waste in landfills for six years, district attorneys from 35 counties have asked a judge to stop the company from continuing the practice while the case is litigated.   read more