They found chicken, pork, bacon and vegetables among the products improperly stashed. According to NBC, Sysco admitted to inspectors that the company has conducted business this way for years, but promised to break its leases with the storage companies. And in an email to NBC, it promised to start doing what it already knew it should be doing.   read more

The auditor found that health care staff members didn’t always let OPS know about an incident in a timely fashion, and that once informed, “law enforcement personnel did not consistently follow established procedures for investigations of alleged resident abuse. Specifically, OPS often failed to collect written declarations from suspects and witnesses, take photographs of crime scenes or alleged victims, and attempt to interview alleged victims, particularly residents said to be nonverbal.”   read more

Dr. James Heinrich, Valley State Prison’s OB-GYN in 2006, explained to CIR why prison sterilization made sense (after being told the doctors were paid $147,460 by the state), “Over a 10-year period, that isn’t a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children—as they procreated more.”   read more

Not all the whales behaved the same, but in general, most of it wasn’t good. Some whales stopped eating, some increased their speed and others fled. They temporarily avoided areas where they heard the sounds and modified their diving behavior. The study concluded that, “Sonar-induced disruption of feeding and displacement from high-quality prey patches could have significant and previously undocumented impacts on baleen whale foraging ecology, individual fitness and population health.”   read more

Pummeled by the economic crisis in 2009, California elected to help balance its budget by cutting off Medi-Cal coverage for poor adults who received health care from dentists, podiatrists, chiropractors and eye doctors. Last Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District ruled (pdf) they could that to people who use hospitals, but shouldn’t have done that to folks who get their care at rural clinics and federally-qualified health centers.   read more

LAPD had destroyed the case files, which are the basis for electronic databases used to track employment litigation, once they were closed. Without the case files, “the Audit was unable to determine the Department’s compliance” with a 2007 mayoral directive on how to reduce the city’s exposure to such lawsuits.   read more

Although warning letters were routinely sent out to individuals whose personal data was compromised, many of them may have been unaware of what had happened because the average reading level of the notices was “14th grade.” In other words, those without a college education probably couldn’t understand what they were reading.   read more

A two-year federal investigation of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department found deputies harassed minority groups in the Antelope Valley, northeast of L.A., on a regular basis, unlawfully detaining them, using excessive force and conducting illegal searches. A spokesman for the sheriff denied that the department discriminated but the Justice Department noted that it has already begun to implement federal recommendations to halt the practices.   read more

California lawmakers left intact on Thursday a Medi-Cal program cost loophole for major employers large enough for Walmart to ooze through. Companies with more than 500 employees can avoid providing health insurance for part-time workers without paying a penalty under the Affordable Care Act by paying them so little they qualify for Med-Cal totally at the state’s expense.   read more

Although the usual procedure is to cite protesters for a misdemeanor offense and release them, in this instance they were handcuffed and herded into sheriff’s department buses and held there for hours. The buses lacked bathrooms and it was reportedly not a pretty sight. The demonstrators were put through a lengthy booking process and held overnight, packed into overcrowded county jail cells. The next day, two of the arrestees were charged and the rest were released without charges.   read more

State lawmakers, stung by criticism that their attempt to gut the California Public Records Act last week was about secrecy in government—not fiscal responsibility, as they claim—introduced a proposal that voters pass a constitutional amendment ensuring that local governments get stuck with the bill, not the state.   read more

A three-judge panel tried to cut through years of courthouse negotiations, confrontation and frustration and ordered that state prisons (pdf) immediately prepare to release enough inmates on “good time credits” to relieve dangerous, inhumane overcrowding. They waived any local and state laws and regulations that stand in the way.   read more

All four lawsuits attack the plan’s balancing act between its two avowed goals of protecting the Delta and providing more water for Californians. But they don’t agree on whose ox is being gored. At the core of their discomfort is that all parties are already suffering a loss of resources in a zero-sum game that is still shrinking.   read more

Maplight, a website that focuses on money’s influence on politics, identified 12 bills under consideration during the legislative session that were relevant to fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing. Seven were stalled (and are probably dead), three were defeated and, by Maplight’s count, two are still under active consideration. But one of those two, Assembly Bill 665, simply increases indemnity bonds for abandoned wells.   read more

The U.S. Supreme Court put a crimp in Port of Los Angeles efforts to expand without causing more air pollution by striking down regulations requiring off-site parking and rules ordering companies to place “How Am I Driving?” placards on their trucks. The port’s 2008 rules were in response to criticism from environmentalists and community activists who opposed expansion of the port unless something was done about the miserable air generated by trucks.   read more

Troubled Exide Technologies was already scrambling to fend off creditors and restructure the company when a California regulatory agency shut down its huge Vernon battery recycling plant in the middle of Los Angeles County in April. Consumer advocate Liza Tucker said the $10 million posted by the company will not be enough to cover the plant’s cleanup. “That will not come close to actually cleaning up all the contamination at the site,” she wrote   read more