Wading once again into a nearly 30-year-old case, a Ninth Circuit panel on Thursday sided with a federal judge who ordered more surveillance and disciplinary system reform at a prison with documented instances of abuse of inmates with disabilities. The class action filed in 1994 involves claims of shocking abuses within the state prison system, despite decades of court orders meant to curb violations of disabled prisoners’ civil rights.

Attorneys for the estate of the late husband of former Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey can have access to the Cal State Los Angeles teaching curriculum of a Black Lives Matter member who along with two colleagues allege they suffered emotional distress when confronted at gunpoint by Lacey’s spouse in 2020, a judge ruled Tuesday.

A federal law prohibiting possession of a firearm for anyone that is under a domestic violence court order has been struck down by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas. Groups like Genesis Women's Shelter, which fight to get women out of danger and keep them safe, are angry at the appeals court ruling. "It's the reaction of the entire domestic violence community nationwide. We are really offended. We are frightened this was a very, very dangerous thing to do," said Jan Langbein of the Genesis Women's Shelter.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has, for the second time, reinstated a Hollywood costumer’s lawsuit against the labor union she belongs to, holding that summary judgment was improperly granted because there are triable issues as to whether the union failed to provide fair representation. Plaintiff Melissa Antablin has been at war with Motion Picture Costumers, Local #705 since Feb. 6, 2016, when a dispute with leaders erupted in in a physical altercation.

The Court is prioritizing solutions to recruit, retain and reward official court reporters with the help of nearly $10 million in state funding to address a critical staffing shortage, Presiding Judge Samantha P. Jessner and Executive Officer/Clerk of Court David W. Slayton announced today. As a result of a nationwide court reporter shortage, recently the Court was required to shift court reporter coverage from family law, probate and matters assigned to the writs and receiver departments to criminal felony and juvenile proceedings to ensure that court reporters are able to cover these statutorily mandated case types.

A coalition of housing advocates accuse at least a dozen cities across the San Francisco Bay Area of failing to meet state deadlines to submit plans for housing. Cities across California have raced to meet the state’s Jan. 31 deadline to adopt “Housing Element” plans. The plans are supposed to illustrate how each city will meet the state's housing requirements and prove compliance with state laws in order to preserve local land use control and compete for state-issued affordable housing grants.

By the time Richard Glen Mathews maimed an Imperial Beach man with a pipe bomb in May 1991, he’d already shot at least three people during his lifetime. He was cleared the first time he killed someone when it was ruled self-defense. The second time, he was convicted of first-degree murder and imprisoned. Then shortly after being paroled, he shot and wounded a fellow biker over a drug money dispute, prompting his expulsion from the Mongols Motorcycle Club, an outlaw biker gang.

People living in a homeless encampment in West Oakland will likely be moved this month after a federal judge on Friday lifted a block he placed on the city. Around 60 people remain at the city-owned, three-acre site by the highway - nearby where, on the same street this past fall, Caltrans got the OK to remove more than 200 people. Residents have filed multiple lawsuits claiming Oakland has not offered enough shelter options to justify moving them from the site. 

The state’s judicial disciplinary agency yesterday announced that it has imposed a public censure on a judge for promoting a non-profit public benefit corporation he formed. San Joaquin Superior Court Judge Richard A. Vlavianos is the recipient of the discipline, issued by the Commission on Judicial Performance (“CJP”) pursuant to a stipulation.

A UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital pediatrician testified Monday that a Lancaster boy who died of alleged physical abuse by his mother and her boyfriend was extremely malnourished when he got to the hospital, describing him as "skin and bones.” Dr. Andranik Madikians told the court that almost every one of 10-year-old Anthony Avalos' organs were failing when he arrived. He said his eyes were sunken and his body was bruised and burned.

A woman running a fake law practice across the street from Los Angeles' largest immigration court allegedly scammed 17 immigrants out of more than $100,000 by pretending to aid in their claims for political asylum, prosecutors said. Nubia Esmeralda Burrier, 56, was charged with 10 counts of grand theft and one count of burglary after she spent years operating unlicensed law practices in downtown L.A. and Glendale, according to a statement from the Los Angeles County district attorney's office and civil court filings.

As expected, Harvey Weinstein’s defense team have moved to ask for a new West Coast trial for the incarnated producer. In a risky move, the Oscar winner’s Werkman Jackson & Quinn attorneys are putting the credibility of Jane Doe #1 and the LA County District Attorney’s office at the heart of their attack.

Ron Jeremy isn't going before a jury to face rape charges, because he's being shipped off to a mental hospital ... where he could spend the rest of his days. The former porn star - who'd been hit with a 30-count indictment alleging rape, sexual assault and other related crimes - was committed to a state-run mental hospital in California ... this after being deemed unfit to stand trial.

A retrial of a former Kern County Sheriff's deputy convicted of killing two prostitutes has drawn witness testimony from many disparate people - former sex workers, deputy district attorneys reading transcripts of KCSO officials who've died and a fingerprint expert from a state department. Entering the approximately 11th day of trial on Monday, prosecutors questioned the heads of two Bakersfield law enforcement agencies.

People awaiting trial in San Francisco may find themselves forced to accept onerous conditions at the hands of the sheriff’s office if they want to avoid jail time before they get to court. At issue are two rules imposed upon people in pretrial release in San Francisco by the sheriff’s office which the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California argues are unconstitutional.

Among five indicted members of the Proud Boys facing seditious conspiracy charges, the only one who faces a single count for robbery faced damning testimony Tuesday from a former U.S. Capitol Police officer who withstood the attack on Jan. 6, 2021. Marc Ode said he tried to use his shield during the mob scene to create space between the rioters and the police line but that members of the crowd grabbed his arm and pulled down to the ground.

Federal prosecutors announced charges Monday against the leader of a neo-Nazi group from Florida who they say had plotted with his girlfriend to destroy electrical substations in the Baltimore area. The federal complaint was unsealed Monday in Baltimore, charging Brandon Russell, 27, of Orlando, and Sarah Clendaniel, 34, of Catonsville, Maryland, with conspiracy to damage an energy facility. If convicted, they face up to 20 years in prison.

A sergeant with the Los Angeles Police Department has been charged in connection with a 2021 crash that left a motorist seriously injured. Sgt. Ruby Aguirre, 37, faces one misdemeanor count of reckless driving causing injury, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. The crash occurred on May 6, 2021, when Aguirre was responding to a call of a pursuit. She allegedly ran a red light at the intersection of Jefferson Boulevard and Western Avenue and struck a sedan.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is preparing a possible antitrust lawsuit against e-commerce giant Amazon.com, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. It could not be determined exactly which aspects of Amazon's businesses the FTC would target and the timing of any case was uncertain, according to the report. Amazon and the FTC declined to comment.

On May 2, 2019, Washington state resident Michael Powers was pulled from the frigid waters of Deception Pass after his boat sank, leaving behind the body of his cousin who died in the water. But while Powers was eventually rescued by a passing fishing boat, he waited six hours after an initial emergency call was made to the U.S. Coast Guard, which called off all rescue operations, stating there was “no vessel in distress.”

San Francisco police have refused to release records of their purchases of “militarized equipment” such as semiautomatic rifles and armored vehicles despite a state law making those records public, the American Friends Service Committee says in a lawsuit. AB481 by then-Assembly Member David Chiu, D-San Francisco, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021, requires cities and counties to approve law enforcement acquisition and use of weapons defined as military equipment, including high-powered rifles, armored vehicles, explosives and other types of munitions.

For many familiar with the ebb and flow of policing in the United States, the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols by five police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, after a routine traffic stop last month was reminiscent of tactics used in the 1990s era of gang warfare and crack cocaine, when special crime-fighting units, acting with bravado and impunity, were unleashed in high-crime neighborhoods.

After a federal appeals court struck down a law that kept people with domestic violence restraining orders from having guns on Thursday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the state's department of justice is ready for conservative-leaning judges to rule similarly in separate cases challenging some of California's gun laws.

A lawyer representing Navy Seals who do not want to be vaccinated against Covid-19 told a federal appeals court Monday that their lawsuit over a now-withdrawn vaccine mandate isn’t moot even though Congress passed legislation last December ordering the policy canceled. During arguments before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, attorney Heather Hacker said the service members still face the possibility of discipline over their refusal to get vaccinated and the government has not ruled out taking vaccination status into account when doling out future assignments.

The No. 1 challenge facing the retail industry in recent years has been crime, according to Rachel Michelin, CEO of the California Retailers Association. The most common issue has revolved around theft, which she said has been heightened since the 2014 passage of Proposition 47 in California, which reclassified certain theft and drug possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors.

Police in Southern California have released images of a covert underground “hiding area” they say was discovered beneath a house linked to a gang member. According to the Fontana Police Department in San Bernardino County, the secretive area also contained a section that was being used as a shooting range. It was uncovered by experts from the department’s gang unit, known as SMASH, who searched a manhole at the residence.

Court records revealed that a man accused of killing two people while trying to lose police during a pursuit in Panorama City has an extensive criminal past. The pursuit began in the Westlake area just before 7:50 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 31, when Los Angeles police officers spotted a stolen Toyota Tacoma pickup truck and engaged in a four-minute chase. The suspect driver "began to take evasive measures to get away from the officers," LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said in a news conference that night.

Murder charges were filed Thursday against a former karate instructor and carpenter allegedly linked by DNA evidence to the 1981 rapes and murders of two young women. For more than four decades the man now accused in the strangulation killings lived undetected a few miles from the crime scenes, only connected to the cases recently through genealogical research aided by public family tree databases.

Police are searching for a man accused of attempting to rob - and in one instance also try to kidnap - UCLA students near campus parking lots. The two incidents happened Sunday within about two hours from each other in the 700 block of Gayley Avenue and in the 300 block of Charles E. Young Drive North, according to the UCLA Police Department. In the first incident, police say the suspect approached a victim near Parking Structure 1 at about 4:30 p.m.

Los Angeles police officers were in pursuit of a shooting suspect that began in the Rampart area of Los Angeles. The pursuit moved into Hyde Park near Centinela, then into Inglewood. The suspect was driving a silver late-model sedan. Speeds reached 90 mph in residential areas as the suspect ran several red lights and took multiple turns to try to evade pursuing officers. The suspect drove through several parking lots.

An armed robber who stole a pregnant woman’s two French bulldogs in Studio City in early December has been arrested. The Los Angeles Police Department announced the arrest this week and identified the suspect as 27-year-old Sammeiso Lewis, a resident of Las Vegas. Lewis was arrested on Jan. 26 in Glendale, officials said. He was wanted in connection with an armed robbery that happened on Dec. 9 on the 4100 block of Kraft Avenue in Studio City.

The FBI and our international law enforcement partners are issuing a joint warning about a global financial sextortion crisis. Our agencies have seen an explosion in incidents of minor boys around the world being coerced into sending explicit images online and extorted for money - a crime called financial sextortion. In 2022, the FBI received thousands of reports related to the financial sextortion of minors, primarily boys, representing an exponential increase from previous years. 

Sophois Sokhom, the owner of Daily Perks, a restaurant located on 7th Street, said she has only owned her business for six months. "On Sunday morning, I was coming to bake for my youngest daughter's volleyball tournament and I saw one of the large windows was broken into," she said. Sokhom said the thieves didn't get away with a lot of money and the cost of repairing the restaurant's window was more than what they took.

The first time most people in Los Angeles heard of gay porn actor Billy London - a.k.a. Bill Newton - was when his head and feet showed up in a dumpster. Newton’s murder in the fall of 1990 rattled the close-knit gay enclave of West Hollywood, even amid the unrelenting wave of young men dying from AIDS. Homicide detectives with the Los Angeles Police Department diligently pursued the case but kept running into dead ends in a community with good reason to distrust them.

The Los Angeles Police Department has opened an internal investigation into the leak of information about a call allegedly made to the department last week by an aide to City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, which later showed up on Instagram and Fox News. LAPD Capt. Kelly Muniz said the department will seek to determine who distributed a photo or screenshot of information displayed on the city's computer assisted dispatching system, which appears on the screens of laptops inside LAPD squad cars and shows such details as the time, place and a general summary of an incident.

Just 17 days after a gunman slaughtered 11 people at a Monterey Park dance venue, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday on new laws to regulate sales and possession of guns in unincorporated areas. "We know that blame for the gun violence epidemic lies with the failure of congressional leaders to pass even the most basic federal gun laws,'' board Chair Janice Hahn said in a statement following the vote.

Virtually the entire world knows that the Duchess of Sussex, Los Angeles’ own Meghan Markle, went to high school at Immaculate Heart (IHHS) in Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. The dividing line between Los Feliz and Hollywood is Franklin Avenue. Since the school is on the north side, it is officially in ritzy Los Feliz. Minor note, Meghan’s father lived in a house which Immaculate Heart owned in the Hollywood Grove HPOZ where he was our next door neighbor.

Politics likes to force false choices: Clean environment or a healthy economy? National security or personal privacy? Safe communities or police reform? That last one - the assumption that police reform and crime reduction are antithetical ideas - is baked into the national debate over the role and oversight of police. As is often the case, it’s being debated in Los Angeles, and the record that’s being made here may guide others.

Mayor Karen Bass today announced the appointment of her Deputy Mayor of Public Safety and two appointments to the Board of Police Commissioners. “My number one job as Mayor is to keep Angelenos safe,” said Mayor Bass. “The only way to do that is to hold people who commit crimes accountable and to take real steps to prevent crime from happening in the first place. The appointments I’m making today represent a major step toward transparency, accountability and a comprehensive approach to public safety that includes a police department that protects the community and leaves community members feeling safe no matter where they are living in Los Angeles.”

Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia says his office will begin auditing the Los Angeles Police Department’s use of helicopters. Mejia announced plans for the audit on social media, including the L.A. Controller’s official Twitter and TikTok accounts. The audit is set to begin this month and the results will be released in the summer, the Controller’s Office says.

The biggest surprise of this week was the outta-nowhere turn in HBO’s The Last of Us. The riveting video game adaptation zombie-lurched in an unforeseen direction, delivering a gorgeously written storyline full of heartfelt emotion and top-notch acting. Ranking second on the week’s surprise scale is the appointment of Michel Moore to another term atop the Los Angeles Police Department.

Councilman for L.A.’s 13th District Hugo Soto-Martinez is one of the city’s most prominent police abolitionists. So it came as something of a surprise when on Wednesday an officer out of the LAPD Rampart Division received a radio call requesting “extra patrol throughout the night” for a white Lexus that was parked at the Echo Park office of the #CareNotCops councilman. 

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies are forming a new “gang” in the agency’s East L.A. station, according to a deputy who alleges in a lawsuit he was abused when he refused to join the group. Amayel Garfias filed his lawsuit in Superior Court last month, claiming he was harassed, assaulted and purposely put in harm’s way by an alleged member of the new “gang.” Both the county and several sheriff’s employees should be held responsible for allowing the East L.A. station to remain under “gang” control, the lawsuit states.

As deputies were closing in on a pursuit suspect after a violent, crash-filled chase across Southern California, Adrian Cruz sat at a stop light with his family. The suspect slammed into their car, and within seconds, Cruz alleges, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies were slamming his head into the asphalt. On Wednesday, Cruz and his family filed a lawsuit against L.A. County outlining a series of allegations, including false arrest, excessive force and violation of his state civil rights.

Just days into her transfer to the evidence unit two years ago, Vallejo police assistant Tina Encarnacion made her way to a tall metal cabinet known as the “homicide bookshelf,” and pulled case 12-11085. Encarnacion found herself holding the case file for the notorious killing of Mario Romero, a young father whose death at the hands of Vallejo police in 2012 sparked citywide protests. Encarnacion documented her next steps in a public servant’s efficient prose.

A U.S. government watchdog has issued a “deeply disturbing” fraud alert over the widespread use of “questionable” Social Security numbers (SSNs) to get pandemic loans. The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) found that 69,323 potentially fraudulent SSNs were used to obtain $5.4 billion from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.

The two men approached the ATM at 6 a.m. - soon after the state disburses the latest round of cash aid to the lowest-income Californians. They sported dark clothing - one wearing paint-splattered black jeans and the other a zip-up and beanie. For about eight minutes on the morning of Feb. 2, authorities say, they inserted cloned Electronic Benefit Transfer cards - the cards people receiving public benefits use to access their monthly funds - into the slot at a U.S. Bank ATM in Tarzana.

The IRS still has yet to answer the question of whether the California middle-class tax refund is taxable on federal returns - but it has finally acknowledged the issue and could provide guidance this week. Without the IRS’ formal guidance, confusion has set in over how to handle these payments as tax season begins in earnest. Some major tax-preparation companies have been treating it as not taxable, while other tax professionals believe it is.

Your iPhone has a ton of important privacy features. For example, there is a setting to hide your IP address when you send an email. This way advertisers cannot track you this way. Here’s how to turn it on. What if you share your location or other access with someone and now want to stop? There’s an easy way to make your texts, location, and other data private again. The internet is a dangerous place. Join over 400,000 people and stay updated with my free daily newsletter.

An Agoura Hills-based real estate developer has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges for failing to disclose on a bankruptcy petition that he had earned nearly $2.3 million in income and for failing to report almost $6.9 million in income on his tax returns, the Justice Department announced today. Mark Handel, 68, has agreed to plead guilty to a two-count information charging him with making a false statement in bankruptcy and subscribing to a false tax return.

A Southern California man who killed his girlfriend and her two young sons and left their bodies to rot on a balcony while he partied was sentenced Friday to three consecutive life terms in prison, prosecutors said. Shazer Fernando Limas, 42, of Orange, was sentenced in Orange County. Limas stabbed 31-year-old Arlet Hernandez Contreras 48 times at his home in April 2012 following an argument a day or two earlier, the Orange County district attorney’s office said in a statement.

A California movie producer was sentenced in New York City to the maximum five years in prison Thursday after he admitted operating a high-end prostitution service for seven years, providing women to wealthy clients for up to $15,000 and organizing sex parties in the U.S. and abroad. Dillon Jordan, of Lake Arrowhead, California, was sentenced in Manhattan. U.S. District Judge John P. Cronan said he would have imposed a longer prison sentence if he had the authority to do so, citing the permanent physical and emotional scars the women sustained.

A trial is slated to start this week in a lawsuit brought by a former San Diego TV news anchor who has accused her employer of paying her $80,000 a year less than her male counterpart. The lawsuit by Sandra Maas, formerly with KUSI-TV, alleges that McKinnon Broadcasting Co. violated the state’s Equal Pay Act; it also alleges age and gender discrimination and whistleblower retaliation. Maas’ attorney, Josh Gruenberg, said last week that his client, who is 60, performed substantially similar work to Allen Denton when the pair anchored the station’s afternoon and evening news broadcast for six years.

In the fall of 2016, two influential men in Los Angeles faced money troubles. The head of the L.A. office of the U.S. Secret Service, Lorenzo Robert Savage III, thought he was being shortchanged in a lawsuit over a defective braking system in his family’s Volkswagen minivan. And Tom Girardi, then at the height of his power, was borrowing heavily to fund his law firm and increasingly upset about the size of his wife’s American Express bill. To address their respective problems, Savage and Girardi and their spouses turned to each other.

The lawyer for a Spanish-speaking plaintiff who alleges security at a restaurant assaulted him wants his client's deposition scratched from the record, finding fault with the performance of their translator. Attorney Bryan Crews of Crews and Pesquera in Orlando, Fla., filed the rarely seen motion Jan. 11, asking the Orange County Superior Court to suppress plaintiff Juan De La Cruz's June deposition. The interpreter made several mistakes, Crews says, starting with the failure to take a proper oath.

The new year begins with one of the most anticipated labor cases on the high court’s docket in decades. On January 10, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union No. 174 to decide whether the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA” or the “Act”) preempts state court lawsuits for tort damages caused by unions during strikes.

After spending 34 years in prison for first-degree murder, Steven Bradley is now one step closer to walking the streets of Bakersfield once again after being granted clemency. While clemency is a standard part of our government process, the family of his victim says Bradley's potential release is devastating. The crime took place at a Shell gas station on White Lane in 1987. Bradley shot and killed Claude Baker, Jr. A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.

When Mary Reese received a call at the California Institution for Women in 2021, a prison official told her she had “won the lotto.” Gov. Gavin Newsom had granted her mercy with a commutation shortening her sentence of 35 years to life for a series of burglaries committed in 2007. She believed she’d be free and reunited with her family within days. But a year and eight months after Newsom noted her “good prospects for successful community reentry,” Reese, 64, remains in prison.

Public retirement systems saw their expenses rise in fiscal 2022, while many reduced their assumed rates of return, according to an annual study by the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems. In fiscal 2022, the pension systems averaged 64 basis points in administrative costs and investment manager fees, up from 54 points the year before.

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