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Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David R. Fields held yesterday that the man District Attorney George Gascón wants to serve as a special prosecutor, going after law enforcement officers who allegedly commit crimes, cannot continue to represent criminal defendants, booting him off a case when he would not provide an assurance that he will decline the job offer.

A judge who in February ruled mostly in favor of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County in a petition brought against District Attorney George Gascón put the case on hold Tuesday while Gascón appeals. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant issued a preliminary injunction in favor of the union on Feb. 8, finding that Gascón cannot order his prosecutors to ignore laws that the union says protect the public, including three-strike allegations and sentencing enhancements.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied the appeal of a retired federal agent seeking to challenge sweeping legal immunity for police officers after he was injured during an arrest and later blocked from suing for damages. "This big guy grabbed my left hand and with his two hands, he jerked my arm as high as he could. Almost simultaneously, as this guy was jerking my arm, he put a chokehold on my throat very hard, very hurtful," Jose Oliva, 76, said of the 2016 incident at the El Paso, Texas, Veterans Administration hospital.

The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously ruled against a non-U.S. citizen who was contesting his indictment for unlawful re-entry into the country. The case, United States v. Palomar-Santiago, involved Refugio Palomar-Santiago, a Mexican citizen who obtained lawful permanent residency in the United States in 1990. Eight years later, he was deported on the basis of a California conviction for driving under the influence.

The state Supreme Court upheld the death sentence Monday of a man who fatally shot a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy shortly after being released from prison in 1995, rejecting defense arguments that the case should have been transferred to another county because of extensive and hostile press coverage. Robert Walter Scully was 37 when he was freed from maximum-security Pelican Bay State Prison in March 1995 after serving 11 years, mostly in solitary confinement, for robbery convictions in San Diego.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the appeal of a Missouri man who said his brain damage leaves him at risk of severe and painful seizures if he's put to death by lethal injection. Ernest Johnson asked the lower courts to let him choose a firing squad or nitrogen gas as the means of execution, but his appeals were rejected by a federal appeals court, and the Supreme Court declined to take up the case.

A state appeals court panel Tuesday conditionally reversed the murder conviction of one of three young men convicted in the 2008 murder of a woman who was shot while calling 911 to report a break-in at her Covina Hills home. The three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal ordered the case against Christopher Stratis - who was 17 at the time of Michelle Hsu’s killing - to be sent to a juvenile court for a hearing, if requested by the prosecution, on whether his case should be handled there or in adult court as a result of a voter-approved ballot measure that resulted in a change in state law.

Judge Maria Lucy Armendariz never told her story to anyone before she was elected to the Los Angeles Superior Court bench in 2018. “Childhood for me was hardly idyllic,” Armendariz said as she recalled growing up in East Los Angeles with a mother sentenced to life in prison when she was just eight years old. Armendariz was raised in foster homes, and as she grew closer to aging out of the system, she knew she needed a plan.

Crime has taken on some unsettling trends in Los Angeles County and District Attorney George Gascón has received some backlash for his response to it. Gascón speaks with NBC News’ Lester Holt about reforming the city’s criminal justice system.

In recent weeks, several cities across Los Angeles County have publicly come out against the divisive, anti-law and order district attorney in the form of no-confidence votes. The latest municipalities to issue such resolutions include Azusa, Diamond Bar, Santa Fe Springs, Pico Rivera and the affluent cities of Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach and Beverly Hills.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva joined members of the Recall George Gascón effort in speaking out Wednesday against the new Los Angeles County District Attorney’s criminal justice reform efforts, which include reducing prison sentences for some crimes and ending the prosecution of minors. They gathered outside Los Angeles City Hall downtown to rally against the prosecutor’s positions on handling of criminal cases, with some victims’ advocates joining the effort to recall L.A.’s new DA.

The widow of a sheriff's sergeant who was shot to death while responding to a call of a burglar and the mother of a murder victim who was dumped off a cliff in Azusa Canyon called on the public Wednesday to support a recall effort for Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon. "George Gascon, your days are numbered ...," Tania Owen, the widow of Sgt. Steve Owen, said during a news conference outside the Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced that two former California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers were arraigned today in Los Angeles County Superior Court for allegedly accepting bribes in exchange for falsifying documents to register exotic “gray market” cars. They are charged with conspiracy and three counts each of accepting a bribe in connection with the scheme.

An off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy has been charged with murder in connection with a solo-vehicle crash in Torrance that killed his 23-year-old passenger and left two other people seriously injured, officials announced Wednesday. Daniel Manuel Auner, 23, faces one count each of murder and reckless driving on a highway causing injury, as well as an allegation of causing great bodily injury, according to the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office.

A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy was charged today with a felony count of perjury for allegedly lying about finding a gun in a vehicle parked at a Gardena motel two years ago. Kevin Honea, 33, is set to be arraigned Thursday afternoon in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. Honea was among a group of sheriff's deputies who found a car at a Gardena motel on May 24, 2019, that had been used in a recent crime, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

The Federal Trade Commission, along with the district attorneys of Los Angeles and Riverside counties and attorneys general in several states, has sued internet service provider Frontier Communications, alleging the company charged subscribers for faster digital service than was provided. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles federal court, seeks to revise Frontier's alleged business practices and reimburse customers who paid for speeds the company allegedly didn't deliver.

A Beverly Hills man was arrested today on a murder-for-hire charge that alleges he tried to hire a hitman to kill a woman he briefly dated and who had repeated tried to break off the relationship. Scott Quinn Berkett, 24, was arrested this afternoon without incident after being charged in a federal criminal complaint that alleges he sent thousands of dollars in bitcoin to arrange the murder and then wired another $1,000 to the “hitman,” who was actually an undercover FBI agent.

Our courts are supposed to be public. The reason for that is simple: Conducting the state’s legal business out in the light of day, rather than under a cloak of secrecy, is the best means by which we can ensure that the system is fair to all. Prosecution. Plaintiffs. Defendants. Victims. Criminal or civil - the key to ensuring all are treated fairly under the rule of law is to have an open, accessible court system. It needs watching, lest it become corrupted. 

A former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy charged on suspicion of possessing child pornography returned to court Friday. Scott T. Rodriguez, an employee of LASD until he was dismissed from county service on Jan. 22, the same day the charges against him were filed by the District Attorney’s Office, was said to have been in possession of the pornography on or about July 18, 2019, according to case’s lead investigator at the LASD Department of Internal Criminal Investigations.

Two employees of a cargo handling company who worked at Los Angeles International Airport were arrested this morning pursuant to a federal grand jury indictment that charges them will stealing four gold bars that were part of a larger shipment going from Australia to New York. Marlon Moody, 38, and Brian Benson, 35, both of South Los Angeles, were arrested without incident by special agents with the FBI.

Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert announced today that she and 43 elected District Attorneys across California, have filed a civil lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to prohibit awarding additional conduct credits to more than 76,000 violent and serious offenders.

More than a third of California state prison doctors are objecting to a new corrections department requirement that they prescribe an opioid treatment drug, saying the prisons aren’t taking enough precautions to prevent its abuse. The 138 doctors’ objections, outlined in a petition drafted by the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, come as the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation continues its rapid rollout of the largest prison drug treatment program in the country.

Reform-minded activists in California vow to move forward after a bill that would have dramatically reduced, and in some cases eliminated, enhanced sentences for crimes committed while using a gun failed to advance through the legislature Thursday. "AB 1509 was held in the Appropriations committee and will not move forward this year," Greg Fidell, policy manager of Initiate Justice, wrote on Twitter. "This is very painful - but we will be back stronger next year."

With investors and residents fleeing, organized crime has found itself some big business opportunities in leftwing San Francisco. According to the San Francisco Chronicle: “Retailers attributed a majority of losses to professional thieves instead of opportunistic shoplifters who may be driven by poverty, with one CVS leader calling San Francisco a hub of organized retail crime. Losses have shuttered drugstores providing vital services, even more critical during the pandemic as some stores give out vaccines.”

One year since a nationwide movement sparked calls for slashing police funding in favor of other nontraditional forms of public safety, it's not clear whether any city achieved anything resembling what protesters demanded: massively defunded or abolished police departments. The calls to cut funding and overhaul policing came after a police officer in Minnesota killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck, and video of the encounter set off one of, if not the, largest protest movements in American history.

A new effort by a group of Venice stakeholders hopes that what once was will be again for the Boardwalk. The group recently started an online Change.Org petition asking city leaders to address crime, drug abuse, and other issues they say have made the once-famous Boardwalk unsafe for residents, businesses and visitors alike.

The Los Angeles City Council signed off on a plan by Mayor Eric Garcetti to increase funding for the Police Department, despite calls from activists to have the agency defunded. Council members voted 15 to 0 to give the LAPD a 3 percent boost in funding, allowing the department to begin rebuilding its workforce after a year in which it lost hundreds of officers and scores of civilian employees.

A new effort to bring transparency and accountability to law enforcement is in development at University of California’s Safe Communities Institute. It is called the Law Enforcement Work Inquiry System, or LEWIS registry. It is named after late Georgia congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. The LEWIS Registry is believed to be the first comprehensive national catalog of police officers who have been terminated or resigned due to misconduct.

In the year since the murder of George Floyd, police reform has taken center stage in Los Angeles, the first time that has happened since the beating of Rodney King in 1991. Reformers have won major victories at the ballot box, cuts to the LAPD budget and new initiatives to remove the police from traffic stops and mental health calls.

Los Angeles Police Department commissioners unanimously passed an initiative May 25 that aims to better support women in the police force. “The goal of the 30×30 initiative is to increase the representation of women in policing recruit classes by 30 percent by 2030,” Commander Ruby Flores said during the meeting. “The initiative goal is not only just to increase the number of women in policing, but the pledge also aims to ensure that police policies and culture intentionally support the success of qualified workers in their career.”

Shootings by Los Angeles police officers remained near a historic low and police killings continued to decline in 2020, though an uptick in both categories during the first half of this year has threatened to reverse the progress. LAPD officers opened fire 27 times last year, killing seven people, according to the department’s annual use of force report, published Tuesday. That compared to a 30-year low of 26 shootings in 2019, in which 12 people were killed.

A new Carry a Concealed Weapon, or CCW, Unit in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will allow for a more efficient permitting process for residents seeking to carry hidden guns in public, law enforcement officials announced Wednesday afternoon. Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced the new CCW Unit in order to better distribute the licenses to be armed, in a statement at 4 p.m. Wednesday on LASD’s Twitter account.

The CHP on Thursday released a photo of the possible vehicle suspected of being involved in the fatal shooting of a 6-year-old boy who was riding in his mother's car to kindergarten last Friday on the 55 Freeway in Orange. The vehicle was occupied by a female driver and male passenger. The vehicle appears to be a white Volkswagen Golf Sportswagen with non-tinted windows, the CHP said. The Golf appears to be a 2018 or 2019 model and the license plate is unknown.

Police are looking for a man on a bicycle who has been groping women in the area near Cal State Northridge. Cal State Northridge police issued an alert this week, warning women about at least three incidents of women being groped in the Northridge area. The most recent incident happened Monday at 5:10 p.m. near Lassen Street and Zelzah Avenue.

A second suspect arrested for allegedly taking part in an attack on Jewish diners outside a Beverly Grove-area restaurant - an assault carried out by occupants of a caravan of vehicles waving Palestinian flags - was free on bail this morning. Samer Jayylusi, 35, of Whittier, was arrested about 1 a.m. Tuesday in Anaheim and was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, with bail was set at $255,000, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

A 28-year-old man was killed and five others were injured in a multi-vehicle crash in Reseda that was caught on camera. As many as five cars were involved in the high-speed collision, which occurred just after 8 p.m. Sunday along the 7600 block of Corbin Avenue, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. Police are blaming street racing for the crash. Los Angeles police says a BMW and a Mini Cooper got into an impromptu street race on Corbin Avenue near Saticoy Street.

A Palm Springs Unified School District patrol officer arrested during an investigation into domestic extremism by an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force pleaded not guilty on Monday to a felony weapons charge. Alfredo Luna Jr., 41, was arrested on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, stemming from a prior search of his home that turned up an unregistered assault rifle, according to court papers.

A mental competency trial was rescheduled Thursday to June 23 for a man accused of severely injuring a 7-year-old Desert Hot Springs boy in a random attack last summer. Daniel Birch Poulsen, 33, was arrested last July after allegedly attacking Gavin Ludwick in the middle of the street in the 9600 block of Vista Del Valle, fracturing the boy’s skull and rendering him unconscious.

Amazon's unchecked monopoly power and bullying of brand owners and retail partners is drawing intense criticism, scrutiny, and lawsuits. The e-commerce giant has grown into a global juggernaut of fraud, scams, counterfeits, replicas, and piracy. Allegations of stealing from its employees, fake product reviews and blocked feedback, along with improperly using third-party data for its own strategy for developing and selling its own private-label products contribute to its growing nefarious business profile.

Washington, DC's attorney general filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com on Tuesday, alleging the online retailer broke antitrust law by requiring that third-party sellers not offer better deals for their products elsewhere. Attorney General Karl Racine said Amazon requires third party sellers to give its customers the same or better prices than they offer elsewhere. But since Amazon's prices include fees, which can run as high as 40 percent of the total price, Racine said the policy could make prices for the same product more expensive on platforms that compete with Amazon.

Shortly after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, America began debating the idea that the best way to rectify the historic racial inequities in the criminal justice system is to “defund the police.” Opponents of the idea retort that if we police less aggressively, crime will increase, a burden that historically disadvantaged communities will bear disproportionately.

Rob Bonta, the first Filipino American and second Asian-American attorney general of California, took office right as national attention turned to an alarming spike in hate crimes against the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community. Bonta, also the first Filipino American elected to the state legislature, was appointed as AG in March, after Xavier Becerra left to become President Joe Biden’s secretary of health and human services.

A month after taking over as California attorney general, Rob Bonta has put the Department of Justice on a hard pivot, launching a series of initiatives to refocus the agency on problems inside the state after it spent four years fighting the Trump administration on national issues. In the last few weeks, Bonta has announced the creation of a Racial Justice Bureau to combat hate crimes and biased policing, financial help to local law enforcement agencies struggling with a backlog of untested rape evidence kits and expanded the Bureau of Environmental Justice to better target polluters.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is running to keep his job as the state’s top law officer, confirmed to a progressive radio station on Tuesday that his campaign would reject and return all contributions from “law enforcement.” The Democrat made the promise during an interview on KPFA’s “Upfront,” a morning drive-time show broadcast out of Berkeley. “I have made a personal decision not to accept any law enforcement contributions,” Bonta told the outlet while responding to a question from a Twitter user.

The Biden administration is appealing a judge’s order directing it to release in its entirety a legal memo on whether President Donald Trump had obstructed justice during the Russia investigation. But it also made public a brief portion of the document showing that senior Justice Department leaders concluded that the evidence could not support an obstruction prosecution.

The ACLU and the Sikh Coalition filed a complaint with the Department of Justice against the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry after a Sikh prisoner's beard was forcibly shaved as he was going through the prison intake process. According to the Sikh Coalition, 64-year-old Surjit Singh is serving a five-year prison term after he pled guilty to reckless manslaughter chargers in the wake of a deadly car accident.

A Russian man was sentenced Monday to what amounted to time already served and will be deported after pleading guilty to trying to pay a Tesla employee $500,000 to install computer malware at the company’s Nevada electric battery plant in a bid to steal company secrets for ransom. Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, appearing by videoconference from jail, apologized after U.S. District Judge Miranda Du in Reno acknowledged the attempted hack was not successful and the company network was not compromised.

A 42-year-old man has pleaded guilty and was immediately sentenced to 12 years and eight months in prison for his part in the kidnapping and torture of a marijuana dispensary owner whose penis was cut off in a Mojave Desert attack. The victim was falsely believed to have stashed $1 million somewhere in the desert, and the assailants demanded to know the location of the treasure.

A Gardena man was sentenced today to 162 months in federal prison for running a multi-year scam in which he fraudulently obtained nearly $1 million in business loans by setting up shell corporations - complete with people paid to pose as fake corporate “officers” - that deceived small business lenders into believing they were legitimate companies.

Salvador Castro Jr., 51, of Fresno, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Dale A. Drozd to 17 years and six months in prison for conspiring to sell over 500 grams of methamphetamine, Acting U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced. Castro was one of more than 50 individuals charged in June 2019 as part of Operation Red Reaper, a federal, state, and local law enforcement operation targeted at dismantling the criminal activities of the Nuestra Familia Prison Gang in the counties of Kings and Tulare.

Jessica Cordé wears a mask that says, "Fight like a Mom." In the last few months, that’s exactly what Cordé has been doing. She’s held several one-woman protests in downtown Los Angeles. She’s paid for a billboard demanding justice for the murder of her son Marquis LeBlanc. She went to Sacramento in hopes of getting Governor Gavin Newsom’s attention. Cordé says, "My goal was to get to the Governor to tell them what happened to my son, how they killed him for just being Black."

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released a man headed for deportation to Laos after lawmakers, organizations and members of the public campaigned for his freedom for months. Kao Saelee, 41, who was detained at a facility in Louisiana in August, returned to his family in California on Wednesday, according to KTVU. His family are Mien refugees who fled Laos during the Vietnam War, resettling in California by 1987.

Top brass women in law enforcement came together for a live, virtual USC panel discussion to reflect on former Officer Fanchon Blake’s landmark legal case - the topic of the book Busting the Brass Ceiling: How a Heroic Female Cop Changed the Face of Policing. The book details female LAPD Officer Fanchon Blake’s efforts to fight against discrimination in law enforcement, focusing on her Supreme Court victory that enabled female officers and minorities to be promoted past the ranking of sergeant, and modified various requirements for joining the force.

For decades, many Black Americans have believed that cops’ presence will either make a situation worse - or won’t have any impact. And the solution has sometimes been to not call the police at all, even in circumstances where they felt unsafe. But it’s not just communities of color anymore: White people are now occasionally rethinking whether it’s a good idea to rely so heavily on law enforcement, especially if summoning the police could potentially harm someone. And entire cities have considered whether police officers are the best response to certain kinds of offenses.

The chilling murders committed by French psychopath Charles Sobhraj and his girlfriend Marie-Andree Leclerc have been gripping viewers of the new Netflix series The Serpent. But DailyMail.com can reveal that one person unlikely to be tuning in is the serial killer's daughter, who cut ties with her father and has dedicated her life to fighting crime.

Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz's defamation lawsuit against CNN over its coverage of former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial can continue after a judge refused the network's motion to dismiss. Dershowitz alleged CNN provided an edited version of his remarks and a misleading narrative about his views that damaged his reputation as a scholar. He's seeking $300 million in damages, the Hollywood Reporter said Tuesday.

The embattled co-founder of Black Lives Matter announced on Thursday that she’s resigning as executive director amid criticism over her lavish lifestyle.

Patrisse Cullors, 37 - who has been at the helm of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation for nearly six years - said she is leaving to focus on a book and TV deal. Her last day with the foundation is Friday.

The $4.2 billion of pension obligation bonds issued in California in 2020 was more than triple the amount issued in any other year of the past decade. Golden State local governments represented the lion's share of the $6 billion of POBs Municipal Market Analytics estimates was issued nationally last year. “This high level of issuance activity is attributed in large part to low interest rates and other market conditions,” California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission researcher Kelly Joy wrote in CDIAC’s May Debt Line newsletter.

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