A judge Monday declared Los Angeles County the winner in a spat with Sheriff Alex Villanueva in his attempt to reinstate a deputy fired over domestic violence allegations. Villanueva’s efforts on behalf of former Deputy Caren Carl Mandoyan outraged members of the County Board of Supervisors, who filed a petition in March 2018 seeking to have Mandoyan’s rehiring declared void.

Fed up with the growing number of untraceable homemade firearms used in gun crimes and mass shootings, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced a federal lawsuit Tuesday to force the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to crack down on so-called “ghost guns” that skirt laws requiring background checks and age verification.

The Court of Appeal for this district on Friday affirmed the conviction of a man on multiple counts of raping his daughter, a minor, rejecting his contention that evidence of his possession of child pornography and history of visiting websites featuring child pornography and incest was improperly admitted. Justice Dorothy Kim of Div. Five wrote the unpublished opinion which upholds the conviction of Jayson Gaela Rosacia.

A request for bail was denied Friday for Democratic Party fundraiser Ed Buck, who is accused of giving drugs to a man who died at his West Hollywood apartment after allegedly being lured across state lines for prostitution. Buck’s attorneys argued that their client should be released from the downtown federal lockup due to the COVID-19 pandemic currently moving through jails and prisons.

A woman who whacked her two-year-old son on the head with a stick, striking him five or six times on his arms and hands with the same weapon, following months of abuse of him, and who pled guilty to second degree murder, might be entitled to resentencing because, the Court of Appeal for this district said yesterday, the mother’s boyfriend also administered blows, so she might not be the “actual killer.”

A federal judge balked Friday at the Trump administration’s challenge of lawsuits filed by former FBI agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, telling the government it had not come close to proving that its disclosure of messages between the agents was above board.

The nation's largest cellphone providers will pay a combined $116 million under a settlement approved Thursday in a California lawsuit alleging that they overcharged government customers for wireless services over more than a decade. Verizon will pay $68 million and AT&T Mobility $48 million to settle claims that they violated cost-saving agreements included in wireless contracts with state and local governments.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge John Monterosso will serve as the Southern California court’s next presiding judge starting in 2021, and Judge Judith Clark will be the next assistant presiding judge. Both judges were appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and previously worked in the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office at some point in their careers.

The U.S. Postal Service must prioritize election mail and immediately reverse changes that resulted in widespread delays in California and several other states, a federal judge ruled Monday. The nationwide order is the latest rejection of efforts by Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, to cut costs by instituting changes that snarled the mail system and caused delays in the delivery of medication, unemployment checks and other essential items.

The Judicial Council on Friday allocated $25 million of the judiciary’s budget for the modernization of court operations. The policymaking body earmarked the funds for 13 projects.

A recreational bicyclist who was seriously injured after running into a four-foot long pothole is not barred by the doctrine of primary assumption of risk from recovering a $1.3 million damage-award against the county that maintains the road, Div. Five of the First District Court of Appeal has held.

Los Angeles County Counsel Mary C. Wickham announced Tuesday she is leaving her position become a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner. Wickham was appointed by the Board of Supervisors to be county counsel in 2015. She will leave her position on Nov. 1.

Courthouse closures, virtual hearings, delayed jury trials, releases of infirm and nonviolent prisoners. The U.S. criminal justice system reacted swiftly to the pandemic, but more steps are needed to stifle transmission among the incarcerated, two former U.S. attorneys general say in a new report released Thursday.

As millions of Americans struggle to pay their rent during the coronavirus pandemic, landlords are going to courts, claiming that the national eviction moratorium unfairly strains their finances and violates their property rights. At least 26 such lawsuits have been filed by property owners this year, including several federal challenges of President Donald Trump’s directive, delivered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that broadly prevents evictions through the end of 2020.

When I recently received a jury summons in the mail, it brought with it more than the usual onset of angst. It included a flyer titled “Attention Prospective Jurors,” outlining COVID protections the courts had put in place. Some of the bullet points didn’t offer a lot of solace. “With current social distancing rules,” the flyer read, “the assembly room will only seat a maximum of 40 to 50 prospective jurors.”

A federal magistrate judge on Wednesday rejected a plea by three disabled law school graduates to take next week’s bar exam at home instead of in-person at a remote testing location. Kara Gordon, Isabel Callejo-Brighton and a plaintiff identified only as John Doe had argued that the state bar and the National Conference of Bar Examiners violated state and federal disability-access laws by denying their requests for unscheduled restroom breaks, scratch paper and a paper version of the test.

A federal appeals court decided 2 to 1 Thursday to uphold Gov. Gavin Newsom’s coronavirus restrictions on indoor worship during the pandemic. The majority of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel said California’s health orders on churches did not discriminate against religious expression.

Attempted murder charges have been filed in an attack on two LA County Sheriff's Department deputies who were shot while seated in a patrol car at a transit station in Compton. Officials announced the charges against Deonte Lee Murray at a Wednesday news conference. He was arrested Sept. 15 after a stakeout, car chase, and search in Lynwood that Sheriff Alex Villanueva initially said was unrelated to the deputy attack case.

A 29-year-old man has been charged with attempted murder of two police officers after he was accused of pistol-whipping an officer inside a Los Angeles police station in San Pedro, and firing shots at a second officer. Jose Cerpa Guzman was charged with two counts each of attempted murder on a peace officer and assault with a semiautomatic firearm; and one felony count each of second-degree robbery, evading and resisting an officer, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

The organizer of a Southern California rally against police brutality and racism was charged with attempted murder Tuesday for driving her car into counterprotesters and running over a woman's head. Tatiana Turner deliberately drove into a crowd of President Donald Trump's supporters with the intent to kill the woman and also seriously injured a man who broke his leg, Orange County prosecutors said.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday over 300 individuals in 29 states and Washington, D.C. have been charged for crimes committed during demonstrations since the end of May. 40 U.S. Attorneys' Offices have filed federal charges for crimes including attempted murder, assaulting a law enforcement officer, arson, damaging federal property, inciting a riot and others.

A crewmember on a container ship heading toward the Port of Los Angeles was charged Monday with a federal offense stemming from the fatal stabbing of a fellow crewmember. Michael Dequito Monegro, 41, a resident of the Philippines, was named in a criminal complaint that charges him with one count of performing an act of violence against a person onboard a ship that is likely to endanger the safe navigation of the ship, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Felony charges were filed Tuesday against a woman who allegedly tried to snatch NFL legend Joe Montana's 9-month-old granddaughter from a Malibu home. Sodsai Predpring Dalzell, 39, pleaded not guilty to one count each of attempted kidnapping of a child under 14 and first-degree residential burglary with a person present, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

Federal prosecutors charged a 44-year-old man on Tuesday with a hate crime for attacking a Black man with a knife on a San Francisco Bay Area street this summer. The Department of Justice said in a press release that Ole Hougen, who is white, confronted a 29-year-old Black man in Santa Cruz in July and yelled racial slurs while trying to slash at him.

Shia LaBeouf has been charged with misdemeanor battery and petty theft. Prosecutors allege that the 34-year-old actor fought with a man named Tyler Murphy and took his hat, according to a criminal complaint obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday from the Los Angeles city attorney. The charges were filed on Sept. 24 for the June 12 incident.

A campaign report reveals philanthropist George Soros is funding efforts to replace Los Angeles County’s district attorney with a more progressive alternative in November. The New York billionaire recently made a $1.5 million contribution to a political action committee backing the reform-minded challenger, according to the Friday filing.

More than $12 million has been pumped into November’s contentious Los Angeles County district attorney race, with donors lining up on opposing sides of a stark ideological divide between incumbent Jackie Lacey and challenger George Gascón. Spending in the race has intensified in recent weeks, with New York billionaire George Soros putting $1.5 million behind Gascón, helping to push him into the overall fundraising lead.

What is being called the most important contest in the country outside of the presidency is the race to be top prosecutor in Los Angeles County. Sparring for the seat are incumbent District Attorney Jackie Lacey, seeking a third term, and her challenger, former San Francisco District Attorney (from 2011 to 2019) George Gascón, who moved south to run for the Los Angeles County job.

ABC7 will air the L.A. County District Attorney Debate this Saturday at 9 p.m. commercial free. Marc Brown will be the moderator as Jackie Lacey and George Gascón meet in an hour-long debate on ABC7. The event will air on ABC7 and stream on all our mobile apps, as well as our connected TV apps on Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire or Roku.

It’s been a troubling time for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, as a gunman recently shot two deputies point-blank while on patrol. Later deputies arrested a local reporter in front of the hospital while covering a protest stemming from the shooting. Members of the Oversight Commission have also called for Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s resignation.

A September 22nd response from ALADS repudiating Ms. Torres' misguided September 15th press release in the strongest possible terms has caused her to retract her statement. Her September 15, 2020, press release about the unprovoked ambush and attempted assassination of two of our deputy sheriffs stated that, “This attack did not take place in a vacuum though - the moment of reckoning law enforcement is in right now is long-overdue and well-justified."

A radio reporter taken into custody while covering a demonstration the night two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies were shot will not be criminally charged, the county’s district attorney’s office said Thursday. Josie Huang, a journalist for NPR affiliate KPCC, was slammed to the ground by deputies and accused of interfering with the arrest of a protester outside a hospital Sept. 12.

An attorney for a reporter who was pinned to the ground, handcuffed and taken into custody by sheriff’s deputies while covering the arrest of an anti-police protester is asking Friday for his client to be declared “factually innocent.”

After resisting calls to release the footage for a few-and-a-half months, the San Jose Police Department finally let it out of the bag on Sept. 11. The body-cam videos of three high-profile encounters at the George Floyd protests came with lengthy written justifications of officers’ actions and left out a lot of key incidents. But for the local police union, they still showed too much.

In June, in response to the killings of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, and others during encounters with law enforcement, Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn introduced an “Alternatives to Law Enforcement for Crisis Response” motion directing county leaders reimagine the 911 system and how to make space for “non-law enforcement response” to emergencies.

A California bill inspired by leaked photos of the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant passed this weak, banning law enforcement from sharing graphic crime scene photos off the job. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an invasion of privacy bill on Monday which would make it illegal for first responders to share photos of a deceased person at a crime scene "for any purpose other than an official law enforcement purpose."

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to lodge immigration detainers on criminal aliens in the custody of non-cooperative local law enforcement. State and local policies prevent these agencies from working with ICE, resulting in the release of hundreds of criminal aliens back into the local community after their arrests for criminal activity like homicide, molestation of a child, battery, robbery and terrorist threats.

New pistol models sold in California will eventually have to include micro-stamping technology that will make them easier to trace by law enforcement if they are used in crimes, under legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

An abandoned Range Rover has been parked outside Bernie Shine's Hancock Park home for two and a half months. It's been broken into, has the window down and is missing its license plates, but the city won't move it.

On Tuesday, September 29, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors took the next step toward restructuring public safety in LA County in response to calls for justice system overhauls, including the redirection of police funds toward social services.

A state investigation into the country's largest natural gas utility is steadily piecing together details of how the company may have cloaked its advocacy by recruiting local politicians and minority groups to promote fossil fuels at California ports, according to people familiar with the probe and documents obtained by POLITICO.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council voted to direct $6 million in funding to LA’s struggling street vendors. The COVID-19 Street Vending Recovery Fund will be in the form of grants from the federal CARES Act to aid vendors with costs towards permits and equipment.

Los Angeles County seems prepared to avoid layoffs of county employees over the next 12 months, as the Board of Supervisors approved changes Tuesday to increase the county's planned spending to a record $37.6 billion for the 2020-21 fiscal year, $2.7 billion higher than anticipated in June.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to overhaul the county’s response to residents having health crises, directing officials to design a system that dispatches experts in health and de-escalation - not police - during emergencies.

A San Gabriel Valley man accused of driving a truck loaded with weapons into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators in Old Town Pasadena will remain behind bars to await trial, a federal judge ruled Monday. Benjamin Jong Ren Hung presents a danger to the community and no combination of conditions could be ordered to ensure he would not be a potential threat to others, U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Donahue determined.

Representatives with the American Civil Liberties Union San Diego and Imperial Counties claim local law enforcement have not returned cellphones obtained after arresting at least half a dozen protesters in downtown on Aug. 28. ACLU San Diego joined forces with Community Advocates for Just and Moral Governance and Singleton Law Firm to write a letter asking for an explanation as to why the cellphones have not been returned to the owners.

Many prominent figures in the sports world, including Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, have voiced their outrage against the decision to not charge Louisville police officers for the killing of Breonna Taylor. The “Inside the NBA” crew on TNT offered a different reaction on Thursday, led by Charles Barkley.

A group of Black Lives Matter protesters were filmed in a tense confrontation with a Louisville store owner after they demanded he voice his support for the movement during a third night of Breonna Taylor demonstrations in the city. Footage of the incident, shared on Twitter by a reporter for conservative news site Daily Caller, shows a small crowd of BLM activists grilling business owner Fadi Faouri, as he stands outside his store holding a rifle.

Like the Politburo, government officials in the United States are looking for ways, in the Blue States, to make crime more available, more victims and fewer police to stop the crime. But when it comes to personal security, they use tax dollars and police to protect themselves.

In recent months, the relationship between law enforcement and some of the communities it serves has sharply deteriorated. Just ask L.A. Sheriff's Capt. Duane Allen, Jr. For 32 years, he's worked for the Sheriff's Department in various assignments around the county. Today, Allen commands the South L.A. Station, which has been the scene of angry protests over the fatal shooting of Dijon Kizzee by two deputies supervised by Allen. 

Two fired Orange County sheriff’s deputies convicted of lying on their police reports testified recently before a grand jury that they didn’t know it was illegal to falsify the documents, transcripts show. Joseph Anthony Atkinson Jr., 39, and Bryce Richmond Simpson, 31, had neglected to book evidence but falsified their reports to say they had.

A parolee accused of sexually assaulting a homeless boy in a Riverside park was ordered Wednesday to undergo a psychiatric evaluation based on his attorney’s concerns about his mental health. Ryan Anthony Funk, 31, of Riverside was arrested shortly after the alleged Sept. 11 attack in Hunter Park, near the intersection of Iowa and Marlborough avenues, and is charged with aggravated sexual assault of a minor, kidnapping to commit rape and parole violations.

One day in January, a pair of thieves in black ski masks drove into a restricted area behind a post office in Phoenix. They jumped out of their car, snatched several trays of mail that had just been dropped off and sped away. Over six days in early April, thieves in New York City stole several bags of mail from a carrier cart, swiped packages from a Postal Service truck and made off with an entire pushcart filled with mail near the famed Grand Central station.

For the third consecutive year, the estimated number of violent crimes in the nation decreased when compared with the previous year’s statistics, according to FBI figures released today. In 2019, violent crime was down 0.5% from the 2018 number. Property crimes also dropped 4.1%, marking the 17th consecutive year the collective estimates for these offenses declined.

The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office on Friday identified a man who died in a shootout with deputies as a member of a white supremacist gang. Moreover, they said the suspect died after he waited in ambush for police. Christopher Michael Straub - 38 of Templeton, California - fled from law enforcement, hid in a nearby cemetery and shot at deputies on Thursday morning, according to a press release from the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey warned Friday that scammers are sending emails claiming to be U.S. Census Bureau representatives asking for Social Security information and bank account and credit card account numbers. “While this year’s census is taking place, be careful that your information doesn’t get into the wrong hands,” Lacey said in a video message posted in connection with her office’s weekly #FraudFriday alert.

Wish.com, a 2011 newcomer to e-commerce trade and reportedly valued at more than $8 billion, has built one of the fastest-growing e-commerce businesses by offering a vast range of products that are "discounted" as much as 90 percent off regular prices. The bulk of items available through Wish come from China sellers overseas, yet Wish largely avoided scrutiny of its sales of counterfeit, fraudulent, or harmful consumer goods until now.

Officers recently seized nearly $5 million worth of counterfeit designer goods at Los Angeles International Airport that had arrived from China through express air cargo, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials announced Wednesday. A total of 7,170 fraudulent high-fashion items were confiscated after arriving at LAX’s cargo operations, according to a CBP news release.

As prosecutors who see how changes in the law actually play out in the justice system, we strongly support Proposition 20 which appears on the November ballot. Prop 20 will make reasonable changes to fix some of the unintended consequences caused by Props 47 and 57 and AB 109 to make them comport with what voters were told they were voting for.

Under California law, you can rape an unconscious person, assault a peace officer, abuse a spouse or sell a child for sex, and you’re not considered a “violent” offender. Hate crimes too are nonviolent. So are drive-by shootings. You can freely steal thousands of dollars in merchandise in a continuing series of thefts, day after day, and face only misdemeanor charges - hardly more serious than a traffic ticket.

One of the measures that will be put before California voters in November would reclassify some misdemeanor crimes as felonies and take a stronger stance on parole. In California the pendulum swings back and forth on criminal justice reform. If Proposition 20 is approved, it will swing toward the long arm of the law.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said earlier this year that as the state’s prison population continued to decline, he wanted to start closing down prisons. He made good on that intention last week when the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced plans to shutter Deuel Vocational Institution near Tracy, which had been constructed in the 1950s as a place where young felons could be transformed into solid citizens.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed landmark bills into law on Wednesday, the last day available for the governor to sign legislation. The docket included racial justice, criminal justice, and policing reform, as well as legislation related to cannabis, rental housing, and banning hazardous chemicals and ingredients in cosmetics.

Doesn’t it seem as if the phrase “public safety” is a joke these days? I’m not talking about the performance of law enforcement; they are doing their jobs as best they can in the face of many hurdles. I support them and thank God that they’re there every single day. No, I’m talking about the one-party rule that has dominated Sacramento for the last decade.

A major hospital chain has been hit by what appears to be one of the largest medical cyberattacks in United States history. Computer systems for Universal Health Services, which has more than 400 locations, primarily in the U.S., began to fail over the weekend, and some hospitals have had to resort to filing patient information with pen and paper, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.

California next year will close a prison holding about 1,500 male inmates, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration said Friday in its latest step to reduce the state’s incarceration footprint partly in response to the coronavirus and massive related budget cuts. Shuttering the 67-year-old Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, in the Central Valley east of San Francisco, will save about $182 million annually, state corrections officials said.

California prison officials on Saturday reported the 27th death of a San Quentin State Prison inmate from apparent complications of COVID-19. The prisoner, who was not identified, died Friday at an outside hospital, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement. San Quentin currently has three prisoners who are positive for COVID-19.

A woman was found guilty of pouring gasoline on a homeless man and setting him on fire in the Harvard Park neighborhood of South Los Angeles last year, officials announced Friday. Shalonda Christine Shaw, 34, who was also described as being homeless, was found guilty of one felony count of mayhem, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

A Canadian man has been sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison for killing a 78-year-old Palm Springs woman nearly three decades ago to drain nearly $200,000 from her bank accounts. A Banning jury deliberated one day in November before finding Anton Michael Kubica, 63, of Shawnigan Lake, British Columbia, guilty of first-degree murder in the June 1990 slaying of Marie Darling.

A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced convicted Russian hacker Yevgeniy Nikulin to 88 months in prison for stealing more than 100 million user credentials from LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring databases in 2012. The 88 months amounts to a little more than seven years behind bars for Nikulin, who will turn 33 next month.

For years, Seagram’s liquor empire heiress Clare Bronfman dedicated her time - and millions - to NXIVM as its operations director and one of its largest donors, going to extreme lengths to protect the self-help group and its leader. But on Wednesday, the 41-year-old was sentenced to 81 months in prison for her role in the purported cult that branded women and manipulated them into master-slave relationships.

A man who had already been convicted for murdering his girlfriend pleaded guilty Monday, Sept. 28, to voluntary manslaughter in the killing of a man he robbed in Laguna Beach in 1978. Walter Lawrence Dalie, 61, is scheduled to be sentenced Monday, according to court records.

Lawyers for classic rock group The Doobie Brothers sent a truly epic cease and desist letter to actor Bill Murray Wednesday, calling out the star for using their song without permission. Despite Murray’s golf shirt company promising to “keep you Murray chill and dry all day,” at least one attorney seems pretty un-chill about copyright infringement.

The California Supreme Court has dealt a blow to fiscal hawks who hoped a Marin County lawsuit would set a new precedent allowing governments to renegotiate pension agreements with employees. The court said in late 2016 it would review the lawsuit, titled Marin Association of Public Employees vs. Marin County Employees’ Retirement Association.

Two recent orders from the California Supreme Court indicate the court isn't finished reviewing cases challenging the state’s 2013 pension reform law and the California Rule. The high court issued orders Wednesday in each of the four cases it had accepted for review, but had deferred, pending its ruling in Alameda County Deputy Sheriff’s Association v. Alameda County Employees’ Retirement Association.

A Southern California city’s attempt to offer 401(k)-style retirement plans to firefighters has led to a new law prohibiting similar efforts to exclude public workers from CalPERS pensions. Gov. Gavin Newsom this week signed legislation preventing cities and counties from excluding groups of employees from CalPERS pensions when they offer them for other groups.

For more ADDA news and information, visit www.laadda.com.