Monday Morning Memo for April 24, 2017

At Apple, Neha Rastogi worked on everything from Siri to FaceTime to Maps, sometimes seated beside Steve Jobs himself. She is clearly brilliant and dedicated as well as passionate about the happy interface between technology and the public. Nobody could have foreseen that she would someday be compelled to employ an iPhone to record harrowing moments of what she says was a pattern of domestic abuse during virtually her entire 10-year marriage to a man who is now CEO of a Silicon Valley startup.

Due to increased scrutiny over changing health care, Los Angeles County District Attorney’s officials are advising worried consumers to be wary of scammers offering false replacement coverage. “It’s happening across the nation,” said Jennifer Lentz Snyder, head deputy of the Health Care Insurance Fraud Division, and explained that the crime rates in Los Angeles County are difficult to track. “It’s hard to know because this is not something that people report often.”

More than a dozen states are considering prison reform measures to drastically reduce their inmate populations to save money. But law enforcement in California are blaming their reforms for a recent uptick in crime.  “The most recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice show violent crime rates in some California cities has increased by over 50 percent,” said Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys.

A California appeals court dealt a blow Thursday to a Native American prison inmate who petitioned for the right to use pure tobacco during religious ceremonies. A three-judge panel for California’s Fourth Appellate Division found that Imperial County Superior Court Judge Raymond Cota improperly ruled in favor of inmate Gregory Rhoades. Cota should have held an evidentiary hearing before handing down his decision, the panel concluded.

Los Angeles County Probation is hoarding money again, this time more than $200 million. Last week we reported that LA’s Probation Department was merrily spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for a second year in a row to pay the salaries of two deputy probation officers and a supervising DPO, who were supposed to case manage 240 at risk kids per year to help these youth access important services and activities from various community organizations.

The M. Watt Espy Papers, execution files on more than 15,000 legal executions in the United States since 1608, are getting a digital makeover. Hailed by the New York Times as “America’s foremost death penalty historian,” M. Watt Espy (1933-2009) devoted more than 40 years to cataloging each legal execution since the founding of the Jamestown Colony.

The head of the union that represents Orange County sheriff’s deputies and Orange County District Attorney investigators Monday said the esteem in which his rank-and-file members view their bosses has improved since an annual report was started three years ago. Tom Dominguez, president of the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs’ board, told City News Service, however, that he was “very disappointed” that Sheriff Sandra Hutchens will not meet with him and union representatives to discuss the annual Leadership Assessment Survey.

There’s one item on my reporting bucket list I never did check off – witnessing an execution. I came very close once, even getting a tour of the gas chamber. The condemned inmate was David Lawson, convicted of shooting Wayne Shinn in the back of the head during a home break-in. I talked to Shinn’s family and covered Lawson’s news conference when he blamed depression for driving him to murder and urged other mentally ill people to get help.

California’s death row houses more senior citizens than most of the state’s nursing homes. Ninety California death-row inmates are at least 65 years old, corrections records show. The number of seniors on death row has grown by nearly 500 percent since early 2006, when the state housed 16 seniors. California has not executed a prisoner since 2006, largely due to legal challenges to its lethal injection protocol.

Newly appointed conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch helped clear the way for Arkansas to hold its first execution in 12 years, a sign of the challenges facing other inmates seeking to block their executions next week. In his first recorded vote, President Donald Trump’s pick for the court sided as expected with its renewed conservative majority. The justices voted 5-4 to reject an emergency application brought by several inmates before Arkansas executed convicted murderer Ledell Lee.

Spurring heated debates all over, California’s law enforcement policies, which have led to decreasing arrest rates and early prison releases, are being blamed for the sharp surge in crime rates. In a recent report, Fox News stated that a large majority are now blaming the liberal law enforcement policies for the surge in crime.

In California, a police officer in Sacramento is under criminal investigation after he was captured on video throwing an accused jaywalker to the ground and punching him repeatedly. In Georgia, not one but two Gwinnett County police officers were fired less than 24 hours after cell phone videos surfaced of them punching and kicking a handcuffed motorist.

If there was anything that stood out about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement that his Justice Department would be reviewing comprehensive “consent decree” or reform agreements with civil rights-deficient police departments, it was the timing. Sessions’ troubling memo, one of the most significant shots across the collective bow of the civil rights community, was issued on April 3.

letter from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to law enforcement agencies across Southern California warning about an “emerging problem” of officers engaging in unlicensed firearms sales came just weeks after a Pasadena police officer’s home was searched and guns seized.

People are using Facebook Live for more than recording frolicking animals and family fun. Indeed, it mirrors the violence and tragedy of life. Police nationwide are on the lookout for Steve Stephens, 37, who randomly killed a Cleveland man, posting the video on Facebook, WOIO reported.  People have used Facebook Live to capture crimes such as rape, torture, child and animal abuse.

It’s a simple scam, take a low capacity memory card costing a few cents and reprint it with a higher capacity label and a globally recognized trademark. Sell the items as authentic products on eBay for up to $100.00 or more. The problem is that anybody, anywhere, can sell just about anything on eBay, including fake computer memory cards – items that don’t even exist in any manufacturer’s authentic product line.

Consumers should expect honest services and have confidence they will receive authentic and safe products presented in a clear and truthful manner when they shop on eBay – but that’s not what happens. eBay has migrated from the auction house of garage sale items and concentrated on its Marketplace of new items at a fixed price from unvetted global sellers.

The dismay that the neophytes in the Trump Administration elicit tends to follow three stages: alarm at what they say, shock at what they do, and outrage at what they propose to do next. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is no political neophyte-he represented Alabama in the Senate for twenty years-but the pattern still applies. His confirmation hearing included a reminder of an indulgent jest he once made about the Ku Klux Klan.

The U.S. Justice Department has escalated its approach to so-called sanctuary cities, writing at least eight jurisdictions Friday to put them on notice they could be failing to cooperate with immigration authorities. Alan Hanson, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s grant-making arm, warned the cities that they’re required to submit proof that they comply with federal immigration law.

The head of the union that represents Orange County sheriff’s deputies and Orange County District Attorney investigators Monday said the esteem in which his rank-and-file members view their bosses has improved since an annual report was started three years ago. Tom Dominguez, president of the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs’ board, told City News Service, however, that he was “very disappointed” that Sheriff Sandra Hutchens will not meet with him and union representatives to discuss the annual Leadership Assessment Survey.

On September 27, 2011, the LA Times reported that the “FBI orchestrated an undercover sting” to smuggle a cell phone into an inmate at a Los Angeles County Sheriff Department (LASD) jail and about Sheriff Lee Baca’s public comments that the FBI’s actions were criminal. “Our review of the case shows the FBI may have engaged in misconduct and possibly committed a crime that endangered the lives of LASD deputies,” says Lamont Banks, Executive Director of A Just Cause.

A 38-year-old woman who was arrested for drug possession in Manhattan Beach last year claims in a lawsuit that she went blind from an eye infection after she couldn’t remove her contact lenses for days in jail. Kathryn Krause is suing the Manhattan Beach Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for alleged negligence, medical malpractice and civil rights violations stemming from her arrest on June 25, 2016.

A California police officer acted lawfully when he shot and killed a legally blind man with schizophrenia during an encounter at a gas station in 2015, prosecutors said Tuesday. A report made public Tuesday by the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office said Fontana police officers were justified when an officer fatally shot James Hall on Nov. 22, 2015 after responding to a call of a possible robbery at a gas station.

If a Los Angeles police officer shoots at someone, would you want that video released to the public? That is the question being asked by the Los Angeles Police Commission at a community meeting in Reseda on Thursday. The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the ONE Generation Senior Enrichment Center, at 18255 Victory Blvd. Food and refreshments will be provided.

President Donald Trump is ready to crack down on the infamous, money-making MS-13 gang, after a violent quadruple homicide in Long Island, N.Y. last week left four teenagers dead and badly beaten. Trump is promising to remove the gang from U.S. streets “fast.” MS-13, a group that was started by Central American immigrants in Los Angeles in the 1980s, is known for its ruthless and violent tactics.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck is taking jabs from critics on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the L.A. riots. A normally considerate speaker, Beck is being criticized for comparing his time as an undercover detective with “hippie hair” to the experience of African-Americans who are stopped by police. The top cop said he had been pulled over hundreds of times during those days in the 1980s because of his appearance.

A bill to reform the way the state administers bail bonds making it’s way to Sacramento this week. As reported by Bay Area News Group, AB 42 would enable people to be released at no cost while waiting for trial. The bill will be heard Tuesday before California’s State Assembly Committee on Public Safety. Under the proposed legislation, judges would be able to decide whether individuals would need to be held until their court date.

The Kern County District Attorney’s office condemned a controversial bill that could effectively end bail in California. If passed, Assembly bill 42 will eliminate the money bail system, therefor reducing the number of people locked up because they cannot afford bail.  According to the District Attorney’s Office, all it will do is threaten public safety and burden an already short-funded court system.

A nationwide movement that began 53 years ago to reform the pretrial incarceration and money bail process has finally reached the legislative committees and political bargaining tables in Washington and Sacramento. Reform advocates – including legislators, prosecutors, attorneys, judges and grassroots organizations – contend that the use of a money bail system for pretrial release is unfair to the poor and unsafe for the public.

Though she had previously sponsored legislation in New York to combat sex trafficking, Assemblywoman Amy Paulin said she had not realized how big a role hotels and hotel workers could play in the fight until she met with two activists. “They made me aware,” Ms. Paulin said of Anneke Lucas, a sex-trafficking victim, and the Rev. Adrian Dannhauser.

Nearly two weeks after breaking with fellow Democrats to vote against a bill raising California fuel taxes, Assemblyman Rudy Salas of Bakersfield has lost the chairmanship of a prime legislative committee. On Monday, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon announced that he had removed Salas from his position heading the politically lucrative Assembly Business and Professions Committee, which handles consumer regulations, occupational licensing and product labeling bills.

It would be more difficult for police departments in California to discipline officers accused of lying under under a plan proposed by a Los Angeles lawmaker. Democratic Assemblyman Miguel Santiago of Los Angeles believes current rules allow law enforcement agencies to unfairly target cops who simply make mistakes. His bill, which cleared its first committee hurdle on Tuesday, would raise the standard of proof in cases where officers were accused of lying.

California lawmakers have proposed more taxes and fees in the first four months of the 2017-18 legislative session than in all of 2015 or 2016. If each proposal becomes law, the tax burden in California would increase by more than $155 billion per year. This comes at a time when state revenue continues to grow, and California is nearing its taxing capacity under the Gann Spending Limit.

California is considering another step to protect its interests – specifically, its weed – from Washington meddling. The proposal – the first of its kind in the nation – would prevent state and local police from helping federal agents crack down on marijuana activity that California has deemed to be legal. Despite objections from law enforcement, it cleared the Assembly Public Safety Committee Tuesday by a 5-2 vote.

As the debate continues over whether Los Angeles is a sanctuary city in practice if not in name, county authorities Monday sought to reassure those in the U.S. illegally that they would not be targeted by sheriff’s deputies. A memo released by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department stated deputies are not permitted to ask about a person’s immigration status during traffic stops or other service calls.

California state leaders are asking U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly to identify the state’s statutes or ordinances that they perceive as designed to prohibit or obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration law. In a letter sent to the U.S. officials last week, a lawyer for Covington & Burling, a private firm hired by the state Senate and Assembly, said the Trump administration had repeatedly made unsupported accusations against California.

Nothing has created more controversy in California politics than the issue of federal immigration enforcement within the state. A consensus has emerged among a large body of police departments that relationships with the immigrant community would be impaired if local police were seen not as guardians of the peace and enforcers of state and local law but as colluding with enforcers of federal immigration law.

A Trump administration lawyer told an apparently skeptical federal judge Friday that President Trump’s executive order against so-called sanctuary cities, such as San Francisco, doesn’t deprive them of federal funding – at least not yet – but merely encourages them to follow immigration laws. “There’s been no action threatened or taken against the cities,” Assistant Attorney General Chad Readler said at a hearing in San Francisco on a lawsuit by San Francisco and Santa Clara County.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Saturday it “makes no sense” that sanctuary cities want to fight the federal government to prevent detention of illegal immigrants. Sessions said that voters in those areas must hold their local government accountable to keep their cities safe. “We’re going to put pressure on these cities,” he said on “Justice with Judge Jeanine.” “We’re going to battle them every step of the way.”

ver since Donald Trump became President, mayors and city council members in “sanctuary cities”-places where local law-enforcement officials limit their coöperation with immigration agents-have promised to resist the federal government’s crackdown on immigrants. The new Administration has responded with threats (to cut sanctuary cities’ funding), reprisals (like launching more raidsin specific jurisdictions), and accusations (that these cities are making the country less safe).

Recent conversations surrounding federal immigration policies have caused fear among segments of the population and debate at all levels of government. One of the most recent and serious legislative entries in the immigration debate is California state Senate Bill 54. Local law enforcement has been repeatedly clear in spoken and written word: We have not and will not be involved in immigration enforcement in our communities.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Curren D. Price Jr. has been implicated for fraud and perjury, perhaps unwittingly, by his own attorney Stephen J. Kaufman. And that’s the least of Price’s problems.  The backstory is this: In a misdated 2012 affidavit, Price and his then-divorce attorney Albert Robles (who is the current Mayor of Carson, CA) claimed that Price’s first wife Lynn could not be located for the purpose of serving her divorce papers, although they repeatedly tried to serve her at her residence at 4519 Don Arturo Place in Los Angeles.

Thanks to Hillary Clinton’s unexpected defeat last fall, Democrats face a quandary they weren’t expecting until the next decade: what does their party embody in a post-Clinton universe? One place to go seeking answers: California and an open gubernatorial seat in 2018 that’s a window into modern-day progressivism – or, at least, the Left Coast version of it.

The 80-member California Assembly has 55 Democrats and 25 Republicans. If the assembly were a voting district, it would be 68.75 percent registered Democrats. That supermajority means that, much of the time, legislation can pass through the chamber without any involvement from the state’s Republican assembly members.

Frustrated by slow progress in securing petitions and undermined by bad publicity over a colleague’s strategic retreat to Russia, the chief organizer of the Yes California campaign to move the Golden State toward secession from the United States called it quits yesterday, as reported by the Los Angeles Times: Less than three months after being given the green light to start gathering voter signatures, the author of a closely watched effort to split California from the United States has decided to withdraw his proposal.

In Canada earlier this month, the Court of Appeal for Ontario wrote of a criminal case in which jurors staged what was described as a “small mutiny” – demanding to drink. It was a Saturday night. The jury had just endured the stress of a 14-week murder trial in which a young woman had been shot and killed. Deliberations were to begin soon. An officer monitoring the jury cautioned that alcohol would be unwise.

The U.S. Supreme Court sidestepped a turbulent debate over illegal immigration on Monday, turning away an appeal by a group of asylum-seeking Central American women and their children who aimed to clarify the constitutional rights of people who the government has prioritized for deportation.

People like George Gascon are hired or put in office for a reason. When it comes to the crunch they will bend for the agenda of the elite and last week he proved it by failing to bring charges against two cops in the killing of Amilcar Lopez-Perez. Gascon, the career politician and bureaucrat and former police chief carried the winning ball for the establishment.

After getting denied to be assured of no more jail time for the 1977 rape of a 13-year-old-girl, director Roman Polanski is not giving up on hopes to return to the US and has compared the country’s justice system to that of ?Nazis.’ As per the Hollywood Reporter, his attorney Harland Braun said, “The Court should consider why Mr. Polanski was not charged with unlawful flight by either the State or federal authorities. Mr. Polanski was as justified in fleeing this Court?s illegal conduct as he was to flee the Germans who invaded Poland.”

A federal judge ruled against a lawsuit seeking redemption for the removal of a US Capitol painting depicting cops as violent pigs, stating the artist’s free speech rights were not violated when the painting was removed after protests by Republicans. US District Court Judge John D. Bates has rejected a lawsuit filed by US Representative William Lacy Clay (D-Missouri) that sought to challenge the January removal of the controversial painting from a display of works entered into the annual Congressional Art Competition.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has brought sweeping change to the Department of Justice. In just two months as the nation’s top cop, Sessions has moved quickly to overhaul the policies and priorities set by the Obama administration. He has rolled back protections for transgender students that allowed children to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity and rescinded plans to phase out the federal government’s use of private prisons.

On a cloudy afternoon in the Bayview district, Shaquille, 21, was riding in his sister’s 1991 Acura when another car ran a stop sign, narrowly missing them. Both cars screeched to a halt, and Shaquille and the other driver got out. “I just wanted to talk,” he recalls. But the talk became an argument, and the argument ended when Shaquille sent the other driver to the pavement with a left hook. Later that day, he was arrested and charged with felony assault.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is making aggressive law enforcement a top priority, directing his federal prosecutors across the country to crack down on illegal immigrants and “use every tool” they have to go after violent criminals and drug traffickers. But the attorney general does not have a single U.S. attorney in place to lead his tough-on-crime efforts across the country.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday invalidated a Colorado scheme that forced defendants whose convictions have been tossed or overturned to jump through several legal hoops before they could get back any fines or restitution they may have paid out before they were cleared.

Under the Colorado regime, defendants who have been exonerated or have successfully appealed their convictions have to sue to get their money back and essentially prove in civil court that they’re innocent.

A federal judge said Wednesday that she will fine California $1,000 a day if state officials don’t start providing swifter care for mentally ill inmates. U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller said she is fed up with the treatment delays that have plagued the prison mental health system despite two decades of federal oversight. She gave the state until May 15 to end a chronic backlog in sending inmates to state mental facilities.

An ambitious, $30 billion proposed budget for the next fiscal year was unveiled Monday by Los Angeles County officials that includes millions to fight homelessness, bulk up social services and medical care for the poor, and improve infrastructure. More than half of the funding for the 2017-2018 fiscal year would go toward health services and safety and protection, with another $8 billion toward assistance.

On Monday, the Los Angeles County Council released a long awaited report detailing the successes, ambitions and ongoing struggles of authorities to shut down illegal medical marijuana dispensaries in the county’s unincorporated cities. The report, which was initially expected in February, lacks specifics about the county’s enforcement strategy, saying that the LA District Attorney’s Office and the county counsel want to take an “aggressive, uniform and expeditious ‘surge strategy'” against illegal medical marijuana dispensaries, with the hope that they’ll all be shut down within the next four to six months.

A year after the Los Angeles County coroner abruptly resigned amid a backlog of bodies to be examined and hundreds of pending toxicology reports, some progress has been made inside one of the busiest morgues in the nation. However, the department’s request for additional funding was rejected Monday when the county released its proposed $30 billion budget. In March, 2016, 180 bodies were waiting to be processed.

In another ruling allowing pension cuts, an appeals court last week overturned a state labor board ruling that a voter-approved San Diego pension reform was invalid because the city declined to bargain the issue with labor unions. The initiative approved by 66 percent of San Diego voters in 2012 gave all new city hires, except police, a 401(k)-style individual investment retirement plan instead of a pension and imposed a five-year freeze on pay used to calculate pensions.

In another ruling allowing pension cuts, an appeals court last week overturned a state labor board ruling that a voter-approved San Diego pension reform was invalid because the city declined to bargain the issue with labor unions. The initiative approved by 66 percent of San Diego voters in 2012 gave all new city hires, except police, a 401(k)-style individual investment retirement plan instead of a pension and imposed a five-year freeze on pay used to calculate pensions.