Tag: california

High School Student and Father Arrested Following School Threat Allegations — Cache of Guns and Explosives Including RPG Launcher Discovered at Home

A potentially catastrophic event was averted at Rancho Bernardo High School when officials took swift action after learning of threats made by a student. The student and his father have been taken into custody, according to the Poway Unified School District, ABC 10News reported.

Rancho Bernardo High School, or RBHS, is a public high school in the Poway Unified School District of San Diego County, California.

Christine Paik, Chief Communications Officer for the Poway Unified School District, informed ABC 10News that the student was apprehended by the authorities last Friday, January 26.

The arrest followed an alarming series of events that began with vigilant students reporting unsettling videos and statements made among students detailing a planned attack on the school slated for Tuesday, January 30.

“This is a situation where everything went right,” Paik said.

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To protect kids, California might require chronological feeds on social media

Social media companies design their feeds to be as gripping as possible, with complicated algorithms shuffling posts and ads into a never-ending stream of entertainment.

A new California law would require companies to shut off those algorithms by default for users under 18, and implement other mandated tweaks that lawmakers say would reduce the negative mental health effects of social media on children.

The bill, dubbed the Protecting Kids from Social Media Addiction Act by its author, state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), was announced at a news conference with California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Monday, alongside another proposed law that would tighten privacy protections for minors.

“Social media companies have the ability to protect our kids,” Skinner said. “They could act; they have not.”

One of the act’s key provisions is making a chronological feed the default setting on platforms, which would show users posts from the people they follow in the order that they were uploaded, rather than arranging the content to maximize engagement.

This change would show young users “the things that they want to see, as opposed to the addictive algorithmic feed that is presently being fed to our children,” Bonta said.

The act would also require the default settings on social media apps to mute notifications between midnight and 6 a.m., cap use at one hour daily, and remove the visibility of “like” counts. Parents — and in practice, most likely, the children using these apps — would have the ability to change these default settings.

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Long Beach, California, Police ‘Brutally’ Arrested a Cancer Patient. Now, the City Is Paying $300,000.

Long Beach, California, is stuck with a $300,000 bill after three of its police officers arrested a cancer patient with “brutal force” for driving with an expired vehicle registration. 

On September 3, 2022, Johnny Jackson, who had undergone surgery for his prostate cancer the day prior, was driving home from an errand to make a copy of his doctor’s note following surgery when he noticed he was being followed by an unmarked Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) vehicle. 

According to a lawsuit filed last October, when Jackson pulled into his driveway, the LBPD vehicle parked outside his house. Jackson exited his car, holding his doctor’s note, and told the officers that he knew he had an issue with his vehicle registration. In response, the officers, who were not named in the complaint, ordered Jackson to put his hands up and approach them. As he was doing so, Jackson was additionally ordered to put his hands on his head and turn so his back was facing one officer, while a second officer approached Jackson’s front porch.

Body camera footage shows Jackson again telling the officers that he knew his vehicle registration may have been expired and that he had gotten surgery for his prostate cancer the day before. The lawsuit states that, while Jackson was speaking, “a gust of wind began blowing the Doctor’s Note off the top of his vehicle.” Jackson then told the officers that “this is actually my paperwork for my surgery yesterday,” and put one of his hands on the note to prevent it from blowing away.

In response, one of the officers rushed to grab Jackson’s arm, pinning it behind his back and telling him that he was “about to get fucked up.” 

“Listen to me, put your hands behind your back. If you resist you will get hurt,” one officer told Jackson. “If you hurt me I will sue you. I just had surgery,” Jackson replied.

Body camera footage shows the ensuing struggle, in which Jackson was pulled in multiple directions by the officers, as Jackson again told them he was recovering from surgery. The lawsuit states that one officer struck Jackson in the head in an attempted “takedown maneuver,” which he followed by kneeing Jackson in his groin three times. 

“Why are you forcing us to use force on you?” one officer asked

Eventually, Jackson was handcuffed and cited for having an expired vehicle registration and resisting arrest. Jackson sued the city and police department in October 2023, arguing that the officers engaged in excessive force and caused him multiple injuries by arresting him so violently, despite being aware of his recent surgery. 

A settlement in the case was reached in December 2023, and the staggering $300,000 value was announced last week.

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California Bill Would Electronically Cap Vehicle Speed to 10 MPH Over Limit

Everyone wants safer roads. However, California senator Scott Wiener wants “SAFER” roads, as that’s the name of the bill he proposed, which would electronically cap a new vehicle’s top speed to 10 mph over the speed limit, among other things.

Part of the Speeding and Fatality Emergency Reduction on California Streets (SAFER California Streets) bill published Tuesday would require all vehicles built starting in 2027 to have speed governors. As proposed, they’d work using a vehicle’s GPS compared with a database of posted speed limits, though speed limit sign recognition would seem to present another method. The text of SB-961 mentions that the electronic regulator “shall only be capable of being temporarily disabled by the driver of the vehicle,” but doesn’t explain in what circumstances a driver should or will be allowed to do that.

Other road changes in the bill include side underride guards on trucks, to reduce the risk of cars and bikes being pulled underneath in a crash; improved crosswalks; and curb extensions. These new rules are designed to counter a rise in reckless driving since the pandemic. According to TRIP, a national transportation research nonprofit, traffic casualties in California rose 22% from 2019 to 2022, and 4,400 Californians died in traffic accidents in 2022.

“The alarming surge in road deaths is unbearable and demands an urgent response,” said Senator Wiener in a news release. “There is no reason for anyone to be going over 100 miles per hour on a public road, yet in 2020, California Highway Patrol issued over 3,000 tickets for just that offense. Preventing reckless speeding is a commonsense approach to prevent these utterly needless and heartbreaking crashes.”

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California homeless people are found living inside CAVES 20 feet below street level complete with home furnishings – as Democrat state grapples with vagrancy and LA begins annual count of those living rough

Rough sleepers in California were found living inside furnished caves dug into the banks of a river 20 feet below street level. 

The groups were removed from the eight caves – along the Tuolumne River in Modesto – over the weekend, and they were emptied of belongings, furniture and 7,600 lbs of rubbish, filling two trucks and a trailer. 

Some of the caves were decorated with murals, had broken floor tiles and one even had a makeshift fireplace with a chimney. 

Modesto Police Department said: ‘This particular area has been plagued by vagrancy and illegal camps, which have raised concerns due to the fact that these camps were actually caves dug into the riverbanks.’

It comes as Los Angeles carries out its annual homeless count to try to take an accurate snapshot of the rough sleeper population in the city, after 75,500 were found to be sleeping rough in the county on any given night last year.  

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California LGBTQ+ center director arrested in multi-agency child sex-ring operation

The Director of the Rainbow Resource Center of Modesto was arrested among 17 other men in a multi-agency sting operation targeting men for allegedly eliciting sex from minors according to a report from the Modesto Bee.

According to the report, Gerad Slayton, 42, and sixteen other men were taken into custody by the Turlock Police Department after falling into a sting designed to ensnare sexual predators reportedly contacting minors with the intent to have sex with them. 

The Rainbow Resource Center posted a statement to Facebook saying, “We want to assure our community that we take these allegations with the utmost seriousness. [Slayton’s] actions do not represent our organization’s values or mission.” They added, “In accordance with our unwavering commitment to upholding the highest standards of conduct and integrity, we are addressing the issue within the rainbow resource center.

“We acknowledge the impact that the situation may have had on the community. We understand that trust is earned through consistent and accountable actions. We are dedicated to rebuilding any trust that may have been affected by the situation. As an organization that is at the forefront of advocacy and support for the LGBTQ+ community, our actions must reflect our dedication to these principles.”

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California’s Attack on Gig Work Predictably Drove Workers Out of Jobs

California’s attempt at forcing gig workers to become traditional employees backfired by driving many of those workers out of their jobs.

In the wake of a new law (Assembly Bill 5) that was intended to reclassify many independent contractors as regular employees, self-employment in California fell by 10.5 percent and overall employment tumbled by 4.4 percent, according to a study released Thursday by the Mercatus Center, a free market think tank housed at George Mason University. In professions where self-employment was more common, the effects were more dramatic, and in some fields employment declined by as much as 28 percent after A.B. 5’s implementation.

Meanwhile, researchers Liya Palagashvili, Paola A. Suarez, Christopher M. Kaiser, and Vitor Melo reported finding no increase in the number of employees classified as full employees. In professions where there was an uptick in traditional employees receiving W-2 wages and benefits, those increases were not large enough to cancel out the number of self-employed workers who left jobs.

“These results suggest that AB5 did not simply alter the composition of the workforce as intended by lawmakers,” the four researchers wrote. “Instead, our findings suggest that AB5 was associated with a significant decline in self-employment and overall employment in California.”

That could have significant implications for the Department of Labor’s (DOL) recently announced attempt at duplicating California’s policy across the rest of the country.

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California Lawmaker Revives Bill To Legalize Marijuana Cafes Months After Governor’s Veto

A California lawmaker is renewing his push to legalize cannabis cafes in the state, with a newly introduced bill and plans to work with the governor and regulators to address concerns that resulted in the last version being vetoed.

Assemblymember Matt Haney (D) is again sponsoring the proposal, which would allow on-site marijuana consumption at licensed businesses, which could also offer non-cannabis food and drinks and host live events such as concerts if they get permission from the local government.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) vetoed the prior version, saying that while he appreciated that the intent was to “provide cannabis retailers with increased business opportunities and an avenue to attract new customers,” he felt “concerned this bill could undermine California’s long-standing smoke-free workplace protections.”

“Protecting the health and safety of workers is paramount,” the governor said at the time. “I encourage the author to address this concern in subsequent legislation.”

Accordingly, Haney says he’ll be exploring ways to resolve those concerns in collaboration with the governor’s office and the state Department of Cannabis Control (DCC).

As filed last week, however, it seems the basic provisions of the bill were kept the same as those discussions continue. The sponsor told The San Francisco Standard that the legislation will be amended to address the governor’s concerns “in the coming months.”

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Date rape drug test kits soon to be required at bars, nightclubs in California

In California it is about to get a lot harder for partygoers and revelers at bars and nightclubs to have their drinks “roofied” unwittingly.

A new law known as AB 1013 will go into effect in the Golden State this July that will require all bars and nightclubs to keep testing kits at their establishments that can detect drugs like Rohypnol, ketamine or the sedative GHB.

According to the bill, these business owners must offer to sell their customers the unexpired testing devices “at a cost not to exceed a reasonable amount based on the wholesale cost of those devices” or offer them for free.

There must also be signage at the facilities that read: “Don’t get roofied! Drink spiking drug test kits available here. Ask a staff member for details.”

The law goes into effect July 1, 2024, and will be repealed on Jan. 1, 2027, unless reinstated by the California General Assembly. The bill was proposed California Democrat Josh Lowenthal.

The kits will include a straw, sticker and strip to detect the “date rape drugs” in drinks.

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‘It was creepy’: Woman found in prone position with no head or thumbs and blood drained from entire body is identified

Nearly 13 years after cops found a woman without her head or thumbs and with her blood drained from her body, they now know her name.

The Kern County Sheriff’s Office last week said it identified the woman found dead in a grape vineyard in Arvin, California, on March 29, 2011, as 64-year-old Ada Beth Kaplan. The scene that day in Arvin, which is about 30 miles south of Bakersfield, was brutal. In addition to having her head and thumbs chopped off, the woman now known as Kaplan also was nude and placed in a prone position that investigators considered sexual.

Detectives believe she was killed elsewhere and carefully placed in the vineyard. Coroners categorized the death as a homicide but could not determine the cause of death.

Ray Pruitt, then an investigator with Kern County Sheriff’s Department, described the scene as “surreal” in a 2018 interview with NBC affiliate KGET.

“I remember looking at the detectives and the sergeant on scene and the coroner investigator who had arrived on the scene and we were all kind of speechless,” Pruitt said. “We were all just looking at each other trying to get our minds around what we were looking at.”

Pruitt said the murder was one “that you come across maybe once in an entire career, maybe never.”

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