Tag: california

Washington Has Been Much More Successful Than California in Displacing the Black Market for Pot

A new report indicates that Washington, which legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, has been much more successful at displacing the black market than California, where voters approved legalization in 2016. In a 2021 survey by the International Cannabis Policy Study (ICPS), 77 percent of Washington cannabis consumers reported buying “any type of marijuana” from a “store, co-operative, or dispensary” in the previous year, while 17 percent said they had obtained pot from a “dealer.”

The share of Washington consumers who report buying marijuana from a “store, co-operative, or dispensary” is higher than the average for states that have legalized recreational use, which was 57 percent in 2021, according to a nationwide ICPS survey. Washington’s Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) paid for the ICPS report on cannabis consumption in that state, and the ICPS has not published California-specific survey data. But calculations based on estimated total consumption and legal sales suggest that the black market accounts for somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of marijuana purchased in California.

California’s striking failure to shift consumers from illegal to legal dealers is largely due to a combination of high taxes, onerous regulations, and local retailing bans. While Washington has a relatively high retail marijuana tax (37 percent, plus standard sales taxes), in other respects the state has made it easier for licensed suppliers to compete with illegal sources.

A 2022 study from Reason Foundation (which publishes Reason) notes that local restrictions in California have created “massive cannabis deserts” where “consumers have no access to a legal retailer within a reasonable distance of their home.” Washington has more than three times as many legal dispensaries per capita as California.

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California megachurch leader, grandparents charged with murder, torture in death of 11-year-old daughter

A California megachurch leader and her parents have been arrested on charges including murder and torture in the death of the woman’s 11-year-old daughter.

Leticia McCormack, a leader at Rock Church in San Diego, founded and led by former NFL player Miles McPherson, was booked in jail Monday on a charge of murder, three counts of torture, and three counts of willful cruelty to a child in the death of Arabella McCormack, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office reported.

On Thursday, McCormack’s leadership profile had been removed from the megachurch’s website.

Arabella was initially fostered before being adopted by Brian and Leticia McCormack, officials said.

The 49-year-old church elder’s father, Stanley Tom, 75, was also charged with murder, three counts of torture, and three counts of willful cruelty to a child, according to a news release from the department. Arabella’s grandmother Adella Tom, 70, was booked on three counts of torture and three counts of willful cruelty to a child.

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Police in California conduct home raids with redacted search warrants

Police in San Diego County, California, and FBI agents reportedly coordinated to conduct several early-morning raids on homes with redacted search warrants.

The redactions included the location and the people being searched by the warrants, according to a CBS affiliate in San Diego.

The raids were conducted Thursday morning, with several of the targets being individuals with warrants out for their arrest, but it is unknown how many of those individuals were found in the raids.

Greg Otis, one of the residents affected by the raids, told the local news station more than a dozen officers showed up to his home early in the morning and demanded that he walk out of his home with his hands up. When he asked for a search warrant, they did not present one but said they were looking for his nephew.

“If you’re going to go to somebody’s house, tell the owner what you’re coming for. Don’t just barge on in there, you know, and never tell them what for,” Otis said to the station.

Officers did not find Otis’s nephew at the house.

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A Student Was Sodomized With a Pole at His Public High School. This California Congressional Hopeful Rejected His Damages Claim.

As a school board member in Southern California, Democratic congressional hopeful Jay Chen voted to reject a damages claim from a high school student who was sodomized with a pole as part of a horrific hazing ritual.

Chen—who is now running for Congress in California’s 45th Congressional District—sat on the Hacienda La Puente school board during a high-profile hazing incident in 2011, which saw older members of a boys’ high school soccer team in the district sexually assault and sodomize their younger teammates with a sharp, javelin-like pole. In October 2012, one victim filed a claim for at least $25,000 against the district, alleging that Chen and other top officials failed to protect him. Chen led a motion to reject the claim in November 2012, board meeting minutes show.

The victim later detailed the brutal attack in a lawsuit against Chen’s district, which cited the initial damages claim. “Plaintiff and other varsity soccer players were victimized after being lured to the backroom … where athletic equipment was stored,” the suit stated. “Before the assault, the victim is asked whether he wants it ‘the easy way’ or ‘the hard way.’ The easy way meant that the victim would bend down and accept the sexual assault without resistance—while the hard way meant, upon resistance by the victim, he will be physically attacked by those present and forcefully have a foreign object inserted into his anus.”

Chen was explicitly mentioned in the lawsuit, which alleged that Chen knew or should have known of the “sexually abusive actions” and that the district “failed to protect” the victims. Chen’s district settled the suit just days before its scheduled trial date in March 2016. The attacks also led to felony assault convictions against three juveniles.

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Masturbation story assigned to 10th graders in California, teacher placed on leave

A disturbing exclusive report from Libs of TikTok indicates that a high school teacher in California recently assigned to 10th grade students a story that graphically depicts a grown man unknowingly masturbating in front of young girls.

In the presumably fictitious short story entitled “Shower Power Hippie Man,” a 9-year-old named Michele and a group of girls her own age frequently sneak to a nearby neighborhood to watch a grown man take a shower. On one such occasion, the girls witness the man masturbate until he orgasms.

“He kept yanking and pulling, pulling and yanking, and slowly, like Tia Annie’s Boston terrier, it stood up, stood out, stood red, different from any other body part we’d ever seen in our lives,” the narrator describes. “An alien tentacle from another planet. He continued to lather. …

“Shower Power Hippie Man’s face slowly grew violent, and anger began to envelope his usual calm,” the narrator continues. “And suddenly, like the volcano in the film we saw in Mr. Larkey’s geography class, he exploded. I mean, right then and there in his shower, his house, in front of us, in front of our horrified eyes.

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OAKLAND COPS HOPE TO ARM ROBOTS WITH LETHAL SHOTGUNS

IN A SERIES of little noted Zoom meetings this fall, the city of Oakland, California, grappled with a question whose consequences could shape the future of American policing: Should cops be able to kill people with shotgun-armed robots?

The back-and-forth between the Oakland Police Department and a civilian oversight body concluded with the police relinquishing their push for official language that would have allowed them to kill humans with robots under certain circumstances. It was a concession to the civilian committee, which pushed to bar arming robots with firearms — but a concession only for the time being.

The department said it will continue to pursue lethal option. When asked whether the the Oakland Police Department will continue to advocate for language that would allow killer robots under certain emergency circumstances, Lt. Omar Daza-Quiroz, who represented the department in discussions over the authorized robot use policy, told The Intercept, “Yes, we are looking into that and doing more research at this time.”

The controversy began at the September 21 meeting of an Oakland Police Commission subcommittee, a civilian oversight council addressing what rules should govern the use of the city’s arsenal of military-grade police equipment. According to California state law, police must seek approval from a local governing body, like a city council, to determine permissible uses of military equipment or weapons like stun grenades and drones. Much of the September meeting focused on the staples of modern American policing, with the commissioners debating the permissible uses of flash-bang grenades, tear gas, and other now-standard equipment with representatives from the Oakland Police Department.

Roughly two hours into the meeting, however, the conversation moved on to the Oakland police’s stable of robots and their accessories. One such accessory is the gun-shaped “percussion actuated nonelectric disruptor,” a favorite tool of bomb squads at home and at war. The PAN disruptor affixes to a robot and directs an explosive force — typically a blank shotgun shell or pressurized water — at suspected bombs while human operators remain at a safe distance. Picture a shotgun barrel secured to an 800-pound Roomba on tank treads.

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California serial killer: Police arrest man suspected in Stockton murders

Police in Stockton, California announced that a suspect has been arrested in relation to six murders and one shooting since April 2021.

Stockton Police Department Chief Stanley McFadden announced that Wesley Brownlee, 43, was arrested while he was armed and on a “mission to kill” another victim.

McFadden said that police followed Brownlee while he was driving on Saturday morning, and while watching his “patterns,” officers determined that “he was on a mission to kill” and he was “out hunting.”

When police officers made contact with Brownlee at around 2 a.m. after stopping him, they observed he was wearing a mask around his neck with dark clothing, McFadden said, adding that he was armed when taken into custody.

“We are sure we stopped another killing,” McFadden said.

Brownlee was arrested in relation to the fatal shootings of Salvador Debudey Jr., 43; Paul Yaw, 35; Jonathan Hernandez Rodriguez, 21; Juan Cruz, 52; and Lawrence Lopez Sr., 54, which all took place over the last three months.

Police earlier said that the suspect is being linked to several additional incidents dating back to April 2021, which include the shooting of a 46-year-old Black woman  who was unarmed on April 16, in addition to the fatal shooting of a 40-year-old Hispanic man who was also unarmed on April 10.

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Southern California Superintendent Defends 7th-Grade Boy Masturbating In Front Of Classmates, Claims It’s Normal

A California superintendent defended a 7th-grade boy allegedly caught masturbating in front of his classmates, insisting to shocked parents that it was normal.

The superintendent, Mark McLaughlin of the Conejo Valley Unified School District (CVUSD), admonished parents for bringing up the issue during a school board meeting last month. McLaughlin disclosed that similar offenses occur at least once a year in their district, which he said normalized the incident.

“I don’t think any of you would want us up here chatting about an issue that took place with your child,” said McLaughlin. “I would say that, at least once a year, this comes up from both males and females within a school setting. And so, I don’t think this is anything outside the norm.”

McLaughlin issued those remarks in response to the testimony of Carrie Burgert, the mother of one of the alleged victims. Burgert shared that her daughter and other classmates allegedly witnessed the 7th-grade boy masturbating while in class back in May. Burgert added that the principal informed district leadership, but she has yet to hear back from the district office all these months later.

“I only know this because my daughter told me in the car when I picked her up, saying her friends were disturbed, traumatized, and scared,” said Burgert.

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Second world war ‘Ghost Boat’ emerges in California lake, puzzling officials

Dubbed the “Ghost Boat” by officials, the decayed carcass of a second world war Higgins boat, used to transport troops into battle and on to beaches overseas, began to emerge from the shallows in Lake Shasta last fall. Levels have sunk low enough this year to excavate the craft fully.

But how it ended up in California’s largest reservoir, buried in the depths for decades, is uncertain.

“The circumstance of its sinking remains a mystery,” US Forest Service officials with Shasta-Trinity national forest wrote in a Sunday morning Facebook post, including photos of the historic find perched atop dried cracked earth of the desiccated lakebed. Numbers painted along the boat’s ramp show that it was once assigned to the Attack Transport USS Monrovia, used as General George Patton’s headquarters in the Sicilian occupation in 1943.

“Eisenhower also was on this ship at that time, and it went on to a further six D-Day invasions in the Pacific,” officials said in the post, noting that it was reportedly used in the invasion of Tarawa and that it “sank in shallow water during that invasion”, but was later salvaged. Classified as an attack transport in 1943, the ship earned seven battle stars during the war, according to NavSource, a volunteer-run history site, but was sold for scrap in 1969.

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Newsom-Appointed Judge Gives Pedophile With ‘One Of The Largest’ Child Porn Collections Less Than Half A Year In Jail.

ACalifornia man arrested with what authorities described as an “astonishing” amount of child pornography – including over 1,000 DVDs with content showing children being raped – will spend less than a year in jail.

The light sentence was issued by Fresno County Superior Court Judge Leanne Le Mon, a self-identified Democrat and judicial appointee of Governor Gavin Newsom.

On Tuesday, 57-year-old Michael Wayne Martin of Fresno was officially sentenced to 180 days in jail and two years of formal probation, according to court documents.

The sentence follows Martin’s arrest in May of 2021, where investigators with the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office found over 1,000 DVDs that contained videos of children being raped at his home.

“His closet was stuffed full of DVDs, the majority contained video and images of children being raped. Disgusting material,” said Tony Botti with the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office in response to Martin’s arrest.

Officials described their findings, which also included electronic devices and books containing explicit photos and videos of children, as “one of the largest collections of child pornography they have ever come across in an investigation.” No evidence suggested that Martin engaged in physical contact with children.

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