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Students Experiencing Homelessness Are Supposed to Get Extra Help. Here’s How California Can Do Better
This article was produced in partnership with the California Health Report, Center for Public Integrity, The Seattle Times, Street Sense Media, WAMU/DCist, and WitnessLA. On a sunny morning in March 2014, Yenni Rivera picked up her small son and stepped outside her Long Beach home. She would not be going back. With the help of family members and her best friend, she loaded a few cardboard boxes into the back of her parents’ car. Inside the boxes was everything she now owned. In her arms was her reason for leaving and her hope for the future.
Students Experiencing Homelessness Are Supposed to Get Extra Help. Here’s How California Can Do Better
This article was produced in partnership with the California Health Report, Center for Public Integrity, The Seattle Times, Street Sense Media and WAMU/DCist. On a sunny morning in March 2014, Yenni Rivera picked up her infant son and stepped outside her Long Beach home. She would not be going back. With the help of family members and her best friend, she loaded a few cardboard boxes into the back of her parents’ car. Inside the boxes was everything she now owned. In her arms was her reason for leaving and her hope for the future.
Update on LASD recruits injured, several critically, when hit by speeding SUV in devastating incident
Slightly before 6:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, November 16, an SUV traveling southbound on Mills Avenue north of Telegraph Rd. in Whittier, CA, veered into the wrong lane and plowed into a group of first year trainees of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department who were, at the time, running northbound on Telegraph.
Op-Ed: Reform – Not Crime – Was the Winning Message in 2022
Despite months of campaign ads bombarding voters with bodybag imagery, grainy crime- scene videos, and threats about dangers awaiting them if the “soft-on-crime” candidate prevailed, last week’s election results suggest that fear-mongering about crime was not a winning strategy and that voters’ appetite for justice reform remains strong throughout the country.
Veterans Day: With deep gratitude and respect for those who have served
Below, as it is traditional for WitnessLA, we gathered some literary thoughts and also some music for this day:. *First, here is a small clip from Sebastian Junger’s combat narrative, War, which has been widely praised by veterans. Junger is not himself a veteran, but he embedded for 14 months with a platoon of the 173rd Airborne brigade in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley.
VOTE! And, while you wait for election results, watch for a new story on K-9 Spike
Yep. It’s finally arrived. Today is voting day. This means, among other things, that Los Angeles County voters will decide today if the nation’s largest sheriff’s department will have a new leader. Or will Alex Villanueva, the agency’s extremely controversial sheriff, remain at the helm?. As...
Researchers talked to 100 people about their experiences in solitary confinement, & California fails to get its much needed solitary reform: here’s what you need to know
When John McCain was a prisoner of war, he was beaten regularly, suffered two broken arms, and a broken leg. Then after his arms had finally healed—despite the lack of decent medical treatment—he was tortured again, which resulted in one of his arms breaking a second time. Yet,...
Mother of Shaylene Graves Shares With Prison Officials Policy Recommendations That Could Have Saved Her Daughter’s Life
On October 6, 2022, on an unprecedented presentation to California prison officials, the mother of Shaylene Graves, a young woman killed in a women’s prison in Chino in 2016, shared recommendations for preventing intimate partner violence and suicides, especially in women’s prisons. The presentation was part of a...
Ray Leyva, LA County’s respected former undersheriff who would have challenged Villanueva, has died
On Wednesday morning, October 12, Ray Leyva, who was the highly respected former second-in-command of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, died as the result of a malignant brain tumor, according to his family. Prior to his diagnosis, Leyva was planning to run for sheriff against Alex Villanueva. In the...
After Months of Uncertainty and Rising Jail Numbers, LA’s Office of Diversion and Reentry Gets Funding for 750 More Beds
For the past year and a half, the Los Angeles County Office of Diversion and Reentry’s housing programs have been operating at maximum capacity, meaning that ODR has been forced to turn away people who could otherwise be diversion candidates. However, ODR’s programs will expand by 750 beds in...
Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate questions re: LA’s Redistricting Process revealed by leaked recording.
On Wednesday Oct. 12, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that the California Department of Justice will investigate the most recent redistricting process of the City of Los Angeles. The need for an investigation was illuminated by the still expanding scandal, triggered by the release of a leaked recording of a...
Resignations required: There are no excuses that can erase Nury Martinez & Co’s vile & racist remarks – Updated
Monday, the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board—along with just about anyone with any sense—has called for the resignation of LA City Council President Nury Martinez, along with those of Council Members Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León. Tuesday PM update.President Joe Biden has now officially become the...
“Unconscionable” Jail Conditions Spur LA County Supervisors to Explore Building Locked Mental Health Facilities
On Tuesday, September 13, after hearing about persistent, inhumane conditions at Los Angeles County’s jail intake center, the LA County Board of Supervisors used a spur-of-the-moment motion to reintroduce the possibility of building a brand new locked medical facility—or facilities—to replace the dilapidated and dungeon-like Men’s Central Jail.
Deputy Gangs hearing #6: harassment of witnesses & whistleblowers continues
On Friday, September 23, the LA County Sheriffs Civilian Oversight Commission held the sixth of its special public hearings on the issue of deputy gangs. The event, which was held both in person and virtually, was set to begin at 9 a.m. But before the hearing’s special counsel, Bert Deixler, began to call witnesses, the COC commissioners acknowledged the 7 a.m. search of the home of fellow commissioner Patty Giggins by the LASD that occurred earlier this month.
Inside the team pioneering California’s red flag law
There were four more requests for gun violence restraining orders on Jeff Brooker’s desk when he arrived at the San Diego City Attorney’s Office that July morning. Officers had responded to a minor car crash at a mall where the driver, who carried a replica firearm, was rambling delusionally and threatening to kill the “one-percenters” and a public official. Another man, during an argument outside a family member’s home, had pulled a gun out of his waistband and pointed it at someone’s head as several others looked on.
Civilian Oversight continues to probe the toxic world of deputy gangs despite Sheriff Villanueva’s “tsunami of obstruction”
It’s been a scandal-filled week for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the LASD’s leader Alex Villanueva. Yet, apart from this week’s panoply of search warrants, and other disturbing events, according to Sean Kennedy, who is the chair of the Sheriffs Civilian Oversight Commission, the COC continues to make measurable progress in its investigation of the fifty-year problem of deputy gangs that continues to infect the culture of the nation’s largest sheriff’s department.
Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in California
One of the most important criminal legal system disparities in California has long been difficult to decipher: Which communities throughout the state do incarcerated people come from? Anyone who lives in, works within heavily policed and incarcerated communities, or who has an incarcerated loved one intuitively knows that certain neighborhoods disproportionately experience incarceration. But data have never been available to quantify how many people from each community are imprisoned with any real precision.
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