Other fired LAPD officers want their cases reviewed after Dorner incident; Labor brokers exploit factory workers dependent on them for transportation; Michael Jackson wrongful death lawsuit begins; Washington's 'pot czar' tasked with setting up a new industry; A look inside Disney's effort to hire 3,000 veterans, plus much more.
Other fired LAPD officers want their cases reviewed after Dorner incident
The LAPD may review more than three dozen firings after the incident surrounding Christopher Dorner.
Dorner, dismissed from the department in 2008, made headlines in February for a deadly rampage in revenge for his ousting. But his allegations that the police department is racist and corrupt struck a chord with other fired officers. Forty of them are asking that the LAPD review their cases for wrongful termination.
Joining us for more is Joel Rubin, police reporter for the LA Times.
Michael Jackson wrongful death lawsuit begins
At this hour, opening statements begin in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Michael Jackson's mother, Katherine Jackson, against concert giant AEG Live. The trial will feature a star-studded witness list and is expected to last for months.
For more on this case, we're joined now by Anthony McCartney of the AP.
Labor shortages make Ventura County farmers scramble
The Senate's immigration reform bill gives farm workers a fast path to citizenship: five years. That's half the amount of time proposed for the rest of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US. The legislation could affect 400,000 workers in California.
KPCC's Charles Castaldi caught up with some of them in Ventura County.
Washington's 'pot czar' tasked with setting up a new industry
While it's been nearly six months since Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana, each state is still trying to figure out how to regulate the new industry. There are rumblings that Colorado lawmakers might try to make pot illegal again, and in Washington they're still trying to establish ground rules.
To do that, the state's liquor board has hired a team of consultants to figure out how to write regulations for the new legal marijuana industry. One of those people is Mark Kleiman, a UCLA professor and author of "Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs To Know."
How an investigative reporter suffered a marijuana mishap on the job
Journalist Michael Montgomery of the Center for Investigative Reporting has been covering marijuana here in California for several years now. You've heard him numerous times on this show, talking about everything from marijuana prices to federal crackdowns on pot dispensaries.
On a reporting trip here in Southern California, he had an experience which has changed the way he thought about this industry. That experience is chronicled in a new multimedia video as part of a series called Off the Record Stories:
Hollywood Monday: Industry employment up, Academy expansion, and more
Some good news for everyone who works below the line, as they say, in Hollywood. Employment in the entertainment industry is picking up, so much so that it's helping push down the over-all unemployment rate in the LA area.
Plus, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences plans to expand its membership, and we take a look ahead to two blockbuster sequels, "Ironman 3" and the second "Star Trek" film.
Here with that story and other Tinsel Town news, Rebecca Keegan of the LA Times.
NBA's Jason Collins the first active pro athlete to come out
NBA center Jason Collins is the first active professional athlete in one of the four major North American sports leagues to come out as gay.
Collins split time this past season with the Washington Wizards and Boston Celtics. He went to high school at Harvard-Westlake in North Hollywood and then Stanford before turning pro in 2002. He is a free agent, which means he's technically unemployed but can sign with any team that'll have him.
The question is, with his historic announcement, what will it mean for his chances to find a job next season?
Here to discuss Collins and what it could mean for the sports world is Franz Lidz, contributing writer with Sports Illustrated.
CA authorities catch multimillion-dollar fish bladder smuggling ring
We've heard of poachers hunting rhinos for their horns and elephants for their tusks, but now in southern California, they're going after a fish called the totoaba for their bladders.
Last week, federal agents seized over 200 of these bladders from a home in Calexico. On the black market, they could have fetched as much as $3.6 milllion.
We called up Jill Birchell from the office of Law Enforcement with US Fish and Wildlife Service to find out what this fish is and why it's in such high demand.
Picture This: Mark Laita captures the beauty of nature's deadliest serpents
This much we know for sure about the black mamba snake: its venom is very poisonous and it can kill you. That's something photographer Mark Laita recently learned that firsthand.
Laita makes his living as a commercial photographer, you've likely seen his work on products ranging from the iPhone to Gatorade. But his passion is portraits of everything from people and peonies to seahorses and snakes. For our series on photography called Picture This, we spoke with Laita about his new book, "Serpentine," which features images of snakes from throughout the world.
Laita joins the show with more about his project, his shooting style, and how he managed to survive a black mamba bite.
Interview Highlights:
On why he wanted to create his book "Serpentine":
"To me it's not a book about snakes, to me it's a book about color and form and movement. If you're looking for something to convey those qualities, what better than a snake?"
On finding the pit viper he chose for the cover:
"I couldn't do a project like this without getting that snake. I had seen a photo of it and none of the collectors or zoos or breeding labs that I had been dealing with had ever had one. I kept hunting and hunting relentlessly. I found this collector of pit vipers in upstate New York who had a basement full of really exotic, beautiful, only pit vipers. And he had this snake, only one of them."
On why he chose to shoot the snakes on black velvet:
"Most of the snakes, you'd put them on this black velvet and something about the nap of it, the fur, kept the snakes from moving. They'd try to scramble and get away, but they for some reason couldn't grip and they wouldn't move and they'd do whatever they could then eventually just stop and give up and take these poses that I end up capturing."
On his shooting style:
"I looked like a fool because I was standing next to some of these snakes. If you see how I'm shooting it, it looks like I'm standing right next to this very dangerous, venomous snakes, but the truth is they couldn't really move that quickly. I'm not reckless, maybe a little bit, but something about the velvet kept them from being able to move as quickly as they'd want to."
On being bitten by a venomous black mamba during shooting:
"The black mamba that I was shooting was about 14 or 15 feet long, and it's a heavier snake, whatever the case, the handler said it is a very timid snake, you don't have to worry about it. Everything was fine for the 20 minutes I was shooting it, he turns his back and right as he did that the snake kind of came around my foot. Knowing to not panic and move, I sat there and had this black mamba wrapped around my ankle, I asked him to give me my little point and shoot camera. He gives me the camera, I'm taking like 20 or 30 snapshots of this black mamba around my foot, which doesn't happen every day.
"He grabs his hook to pull the snake away and he inadvertently snags the red cord you see in the picture. The red cord dangled and that created the movement that startled the snake and it struck whatever was hot, which was the artery in my calf. Both fangs hit the artery, but my face is behind a camera and neither of us noticed that the snake had hit me. It didn't hurt, I didn't feel a thing. It wasn't like a lion biting me, it must have been just a fraction of a second. He pulls the snake away and I'm back to taking pictures...he goes, 'Dude you got hit,' and there's blood gushing down my leg. I start to panic a little bit...I was in Central America, we probably could have found the anti venom, so I probably would have survived, but whatever the case nothing happened. I think what happened was it was a very old snake, and I read that older snakes sometimes with save their venom for only prey they're going to eat."
Labor brokers exploit factory workers dependent on them for transportation
Public radio's Marketplace and the investigative news site ProPublica have looked into the temporary immigrant labor force in the U.S.
What they found is that somewhere between the temp agencies that book the workers and the factories that employ them, immigrant workers fall prey to a group of middle men called 'raiteros.' Among other things these raiteros often fleece paychecks and charge onerous fees for services, like transportation, that these workers have no chose but to use.
Jeff Tyler from Marketplace and Mike Grabell from ProPublica join the show with more.
Farmers look for new solutions to water woes
When the California snow pack is measured next week, the state will have a better sense of what the summer water supply will be. It could leave farmers scrambling for water, potentially pumping more precious groundwater from aquifers.
But too much pumping has overdrawn some aquifers, causing the land to sink in parts of California's farm belt. Some farmers are looking at a unique solution.
From the California Report, Sasha Khokha has the story.
A look inside Disney's effort to hire 3,000 veterans
It can be difficult for anyone to find a job right now, but it’s especially tough for new veterans.
The unemployment rate for recent young vets averaged more than 20 percent last year. That’s more than five percentage points higher than young non-vets.
But now, some big companies are making an effort to hire more veterans, including Disney.
“This is no different than planning for a mission,” Disney’s head of veteran hiring, Kevin Preston, told a room full of job seekers recently at a Disney-sponsored job seminar in Long Beach. “Know what you’re going to wear the night before. Make sure the tie is there. Make sure the shoes are there.”
Aside from attire, Preston stresses the importance of acing the interview, of networking—and of branding.
“Don’t overlook the status and the brand of being a veteran,” said Preston. “You need to have in the first three words of your resume ‘veteran.’”
Vets bring experience, follow-through
Preston served in the Army for 27 years, rising to the rank of colonel. He joined Disney a year ago to lead its effort to hire a thousand veterans in three years.
The company may have set the bar too low.
Already, Disney has hired 1,300 veterans. It recently announced a new goal of bringing on 2,000 vets in two years.
“Not since World War II has there been a better time to be a veteran,” said Preston in an interview after his seminar.
Corporate America has finally realized that veterans make excellent employees, he said. They’re good at following orders and at leading; they know how to follow-through on assignments; and they have experience with different cultures.
But Preston said many veterans never get to show what they can do on the job because they don’t know how to get a job. They’re used to the military, where you wear your resume on your sleeve.
“Building a resume is learned skill, learning how to interview a resume is a learned skill, building a network is a learned skill," said Preston. “The military doesn’t do that. We don’t use resumes, we don’t do interviews, and networking is not really needed.”
Understanding different behavior on the job
It’s not just the veterans who need training. Preston also teaches classes for Disney managers.
“And one of the things I tell them is, ‘Here’s where’s these people are coming from: You may see different behaviors in the office than what you’re used to,’’’ said Preston. “For example, the veterans may not be the chatty person that asks everyone, ‘How was your weekend?’ It’s not because they don’t like you; they’re just really focused on the job.”
If any place required a sunny disposition, it would seem to be Disney.
Many veterans who came to the job seminar badly wanted to work at the Happiest Place on Earth, even though their experience since leaving the military has been far from a fairy tale.
“I’ve had a lot of people tell me: ‘Find a job.’ But it’s not that easy,” said Eric Nicholson, who was medically discharged from the Marines in 2010.
He has nerve damage in one leg and uses a cane to help him walk. After two years of looking for work—sending out dozens of resumes—Nicholson’s only job offer came from Taco Bell.
He tried it for a month - and then he quit.
“It’s a little bit frustrating, but you gotta roll with the punches,” said Nicholson.
Nicholson hopes to work at the Magic Kingdom as a security guard, but what he’s really hoping for is that the company hires him to play a Disney character.
The Rolling Stones play secret show at tiny venue in Echo Park
In case you hadn't heard, the Rolling Stones played a surprise show this past weekend. Although the band could have easily filled the Staples Center or the Rose Bowl, they chose a tiny club in northeast LA: the Echoplex.
Daniel Ahearn was there for the show and he joins me now on the line.
What it means to have A 90-percent secure border
Before the estimated 11 million people living in this country illegally can start down the long path to citizenship, the U.S.-Mexico border must reach a level of security that satisfies border hawks in Congress. And that argument may not be won from statistics alone.
In the end it will come down to places like Altar Valley in Pima County, Ariz. The obelisk peak of the Baboquivari Mountainsjuts into the sky and divides Arizona, the Tohono O’odham Indian reservation and Mexico.
U.S. Border Patrol agents cruise the highway, hauling horses and ATVs and giant telescopes on the back of pickup trucks. This valley is one of the five busiest areas for migrant smuggling and drug trafficking along the U.S. border with Mexico.
For the latest version of comprehensive immigration reform to go through, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will have to convince people in the four border states that the border is secure. And in Arizona, that won’t be easy. People like Pat King have lived here with their families for more than 120 years and they'll have to be consulted.
"And Ms. Napolitano saying 'well the border’s never been more secure.' Well excuse me, but we don’t report all the damages and stuff that’s going on. Why bother?" King said.
King says immigrants crossing the border illegally die of dehydration on her ranch. Drug smugglers come down from the mountains chased by Border Patrol helicopters. There are petty crimes, too. Break-ins at their cabin in the hills. Waterlines slashed open by thirsty border crossers.
"And how do you equate that? Put that in your numbers and add that in. Because it’s part of it," King said.
Under the Senate’s plan, the Department of Homeland Security has to have a strategy to achieve a 90 percent effectiveness rating across the entire border.
And here’s where that equation King is talking about comes into play. The federal government measures effectiveness using the total number of apprehensions, the total number of turnbacks — those are folks who crossed the border, saw an agent and turned back to Mexico — and the total number of gotaways, the estimate of how many got through. Let’s say the Tucson sector has 100 apprehensions in a given day. And let’s say 20 people were chased by an agent and ran back into Mexico. That’s 120. Now let’s say agents found that 10 people got away that day. Divide out those gotaways and you’re left with a 92 percent effectiveness rate.
As it turns out, according to current government figures, the agency is already nearly meeting that 90 percent benchmark. Tucson Sector has an 87 percent rating. Laredo, 84. San Diego, 91 percent.
But the numbers are in some doubt. Measuring gotaways and turnbacks is an inexact science. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that not all the sectors measure them the same away.
Tony Coulson ran the Drug Enforcement Administration Tucson office. He’s now a DHS consultant.
"Does 90 percent in Tucson sector mean something different than 90 percent in South Texas along the Rio Grande Valley?" he asked.
Coulson expects that difference is going to come up as the U.S. Congress continues its debate and figures out a way to have a uniform count across the border.
To hit that 90 percent benchmark, the agency will receive $6.5 billion over the next five years to hire more agents, bring in more drones and to add more border walls and vehicle barriers.
Rebecca Orozco, a Southern Arizona historian, says it’s important to remember that we’ve been through this debate many times before, dating back to the Apache Wars.
"Then following World War I, they said 'we’re gonna build a border wall.' They built a series of forts that time, [it] lasted four years before they decided it cost too much and doesn’t do enough," Orozco said.
The Senate’s plan calls for input from stakeholders along the border, some of whom will be academics like Orozco, or ranchers like King. And satisfying their concerns may prove more elusive than hitting a 90 percent success rate.