LOS ANGELES

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The Los Angeles County sheriff says a bystander’s cellphone footage showing a deputy violently tackling a woman while she filmed a man being handcuffed, then pepper-spraying her in the face, is “disturbing,” and community groups on Wednesday called for the department’s new chief to hold his agency accountable.

The June 24 incident in the city of Lancaster follows several cases that have drawn scrutiny to the department amid allegations of excessive use of force by its deputies.

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A bus carrying migrants from a Texas border city arrived in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday for the second time in less than three weeks.

The office of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was not formally notified but became aware on Friday of the bus dispatched from Brownsville, Texas, to L.A. Union Station, Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl said in a statement.

"The City of Los Angeles believes in treating everyone with respect and dignity and will do so," he said.

The bus arrived around 12:40 p.m., and the 41 asylum-seekers on board were welcomed by a collective of faith and immigrant rights groups. Eleven children were on the bus, according to a statement by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

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The number of homeless residents counted in Los Angeles County has spiked again, increasing by 9% since last year in the latest marker of how deep the crisis is of people sleeping in cars, encampments or shelters in California.

Results released Thursday from a federally required tally conducted in January found 75,518 people were homeless on any given night across the county, compared with 69,144 in 2022. About 46,260 were within the city of Los Angeles, where public frustration has grown as tents have proliferated on sidewalks and in parks.

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A California reparations task force has voted to approve recommendations on one of the most significant reparations campaigns for African Americans in modern U.S. history. However, some critics have questioned whether the proposed reparations are sufficient to address systemic issues in the Black community.

The task force was established through a bill authored by then-Assemblymember Shirley Weber, currently California's first African American Secretary of State, according to task force chair Kamilah Moore. The bill was signed into law in September 2020 by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

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One person was killed when a single-engine plane slammed into a grassy hillside above homes in a Los Angeles neighborhood amid dense fog, authorities said.

The Cessna C172 crashed around 8:45 p.m. Saturday on the city's west side, about 8 miles (13 km) southeast of Van Nuys Airport, the Los Angeles Fire Department and Federal Aviation Administration said.

Joubin Solemani was at home with his family in the upscale Beverly Crest area when they all heard a loud crash.

“We thought it might be a car crash. But we looked outside and didn't see anything. We didn't know what the heck it was,” Solemani said Sunday. “Then search-and-rescue showed up and were all over the hillside.”

Photo Credit: California Highway Patrol 

Prosecutors charged seven California Highway Patrol officers and a nurse with involuntary manslaughter on Wednesday in connection with the 2020 death of a man who screamed “I can’t breathe” while multiple officers restrained him as they tried to take a blood sample.

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced the charges in the death of Edward Bronstein, which the LA County coroner said was caused by “acute methamphetamine intoxication during restraint by law enforcement.”

“The officers had a legal duty to Mr. Bronstein,” Gascón said during a news conference. “He was in their custody. We believe that they failed their duty and their failure was criminally negligent, causing his death.”

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When North Carolina in 2016 banned transgender people from using the bathroom of their gender identity in public buildings, California retaliated by banning state-funded travel to that state and any other state with laws it deemed discriminatory against LGBTQ people.

But seven years later, California now bans state-funded travel to nearly half of the country following a surge of anti-LGBTQ legislation in mostly Republican-led states.

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At the start of 2022, Thomas Marshall weighed 311 pounds. He had been hospitalized 10 times in five years, including six surgeries. He had an open wound on his left leg that refused to heal — made worse by living in a dirty, moldy house with five other people, two ball pythons, four Chihuahuas and a cage full of rats.

More than a year later, Marshall has lost nearly 100 pounds. His wound has healed. His blood pressure has returned to normal levels. His foot, which had nerve damage, has improved to the point he goes on regular walks to the park.