On the killing of Ezell Ford and the impotence of civilian review boards

The Los Angeles Police Commission said the two LAPD officers who in August 2015 shot and killed an unarmed, mentally man named Ezell Ford acted improperly -- and I wrote about how that doesn't mean a whole lot, unfortunately, given that the commission has no actual power to discipline anyone. Check it out at TakePart.

Protests and prisons

Last month, I attended a protest outside a Nestlé water-bottling facility in South Los Angeles and spoke to a woman in an orangutan mask who objects to the world's largest food and beverage company profiting from the out-of-state sale of drought-stricken California's water. You can read my account here.

Earlier this week, California's state senate approved a bill that would strictly limit the use of solitary confinement at juvenile detention facilities. When I asked the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to comment on the legislation, I was told that there is no such thing as "solitary confinement" in California, the people who say they experienced it apparently mistaken (the state says the presence of a television, or the ability to take correspondence courses, means one is not truly in isolation). Read my report here.