Long Beach Press-Telegram

SoCal Police's Blood Money

When the DA declines to prosecute bad cops, the only justice families can get is financial

Long Beach Still Has Pot Clubs?

According to an article in today's Long Beach Press Telegram, the city is trying to revoke the commercial license of the owner of a strip mall on Anaheim Blvd. The reason? The landlord keeps renting the building to pesky pot clubs.All of which raises a question: are there really any medical marijuan ... More >>

What We Learned, April 14-20

It's our weekly look back at the Weekly's week that was, with taglines indicating what this taught us.APRIL 14: Ron Thomas, the father of Kelly Thomas, the young man beaten to death by Fullerton cops in July 2011, participates in the Social Justice Summit at Cal State Fullerton. His topic is not ven ... More >>

Orange County Register Eyed by Publisher South of the Border

​Someone south of the border may buy the Orange County Register.Clean up in whichever aisles old coot heads just exploded in.That's south of the Orange County border, not the Mexican one.

Kenneth Ray Johnson, Charles Anthony Mackbee, Arrested in Philip Victor Williamson Murder

​Police in Long Beach have announced two more arrests in the March 2011 murder of Philip Victor Williamson, whom police believe may have been carrying seven pounds of marijuana and $500,000 in cash when he was shot in an alley north of downtown. Kenneth Ray Johnson, 36, and Charles Anthony Mackbee ... More >>

[UPDATED with Tribune Talks Back On:] Sale Could Lead to One Company Owning All SoCal Dailies

​UPDATE, JUNE 16, 9:22 A.M.: Now that merger talks with MediaNews have broken down, Irvine-based owner of the Orange County Register Freedom Communications has revived negotiations with that other Southern California newspaper  publisher.No, not the Los Angeles investment company that bought ... More >>

Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station Radio at War With Local Garage Doors

​The Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station's new radio system is interfering with some residential garage door openers.Unfortunately for those 18 homeowners in Westminster, Huntington Beach and Long Beach's Island Village area that called the base after figuring out military signals were responsible fo ... More >>

Party Foul: Dude on Beach Busted With 1500 Pounds of Weed

​There's an interesting little story on the Long Beach Press Telegram website today about what has to be the biggest marijuana bust on Catalina Island in recent memory. "Deputies arrested one man and seized 1,500 pounds of marijuana on a Catalina Island beach, authorities said today," the story sa ... More >>

Press-Telegram Kills Sports, Photo and Features, Allows Staffers to Reapply at Daily Breeze

​The Long Beach Press-Telegram, whose history extends back to 1897, is reportedly eliminating its sports, photo and features departments.In Long Beach, anyway.Some members of those departments will be swallowed up by the Torrance Daily Breeze, which shares news the P-T and other MediaNews Group pa ... More >>

Register Sale Could Lead to One Company Owning All SoCal Dailies: Media Expert

​A newspaper journalist-turned-Silicon Valley media mogul sets up the dominoes which, once tipped over, could lead "a single entity" to "publish all the dailies from the Tehachapi Mountains at the north end of metro L.A. to the Mexican border."At the middle of it all is the pending sale of the Ora ... More >>

[UPDATE] 5 Die in Long Beach Plane Crash. Tom Dean, Laguna Beach Developer, and Bruce Krall, Ladera Ranch Banker, Among the Dead

​UPDATE, MARCH 21, 4:10 P.M.: The doomed twin-engine plane pilot who died in Wednesday morning's Long Beach Airport crash has been identified as Kenneth Earl Cruz.The 43-year-old Culver City resident worked for Rainbow Air of Long Beach, had been a commercial pilot since 2003 an ... More >>

Long Beach Says Goodbye to Annual Celebrity-Studded Women's Conference

​The annual, superstar-studded women's conference that brought speakers like Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Diane Sawyer, Sandra Day O'Connor, Sarah McLachlan and Suze Orman to Long Beach, along with major tourism dollars, will not be back to the city this year.    It is uncerta ... More >>

This Just In: Rohrabacher Will Not Sing "Kumbaya" With Obama

​President Barack Obama's conciliatory, olive-branch-loaded, let's-all-work-together-for-the-sake-of-America State of the Union speech before both houses of Congress Tuesday evening failed to sway Representative Dana Rohrabacher."You think that us sitting together and singing 'Kumbaya' is going to ... More >>

Boeing Cuts 900 Jobs in Long Beach, But OC Workers Also Get Bad News

​Boeing's announcement that it is eliminating 900 jobs in Long Beach is getting the big headlines today, but the once-mighty aerospace company also dropped some bad employment news for Orange County.

[UPDATED:] In-Custody Death and Police Killing of Andres Ramirez Put DA's New Disclosure Policy to the Test

T-Rack​Update, December 14, 11:48 a.m.: The disclosure policy has changed, but the results have not. As with just about every (if not every) police shooting case brought before it, the Orange County District Attorney's Office has officially cleared Laguna Beach cops of criminal wrongdoing in the d ... More >>

Amanda Russell, Long Beach Poly Senior, Wins $20,000 from KFC for a Tweet!

Flickr user Ollie Crafoord​In the Department of Participating in Every Zany Contest Fast-Food Chains Offer comes this news: a Long Beach Poly senior won a $20,000 college scholarship from KFC for the best tweet expressing how the chain would help the student better their lives.Amanda Russell didn' ... More >>

Michelle Obama Spoke Near "Disaster" Site

​The Secret Service protecting Michelle Obama had reason to be suspicious of an ominous sight very close to where the first lady appeared as part of Maria Shriver's Women's Conference 2010 in Long Beach Tuesday. Cars were overturned at the intersection of First Street and Elm Avenue, but all was n ... More >>

Two More Long Beach Cops Arrested For Stealing Weapons

​It's a case of cops behaving badly. An officer and a former officer from the Long Beach Police Department have been arrested for grand theft of weapons in connection with the previous arrest of Officer Damian Ramos, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported.  Ramos had been arrested in August f ... More >>

1949 Ford Sedan Shows Off Its Classic Car Trophy--in Street Where DUI Crash Happened

​Police and video reporters responding to an 11 p.m. car crash in Long Beach found a trophy in the street right next to a brown sedan involved in the incident. That would be a 1949 Ford Sedan which had won the trophy at a car show earlier in the day at Veterans Stadium before crashing into a big r ... More >>

Jonathan Huynh Quickly Found Guilty of Murdering His 20-year-old Girlfriend

​It took jurors less than two hours to agree that Jonathan Huynh strangled and stabbed his 20-year-old girlfriend to death.Huynh, 22, of Mission Viejo, was convicted Wednesday of first-degree murder in last year's slaying of Cal State Long Beach student Kate Su Yi.

Airport Airspace Changes Prompted by Mid-Air Collision Warnings Come in for Criticism

​Looking up at the skies over north Costa Mesa a couple weeks ago produced a most disturbing site: a JetBlue plane making its normal descent into Long Beach Airport was passed maybe 100 feet above by another airliner heading for either LAX or the landing line at John Wayne Airport. Maybe that's a ... More >>

Rossmoor War on Coyotes Ugly

​So, the residents of Rossmoor, Seal Beach, Los Alamitos and East Long Beach are perturbed because coyotes are apparently attacking defenseless Fidos and Garfields with ever more frequency, and the response from officialdom is to leave the American jackals be. But close readers of this space shoul ... More >>

Cypress Stop Gets in on OC DUI Action Tonight

​The Cypress Police Department conducts a DUI and driver's license checkpoint from 8 p.m. Saturday to 3 a.m. Sunday.Perhaps feeling a bit saucy, the cop shop isn't disclosing the location of that checkpoint, which could feature sights like this on the right if boozy drivers are ordered out of thei ... More >>

Bicycling: So Hot Right Now

​Bikes are sooooo hot!In Long Beach, they are hot in the stolen property sense. More on that in a bit. First, we turn more positively to Orange County's LB.

Long Beach Cops Nab 2 Bicycle-Theft Suspects

​We told you last month that as Long Beach has become more bicycle friendly, bike thefts have risen. As Bicycling is Embraced, Bike Thefts Rise The Police Department announced it has arrested two suspected of ripping off two-wheelers.

[UPDATED:] Long Beach Weighs Marijuana Tax

​UPDATE: The council voted 8-1 to hold a hearing next month on whether to put a medical-marijuana tax on the November city ballot.The Long Beach City Council considered a proposal Tuesday night to put a ballot measure before local voters that would tax marijuana.However, Americans for Safe Access ... More >>

[UPDATED:] Ban Smoking at Tiny Long Beach Parks?

​UPDATE: The council voted 8-1 to send to the Parks and Recreation Commission a councilwoman's proposal to ban cigarette smoking in Long Beach's small parks.We told you here that the Long Beach City Council Tuesday night may take the first steps in letting voters decide if medical marijuana should ... More >>

CSULB's Dr. Foxy in the Big Brother House

​Ragan Fox is an assistant professor of communications at Cal State Long Beach. He's also the host of a popular podcast (Fox and the City,) a performance artist, a poet, an author of two books and a gay man with a PhD in communications. In short, he's the perfect reality show cast member. Dr. Fox ... More >>

Yet Another Newspaper Chain To Go Bankrupt

Who's Next?​The rest of the economy might be slowly recovering from the great global economic cataclysm, but the death march of daily print journalism continues. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal---one of the few daily papers that successfully managed the rise of the Internet--reported that Dean ... More >>

Tale of Three Port of Long Beach Realities

​"Ports Celebrate Clean Truck Program Anniversary"Long Beach Press Telegram"Port Trucking Company Fights Economy, Environmental Fee"89.3 KPCC"Backroom Deal Leaves Long Beach Truck Program in Hands of Polluting Industry"Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club via PR Newswire

OC Weekly Receives 8 SoCal Journalism Awards Nominations

The OC Weekly--as in ORANGE COUNTY Weekly--plot for Los Angeles media market domination has been slow to achieve but persistent, as evidenced by the impressive showing Weeklings make on the Los Angeles Press Club's list of finalists for the 51st annual SoCal Journalism Awards.Winners will be announc ... More >>

Navel Gazing: The Avis of Journalistic Blogs in the West

Dear readers, prepare to withstand some navel gazing about Navel Gazing, the OC Weekly staff news blog: It has won second-place honors from Best of the West, which was founded in 1987 to promote freedom of information and reward journalistic excellence, mainly through its contest for newspapers and ... More >>

More Fun With the Queen Mary of Orange Coun...uh...Long Beach

First off, an "Ahoy, matey!" with a cherry on top to "Nice try," who justifiably mocks my bleary-eyed muffing of the photo selection for Speaking of Abandoned Ships, Save the Queen [Mary] Can't Save Itself. I'm next to positive the correct barnacle collector is shown here. And I disagree with Nice t ... More >>

Closing and Re-opening in Long Beach: Sophy's

According to a story in the Long Beach Press-Telegram, Sophy's -- the popular Cambodian restaurant on Long Beach's Anaheim street -- is moving to a new location not because they wanted to, but because their landlord refused to renew the lease. So they upped and got a new lease at a better location, ... More >>

Devil Dean Calls Obama "Bin Laden"

Most people know Dean Singleton as the owner of the Denver-based MediaNews, Inc., a man who loves to buy newspapers like the L.A. Daily News and Long Beach Press-Telegram so that he can slash salaries, bust unions, earn huge profits, and generally quicken the destruction of print journalism. (His ef ... More >>

More newsroom cuts! Who is it this time?

LA Daily News staff are bracing for a possible shakeup after, as media blog LA Observed reports, employee representatives have sent memos saying a meeting this very afternoon could produce some very bad news. We expect there will probably be a staff meeting called Wednesday afternoon and that they ... More >>

Ayn Rand Institute Warns: The Obesity Police Are Coming!

Mississippi lawmakers have proposed a bill that would revoke the business license of any restaurant that serves food to fat people. The statewide measure, House Bill 282, would prohibit eateries from serving food to "any person who is obese based on criteria prescribed by the state health departmen ... More >>

Sunday's Headlines & Surprises: Pipe Bomb Rocks Long Beach

Bud Light No More, You Pick Again: My-Thuan Tran reports this morning that the “Starbucks generation” of Vietnamese Americans “couldn’t stand dingy” Little Saigon restaurants and is building “stylish and spotless . . . swank” restaurants in response. Bao Tran, 34, quit a job in insura ... More >>

Monday's Headlines

History for sale: Items salvaged from the dismantled Pride of Newport riverboat are on eBay starting today - the proceeds will go to the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum. Pieces up thus far: a door to the riverboat's restaurant, the grand staircase chandelier (pictured), several smaller antique table ... More >>

Tuesday's Headlines

Gore guilty: Al Gore III pleaded guilty Monday to possessing marijuana and other drugs when he was caught speeding in OC earlier in the month, reports the LA Times. This shooter's a giver: "Machine-gun Sonny" has mastered a shooting game at the OC Fair and wins mountain bikes nightly. But he doesn' ... More >>

Beach Break: Send in the Clowns - Eventually

On the corner of Pine Avenue and Shoreline Drive in downtown Long Beach hangs a banner. It says "COMING SOON." and it's been hanging for years from what is supposed to be the newest Laugh Factory at the Pike at Rainbow Harbor. A November 2003 article in the Long Beach Press Telegram celebrated th ... More >>

Killing in Long Beach

The last time the combination of Long Beach and crime was featured in this space, some of the area's dimmer predatory perverts were doing their part to help NBC's ratings. Now comes better news. According to the Long Beach Press-Telegram, crime is down in LBC, despite what you might see on Dateli ... More >>

Diary of a Mad County

Nov. 29 - Dec. 5

Diary of a Mad County

Sept. 27 - Oct. 3

Karaoke: Cruel and Unusual

As home to the country's largest concentration of Vietnamese-Americans, any story about Vietnam is liable to generate strong opinions in OC. But regardless of how one feels about the current government of Vietnam, I think we can all agree that a story in today's Long Beach Press-Telegram shows that, ... More >>

I said, shotgun shoot em for he runs now

What the hell's going on at the Long Beach Police Department. Reports Nancy "Ride, Nancy" Wride, in today's LA "By God" Times, the LBC fuzz is missing more than a quarter of its shotguns and Lord knows how many revolvers. It just brings to mind a drab, cluttered squad room ala Barney Miller, only in ... More >>

Safe For Now

Register eludes slash-and-burner Singleton

Diary of a Mad County

Diary of a Mad County