Arrests of undocumented immigrants have dropped significantly across the Los Angeles region two months after the Trump administration launched its aggressive mass deportation operation, according to new figures released Wednesday by Homeland Security.
Federal authorities told The Times on July 8 that federal agents had arrested 2,792 undocumented immigrants in the seven counties in and around L.A. since June 6. Homeland Security updated that number Wednesday, indicating that fewer than 1,400 immigrants have been arrested in the region in the last month.
“Since June 6, 2025, ICE and CBP have made a total of 4,163 arrests in the Los Angeles area,” Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement provided to The Times.
While 1,371 arrests across the L.A. region since July 8 is still a much higher figure than any recent month before June, it represents a notable drop from the 2,792 arrests during the previous month.
The new figures confirm what many immigration experts suspected: The Trump administration’s immigration agenda in L.A. has faltered since federal courts blocked federal agents from arresting people without probable cause to believe they are in the U.S. illegally.
McLaughlin said Wednesday that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s agenda remained the same.
“Secretary Noem unleashed ICE and CBP to arrest criminal illegal aliens including terrorists, gang members, murderers, pedophiles, and sexual predators,” McLaughlin said in a statement Wednesday. “We will continue to enforce the law and remove the worst of the worst.”
Trump administration officials have long maintained they are focused on criminals. But a few days after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller announced in late May he had set a new goal of arresting 3,000 undocumented migrants across the country a day, federal agents fanned out across L.A. to snatch people off the streets and from their workplaces.
White House top border policy advisor Tom Homan suggested federal officials adopted the strategy of raiding streets and workplaces to get around “sanctuary” jurisdictions, such as Los Angeles, that bar municipal resources and personnel from being used for immigration enforcement.
“If we can’t arrest them in jail, we’ll go out to the communities,” Homan told CBS News.
But after local protesters rallied to resist and Trump deployed the National Guard and U.S. Marines to the city, the administration’s ability to ramp up deportations across L.A. was dealt a blow in the federal courts.
On July 11, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of President Biden, issued a temporary restraining order that blocks federal agents in southern and central California from targeting people based on their race, language, vocation or location without reasonable suspicion that they are in the U.S. illegally.
That decision was upheld last Friday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.
“If, as Defendants suggest, they are not conducting stops that lack reasonable suspicion,” the panel wrote, “they can hardly claim to be irreparably harmed by an injunction aimed at preventing a subset of stops not supported by reasonable suspicion.”
It’s hard to know whether July numbers signal a permanent change in tactics.
On Tuesday, Border Patrol agent carried out a raid at the Home Depot in Westlake, arresting 16 people.
“For those who thought Immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again,” acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli posted on X shortly after the raid. “The enforcement of federal law is not negotiable and there are no sanctuaries from the reach of the federal government.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said her office was looking into the matter but added: “From the video and from the stills, it looks like the exact same thing that we were seeing before.”
When Natalie Babcock and Samuel Gibson found a listing for a sunny apartment in Beachwood Canyon five years ago, they immediately fell for the two bedroom’s charming built-in bookshelves, faux fireplace, hardwood floors and formal dining room. Practical amenities such as an in-unit laundry and a garage, which are often elusive in Los Angeles rentals, didn’t hurt.
In this series, we spotlight L.A. rentals with style. From perfect gallery walls to temporary decor hacks, these renters get creative, even in small spaces. And Angelenos need the inspiration: Most are renters.
Today, however, the couple says they are most impressed by the sense of belonging they have found in the community just outside their 1928 Spanish fourplex. Here, where tourists and brides in wedding gowns often pose for photographs in the middle of the street in an effort to capture the Hollywood sign in the background, Babcock and Gibson have become part of a larger family. “Everyone knows our dogs’ names,” says Babcock, a 35-year-old educator working in the adolescent mental health field. “There is a true community vibe in this neighborhood.”
Adds Gibson, a 38-year-old screenwriter and Spanish professor and tutor from London: “I’ve never lived in a place that felt like a neighborhood. We’re in a message group with our neighbors. Sometimes our dog walks take forever because we stop every few minutes to say hello to someone.”
The couple was living in a charming apartment in Los Feliz when Gibson had to return to England to care for his mother, who had pancreatic cancer. Compounding their distress, Babcock’s father suffered a stroke, and Babcock moved in with her parents to help her sister, Eve, care for their father.
“It was the worst year of our lives,” Babcock recalls of that period. “Sam’s mother died, and my father had a catastrophic stroke.”
Their Los Feliz apartment was filled with bad memories, and they were excited by the prospect of creating happier memories in a new apartment.
Gibson’s office is decorated with artworks by local artists including his sister and one found on the street.
After scouring countless rentals online, the couple found a listing for the Hollywood apartment on Zillow, only to encounter what they now describe as “a feeding frenzy” when they arrived at the open house. The apartment, they say, was priced too low at $2,995 compared with similar units, and they were faced with fierce competition.
So they decided to do what many people do when trying to persuade sellers to choose them to buy their house. They wrote a letter about themselves, included photos and sent it to their potential new landlord.
“Eve and I were in a panic because the apartment was so beautiful and we really wanted to live there,” says Babcock. “The three of us were an unconventional group, though, and we hoped they might choose us.”
The couple enjoys having dinner parties in their dining room, which has a mix of chairs and benches.
When they moved into the apartment in February 2020, they were thrilled, not realizing they would end up isolating there together during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The apartment was a welcome reset,” Babcock says, “It gave us plenty of time to nest and decorate.”
A year later, Eve moved out, and Gibson converted her bedroom into an art-filled office that now doubles as a guest room when family and friends visit. The key to a comfortable — and flexible — guest bed, they say, is a durable mattress topper from IKEA, which they store in the garage and carry into the apartment when they have overnight guests. “Blow-up mattresses always deflate,” Babcock says of their choice. “This is a better option.”
The couple’s taste is vibrant, and the colorful interiors reflect their sense of fun and love of design. They painted one wall in Samuel’s office a dramatic Kelly green, which makes the white-trimmed windows and his extensive art collection pop. Behind their bed in their bedroom, they painted an accent wall a charcoal hue, which gives the bedroom a peaceful feel.
Pictures of family and friends decorate the refrigerator.
Decorative tiles and sunshine illuminate the kitchen.
“Paint is your friend,” Babcock says. “Be bold in your color choices, and when it comes to DIY and landlords, ask for forgiveness, not permission.”
A glance around the apartment confirms not just their love of art but also the personal stories behind each piece: framed prints in the kitchen, black-and-white photographs in the dining room, large-scale oil paintings in the living room and hallway, and mixed-media pieces in the office, including works from local artists, EBay, Gibson’s sister and even one found on the street.
Mixed in with the artwork is an abundance of lush houseplants, including Monstera deliciosa, a rubber tree and a ponytail palm, that is thriving thanks to the surplus of bright, indirect light that filters in through the large picture windows overlooking bustling Beachwood Drive.
“Art is one thing that I am always happy to spend money on,” Gibson says.
In the bedroom, a charcoal-colored accent wall, vintage furnishings and art help to create an inviting retreat.
A painting by Alexander Mayet hangs in the hallway.
Last year, Gibson painted the kitchen walls blue and installed peel-and-stick floor tiles from WallPops over the dated yellow linoleum flooring, providing an inexpensive, albeit temporary, update. (One package of a dozen 6.2 x 6.2-inch sheets costs $17.99.)
“It wasn’t the hardest project,” Gibson says, “but you do have to measure each tile to the centimeter because the apartment has moved slightly over the years, presumably from earthquakes.”
Throughout the 1,200-square-foot apartment, the couple has decorated with vintage Midcentury furniture and thrifted furnishings and accessories sourced from Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist.
“There’s something nice about scraping together designs,” says Gibson. “It’s like a puzzle where you have to patch different styles together.”
Peaches lounges on the sofa in the living room.
In the living room, the couple has furnished the space with an L-shaped Bensen sofa, which they purchased at a warehouse sale mentioned on Craigslist, comfortable yellow swivel chairs they picked up from the back of someone’s car in downtown L.A. and a pair of leather loungers they found on Facebook Marketplace.
To accommodate their love of hosting formal dinner parties, they purchased a table that seats eight, which they found on Craigslist. “We found it in a grungy flat in Hollywood,” Gibson says.
Admitting her husband “has become the primary household chef,” Babcock takes the lead when it comes to dinner parties and “goes all out.”
“Sometimes our dog walks take forever because we stop every few minutes to say hello to someone,” says Gibson.
“I grew up around the dining-room table,” says Babcock, a Los Angeles native who was raised in West Los Angeles.
In the corner of their dining room, across from a thrifted wooden bar cart, they installed a stone cigar table inspired by their trip to Casa Luis Barragán in Mexico City. They purchased it from a designer who was living in a loft in downtown Los Angeles.
Ultimately, some of their rental’s decor, such as having washable sofa covers, is influenced by their dogs Chili, whom they rescued as a puppy in 2020, and Peaches, their “foster fail,” whom they adopted in 2023 after a neighbor pulled her from a shelter the day she was scheduled to be euthanized.
“We’ve made great friends here,” says Gibson. “From our apartment, we can walk the dogs in every direction. We can walk to the Hollywood Reservoir in the Hollywood Hills, to the caves in Bronson Canyon, to the Sunset Ranch stables at the top of Beachwood Drive, or to Griffith Park, which is a two-hour loop.”
Chili gives Babcock a kiss in the living room.
Do they ever dream of owning a home like other couples their age? “Yes, of course,” Gibson says. “But I think we would truly never leave this apartment unless we could buy a house with a yard. It’s like London, in that, having a yard is a luxury.”
Babcock agrees, admitting that small things such as an outdoor space for the dogs or a second bathroom would be nice.
But it would be a shame “to buy a house that’s not as nice as this,” Gibson says.
In the meantime, they are happy in their Hollywood Hills home, which reflects their love of art and their deep affection for their sweet-natured four-legged friends and their neighborhood.
“We joke that we will die here,” Babcock adds, laughing.
MOJAVE, Calif. — One of the largest solar and battery power plants in the United States is now supplying Los Angeles and Glendale from Kern County.
Local leaders and clean energy experts gathered Tuesday beneath a blazing desert sun to mark the initiation of full production from 1.36 million solar panels and 172 lithium iron phosphate batteries that make up the Eland solar-plus-storage electricity project. It’s as large as 13 Dodger stadiums, parking lots included, and will generate 7% of the electricity for all of the city of Los Angeles, much of it at a record-low price.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s biggest solar and battery storage plant, the Eland Solar and Storage Center in the Mojave Desert of Kern County on Nov. 25, 2024, near California City, Calif.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
“This is the largest project for LADWP when it comes to solar and battery, and that is a huge accomplishment for us because it takes away the fear of doing more of these — and we need about 10 more of these to hit our goals,” said Janisse Quiñones, chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The city has committed to 100% clean energy by 2035.
With Eland’s power now flowing through its grid, L.A. is nearly two-thirds of the way there: The project has pushed the city’s total supply to 64% clean energy, Quiñones said. Other sources of power in L.A.’s portfolio include hydrogen, natural gas, biomass, geothermal, nuclear and coal, which the city aims to decommission by the end of this year.
The $2-billion Eland project was developed by Arizona-based Arevon Energy and will also supply solar electricity to Glendale Water and Power.
While Eland’s sprawling solar panels are eye-catching, it’s the unassuming batteries — which look like rows of large white shipping containers — that are the real crux of the project.
Battery energy storage units at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s biggest solar and battery storage plant, the Eland Solar and Storage Center in the Mojave Desert of Kern County.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Locating batteries together with solar power or wind allows them to charge up on the clean energy, then feed it back to people’s homes after the sun goes down or the wind stops blowing. At the end of 2023, there were close to 469 such “hybrid” clean power plants in the U.S., according to a recent report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
In California, nearly every new solar project waiting to be connected to the electrical grid included batteries.
All scenarios for effectively addressing climate change call for using storage.
The Eland project is also coming online as the Trump administration is slowing the transition to clean energy with dozens of measures that favor electricity made from coal and natural gas. The president’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill ends federal tax credits for wind and solar within the next two years.
But in California and a number of other states where addressing climate change is mandated, the transition is likely to continue.
“I spent 12 years in D.C., and to be home, where this is not a controversy — there’s no controversy about climate goals and solar and renewables — it’s an exciting day,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told The Times.
Eland “represents a significant milestone toward reaching our climate goals, and it also just reinforces our stature of leading the country in terms of renewables and moving toward clean energy goals,” Bass said.
Kevin Smith, chief executive officer of Arevon, said solar paired with battery storage is currently the cheapest source of energy “with or without tax credits,” and the fastest to deliver to market. The Eland project took about two years to complete once the first shovel was in the ground, compared with nuclear or natural gas projects that can take several years longer, he said.
Smith also cited the sudden increase in forecast need for electricity for data centers. “If we don’t meet that demand, that means the AI future is going to be won by the Chinese, because they’re building more solar in a month than we build in a couple of years.”
Two-thirds of all the renewable energy installed globally in 2024 was in China, which strongly encourages the buildout.
In the U.S. now, such projects must either begin construction by next July or be placed into service by the end of 2027 in order to receive a federal tax credit.
But much of Eland’s success will depend on DWP, which has committed to a 25-year, $1.5-billion contract for its power, with options to buy the facility outright as soon as Year 10, according to company officials.
Eland marks DWP’s first utility-scale integrated solar and battery project. Its two facilities combined — the first phase opened last year — will generate 758 megawatts of solar power and store up to 1,200 megawatt-hours of energy, all of which can be dispatched during peak demand in the evening or nighttime.
DWP officials said Eland is the lowest-cost project in their portfolio, with the cost of generation and storage averaging about 4 cents per kilowatt hour. The energy is expected to be neutral or even a cost savings for ratepayers, company officials said.
Workers install solar panels for the Eland Solar and Storage Center in the Mojave Desert of Kern County.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
That’s partly because DWP was able to contract for the power prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing supply chain issues, and well before new market uncertainties related to tariffs, according to Quiñones.
Experts say such projects can’t come soon enough. Last year was Earth’s hottest on record, with rising global temperatures driven primarily by fossil fuel emissions. The Eland project alone is expected to avoid emissions equivalent to about 120,000 cars, according to company officials.
“When the City of Los Angeles first pursued renewable power some twenty years ago, it did so on moral grounds. It was ‘the right thing to do’ to reduce the City’s greenhouse gas emissions,” Jonathan Parfrey, executive director of the nonprofit Climate Resolve, said in a statement. “Flash forward to today — and solar power is now the right thing to do economically, producing electricity at a cost lower than that of coal, natural gas and nuclear power.”
About 75% of the state’s energy on Tuesday came from renewables, according to the California Independent System Operator.
With Eland, DWP is well on track to meet its 100% clean energy goal by 2035, although Quiñones said the last 3% to 4% will be the most challenging.
But a project like Eland — the largest DWP has ever done — “demonstrates our commitment toward our renewable and clean energy transition,” Quiñones said. “We’re not backing down from that.”
WASHINGTON — In past Olympic Games held on American soil, sitting presidents have served in passive, ceremonial roles. President Trump may have other plans.
An executive order signed by Trump on Tuesday names him chair of a White House task force on the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, viewed by the president as “a premier opportunity to showcase American exceptionalism,” according to a White House statement. Trump, the administration said, “is taking every opportunity to showcase American greatness on the world stage.”
At the White House, speaking in front of banners adding the presidential seal to the logo for LA28, Trump said he would send the military back to Los Angeles if he so chose in order to protect the Games. In June, Trump sent the National Guard and U.S. Marines to the city amid widespread immigration enforcement actions, despite widespread condemnation from Mayor Karen Bass and other local officials.
“We’ll do anything necessary to keep the Olympics safe, including using our National Guard or military, OK?” he said. “I will use the National Guard or the military. This is going to be so safe. If we have to.”
Trump’s executive order establishes a task force led by him and Vice President JD Vance to steer federal coordination for the Games. The task force will work with federal, state and local partners on security and transportation, according to the White House.
Those roles have been fairly standard for the federal government in past U.S.-hosted Olympic Games. But Trump’s news conference could present questions about whether a president with a penchant for showmanship might assume an unusually active role in planning the Olympics, set to take place in the twilight of his final term.
There is ample precedent for military and National Guard forces providing security support during U.S.-hosted Olympic Games. But coming on the heels of the recent military deployment to Los Angeles, Trump’s comments may prove contentious.
French President Emmanuel Macron was a key figure in preparations for last year’s Paris Games, including expressing his vocal support for the ambitious Olympic opening ceremony plan to parade athletes down the Seine River on boats. Many officials were concerned about potential threats along the 3.7-mile stretch, but authorities responded by increasing security measures that included up to 45,000 police officers and 10,000 soldiers.
The task force, to be housed within the Department of Homeland Security, will “assist in the planning and implementation of visa processing and credentialing programs for foreign athletes, coaches, officials, and media personnel,” the executive order said. City officials have expressed concern that the president’s border policies could deter international visitors and complicate visa processing for Olympic teams.
Tensions with L.A.
More concentrated involvement from Trump could spell further strain with Los Angeles city officials, who sought to make nice in the wake of devastating January fires, but have fiercely bucked Trump’s recent immigration offensive. Trump swiped at Bass during his remarks on Tuesday, calling her “not very competent” and criticizing the pace of city permitting for fire rebuilding.
“We’ve had a productive working relationship with the federal government since Los Angeles was awarded the Games in 2017 and we will continue preparing with all partners to host the best Games in history – Games that will benefit the entire nation for decades to come,” Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl said.
Known for her coalition-building skills, Bass is not, by nature, a public brawler. In the aftermath of the Palisades fire, she appeared determined to preserve her fragile relationship with the president — and the billions of dollars of federal aid her city was depending on — responding diplomatically even as he publicly attacked her.
But that determined cordiality crumbled when masked immigration agents and military personnel descended on the city. With troops stationed in the city and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal authorities arresting undocumented immigrants at courthouses, car washes and Home Depot parking lots, Bass took on Trump forcefully.
At news conferences and in interviews, she accused the president of waging “an all-out assault on Los Angeles,” inciting chaos and fear and using the city as “a test case for an extremist agenda.”
Casey Wasserman, chairman of LA28, attended the White House event, thanking Trump for “leaning in” to planning for an Olympics that was awarded to Los Angeles during his first term.
“You’ve been supportive and helpful every step of the way,” Wasserman said, noting that the Games would amount to hosting seven Super Bowls a day for 30 days. “With the creation of this task force, we’ve unlocked the opportunity to level up our planning and deliver the largest, and yes, greatest Games for our nation, ever.”
Wasserman will also have a delicate political balancing act, managing a Games in a deep-blue city with a famously mercurial Republican president in office.
President Trump holds a full set of medals from the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles during Tuesday’s event at which he announced an executive order regarding federal involvement in the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)
A Hollywood scion and sports and entertainment mogul, Wasserman has long been a prominent Democratic donor known for his close relationship with the Clintons.
But in recent months he has diversified his giving, with hefty donations to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and House Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership fund. Wasserman has publicly praised Trump’s commitment to the Games and traveled to Mar-a-Lago in January to meet with the incoming president.
Presidents have long played a role in the Games. In 1984, Ronald Reagan formally opened the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, becoming the first American president to do so. Reagan attended several Olympic events, but repeatedly emphasized the federal government’s role was focused on security, according to the White House Historical Assn.
The Olympic Charter requires the host country’s head of state to officially open the Games, but before Reagan, the duty had been fulfilled by local political leaders or vice presidents representing the president.
Ever-tightening security
The federal government has historically provided significant funding when the Games are hosted on U.S. soil, with financial support going toward both security and infrastructure.
Leading up to the 1996 Games in Atlanta, the federal government spent $227 million on security and transportation, playing “very much a junior partner” to the Olympic Committee, then-Vice President Al Gore said at the time. Still, a bombing at the Centennial Olympic Park during the Games that summer shook the security establishment.
The 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City were the first Games to be classified as a “National Special Security Event,” the government’s highest security rating for any event that designates the U.S. Secret Service as the lead agency for implementing security. That standard has remained in place for U.S.-held Olympic Games ever since. The Secret Service will also lead security coordination for the 2028 Games.
The federal government was particularly involved in the Salt Lake City Games, which were held just months after the 9/11 attacks.
Los Angeles leaders are actively involved in the security planning, and are currently in negotiations with LA28 for the use of the city’s police, traffic officers, and other employees during the Olympics and Paralympics.
Security, trash removal, traffic control, paramedics and more will be needed during the 17-day Olympics and the two-week Paralympics the following month.
Under the2021 Games agreement between LA28 and the city, LA28 must reimburse Los Angeles for any services that go beyond what the city would provide on a normal day. The two parties must agree by Oct. 1, 2025, on “enhanced services” — additional city services needed for the Games, beyond that normal level — and determine rates, repayment timelines, audit rights and other processes.
Overtime for Los Angeles police officers, and any other major expenses, would be acutely felt by a city government that recentlyclosed a nearly $1-billion budget deficit, in part by slowing police hiring.
Wilner reported from Washington, Wick and Nguyen from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
The Department of Justice published a new list Tuesday of “sanctuary” jurisdictions that it claims have policies, laws or regulations that obstruct enforcement of federal immigration laws.
Although the list includes the Trump administration’s typical targets — the city of Los Angeles and the state of California — it is much shorter than a previous list issued by the Department of Homeland Security. And at least one local area that has become a major battleground over immigration is not on it: L.A. County.
In a news release, the Department of Justice said Tuesday that the new federal list of 35 cities, counties and states — a much lower figure than the hundreds of jurisdictions that appeared on the previous Homeland Security list — is “not exhaustive” and “will be updated as federal authorities gather further information.”
A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not answer specific questions from The Times about why L.A. County was not on the list.
“These designations were made after a thorough review of documented laws, ordinances, and executive directives by the listed jurisdictions,” the agency states on its website. “This initial list of designated Sanctuary Jurisdictions will be reviewed regularly, to include additional jurisdictions and remove jurisdictions that have remediated their policies, practices, and laws. Each state, county, and city will have an opportunity to respond to its placement on the list.”
The new Justice Department list is just the latest effort by the Trump administration to ramp up pressure on cities, counties and states that have policies or laws that restrict collaboration with federal immigration authorities.
But it also represents a more targeted focus. The previous Homeland Security list, which included most of California’s 58 counties, sparked ridicule for its errors. It even included the conservative city of Huntington Beach, which declared itself a nonsanctuary city a few days after Trump took office and sued the state of California over its sanctuary policies.
Gov. Gavin’s Newsom office dismissed the new Department of Justice list Tuesday as “another PR stunt by the federal government to scare people.”
“Like their last failed attempt at this ridiculous and meaningless list, which they were forced to pull down within days because of the backlash, this was created without any input or criteria,” Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for the governor, said Tuesday in a statement. “California is confident in the balance of our law.”
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass also seemed committed to her city’s sanctuary status.
“Los Angeles’ law is legally sound and we will always stand with the people of Los Angeles, especially in the face of continued assaults on our city,” Bass told The Times.
Now that the Department of Justice has winnowed down its inventory of offenders, California is one of 13 states, mostly on the West Coast and in the Northeast, that the Trump administration has identified as having policies or laws that impede federal immigration agents.
Only four county jurisdictions across the country are included in the Department of Justice list: Baltimore County, Md.; Cook County, Ill.; San Diego County and San Francisco County. Three of the 18 cities on the list — Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Francisco — are in California.
“Sanctuary policies impede law enforcement and put American citizens at risk by design,” U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in a statement Tuesday. “The Department of Justice will continue bringing litigation against sanctuary jurisdictions and work closely with the Department of Homeland Security to eradicate these harmful policies around the country.”
In April, Trump signed an executive order, “Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens,” directing the Justice Department to work with Homeland Security to publish a list of jurisdictions that “continue to use their authority to violate, obstruct, and defy the enforcement of Federal immigration laws.”
The Justice Department has since taken legal action against a number of sanctuary jurisdictions — including L.A., where the City Council voted unanimously in November to declare the city a sanctuary jurisdiction and block any city resources from being used for immigration enforcement.
In June, the Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and the L.A. City Council that described L.A.’s sanctuary law as “illegal.” Officials, the lawsuit said, “refuse to cooperate or share information, even when requested, with federal immigration authorities.”
“Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level,” Bondi said in a June statement. “It ends under President Trump.”
Last month, Bondi announced a “major victory” for the Department of Justice: the city of Louisville, Ky., she said, was ditching its sanctuary policies after receiving a letter from her office.
“This should set an example to other cities,” Bondi said on X. “Instead of forcing us to sue you — which we will, without hesitation — follow the law, get rid of sanctuary policies, and work with us to fix the illegal immigration crisis.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department said in a news release that “the federal government will assist any jurisdiction that desires to be taken off this list to identify and eliminate their sanctuary policies.”
L.A. County leaders have at times taken steps to oppose Trump’s aggressive clampdown on immigrants. Last week, for example, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 0 to direct county lawyers to draft an ordinance that prohibits officers, including federal agents, from concealing their identities with masks, except for medical reasons or when working in an undercover operation.
But county officials have stopped short of declaring the county a sanctuary jurisdiction. And on Tuesday few L.A. County leaders responded publicly to the news that the county was no longer on the federal government’s official list of sanctuary jurisdictions.
In a statement to The Times after the Justice Department released its list, L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who abstained from last week’s vote on masked law enforcement, said she had “worked hard to advance a thoughtful approach to governance — one that upholds the law while respecting the dignity of all individuals.”
“I remain committed to leading with transparency, accountability, and a balanced perspective that prioritizes both public safety and community trust,” Barger said.
Sports and music fans, flocking to a once-questionable corner of downtown, were the springboard for an L.A.-born multibillion-dollar empire of venues and events for screaming enthusiasts around the globe.
AEG, the company behind Crypto.com Arena and the L.A. Live district, has turned its know-how about hosting and promoting big shows into a formula it has rolled out on five continents. It is literally setting the stages for the world’s biggest pop stars, sports teams and even — most recently — sumo wrestlers.
It is one of the city’s lesser-known global success stories. With more than 20,000 employees and billions of dollars of projects running at any one time, AEG is one of the planet’s biggest venue and event companies. L.A.’s high concentration of sports teams and musical talent forced it to develop a system that uses its spaces for up to five different events in a day.
“We learned how to be nimble in moving from one to the other to really maximize,” AEG Chief Executive Dan Beckerman told The Los Angeles Times.
AEG is prospering by executing a fairly simple business plan, said Andrew Zimbalist, professor emeritus of economics at Smith College. Its industry is fairly straightforward — and more use of each seat gives the company more capital to build more venues.
“You have to pick your niche, have capital, have tenacity,” he said. “And stick with it.”
Sumo wrestlers bashed bellies this month in AEG’s newest venue on the grounds of a legendary castle. The recently opened IG Arena stands in the outer citadel of Nagoya Castle in Nagoya, Japan, which was built in the early 1600s, when samurai battles raged in the region.
While the summer sumo tournament required a traditional ring of sand, clay and rice straw bales, the arena will be soon be transformed to host such diverse events as a basketball clinic hosted by the L.A. Lakers’ Rui Hachimura, a professional boxing match and a concert by English musician Sting.
The new IG Arena in Nagoya, Japan stands in the outer citadel of Nagoya Castle.
(AEG)
In Nagoya and increasingly across East and Southeast Asia, AEG is doing what it does better than most — build arenas that can host pro sports and shows by big-name artists, with the venues often built within an ecosystem of bars, restaurants and hotels also built by the company and its partners.
The company was founded in 1995 when Denver billionaire investor Philip Anschutz bought the Los Angeles Kings and in 1999 opened the downtown arena then known as the Staples Center, which was built by Anschutz and Kings co-owner Ed Roski.
It was considered a risky project at the time, when the gritty blocks near the Los Angeles Convention Center were deemed undesirable by most real estate developers. AEG added the $3 billion L.A. Live complex in 2007, and other developers also moved into the South Park district, building hotels, restaurants and thousands of residential units.
The popular venues have now hosted 22 Grammy Awards shows, a Democratic National Convention, two Stanley Cup championships, six NBA championships and All-Star hockey and basketball weekends.
That high-profile success gave it an edge when competing to build or buy around the world. AEG has expanded to own and operate more than 100 venues serving 100 million guests annually. Among its holdings are the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team and German pro ice hockey team Eisbären Berlin. As the second biggest event promoter in the world, it puts on large festivals including the annual Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival and American Express Presents BST Hyde Park music festival in London.
It has faced slowdowns and other tough periods as well.
Its London arena was the site of Michael Jackson’s planned comeback announced in 2009. During a period when he was rehearsing for the physically demanding shows, Jackson died.
His mother and three children sued AEG Live in 2010. The lawsuit alleged that AEG was negligent in its hiring of the physician who administered the fatal dose of propofol that led to Jackson’s death. A Los Angeles jury unanimously decided that the concert promoter wasn’t liable in the singer’s death.
“People heard of AEG because of Michael Jackson and the subsequent lawsuit from the family,” said Randy Phillips, former manager of music promotions at AEG. “They would never have even known what it is.”
The company was laid low during the pandemic, when live events were canceled starting in March 2020. Venues stayed dark until well into 2021, when AEG started putting on sports events with no audiences and later with limited seating. Times changed in 2022 when revenues reached new records as fans stormed back, Beckerman said.
“We were all very pleasantly surprised,” he said. “I think people learned during the pandemic that there really is no substitute for live events.”
AEG also lost a longtime arena tenant when the Los Angeles Clippers moved to a new arena in Inglewood after the team’s lease at Crypto.com Arena expired in 2024. Owner Steve Ballmer said he wanted the Clippers to have their own home that they didn’t share with other teams.
AEG’s touring business lifted off with a 2001 concert with Britney Spears at Staples Center.
“The Britney Spears tour is what broke the company wide open,” said Phillips, who became head of music promotions for AEG after landing Spears. “That’s when we became players.”
Big acts followed including Tom Petty, Paul McCartney, Tina Turner and Pink.
AEG expanded its U.S. concert touring empire by building large multipurpose arenas in Las Vegas and Kansas City. It also is establishing a network of smaller venues such as the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles and the Showbox in Seattle. It recently opened the Pinnacle at Nashville Yards, a concert hall that is part of a mixed-use district including housing and offices that AEG and a local partner are developing in downtown Nashville.
Its highest-profile property outside of Los Angeles is in London, where the company resurrected a large dome-shaped building built to house an exhibition celebrating the turn of the millennium in 2000. After AEG’s redevelopment of the site, the O2 Arena became one of the world’s busiest venues for entertainment and sports with 10 million visitors a year.
In Berlin, the company built the Uber Arena, one of the highest-grossing arenas in the world and part of an entertainment district with restaurants and theaters.
The Nagoya project is part of the company’s pan-Asian strategy to grow its real estate empire and create more venues for artists like Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran.
The United States and Europe, where AEG has long been active, are largely built-out with modern arenas for sports and entertainment, but many Asian countries are ready to upgrade their old facilities.
“Japan is at the top of the list” for AEG, said Ted Fikre, head of development at the company.
The country’s venues are typically decades old and pale in comparison to modern multi-use arenas typically found in the U.S. and Europe.
The IG Arena in Nagoya, with a capacity of 17,000, is expected to annually host 150 events for 1.4 million attendees at concerts, basketball games and other live entertainment.
AEG has an even larger development in the works in Osaka. Plans call for an 18,000-seat arena that will anchor an entertainment district with hotels, offices, shops and restaurants along with housing. Valued at more than $1 billion, Fikre compared the Osaka project to its largest mixed-use districts — L.A. Live in Los Angeles and the O2 in London. The project is set to break ground in 2027.
In partnership with the NBA, the company built Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai in 2010. It is also involved in plans for South Korea, Singapore and Thailand.
“The ambition for us is to establish a strong presence throughout the Asia region, and we’ve got a good head start,” Fikre said.
A panoramic view of L.A. Live in Los Angeles, CA on Friday, July 18, 2025.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
AEG opened a 4,500-capacity venue in Bangkok last year with a concert by Ed Sheeran. The company is also working with one of Thailand’s largest mall operators to build an 18,000-seat arena in a sprawling regional mall just east of Bangkok, set to open in 2028.
AEG’s network of venues throughout Asia makes it easier to book big-name artists.
“It’s a bit tricky to tour in Asia because of the expense of traveling around the region,” Fikre said. “It’s not like you’re in the U.S., where you just take a bunch of trucks” from city to city.
Aerial view of Crypto.com Arena and the L.A. Live sports and entertainment district of Los Angeles.
(AEG)
Swift completed the international leg of her most recent tour last year that included six nights in Singapore and four nights in Tokyo to sold-out audiences booked by AEG Presents as her international promoter. Sheeran played in Bhutan, India and other Asian countries he hadn’t previously visited in venues booked by AEG.
The international trend now works in both directions for AEG, with K-pop acts such as BTS, Blackpink and other global stars packing AEG venues in the West.
Almost since the first suburbs were built in Los Angeles, there have been worries that adding density would “Manhattanize” L.A., rendering it so crowded with new vertical development as to be unrecognizable to longtime residents. In the 1980s, as battles over growth heated up, one local slow-growth group dubbed itself Not Yet New York.
But Los Angeles has always been a city with a knack for reshaping itself by looking to its own architectural past. In particular, medium-density designs such as bungalow courts and dingbat apartments have welcomed waves of newcomers for more than a century while becoming architectural emblems of upward mobility and a particularly Southern Californian design sensibility — informal and optimistic.
We have never needed a return to that kind of development more than now, in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires, even as public discussion has focused mostly on rebuilding exactly what was lost. With affordability pressures as intense as ever, now is the time not to Manhattanize but, once again, to Los Angelize L.A.
As longtime advocates for design excellence and policies to boost housing production, we believe there is nothing more Angeleno than the reinvention of the so-called R1 neighborhood, the single-family zone that first emerged in L.A. with the Residential District Ordinance of 1908. R1 zoning shifted into overdrive in 1941 when tract houses emerged to replace the bean fields of Westchester, near what is now Los Angeles International Airport.
It wasn’t until 2016, with the appearance of a new state law allowing accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, that the R1 neighborhood evolved in any meaningful way. Even the most ardent champions of ADUs — aka granny flats or casitas — couldn’t have foreseen how widely popular they’d become. Today, about one-fifth of new housing permits in California and a whopping one-third in the city of L.A. are ADUs.
Still, the granny flat is no silver bullet. The housing affordability crisis in Los Angeles demands a more ambitious approach than adding new residential development one small unit at a time. State laws allowing as many as 10 apartments on a single-family lot have been on the books for several years now. But homeowners and developers have been slow to take advantage of them, and many California cities have dragged their feet in making them truly usable.
The result has been a stalemate, with Los Angeles among the cities struggling to take the important step past the ADU to begin producing additional missing-middle housing in real volume, even as rents and home prices continue to climb. The city‘s Low-Rise LA design challenge was organized in 2020 to help break this logjam. Many of the winners incorporated design lessons clarified by the COVID-19 pandemic, when we learned that second, third and fourth units in R1 zones might offer not just rental income or an extra bedroom but the flexibility to quarantine or work from home while building stronger ties with extended family and neighbors.
A new initiative — Small Lots, Big Impacts — organized by cityLAB-UCLA, the Los Angeles Housing Department and the office of Mayor Karen Bass builds on Low-Rise LA with a focus on developing small, often overlooked vacant lots, of which there are more than 25,000 across the city, according to cityLAB’s research. The goal is straightforward: to demonstrate a range of ways that Los Angeles can grow not by aping the urbanism of other cities but by producing more of itself.
Different views of the “Mini Towers Collective” and the “Shared Steps” proposals. Both favor shared outdoor space balanced with individual architectural identity.(courtesy of cityLAB UCLA)
Winners of this design competition, announced at the end of May, placed six or more housing units on a single site, sometimes dividing it into separate lots. One proposal created rowhouses, slightly cracked apart to identify individual homes and entrances as they cascade along an irregular site. A communal yard opens to the street in another project, with roof gardens between separated, two-story homes atop ADUs that can be rented or joined back to each of several main houses on the site. Other designs show that vertical architecture, in the form of handsome new residential towers from three to seven stories, can comfortably coexist with L.A.’s low-rise housing stock when the design is thoughtful enough.
A key goal of the competition was to produce new models for homeownership. When land costs are subdivided and parcels built out with a collection of compact homes, including units that can produce rental income or be sold off as condos, a different approach to housing affordability comes into focus. Those who have been shut out of the housing market can begin to build wealth and contribute to neighborhood stability.
The traditional R1 paradigm, in addition to limiting housing volume, suffers from a rigid, gate-keeping sort of logic: If you can’t afford to buy or rent an entire single-family home in an R-1 L.A. neighborhood, that part of town is inaccessible to you. Many of the winning designs, by contrast, create compounds flexible enough to accommodate a range of phases in a resident’s life. In one development, there may be units perfect for single occupants (a junior ADU), young families (a ground-level unit with a private yard), and empty-nesters (a home with a rooftop garden). As with the granny flat model, construction can proceed in phases, with units added over time as circumstances dictate.
Having served on the Small Lots, Big Impacts jury, we see signs of hope in its rendering of L.A.’s future. The real proof lies in the initiative’s second phase, set for later this year, when the city’s Housing Department will issue an open call, based on the design competition, to developer-architect teams who will build housing on a dozen small, city-owned vacant parcels, with tens of thousands of privately owned infill lots ready to follow suit. If the winning schemes are built, Los Angeles will once again demonstrate the appeal and resiliency of its architectural DNA. Manhattan: Eat your heart out.
Dana Cuff is a professor of architecture, director of cityLAB-UCLA and co-author of the 2016 California law that launched ADU construction. Christopher Hawthorne, former architecture critic for The Times, is senior critic at the Yale School of Architecture. He served under Mayor Eric Garcetti as the first chief design officer for Los Angeles.
WASHINGTON — With two conservatives in dissent, the Supreme Court on Monday turned down a property-rights claim from Los Angeles landlords who say they lost millions from unpaid rent during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency.
Without comment, the justices said they would not hear an appeal from a coalition of apartment owners who said they rent “over 4,800 units” in “luxury apartment communities” to “predominantly high-income tenants.”
They sued the city seeking $20 million in damages from tenants who did not pay their rent during the pandemic emergency.
They contended that the city’s strict limits on evictions during that time had the effect of taking their private property in violation of the Constitution.
In the past, the court has repeatedly turned down claims that rent control laws are unconstitutional, even though they limit how much landlords can collect in rent.
But the L.A. landlords said their claim was different because the city had in effect taken use of their property, at least for a time. They cited the 5th Amendment’s clause that says “private property [shall not] be taken for public use without just compensation.”
“In March 2020, the city of Los Angeles adopted one of the most onerous eviction moratoria in the country, stripping property owners … of their right to exclude nonpaying tenants,” they told the court in GHP Management Corporation vs. City of Los Angeles. “The city pressed private property into public service, foisting the cost of its coronavirus response onto housing providers.”
“By August 2021, when [they] sued the City seeking just compensation for that physical taking, back rents owed by their unremovable tenants had ballooned to over $20 million,” they wrote.
A federal judge in Los Angeles and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 3-0 decision dismissed the landlords’ suit. Those judges cited the decades of precedent that allowed the regulation of property.
The court had considered the appeal since February, but only Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch voted to hear the case.
“I would grant review of the question whether a policy barring landlords from evicting tenants for the nonpayment of rent effects a physical taking under the Taking Clause,” Thomas said. “This case meets all of our usual criteria. … The Court nevertheless denies certiorari, leaving in place confusion on a significant issue, and leaving petitioners without a chance to obtain the relief to which they are likely entitled.”
The Los Angeles landlords asked the court to decide “whether an eviction moratorium depriving property owners of the fundamental right to exclude nonpaying tenants effects a physical taking.”
In February, the city attorney’s office urged the court to turn down the appeal.
“As a once-in-a-century pandemic shuttered its businesses and schools, the city of Los Angeles employed temporary, emergency measures to protect residential renters against eviction,” they wrote. The measure protected only those who could “prove COVID-19 related economic hardship,” and it “did not excuse any rent debt that an affected tenant accrued.”
The city argued that the landlords are seeking a “radical departure from precedent” in the area of property regulation.
“If a government takes property, it must pay for it,” the city attorneys said. “For more than a century, though, this court has recognized that governments do not appropriate property rights solely by virtue of regulating them.”
The city said the COVID emergency and the restriction on evictions ended in January 2023.
In reply, lawyers for the landlords said bans on evictions are becoming the “new normal.” They cited a Los Angeles County measure they said would “preclude evictions for non-paying tenants purportedly affected by the recent wildfires.”
Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen has invested in Hollywood with the $69-million purchase of retail property near the legendary TCL Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
In a bet on the future value of local real estate, Mateen and his brother Tyler bought the Hollywood Galaxy shopping center and the historic Petersen Building next door.
The purchase comes at a time when most institutional investors such as pension funds have stopped acquiring property in Los Angeles. Values of many buildings in the region, including office skyscrapers, have fallen in recent years as the loss of tenants that started during the pandemic and other factors have driven down sale prices.
The Mateens, however, see this as an opportunity. They bought prominent properties in Beverly Hills and Westchester last year and are now stakeholders in Hollywood.
Justin Mateen is known for being a co-founder of popular dating app Tinder but is also a solo venture capitalist through his JAM Fund. He and his brother have a strategy to invest in their hometown of Los Angeles during a cooling commercial real estate market because they expect the region to bounce back in the years ahead.
“I’ve always been a contrarian investor,” he said. “Whether it’s startups, public markets or real estate, I take the long view and hold through cycles for forever. While others are pulling back from cities like L.A., we’re doubling down. Its resurgence feels inevitable.”
The Mateens plan to spruce up the Hollywood property sold by Federal Realty Investment Trust and seek tenants who want to interact with the millions of tourists who visit the blocks around the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue annually.
The three-story Hollywood Galaxy shopping center, which was completed in 1990, is nearly 80% leased to tenants including Target and LA Fitness. The remaining space could go to a high-profile business such as Nintendo or Lego that wants to create an interactive, immersive attraction for Hollywood visitors, Tyler Mateen said.
The brothers are looking for tenants “who benefit off heavy foot traffic and value a large format with visibility,” he said. That might also be a flagship store for a big brand such as Nike, Adidas or Sephora.
Rendering of the historic Petersen Building, which was once a Cadillac dealership.
(It-makes-Architects)
The Petersen Building at Hollywood Boulevard and Orange Drive, which is also part of the deal, was built in 1929 as the home of a Cadillac dealership. It’s now occupied by a Marshalls department store and La La Land souvenir shop.
Last year the Mateens and their partner Pouya Abdi bought Wilshire Rodeo Plaza, a five-story office building at Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. They are in the process of signing new retail tenants for the building and planning a rooftop restaurant.
The Mateens also bought the HHLA entertainment center in Westchester near Playa Vista last year and are in the process of refurbishing it. Among its new tenants will be Meow Wolf, an immersive entertainment firm.
All three properties are in high-profile locations where it is difficult to develop new projects, Tyler Mateen said. “We want to own assets that you can’t build again and that the market can’t ignore.”
Southern California home prices declined slightly in May compared to a year earlier, the first annual drop since 2023.
In May, the average home price across the six-county Southern California region fell 0.07% from April to $876,044, according to data from Zillow. Prices were down 0.2% from May 2024.
Economists and real estate agents say a variety of factors have slowed the market, including high mortgage rates, rising inventory levels and economic uncertainty stemming from tariffs.
The year-over-year price decline last month marked the first since July 2023. At the time, home prices had been falling because rising mortgage rates knocked many buyers out of the market. Values started increasing again when the numbers of homes for sale plunged as sellers also backed away, not willing to give up mortgages they took out during the pandemic with rates of 3% and below.
The inventory picture, however, is changing.
In May, there were 38% more homes for sale than a year earlier in Los Angeles County, with similar increases seen elsewhere in Southern California.
Real estate agents say existing homeowners increasingly want to move rather than hold onto their ultra-low mortgage rates. But many first-time buyers, without access to equity, remain locked out.
Add economic uncertainty and you get a market that’s noticeably downshifted.
If the Trump administration’s policies end up pushing the economy into a recession, some economists say home prices could drop much more.
For now, Zillow is forecasting the economy avoids a recession and for home prices to decline only slightly. By May 2026, the real estate firm expects home prices in the Los Angeles-Orange County metro region to be 1.1% lower than they are today.
Zillow Research, Times analysis
Note to readers
Welcome to the Los Angeles Times’ Real Estate Tracker. Every month we will publish a report with data on housing prices, mortgage rates and rental prices. Our reporters will explain what the new data mean for Los Angeles and surrounding areas and help you understand what you can expect to pay for an apartment or house. You can read last month’s real estate breakdown here.
Explore home prices and rents for May
Use the tables below to search for home sale prices and apartment rental prices by city, neighborhood and county.
Rental prices in Southern California
In 2024, asking rents for apartments in many parts of Southern California also ticked down, but the January fires in L.A. County could be upending the downward trend in some locations.
Housing analysts have said that rising vacancy levels since 2022 had forced landlords to accept less in rent. But the fires destroyed thousands of homes, suddenly thrusting many people into the rental market.
Most homes destroyed were single-family houses, and some housing and disaster recovery experts say they expect the largest increases in rent to be in larger units adjacent to burn areas in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, with upward pressure on rents diminishing for units that are smaller and farther away from the disaster zone.
A recent L.A. Times analysis of Zillow data found that in ZIP Codes closest to the fires rent rose more than the rest of the county between December and April.
Other data sources show similar trends.
In Santa Monica, which borders the hard-hit Pacific Palisades neighborhood, the median rent rose 5.1% in May from a year earlier, according to data from ApartmentList.
Across the entire city of Los Angeles, which includes the Palisades and many neighborhoods not adjacent to any fire, rents dropped 0.33% last month.
ApartmentList does not have data for Altadena, but it does for the adjacent city of Pasadena. Rents there rose 6.2% in May from a year earlier.
One of the oldest movie studios in Los Angeles is up for sale, perhaps to the newest generation of content creators.
The potential sale of Occidental Studios comes amid a drop in filming in Los Angeles as the local entertainment industry faces such headwinds as rising competition from studios in other cities and countries, as well as the aftermath of filming slowdowns during the pandemic and industry strikes of 2023.
Occidental Studios, which dates back to 1913, was once used by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to make silent films. It is a small version of a traditional Hollywood studio with soundstages, offices and writers’ bungalows in a 3-acre gated campus near Echo Park in Historic Filipinotown.
Kermit the Frog above the Jim Henson Company studio lot in Hollywood.
(AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
The seller hopes its boutique reputation will garner $45 million, which would rank it one of the most valuable studios in Southern California at $651 per square foot. A legendary Hollywood studio founded by Charlie Chaplin in 1917 sold last year for $489 per foot, according to real estate data provider CoStar.
The Chaplin studio, known until recently as the Jim Henson Company Lot, was purchased by singer-songwriter John Mayer and movie director McG from the family of Muppets creator Jim Henson.
Occidental Studios may sell to one of today’s modern content creators in search of a flagship location, said real estate broker Nicole Mihalka of CBRE, who represents the seller.
She declined to name potential buyers but said she is showing the property to new-media businesses who don’t present themselves through traditional channels such as television shows and instead rely on social media and the internet to reach younger audiences.
Occidental Studios, which dates back to 1913, was once used by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to make silent films.
(CBRE)
New media entrepreneurs may not often need soundstages, “but they like the idea of having the history, the legacy” of a studio linked to the early days of cinema, she said. It might lend credibility to a brand and become a destination for promotional activities as well as being a place to create content, she said. Mihalka envisions the space being used for events for partners, sponsors and advertisers as well as press junkets for new product launches.
Entertainment businesses located nearby include filmmaker Ava DuVernay’s Array Now, independent film and production company Blumhouse Productions and film and production company Rideback Ranch.
Neighborhoods east of Hollywood such as Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Echo Park and Highland Park have become home to many people in the entertainment industry, which Mihalka hopes will elevate the appeal of Occidental Studios.
“We’ve been seeing film and TV talent heading this way for a while,” she said, including executives who also live in those neighborhoods.
The owner of of Occidental Studios said it’s gotten harder for smaller studios to operate in the current economic climate that includes competition from major independent studio operators that have emerged in recent decades.
“Once upon a time, you did not have multibillion-dollar global portfolio companies swimming in the waters of Hollywood,” said Craig Darian, chief executive of Occidental Entertainment Group Holdings Inc., citing Hudson Pacific Properties, Hackman Capital Partners and CIM Group. “They are not content producers, but have a long history of providing services for multiple television shows and features.”
Competition now includes overseas studios in such countries as Canada, Ireland and Australia, he said. “When production was really robust and domiciled in Los Angeles, it was much easier to remain very competitive.”
Another factor threatening the bottom line for conventional studios is rapidly changing technology used to create entertainment including tools as simple as lighting.
“You used to know that equipment would last for decades,” Darian said. “The new tools for production are becoming obsolete in far shorter order.”
Writers’ bungalows at Occidental Studios.
(CBRE)
Nevertheless, Darian said, the potential sale “is not motivated by distress or urgency. Nothing is driving the decision other than the timing of whether or not this remains to be a relevant asset to keep within our portfolio. If we get an offer at or above the asking price, then we’re a seller.”
Darian said he may also seek a long-term tenant to take over the studio.
Occidental Studios at 201 N. Occidental Blvd. comprises over 69,000 square feet of buildings including four soundstages and support space such as offices and dressing rooms.
It’s among the oldest continually operating studios in Hollywood, used by pioneering filmmakers Cecil B. DeMille, D.W. Griffith and Pickford, who worked there as an actor and filmmaker in its early years. She reportedly kept an apartment on the lot for years.
More recently it has been used for television production for shows including “Tales of the City,” “New Girl” and HBO’s thriller “Sharp Objects.”
Local television production area declined by 30.5% in the first quarter compared with the previous year, according to he nonprofit organization FilmLA, which tracks shoot days in the Greater Los Angeles region. All categories of TV production were down, including dramas (-38.9%), comedies (-29.9%), reality shows -(26.4%) and pilots (-80.3%).
Feature film production decreased by 28.9%, while commercials were down by 2.1%, FilmLA said.
For nearly a quarter-century, voters in Clallam County, Wash. — a lush green dot in the far corner of the country — have gone with the winner in 11 straight presidential elections. That’s an unmatched level of precision among more than 3,000 counties nationwide.
But the streak, dating to 1980, ended on Tuesday as voters favored Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Trump, by a decisive 53% to 44% margin. While there are still votes to be counted, Harris’ lead appears certain to hold.
That means there are no bellwether counties left in America; heading into the 2020 election there were nearly 20. After that, Clallam County — roughly balanced politically between its three small population centers and sparsely populated rural reaches — stood alone.
(Yours truly visited the county and took the measure of voter sentiments in September, just after the Trump-Harris debate: At the time, neither candidate was running away with the contest and virtually everyone was firmly dug into their positions.)
Marc Abshire, director of the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce and a Harris supporter, said he was proud the county went for the Democratic ticket “but also disappointed we’re losing our bellwether status because of it.”
“Out here, we just didn’t have the grievance vote that most of the rest of the country seemed to have,” Abshire said.
Setting aside any bruised pride, he said there are plenty of reasons to visit the region, beyond its former political prescience.
“We’re lucky to live in one of the most beautiful places in the nation, if not the world,” Abshire said. “We have the sea and mile-high mountains all in our front and backyards. Our weather is always temperate.”
People will just have to start looking elsewhere for a political barometer.
A woman who was allegedly kidnapped by her ex-boyfriend in El Monte was released after a 21-mile freeway pursuit through Los Angeles and Orange counties that at one point slowed to a crawl.
According to the El Monte Police Department, the man showed up at the woman’s place of work in the 10300 block of Lower Azusa Road just before 6 p.m. Saturday. The two argued before the man allegedly forced the woman into her car, police said, and drove off without allowing her to exit. The woman called a friend, who tracked the car via the Find My iPhone app and contacted law enforcement.
A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department helicopter located the car on the 5 Freeway in the area of Commerce and notified California Highway Patrol.
CHP attempted a traffic stop, but the man continued to drive, leading law enforcement on a chase for more than 20 miles.
“Spike strips were utilized to puncture the vehicle’s tires which caused it to become inoperable and yield” near the 405 Freeway and Westminster Avenue, police said in a statement.
But first, multiple law enforcement vehicles slowly tailed the vehicle as it inched onward in a slow-speed pursuit, KCAL News footage showed, until the car finally came to a stop.
The suspect and a woman in the passenger’s seat got out of the car, video showed. The man walked over to the woman and hugged her while she spoke into her phone. He then slowly walked backward toward law enforcement with raised arms and surrendered. The woman was not injured, police said.
The suspect is at a processing facility on $100,000 bail, according to the Sheriff’s Department.
El Monte police said that charges of kidnapping and felony evading would be submitted to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Police Department at (626) 580-2100.
With election day right around the corner, Los Angeles County officials opened hundreds of additional vote centers Saturday where voters can go to cast early ballots in person.
The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk opened an additional 526 centers, according to a post on its X account. This is on top of the 122 centers already open across the county, where people can go to vote in person or drop off their ballot for the Nov. 5 election.
The centers are open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Most wait times were under 15 minutes, according to officials.
The county’s mobile voting centers will also travel across the region until election day.
Voters also have the option of submitting completed ballots through the mail, so long as they were postmarked before or on Nov. 5 and received by Nov. 12. Mail-in ballots can also be returned at voter centers or vote-by-mail drop boxes.
Eligible voters who aren’t registered can complete a conditional voter registration at a center and cast a ballot in the election.
The ballot includes a long slate of statewide and local candidates and ballot measures, as well as the U.S. presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
On Saturday, the mobile centers will be at the L.A. Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple and L.A. Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles; Henry Acuna Park in Montebello; Wat Thai of Los Angeles in North Hollywood; and the Paving the Way Foundation in Lancaster.
On Sunday, the centers will be stationed at Dodger Stadium, SoFi Stadium in Inglewood and again at L.A. Plaza de Cultura y Artes.
If the new apartment tower had been planned for another plot of land, chances are good the concrete plant in the middle of the city would have helped build it.
But, as it happens, the century-old facility on La Brea Avenue that has provided concrete for buildings and roads across the Los Angeles region sat where the tower is to go up.
Now, the West Hollywood facility has ceased operating in order to make way for a new apartment tower.
A worker sprays water to keep dust down at the Cemex concrete plant in West Hollywood. A 34-story apartment building is being planned for the site.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The mixing plant that routinely filled fleets of trucks with ready-to-pour concrete stood out as an urban oddity in its final years, a dusty, noisy industrial yard on busy La Brea Avenue near Santa Monica Boulevard, across the street from a shopping center with a Target store.
Straddling the border between West Hollywood and Los Angeles, it backed up against L.A.’s burgeoning Sycamore District that includes upmarket stores, restaurants and art galleries that have sprung up in the former industrial district.
The Cemex Hollywood Concrete Plant was one of the last industrial businesses operating in West Hollywood, said Jennifer Alkire, the city’s assistant director of community development.
The Cemex concrete plant in West Hollywood was described as “the pioneer mixing plant in the West” in a 1924 issue of Concrete magazine.
(CIM Group)
“It was definitely an unusual use, particularly as the city continued to develop and change and grow,” she said. “Obviously, it was there long before the city incorporated” in 1984.
A 1924 issue of Concrete magazine said that the operation at 1000 La Brea Ave. appeared to be “the pioneer mixing plant in the West,” the first of its kind offering “ready-mixed Portland cement concrete in quantities sufficient for a flagpole foundation or a 12-story building, and delivered right on the job when required.”
While concrete had been a preferred construction material for hundreds of years, it was 20th century advances in truck technology that made it practical to be delivered instead of mixed on-site.
By 1924, concrete from the La Brea plant was being used to pave streets in Los Angeles, the magazine said. Customers included the Standard and Union oil companies, along with the Famous Players-Lasky, Buster Keaton and Vitagraph movie studios.
Ready-mix concrete plants continued to support development in the Southern California region during the building boom of the post-World War II era, according to research prepared for a draft environmental impact report on the planned development of the La Brea Avenue site. The plant there was upgraded in the 1930s and 1960s and operated continuously until its closure a few weeks ago.
As mechanical plants go, it was a pretty simple one. Nearly vertical conveyor belts lifted dry ingredients high up to be deposited into hoppers where they were mixed with water and then the wet concrete was poured into waiting trucks below. Concrete trucks routinely queued up on nearby streets before departing right on La Brea Avenue with their agitator drums turning.
Its last operator, Mexican multinational building materials company Cemex, declined to comment on the closure. The company’s landlord, Los Angeles developer CIM Group, said Cemex’s lease on the property was set to expire at the end of November and that it would clear the site of structures and vacate. By the end of October, most of the plant had been disassembled and carted away.
CIM Group is seeking approval from the city of West Hollywood to build a 514-unit apartment complex that would fill much of the former plant site and another parcel on La Brea Avenue. Called 1000 La Brea, it would rise 34 stories and include floor retail space for shops and restaurants.
It would have rooftop gardens, a swimming pool, fitness center, yoga room and library. There would be subterranean and above-ground parking, and at least 20% of the units are expected to be designated as affordable with subsidized rents.
An artist’s rendering shows the apartment tower planned for the site of the Cemex concrete plant at 1000 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood.
(CIM Group)
Shaul Kuba, co-founder of CIM Group, said he expects being situated on the edge of the upscale Sycamore district will help the apartment building land tenants. Neighbors would include Hollywood production facilities such as the former Warner Bros. studio now known as the Lot and other entertainment businesses, including broadcaster Sirius XM studios and Jay-Z’s entertainment company.
“This should become a place where people in the entertainment industry in the neighborhood can live and actually be close to their work,” he said. “The entertainment industry is very focused in this area right now.”
The east side of West Hollywood has evolved from being a collection of mostly low-rise commercial buildings, Alkire said, to including several multistory mixed-use residential buildings and neighborhood-serving retail properties such as the Movietown Square apartments and the West Hollywood Gateway shopping center.
California cities need more apartments to meet housing goals, she said. “It’s definitely been made a priority by our City Council and by the state.”
CIM hopes to break ground on the project next year and complete it by 2028, Kuba said.
It was more than 60 years ago this month that the Dodgers beat the Chicago White Sox and won their first World Series in front of more than 90,000 baseball fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
At the time, the Coliseum lit its torch to honor the team’s win, and now, after the Dodgers won their eighth World Series Championship, the Coliseum has once again lit its torch. And for the next two nights, the Coliseum’s peristyle will be illuminated in blue light.
Ever since the Dodgers’ miraculous comeback victory Wednesday night, some of L.A. County’s best-known buildings and attractions have been finding ways to celebrate the Boys in Blue, from the Pacific Wheel on Santa Monica’s Pier to L.A. City Hall.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, whose father, Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, helped bring the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958, called for the Coliseum torch to be lit.
“I thought it would be fitting to light the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum’s torch in celebration of the Dodgers’ victory at the venue the team played their first World Series winning season,” Hahn said. “We love our team.
“Every corner of Los Angeles is celebrating today,” she said.
Up in the hills of Griffith Park, the letter “D” on the Hollywood sign was lighted in blue.
In Inglewood, a spokesperson for SoFi Stadium said the building’s rooftop Thursday night will display “2024 World Series Champions L.A. Dodgers” in blue lighting. A similar message was already on display on its Samsung infinity screen inside the stadium.
In September, the Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark interest rate for the first time since 2020, giving hope to prospective home buyers that mortgage rates would follow suit.
But instead of declining, home loan costs marched higher.
On Thursday, mortgage giant Freddie Mac reported the average rate on a 30-year home loan rose to 6.72%, up from 6.54% a week earlier. It was the fifth consecutive week of increases.
“People are confused,” said Jeff Lazerson, president of Mortgage Grader in Laguna Niguel. “They are saying ‘What’s going on?’”
The fact that mortgage rates have gone up despite the cut underscores that while the Federal Reserve influences mortgage rates, it does not set them.
Instead, rates are determined by what institutional investors who purchase bundles of mortgages are willing to pay for them and a variety of factors influence those investors.
One is the benchmark rate the Fed cut in September, which sets a floor on borrowing costs throughout the economy. Another is expectations for inflation. That’s because when purchasing 30-year mortgages, investors don’t want to see the value of their investment eaten away as the years march on.
Mortgage rates fell in advance of the Fed’s decision in September, because investors priced in the expectation the Fed would be able to cut because inflation had eased.
Experts said one major reason rates have risen since is because economic data has come in stronger than expected. That’s convinced investors inflation will stay higher for longer and the Fed won’t be able to cut rates as much as they otherwise could have. Similarly, if the job market is stronger, there’s less of a need to cut rates to spur growth.
“You see a lot of positive economic surprises,” said Kara Ng, an economist with Zillow, who cited a strong jobs report in September as one example.
Political factors could be at play as well as presidential election polls have tightened in recent weeks.
Chen Zhao, an economist with real estate brokerage Redfin, said it appears investors increasingly believe former President Trump will best Vice President Kamala Harris and retake the White House.
According to a recent survey from the Wall Street Journal, most economists predict inflation and interest rates would be higher under policies proposed by Trump, who among other measures has called for sweeping tariffs on imported goods.
“The link between tariffs and inflation is just very stark,” Zhao said. “There is not a lot of controversy there.”
Lazerson, the Orange County mortgage broker, said he’s seen business slow to a “trickle” after an initial burst when rates dropped around the Fed announcement.
The reason is simple math.
When rates hit their recent bottom of 6.08% in September, the monthly principal and interest payment on a $800,000 house would have been $3,870. It’s now $4,138.
According to the weekly Freddie Mac survey, rates are still below 7%, a level last seen in May. However, a daily tracker from Mortgage News Daily puts them above that threshold.
Zhao said what happens with rates next depends on a variety of factors, including who wins the election and what policies they actually enact.
If there isn’t a policy shift, she would expect mortgage rates to come down next year because inflation is easing. On Thursday, an inflation measure closely watched by the Federal Reserve dropped to near pre-pandemic levels.
Even so, economists say borrowers shouldn’t expect pandemic-era mortgage rates of 3% and below. Those rates were the byproduct of a massive federal effort to revive an economy where unemployment hit levels last seen in the Great Depression.
“We are talking about [mortgage rates in] the high fives, low sixes” Zhao said. “If President Trump does win, there is certainly a lot more risk that rates could be higher.”
Authorities say they have arrested the mystery man who allegedly teamed up with an accomplice to fatally stab famed hairstylist Fabio Sementilli seven years ago at a Woodland Hills mansion.
Prosecutors allege Christopher Austin was the second man involved in the killing, along with the lover of Sementilli’s wife.
Austin was recently arrested in connection with the killing and extradited from Washington state. On Oct. 18, after being sent back to Los Angeles, Austin pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder with the special allegations of the use of a deadly weapon, and pleaded not guilty Wednesday to an additional charge of conspiracy to commit murder.
The 38-year-old Austin, prosecutors allege, conspired with Monica Sementilli, the hairstylist’s wife, and her lover Robert Louis Baker in January 2017 to kill her husband as part of a scheme to pocket his $1.6 million in life insurance. Austin’s alleged conspirators have been behind bars for more than five years, but until recently Austin’s identity and whereabouts had been unknown.
Sementilli was the father of three and an executive at the hair-care giant Wella.
Baker, 62, last year admitted that he killed the celebrity hairdresser on Jan. 23, 2017, leaving him in a pool of blood on a back patio in what was initially thought to be a home-invasion robbery gone wrong. Baker is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Six months after the killing, Los Angeles police detectives arrested Baker and Monica Sementilli, revealing that they had been in a relationship for 18 months. Baker, a convicted sex offender, met her at LA Fitness, where he was a racquetball instructor.
Baker, after admitting to the crime, has said that Monica Sementilli did not know about the murder plot. Prosecutors and LAPD investigators contend that extensive evidence shows she was tied to the killing.
Monica Sementilli’s trial is pending, and she and Baker have been held in the Los Angeles County jail system for more than five years. She had pleaded not guilty, and her attorney, Leonard Levine, said that she was falsely accused and that Baker will testify to that.
Her trial has been postponed a few times, and the arrest of Austin could change the dynamics. Prosecutors allege that Baker stabbed the hairstylist several times with a knife and that Austin stabbed the victim in the neck with a knife.
Baker is alleged to have told Austin that the victim’s wife wanted to get her husband’s life insurance money. As part of the conspiracy alleged by prosecutors, Baker gave Austin money to buy a ticket to fly from Anchorage to Los Angeles and a roll of gold coins after the slaying, according to the complaint.
Austin was arrested in Washington state and extradited to L.A. County, where he is being held on more than $2 million bail pending a Dec. 2 court appearance.
But though the home’s master bedroom was ransacked, the assailants never took the hair mogul’s valuable watch on his wrist, piquing the interest of detectives, said then-Robbery Homicide Division Capt. Billy Hayes. Security surveillance video showed two hooded men jogging up to the home before the slaying. Afterward, the men drove away in Sementilli’s Porsche and were recorded on another surveillance camera as they abandoned the vehicle five miles away.
In an apparent attempt to cover up their actions, the two men took a video recording system hidden in the garage of Sementilli’s home that captured video from six cameras around the house, prosecutors said.
Detectives closed in on Baker after discovering blood in the abandoned Porsche. His DNA had previously been captured after he was convicted of a lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor in 1993 and forced to register as a sex offender, Hayes said at the time.
Prosecutors alleged Monica Sementilli told Baker how to remove the home’s video recording system. They presented evidence that she watched a live feed of the area shortly before the killing to ensure Baker had a clear path to her husband. Prosecutors alleged that she also let her 16-year-old daughter come home first and discover the crime scene.
“Monica fully intended for Fabio to be murdered,” Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman told a grand jury in 2017. “She wanted him out of the way because she wants to be with Robert Baker. She’s unhappy in her marriage, even though at the same time she’s acting like the loving, adoring wife.”
Baker pleaded no contest in July 2023 to one count each of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He also admitted the special circumstance allegations of murder for financial gain and murder while lying in wait.
One of Monica Sementilli’s attorneys, Leonard Levine, told reporters after Baker’s plea that the defense was confident that his plea and his “truthful testimony will finally establish once and for all that Monica Sementilli had nothing to do with the planning or the murder of Fabio Sementilli, her husband. And we’re looking forward to the trial, which we believe will establish that fact.’’
First, it was a driver of a sedan slowing down to a crawl and pointing as they passed the Spanish-style mansion, draped in elm leaves and hidden behind a privacy fence.
Then came a group of teenage girls running out of a van for selfies, followed by bikers, who stopped to see what all the ruckus was about. In the end, they all had the same question.
“Is that the right house?”
In recent weeks, the quietude of this affluent Beverly Hills neighborhood has been filled with the buzzing of tourists and true crime fanatics all swarming to peek at the infamous Menendez mansion on Elm Drive — where two brothers murdered their parents in 1989. The case has received renewed attention after a Netflix show and documentary profiled their case and L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced he recommends they be resentenced after new evidence that they had been molested by their father came to light, which could make them eligible for parole.
A person takes a photo of the Menendez brothers’ former mansion in Beverly Hills.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
In just the last month, Beverly Hills police officials say, officers have responded to 18 calls for service related to noise complaints and trespassing concerns around the mansion.
“There’s people all hours of the night,” said Elm Drive resident Mindy R., who declined to provide her full name out of concern for her safety because of all the recent visitors. “People are getting out of their cars, blocking our driveway.”
Now she and her neighbors call the police and tow companies to manage the crowd. It was nothing but the occasional tour bus through the neighborhood before, Mindy said.
“I didn’t register that [the mansion] was across the street from me,” she said of when she first moved in a few years ago. “It’s been pretty quiet until the Netflix show came out.”
In September, Netflix released its dramatization of the case, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” as the latest chapter in its true crime anthology series. A two-hour documentary featuring new audio interviews with the siblings, “The Menendez Brothers,” was released by Netflix a month later. The scripted show and documentary introduced a new generation to a case that had their parents and grandparents glued to television screens during the first trial in 1993.
The trial, one of the first of its kind to be televised, created an appetite for a new American genre: true crime. The nation was engrossed in the tale of these two charismatic yet troubled young men who seemed to have it all between wealth and looks before they violently snapped, taking their parents’ lives with shotguns.
The renewed celebrity status of the house has since become a goldmine of viral content for TikTokers who film the mansion and rehash the gruesome details of the murder scene for online audiences or raise the idea of a haunting.
“This psychic visited the Menendez home. Do you see what I see?” says the caption of one TikTok video that has been viewed more than 2.5 million times, as it zooms ever closer to an upstairs window to suggest a shadow of Jose Menendez’s face.
Natalie Gardena, a surgical technician from Pomona, said she’s seen content creators hopping the fence on social media to take photos on the porch to re-create a picture of the brothers standing in front of the mansion.
Erik Menendez, left, and brother Lyle outside their Beverly Hills home.
(Ronald Soble / Los Angeles Times)
The 25-year-old visited the mansion on Wednesday on her day off from work and said she was initially drawn to the home by her morbid fascination with true crime documentaries — she had also visited Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills where the Manson murders happened. But watching the scripted Netflix series also caused her to sympathize with the brothers’ experiences of alleged abuse under their father.
“The system just failed them,” Gardena said. She thinks it was unfair that the trial focused on the brothers’ spending spree after the killings without fully acknowledging the sexual assault allegations. “If they were sisters, they would have been out long time ago. But since they’re men, no one believed men could be sexually abused back then.”
Though the mansion is no longer owned by the Menendez family — it was sold for $17 million in March and is vacant as it undergoes renovation — that apparently hasn’t stopped its appeal at home or abroad.
A tour bus drives past the Menendez brothers’ former mansion in Beverly Hills.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
On a recent Wednesday afternoon, visitors were walking or driving by the home virtually every minute. Among them were tourists from France and South Africa who stopped by to take pictures of the mansion’s front-facing facade and the residence’s numbers on the driveway.
“In Italy, the show is very popular,” said Fabrizio Serra, a 23-year-old who was visiting Los Angeles and decided to include the Menendez mansion on his itinerary. “It’s fascinating to visit this place … something that you always see on the screens … you have the opportunity in real life [to see it].”
Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez, left, Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez, middle, and Javier Bardem as Jose Menendez in “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”
(Miles Crist / Netflix)
For others, seeing the residence brings up a deep sense of personal loss and grief.
Rebecca Hecht, who went to Beverly Hills High School a year ahead of Erik Menendez, lives about a mile away from the home and was walking by the house with a labradoodle on a recent afternoon.
“I just feel a very heavy presence being here,” Hecht said. “It feels very ominous on the street.”
Her brother Adam taught Erik tennis, she said. The same summer the murders happened, Adam also mysteriously disappeared — a case that’s never been solved.
“In 1989, I believe I lost three brothers,” said a tearful Hecht, who still can’t believe that a schoolmate of hers has been in prison for decades. “I understand what they went through, because I grew up in this town, I had a very similar father to them. But the abuse was far worse that they went through.”
With the renewed attention drawn to the case, she finally mustered the courage to watch the entirety of the Menendez trial on YouTube. And while she doesn’t condone murder, she believes they deserve a second chance because of the alleged abuse.
Lyle, left, and Erik Menendez leave a courtroom in Santa Monica in 1990 after a judge ruled that conversations between the two brothers and their psychologist after their parents were slain were not privileged and could be used as evidence in their murder case.
(Nick Ut / Associated Press)
“They’re model citizens in prison, and strangely, ironically, prison was probably a better life for them, and that’s why they were able to thrive,” Hecht said.
As for the Netflix show, Hecht said it’s too personal to watch it.
But she hopes the media attention has swayed the public’s and officials’ opinions in favor of the brothers.
“I think any publicity is good publicity. I do think there’s a firestorm of attention right now, and I believe it’s pushing in the direction of their release,” she said.
Two major state programs to combat illegal cannabis recently sent out news releases lauding their collective seizures of some $544 million worth of illicit weed.
But when it comes to reining in California’s sprawling black market, experts say it’s just a drop in the bucket.
Those in the thick of the fight against illegal pot, like Mendocino County Sheriff Matthew Kendall, can’t help but roll their eyes.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love when those guys [state law enforcement officers] show up to help,” he said, “but I would need 50 police officers for 50 days to even begin putting a dent in it.”
Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall stands near an illegal cannabis grow in January 2022 in the Halls Valley area near Covelo, Calif.
Despite these alarming numbers, some law enforcement leaders say the raids are barely slowing the black market — which, according to a study by Beau Whitney, founder of cannabis economics research firm Whitney Economics, makes up more than half the state’s marijuana sales.
“If we examine the statistics, it is clear that these operations are not effectively or aggressively putting a dent into the illegal market,” said Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue.
For example, operations by the state Department of Justice’s Eradication and Prevention of Illicit Cannabis program, or EPIC, have seized about 77,000 cannabis plants in 36 counties this year. Yet, Siskiyou County alone produces an estimated 12 million to 16 million illegal plants per year. Therefore, if EPIC only focused on Siskiyou for a year, it would eradicate just 6% of the estimated local black market, he said.
A member of a Siskiyou County sheriff’s task force drags cannabis plants out of a greenhouse for burial during a Mount Shasta Vista raid.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
This sentiment was echoed by Kendall, who noted that in Mendocino County’s 35-square-mile Round Valley alone there are an estimated 1 million illegal marijuana plants.
“The black market is as big and bad as ever,” he said.
The Riverside County Sheriff’s marijuana enforcement team told The Times there is still a lot of work to do to address that county’s black market, which has not gotten any smaller in the last two years.
Since then, many law enforcement leaders say they believe the state has done little to address the problems fueling the black market — onerous taxation and regulations for legal producers, few consequences for illegal operators and limited access to legal marijuana in wide swaths of California.
“It’s like [state leaders] came to our counties, they sprayed the whole thing with gasoline and lit it on fire,” Kendall said. “Then they start talking about EPIC doing this work that is basically showing up with a garden hose.”
A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom referred questions about the concerns raised by local law enforcement leaders to the state Department of Cannabis Control, which did not respond to a request for comment.
California legalized weed through Proposition 64, a 2016 ballot measure that promised “to tax the growth and sale of marijuana in a way that drives out the illicit market.” Eight years later, the illicit market continues to thrive.
“California did a horrible job of incentivizing [illegal] cultivators to convert over,” said Whitney, the cannabis economist. “They taxed them heavily, they regulated them heavily, they couldn’t make any money.”
California charges a 15% excise tax on marijuana sales on top of additional local marijuana taxes. A recent study by cannabis industry research and analysis firm GreenWave Advisors found that legal weed companies owe the state more than $730 million in back taxes, 72% of which is owed by companies that have gone out of business.
Johnny Casali, center, and partner Rose Moberly talk with state cannabis control inspectors at Casali’s Garberville farm in 2022. Casali and other growers face steep taxes and onerous rules.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Another challenge is that more than half of California counties don’t allow the sale of marijuana, which restricts access to legal weed in wide swaths of the state and drives demand to the black market.
There are also major incentives for sellers to opt into the illegal market — they can dodge taxation and licensing fees, while knowing that the penalty for selling or transportation of marijuana without required licenses is only a misdemeanor.
“From the criminal mindset, there is minimal downside and massive upside to cultivating marijuana illegally and selling it on the black market,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Lt. Larry Lopez.
Siskiyou County Sheriff LaRue said that, although there are enhanced penalties for certain violations involving tax evasion and environmental crimes, most of the illegal-cultivation offenses do not have harsh enough penalties to deter production.
Because enforcement measures are limited, Mendocino County Sheriff Kendall said the raids conducted by state agencies are like a game of Whac-A-Mole.
“We can chop it down and, by golly, it pops up again the next day,” he said.
Mendocino County sheriff’s deputies destroy cannabis in a 2022 raid.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Raids are also a limited enforcement tool, because they mostly lead to the arrest of laborers — not owners.
“It is a frequent strategy for the black-market organizers to hide behind the labor force and remain shielded from law enforcement,” LaRue said. “It is rare that higher-level organizers are anywhere near the cultivation areas.”
Despite the drawbacks and frustrations, Sheriffs LaRue and Kendall and Lt. Lopez still support conducting raids and welcome state assistance.
But they say that, to have a meaningful effect, raids need to be accompanied by policy changes that address the narrow profit margin for legal cultivators and the minor penalties for illegal ones.
And after years of calling for change, there’s a growing sense of exasperation among those on the front lines.
“We have reached a time in the state of California where the architects of these laws — the governor, the legislators — they’re refusing to speak with the carpenters, and that’s the sheriffs and the police chiefs,” Kendall said. “When we say this isn’t going to work, it’s falling on deaf ears.”
