San Francisco Institutes "Blind Charging:"  Timothy Williams of the New York Times reports that San Francisco's District Attorney, George Gascon, believes the key to solving potential racial biases may rest within removing demographic information from prosecutors. The concern for concealing this information from prosecutors is due to the majority of prosecutors being white and/or from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. "Blind Charging" aims at curbing racial prejudice in order to maintain fair charges and convictions regardless of ethnicity. Gascon is hoping this will lend some explanation as to why there is such a large statistical discrepancy among African American defendants charged and arrested in comparison to white defendants. If the outcome of this study proves to be unwavering from prior statistics, the reasoning behind this disproportion may be due to causes such as prior offenses/charges that the evidence is not accounting for.  San Francisco seems to be the first city to enact something of this kind and the results should be interesting.

Drug Bust of Nuestra Familia Prison Gang Troy Pope reports from Your Central Valley that U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott and other agencies announced the arrest of at least 50 individuals involved in drug-trafficking. Those involved had an association with either the Nuestra Familia prison gang or the Norteno street gang. The Nuestra Familia gang was found responsible for drug-trafficking a mass amount of methamphetamine and other controlled substances, as well as firearm offenses and other violent crimes. Unsurprisingly, the elite members of the Nuestra gang were found with contraband cell phones that were used to arrange the transportation of illicit drugs across border and state lines. The narcotics were then taken to a stash house in Kings County where gang members then prepared the drugs for delivery to dealers. This case illuminates how easily prison gangs have been able to run criminal enterprises out of California prisons.