Members of the South Coast Chapter of National Charity League recently donated $5,000 to support youth programs such as Smart Girls, literacy projects, and scholarships for disadvantaged girls.
Smart Girls is a National Boys & Girls Club of America program, which provides guidance for adolescent girls toward healthy attitudes and lifestyles that will have a positive impact on their lives as they grow into adulthood.

The Orange County Fair has invited all 34 OC cities to participate in a Community Flag Salute. On Garden Grove’s day, Wednesday, August 9, Garden Grove Mayor Steve Jones, along with city council members, will lead fairgoers in singing the National Anthem at 12:30 p.m.
The OC Fair runs from Friday, July 14 to Sunday, August 13.
New to the OC Fair & Event Center is the Heroes Hall. Housed in a Santa Ana Army Air Base, the Heroes Hall consists of two exhibition floors of honoring Orange County veterans, their sacrifices, and to educate the community.

Alamitos West Health Care Center has been recognized as a 2017 recipient of the Bronze – Commitment to Quality Award by the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living.

Los Alamitos High School is 50 years old. Like anything of that age, it suffers from aches and pains that need serious attention. Electrical problems, deteriorating and unusable portable buildings and more is  the focus of the school district staff and board members.
At a town hall meeting held Monday night at the Los Alamitos Unified School District office, residents gathered to hear a presentation about major repairs and replacements needed at not only the high school, but a few of the elementary and middle schools.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted down a proposal for a cost-saving new voting system.
Neal Kelly, the County’s Registrar of Voters, had proposed to save the County money by opting into a new State-approved system of voting for 2018.
The system involved a combination of automatic distribution of mail ballots to all voters, 150 computer-based Voter Centers and 93 secure drop boxes.
The system would replace the existing Orange County 1,100 polling places and eliminate the costs of running them.

The Orange County Grand Jury released a report last week entitled “The Myth of the Orange County Jailhouse Informant Program.” Defense attorney allegations of misuse of jailhouse informants by the DA and Orange County Sheriff’s Department deputies ultimately led the trail judge in the Salon Meritage murder case to replace local prosecutors with the California Attorney General. The trial judge’s continuing frustrations with the defense allegedly not receiving documents from the prosecution have recently led the trial court to consider taking the death penalty off the table in the case against Scott Dekraai, who stands convicted in the 2011 mass murder at Salon Meritage.
Defense attorneys in the Joint Forces Training Base murder case against Daniel Wozniak also accused prosecutors and the Sheriff’s Department of illegally misusing informants. However, the trial judge in that case rejected the defense claims.
When the 28-page report was released, the DA’s office issued a statement essentially calling reports of an informant program at the county jail fake news and characterized the news reports as a “witch hunt.”
The Grand Jury report said, “Significant media coverage, finger pointing, and speculative rhetoric have been published about the alleged jailhouse informant program that is said to exist in the Orange County jails.”
The report said that any violations of “discovery,” the legal process that requires the prosecution to show their evidence to the defense, were “limited to the actions of a few members of the OCDA and a few OCSD personnel.”
The report said: “However, the OCGJ found no evidence to support claims of a systemic, widespread informant program, and reports of such have been exaggerated in the press.”
The Grand Jury report was highly critical of news media coverage of the informant controversy. However, the report also criticized the DA’s Office and the Sheriff’s Department
The report said, “In spite of no official completed investigations, the OCSD has proactively made structural and organizational changes to address the issues that arose as a result of the informant controversy.”
According to the District Attorney’s Office, the defense claimed that the OCDA and OCSD intentionally placed an informant next to Wozniak in order to get information from him. However, the OCDA openly notified the defense in the early stages of the case that they did not find the informant, who independently contacted a special handling deputy from OCSD, to be credible and therefore the informant would not be used in any capacity at trial.
According to the Grand Jury, “Ultimately, the court, in this case, did not find the defense’s argument compelling and Wozniak was found guilty and sentenced to death in September 2016.”

This article appeared in the June 21, 2017 print edition of the News Enterprise.