Category: CNN Regional

By James Taylor, CBS13 Photojournalist

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    SACRAMENTO, California (KMAX, KOVR) — In July, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided a South Sacramento Home Depot parking lot, and last week, community members began mobilizing after spotting what looked like another raid.

With fears continuing over ICE raids, community members like Junior Goris are on alert for this type of activity.

“Families are being separated. People are being snatched off the street. Rights are being violated,” said Goris, president of the Delta Shores Community Association.

A row of unmarked SUVs and armed men in tactical gear were spotted last Wednesday in the Delta Shores community, across from a construction site where workers are building new homes.

“Obviously, there was a fear among the laborers as well that a possible ice operation was being staged,” Goris said.

The unusual activity prompted City Councilmember Mai Vang to rush to the scene.

“I introduced myself as the councilmember, and I did request that they identify themselves, just given the fear in our community,” Vang said.

She was surprised to find out it was actually a Sacramento police department SWAT team training exercise inside one of the vacant model homes.

Vang said there should have been more community notification to prevent this type of scare.

“There is no justification for keeping this operation confidential from the surrounding community,” she said. “Our residents deserve transparency. I do think that an apology from our police department to the neighborhood association is warranted.”

We reached out to Sacramento police for comment. In a statement, they said, “Our SWAT team regularly trains in different environments to stay prepared for unique and critical incidents, and it’s never our intent to cause alarm.”

“Just a little communication would have alleviated this whole thing, but it just didn’t happen. There was a breakdown,” Goris said.

So far, there’s been no apology from the police department, but they do say they’re working with the city manager’s office to address community concerns.

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By Felix Cortez

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    SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, Calif. (KSBW) — The annual crop report for Santa Cruz County shows strawberries as the top crop and highlights the agricultural industry’s recovery from the 2023 floods, with organic farming playing a key role.

Larry Jacobs, named Santa Cruz County Farmer of the Year in 2025, is part of the growing organic agriculture industry in the county.

“Business has been good. We see the demand for what we’ve been growing has been growing,” Jacobs said. He noted that while demand hasn’t grown as rapidly as in the initial years, there is still an increase as the public becomes more aware of the benefits of crops grown without pesticides.

Organic production in Santa Cruz County has seen significant growth over the past several years. According to the latest 2024 crop report, organic production was valued at more than $142 million, accounting for roughly one-fifth of all crop production in the county.

The 2024 crop report also indicates a strong production year overall.

“2024 was a really solid production year,” the Dave Sanford, Santa Cruz County Agricultural Commissioner, said. “We saw upticks kind of across the board on most of our major commodities. Berries particularly had a very strong year.”

Strawberries continue to be the number one crop, with production in 2024 valued at more than $741 million, marking a more than 13% increase from the previous year.

The report also shows how the industry is rebounding from the devastating 2023 floods.

“Those storms really impacted the length of the growing season and even just direct physical impacts on some of the production fields. So we did see some loss in ’23 for sure,” Sanford said. “And in ’24 we’re really seeing a bounce back to, you know, the solid values that we were sort of expecting.”

Organic farmers also faced challenges due to the flooding but are recovering, with growers increasing the acreage dedicated to organics. Jacobs Farms, for example, doubled the acreage dedicated to tomatoes.

“The wetter year cut things short a little bit,” Jacobs said. “This year’s going better and we planted more tomatoes this year, so we’re having a good year with our tomatoes.”

This year’s agricultural report was dedicated to Steve Driscoll, who passed away this year after dedicating 17 years to the Santa Cruz County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office.

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By Eric Graves

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    LIBERTY, Mo. (KMBC) — The Clay County Sheriff’s Office is trying to track down a scammer that tricked a local man out of $120,000 over the course of several months.

Sarah Boyd, public relations manager for the sheriff’s office, said the 61-year-old victim met the person on TikTok.

The suspect claimed they were a 34-year-old woman named Lisa.

Boyd said “Lisa” first reached out to the victim last year but got no response. In March, “Lisa” reached back, and this time the victim responded.

Over multiple months, Boyd said the victim thought he was building a relationship with this online profile posing as the 34-year-old house keeper named Lisa.

A big red flag came when the scammer asked the victim to start messaging on a different app.

“She asked him to move that conversation over to telegram, which is an encrypted messaging app,” Boyd said. “And that’s a very common practice that scammers use is to move conversations to an encrypted app, because they’re very hard for anyone to track.”

From there, Lisa started to have a series of emergencies and ask for help.

“It starts out small,” Boyd said. “Like in this case, they start asking for gas money, then for some pricier car repairs.”

Boyd said the victim was originally sending money through CashApp, but she said his account shutdown.

That was when another major red flag came up, the scammer asked the victim to send them money through cryptocurrency.

“That cryptocurrency is almost impossible to get back,” Boyd said.

Boyd said the victim sent BitCoin to the scammer from two different BitCoin ATMs, one in Excelsior Springs and another in Kearney.

“Scammers ask folks to withdraw cash from their bank, they put it in the cryptocurrency machine, the Bitcoin ATM, and then that gets transferred,” Boyd said. “The cash gets transferred to an account somewhere in the world.”

Over time, Boyd said the scammer built up trust with the victim, eventually asking for a huge sum of money.

“Finally, she said that she needed to sell her mother’s house,” Boyd said. “But she had to pay these back taxes on it and needed his help, paying those taxes, and said she would pay him back when the house sold.”

Boyd said this is where the victim lost the majority of the $120,000.

After this, the victim told his adult daughter what was happening. His daughter recognized the scam and came to the sheriff’s office.

The victim is now short $120,000 with few avenues for law enforcement to recover this swindled money.

“A lot of these folks are overseas,” Boyd said. “They can digitally cover their tracks, make it look like they’re at one IP address when they’re really at another. It is unfortunately very unlikely we’ll be able to identify a suspect in this case. We’re going to give it our best shot.”

Boyd said this is a textbook romance scam.

“They build up a relationship with these folks and it becomes an emotional relationship,” Boyd said. “It’s not transactional to the victim. It’s somebody they care about. Even though they may have never met them, they feel that they care about them. So it’s really hard for them to see what’s happening as a scam, because if that’s true, their heart gets broken, too.”

Boyd said it’s such a common scam there are likely more happening across the metro right now.

She wants potential victims to know what to look for.

“Somebody you’ve never met who you’ve only had contact with online asking for money,” Boyd said. “Anyone asking you to send money via cryptocurrency is big red flag and a lot of times the victims of this are very secretive because they think their loved ones will try to break the relationship up.”

Boyd said loved ones of possible victims need to keep an eye out, too.

“We want loved ones to look for, like, strange and excessive expenditures,” Boyd said. “Like, where is their money going? You know, that kind of thing. Show them examples of what has happened because they don’t want to believe that it’s a scam.”

The Clay County Sheriff’s Office is working to add warning labels and scam alert stickers to every cryptocurrency ATM in the county.

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By Lindsay Stone

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    CINCINNATI (WLWT) — A boy in Monroe faced heartbreak when his favorite toy tractor was stolen, but what happened next turned that sadness into joy and showed how powerful a community’s heart can be.

If there’s one thing 6-year-old Colton Majors loves to do, it’s farm. Every day, he hops on his play tractor, ready to wrangle the weeds and rule the front lawn.

“When its fall, I can pick up the leaves with it and throw it in the back,” Colton said.

When his dad put up a sign in the front yard announcing his campaign for Lemon Township trustee, Colton had an idea to add his tractor as decoration.

“I was trying to put it there to help my dad get his sign better so everybody can vote for him,” Colton said.

But days later, when Colton went to football practice, his tractor and gator were stolen.

“Anyone who knows him knows how much he loves those,” his mom Brittany said. “He’s on them every day, 24/7. That’s his farm equipment, just like his dad. It was very sad, especially for him.”

His mom posted on Facebook asking if anyone had seen Colton’s missing tractor and gator. Instead, the Monroe community took action, raising over $1,000 to get Colton new ones.

“We were able to replace both and the remainder we were able to donate to the Monroe PTO so they could get toys for outside,” Brittany said.

Colton was overjoyed to see his new tractor. To watch the moment he got the surprise, watch the video above.

“They took something that was heartbreaking for my son and turned it into something beautiful and better for the community,” Brittany said.

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