Brutality

Dallas running back DeMarco Murray and Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis were among several players injured during the Ravens' 31-29 victory over the Cowboys on Sunday. Their status won't be known until their MRI results are revealed, but the unofficial prognosis was much more optimistic for one of the players than the other. Murray rushed for 90 yards in the first half before leaving the game with a sprained left foot early in the third quarter. "We're going to have to wait and see. ... I don't know right now," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said of Murray's status for Sunday's game against the Carolina Panthers.

President Obama's trip Monday to sacred ground for the labor movement for the dedication of the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument got more than its share of news coverage. It would be hard for the president's team to complain about stories across the television networks and spread over at least some newspapers' front pages. And yet something was missing and will remain missing through election day, Nov. 6. That is the sense of moment and history that lent a multiplier effect to so much of the coverage of Obama's first run for president.

Reacting to a scathing report of sheriff's deputy brutality in the Los Angeles County jails, county supervisors Tuesday embraced dozens of reforms to curb inmate abuse and said they would be responsible for ensuring that Sheriff Lee Baca carries them out. The Board of Supervisors accepted the findings of a blue-ribbon commission that spent nine months investigating allegations of excessive force before concluding that Baca failed to heed repeated warnings...

The St. Zita Society A Novel Ruth Rendell Scribner: 272 pp., $26 If you're unfamiliar with Ruth Rendell, if you've somehow managed to miss her 60 or so books, if you've never experienced the frisson produced by her unique blend of elegant prose and brutal plotting or laughed out loud at her acidic humor or social observations, then congratulations: Your reading life is about to get infinitely richer. Reviewing mysteries is a bit like dissecting a butterfly to explain the wonder of its flight.

Sheriff Lee Baca said this week that he's ready to shoulder the blame for years of unchecked deputy-on-inmate violence in Los Angeles County jails. And he promised to carry out all the reforms outlined in a scathing jail report by an investigative commission that laid the problem at the sheriff's door. But it's hard to know what to make of a leader - nationally respected and locally beloved - who ignored a decade's worth of brutality complaints and rarely visited the jails he runs, except to play sheriff-sage to the inmate-students in his Education-Based Incarceration program.

Enigmatic anecdote is the currency of Martin Crimp's "The City," having its U.S. premiere at Son of Semele Theater in a production directed by artistic director Matthew McCray. The characters don't so much engage in dialogue as indulge in a cryptic form of storytelling, in which puzzling incidents are set against a background of warfare, brutality and personal desolation. A foreboding air of menace invokes the work of Harold Pinter, though Crimp, a playwright better known in the States for his springy translations of French dramatic classics, is more abstract and diffuse.

"The Green Wave" tells its deeply moving story three ways, using animation, on-camera interviews and extensive documentary footage to show us a moment in history that reveals more about itself each time it is examined. That moment is the tumultuous, controversial 2009 presidential election in Iran, when the spirit of reform as symbolized by the color green ended up stained with the blood of demonstrators savagely attacked by forces loyal to the ruling regime. Although a 3-year-old election may sound like old news, "The Green Wave" has considerable contemporary relevance.

MEXICO CITY — For hours, gunmen held captive a church group camping on a spiritual retreat. They raped girls and beat boys. They stole their cellphones. Finally the gunmen left; the youths wrapped themselves in blankets and walked five miles to find help. The attack late last week outside Mexico City illustrates the mounting dangers — especially violence targeting women — in the Mexican state that until last year was governed by the man who will be the nation's next president.

If you're ever unfortunate enough to find yourself accused of assaulting a law enforcement officer, good luck. When it comes down to your word against the officer's, and there are no impartial witnesses, you may end up in a jumpsuit even if you're innocent. But if you're an inmate accused of assaulting a jailer, you're in a considerably worse jam. And in the opinion of the ACLU of Southern California, your best chance of avoiding prosecution may be evidence that is routinely concealed by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and the district attorney's office.

The Los Angeles County sheriff's captain who ran the Men's Central Jail fostered a culture of brutality by protecting dishonest deputies and permitting his underlings to use excessive force on inmates, his former lieutenant alleged in testimony Friday. Capt. Daniel Cruz even joked at the department's annual Christmas party about hitting inmates, according to Michael Bornman, who is now a department captain. While toasting deputies at the party, Cruz allegedly asked a banquet hall-full of jailers: "What do I always tell you guys?"