Cops

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

Placing surreal moment atop surreal moment - on Sunday at Staples, they were piling up like pancakes - the sun starts to vanish about 5:30 p.m. at L.A. Live. What they call an annular solar eclipse has begun, a cockeyed celestial event that looks as if it were penciled out by Picasso. First thought: They've assigned me to cover the Apocalypse. Second thought: Wow, the 110 is really gonna be a mess. Sunday was just another Sunday here in the City of Playoffs, except that you had this cosmic convergence of a major bike race, a hockey playoff game, a basketball playoff game and a playoff eclipse, all within hours of each other at L.A. Live, the softest spot in our city's stuccoed soul.

Placing surreal moment atop surreal moment - on Sunday at Staples, they were piling up like pancakes - the sun starts to vanish about 5:30 p.m. at L.A. Live. What they call an annular solar eclipse has begun, a cockeyed celestial event that looks as if it were penciled out by Picasso. First thought: They've assigned me to cover the Apocalypse. Second thought: Wow, the 110 is really gonna be a mess. Sunday was just another Sunday here in the City of Playoffs, except that you had this cosmic convergence of a major bike race, a hockey playoff game, a basketball playoff game and a playoff eclipse, all within hours of each other at L.A. Live, the softest spot in our city's stuccoed soul.

Attorneys for a former Westminster police detective will try to persuade a jury that he was under the influence of the antidepressant Zoloft and not responsible for the kidnap and rape of a woman in 2010. Det. Anthony Nicholas Orban was so overwhelmed by the prescription drug that he was mentally "unconscious" and "totally unaware of his actions," attorney James Blatt said outside a Rancho Cucamonga courtroom where his client's trial began Monday. "But for the use of Zoloft, Mr. Orban would not have committed these acts," Blatt said.

Being a cop wasn't enough for Darcey Greenfield. The 17-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department moonlighted in the tumultuous world of real estate. Her "dibbling and dabbling," as she put it, began with her buying a small apartment building during her rookie year and grew into a full-fledged side-profession. She got a real estate license and office space where, on days off from wearing the badge, she researched investments and met with clients. Many of those clients came from the LAPD.

Re "$6 Million to Be Paid in 9 Police Suits," Dec. 18: The Los Angeles Police Department disciplines police officers with exemplary records for breaking the code of silence and reporting on the misdeeds of bad officers. The good cops have their names splashed in the newspapers and are outcasts from the department. The bad cops keep their jobs and remain anonymous to continue their illegal activities while the taxpayers fork out millions of dollars for the good cops to stay quiet and go away.

The difference between cops and civilians: Cops don't beat people if they know they're on TV. Civilians do. WILLIAM R. LIVINGSTONE, Santa Barbara

Rather than more cops, what we need are fewer crooks--think about it! JOHN A. JURGUTIS Santa Monica

Channel-surf almost any night of the week in Britain and chances are you'll come across a gruesome crime drama featuring a dark and tortured soul whose brutal, morally repellent deeds make you recoil in horror. And that's just the detective. The primetime landscape here is littered with screwed-up sleuths whose inner demons command almost as much attention as the stomach-churning crimes they solve, using methods invariably described as "unorthodox. " Such gritty characters are upholders of a grand tradition exemplified by the likes of John Thaw's Inspector Morse and Jane Tennison of "Prime Suspect," the role that helped vault Helen Mirren to international fame.

Re "Supreme Court Debates Traffic Violation Arrests," Dec. 5: Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's attitude toward the cop who handcuffed and jailed a woman because she and her kids weren't seat-belted was, "It is not a constitutional violation for a police officer to be a jerk." How would he have felt if it was his daughter or granddaughter who experienced this trauma? If a policeman can be excused from such disgusting behavior by just admitting to being a jerk, then we'll soon have a police state.

My neighbor's Honda was stolen from our street — twice. The second time it was recovered, its rear windshield had been blown out in a gang shooting. It was time for a change, a drastic one. So my neighbor bought a Ford Crown Victoria with tinted windows, side spotlights and a metal plate on the trunk lid reading "Police Interceptor. " Now it sits, black and brutish, among the Camry Hybrids, Mini Coopers and Volvo station wagons in our Echo Park neighborhood. In September, the last of the iconic cop cars — a veteran of countless street chases, both actual and theatrical — rolled off Ford's production line in St. Thomas, Ontario.

TV westerns, game shows and variety shows have come and gone. But when it comes to prime time, TV has rarely experienced a cop-out, despite the seemingly endless recycling of formulas dealing with the central themes of good and evil, crime and punishment. The creative forces behind CBS' new "NYC 22" hope that their series demonstrates that there is plenty of life left in the well-tilled cop show territory. Its A-list pedigree is an immediate attention grabber: Executive producers include Oscar winner Robert De Niro and novelist-screenwriter Richard Price.

The University of California's investigative report into the controversial pepper-spraying of student protesters by UC Davis campus police is expected to be released publicly Wednesday — with most officers' names removed. After a monthlong legal battle delaying the release, UC and its police union reached a tentative legal settlement Monday that would allow the public disclosure of most of the report about police tactics and UC Davis administrators' roles in the November incident.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose conviction in the slaying of a Philadelphia police officer became a major battleground of the 20th century's racial divide, has lost his latest appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In an order dated March 26, the state high court announced that it was affirming a lower court order in the case; the lower court had rejected Abu-Jamal's complaint that some aspects, including forensic evidence, were unfairly handled.  Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and radio journalist, was convicted of the 1981 fatal shooting of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

Even Duke and North Carolina fans might say this is taking a rivalry too far. Then again, those schools have never met in the NCAA men's basketball tournament , let alone the national semifinals. Five days before Kentucky and Louisville meet in the Final Four in New Orleans came word that police had to be called to break up a fight Monday between rival fans at a dialysis center. The altercation took place in Kentucky at the Georgetown Dialysis Clinic. According to WKYT-TV, a Kentucky fan hooked up to a dialysis machine overheard a Louisville fan waiting for treatment "running his mouth" about how Louisville was going to beat Kentucky on Saturday.

When a rash of burglaries and other crimes broke out in and around a gated community in Sanford, Fla., residents wanted some form of protection. Someone raised the possibility of a neighborhood watch group. But only one resident seems to have  come forward for the duties: George Zimmerman. Zimmerman, 28, is the focal point for national outrage over the fatal Feb. 26 shooting of an unarmed teen, Trayvon Martin. The 17-year-old was returning from a sugar run -- he'd bought a bag of Skittles and an iced tea at a local convenience store -- and was reportedly talking on a cellphone to his girlfriend when he crossed paths with Zimmerman.

There's something about the combination of crime, crazy and cops specific to small-town Texas that is irresistible to filmmakers. Indulging the urge to scratch that sleazy underbelly has produced everything from classic to camp: "The Getaway," "Hud," "Blood Simple," "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," to mention a few of the more unforgettable bad seeds. The new crime thriller "Texas Killing Fields" is certainly shooting to join that crowd but misfires too many times to make the cut. It's too bad. There is enough mystery in the murdering that gives the film its name, enough through-the-glass-darkly in the style of director Ami Canaan Mann (dad is master Michael)

The suspect is a teenager, a baby-faced black kid out for a joyride in "the Jungle," a high-crime maze in southwest Los Angeles. Two white LAPD cops attempt to pull him over. The teenager, cornered in a cul-de-sac, backs up toward them. One cop panics, accidentally fires a shot and blows out the back window, narrowly missing the driver. All the variables add up to the calculus of a riot: young black suspect, trigger-happy white cop, inner-city neighborhood. Irate residents shout at the cops and pour out of apartments, dash down the sidewalk, sprint from between buildings.

The flood channel near Interstate 10 has been scarred by hundreds of graffiti tags and, like a wound that never heals, treated countless times with drab paint. Beneath the layers of beige and gray are jagged markings that dominate San Bernardino Police Sgt. Dwight Waldo's world. He has tracked them for two decades - chasing taggers through back alleys, recovering hundreds of weapons from their hangouts and memorizing, then forgetting, more than 5,000 tags. What many in law enforcement once viewed as petty vandalism, mostly the work of teens with spray cans, early on became something more to Waldo.

"21 Jump Street"is set to school the competition at the box office this weekend. The comedy, starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill as two inept cops on an undercover mission to bust a high school drug ring, is expected to open with $30 million to $35 million in ticket sales, according to those who have seen pre-release audience surveys. Sony Pictures, the studio distributing the film, is predicting a softer opening of around $25 million. No other new movies are hitting theaters in wide national release this weekend, though the Jason Segel-Ed Helms dramedy "Jeff, Who Lives at Home" and Will Ferrell's Spanish-language "Casa de Mi Padre" will play in roughly 60 of the country's top markets.