Crime Issue

Longer prison sentences for sex offenders, carjackers, drive-by shooters and stalkers. Increased funding for sheriffs, police and other local law enforcement officials. Additional prison beds for dangerous felons. Boot camps for nonviolent offenders. For starters, that would be my response to the question Sherry Bebitch Jeffe posed, but never answered, in her recent commentary on crime and the gubernatorial race ("Wilson Hoping Crime Will Assure His Job--but What Has He Done So Far?"

Facing wide public indignation over Mexico's crime epidemic, President Felipe Calderon on Thursday proposed new steps to fight kidnapping and other violent offenses. He called for anti-abduction squads, special high-security prisons with separate areas for kidnappers, closer tracking of cellphones and more aid for local authorities. Calderon summoned governors and police officials from across Mexico to chart a way out of a crisis that has dominated the news and put the nation's leaders on the defensive.

One candidate's brochures feature a stark black-and-white photo of a loaded gun pointed straight out, as if aimed between the eyes of the reader. The message, emblazoned in blood-red, states: "Too many families have lived with the horror of violent crime." The claim on the other candidate's glossy mailers: "Only one candidate for City Council has a specific plan for fighting crime." The word crime is spray-painted in capital letters on a redbrick wall.

Hours after the new year dawned, two men were led into the booking area of the Fairfax County Detention Center and ordered to scrape their cheeks with tiny swabs. The same thing happened 160 miles away in the small town of Waverly, where a stabbing suspect had been brought in after a bloody fracas. In both cases, the suspects provided police with DNA samples compelled under a new Virginia law that seeks to use genetic tests to broaden the hunt for suspects in unsolved crimes.

It was a tribute somber enough to cloud the heart of a sunny little beach town. And it was one that demonstrated why Pete Wilson, who has presided over some of California's bleakest times, is now considered by many to be the favorite to win the race for governor. In a grassy glade next to the baseball field in Live Oak Park, under the outstretched arms of an aged sycamore tree, the citizens of Manhattan Beach on Wednesday unveiled a memorial to one of their own, Police Officer Martin Ganz.

Pledging "strong and unflinching leadership" to fight crime and create jobs, Gov. Pete Wilson on Tuesday formally opened his bid for a second term as California's chief executive and said it would be the last campaign of his long political career.

Regarding the Commentary by Howard Adler, chair of the Orange County Democratic Committee ("It's Time to Address the Issues That Voters Really Care About," Sept. 29): Howard is right. Our economy stinks. Our school system is in trouble. Crime is on the rise. The cost of health care is crippling businesses and families alike. The Democratic Party needs to stand for fundamental change. The Republicans have failed. They campaigned against taxes but have increased taxes on the middle class.

For all the publicity the abortion issue received in the days preceding the Republican National Convention, delegates quickly approved the controversial policy platform without rancor Monday--and that's just how most of the Orange County contingent seemed to want it. After weeks of conflict, local delegates seemed determined to show a united front Monday, with some reluctant to even address the abortion issue when they gathered on the convention floor.

ABC News correspondent Brit Hume got it right Thursday night: "Bush is running for President, not sheriff, but some days it's hard to tell." George Bush's foray into a blue-collar section of Queens, N.Y., to receive the endorsement of several large police organizations made for some great visuals on the national TV newscasts, as Bush continued slamming Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis on the crime issue.

Facing wide public indignation over Mexico's crime epidemic, President Felipe Calderon on Thursday proposed new steps to fight kidnapping and other violent offenses. He called for anti-abduction squads, special high-security prisons with separate areas for kidnappers, closer tracking of cellphones and more aid for local authorities. Calderon summoned governors and police officials from across Mexico to chart a way out of a crisis that has dominated the news and put the nation's leaders on the defensive.

Proclaiming a new spirit of cooperation in fighting crime, the top U.S. and Mexican prosecutors announced steps Tuesday to curb the flow of illegal weapons from the United States into Mexico and to improve collaboration on other law enforcement issues. U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and his Mexican counterpart, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, also vowed to improve communication and understanding between federal prosecutors of the two countries.

The two mayoral candidates continued to jab at each other's approach to criminal justice issues Friday, even as each man accused his opponent of muddying the campaign and misrepresenting his record. The heated back-and-forth spilled over from the charged debate a day earlier, when City Atty. James K. Hahn called Antonio Villaraigosa's record abysmal. Villaraigosa shot back, comparing Hahn to former Mayor Sam Yorty, infamous for running a racially divisive campaign against Tom Bradley.

Discussing the controversial firing of Police Commission President Gerald Chaleff for the first time, Mayor Richard Riordan on Thursday defended the decision by saying that he wants a civilian leader who will take on Chief Bernard C. Parks and deal with a rising crime rate and a dip in arrests. "I want a president of the commission who the chief responds to, who is not afraid to stand up to the chief, and to challenge the chief," Riordan said in an interview with The Times.

What happened to Milton Walker Jr. is plain enough: Two days after Thanksgiving 1995, the 43-year-old homeless man died in a vacant lot, his skull crushed by repeated blows. To know who killed him and why, prosecutors say, is to delve into a world of bigotry and savagery and self-loathing, to peer into the small lives of a vicious group of young white supremacists at the peak of a hate-fueled crime rampage in the High Desert.

An international war crimes tribunal issued warrants for the arrest of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four top lieutenants and ordered their assets frozen Thursday after indicting the men on charges that they masterminded the murders of hundreds of Kosovo Albanians and the mass deportation of at least 740,000 others. Yugoslavia promptly denounced the action as "monstrous." A spokesman for Milosevic's political party accused the U.N.

In a campaign known more for being consumed by the El Toro airport issue, supervisor candidate Dave Sullivan has outraged his opponent, incumbent Jim Silva, with a mailer this week that accuses Silva of being soft on child molesters. The mailer states in large, bold letters: "Jim Silva opposed aggressive monitoring and warning about sex offenders. Is this the kind of person you want as county supervisor?" The piece takes excerpts from an Oct.

There is something about George Bush's speech Monday that puts us in mind of the Irish parliamentarian of whose career it was said that "he resolutely resisted any responsibility more pragmatic than rhetoric." How else to explain the puzzling package of crime-control measures the President announced, and the way in which it manages to be both reckless and timid at the same time? In the first instance, Bush proposes a sweeping expansion of various expensive and problematic legal and penal measures, which already have failed to deter crime to any measurable degree.

Democratic presidential nominee and Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, moving to preempt further Republican attacks on the crime issue, Tuesday announced that he will submit legislation to tighten his state's bail system. Dukakis was responding to public furor over recent abductions of children committed by a man who had pleaded guilty to sex crimes and then had been released on bail.

In 1971, Guy Goughnor was a 19-year-old longhair who went by the name Deputy Dawg. He and his hippie friends used to drink into the night, urinate in the streets, steal laundry from clotheslines and otherwise show their disrespect for authority. The last time anyone saw Goughnor alive was the night a bulldog-like lawman by the name of Renner Forbes pulled him out of a bar and threw him into the back of his patrol car.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to convene regional human relations summits and to study the pattern of hate crimes in order to staunch a reported rise in bias crimes. Last month, the county's Commission on Human Relations reported hate crimes in the county had increased 25% in 1996. In the San Fernando Valley, hate crimes rose about 18%.