CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 12, 2009 | By Anna Gorman
Immigration agents arrested nearly 300 foreign nationals with criminal records during a three-day sweep in California, officials announced Friday. The operation was the largest of its kind and resulted in the arrests of illegal immigrants convicted of robbery, assault and rape, said John Morton, head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The sweep ended Thursday night. Officials said 96 of the 286 arrests took place in Los Angeles County. Among those arrested in the county were a suspected gang member from El Salvador who had a 2004 robbery conviction and a Guatemalan man with a 1993 conviction for lewd acts with a child under 14. "These are not people we want walking our streets," Morton said.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 17, 2009 | Kimi Yoshino
A surgical technician convicted of firing a gun into an occupied car was back on the job last week at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, just days after being released from jail, despite vows by Los Angeles County officials to crack down on medical personnel with criminal records. Norris Smith, 53, had spent 169 days behind bars before pleading no contest to the felony charge Aug. 26. In exchange for the plea, a five-year state prison sentence was suspended. He was placed on probation and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment and abstain from alcohol, according to court records.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 4, 2009 | Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Phillip Garrido, who was convicted in a 1976 kidnapping and rape, was arrested four years earlier for allegedly drugging and raping a 14-year-old girl near his hometown, police in Antioch, Calif., revealed Thursday for the first time. Garrido was arrested last week on suspicion of kidnapping and raping Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was 11 when she was snatched from her street in South Lake Tahoe in 1991 and was allegedly kept in a hidden backyard warren of sheds and tents for 18 years.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
August 22, 2009 | Ari B. Bloomekatz
Two years ago, Calgary real estate executive Ryan Alexander Jenkins was sentenced to 15 months' probation and ordered to complete domestic violence counseling after hitting his then-girlfriend. But Jenkins came to Los Angeles and was selected as a contestant on the VH1 reality show "Megan Wants a Millionaire," on which wealthy men compete for the love of a young woman. Now Jenkins is wanted in the slaying of his ex-wife, model Jasmine Fiore, and "Megan Wants a Millionaire" has been abruptly pulled off the air by VH1. The case raises questions about how a man with a record of domestic violence got onto a show on which the object is to marry a woman.
NATIONAL
August 7, 2009 | Anna Gorman
Pledging more oversight and accountability, the Obama administration announced plans Thursday to transform the nation's immigration detention system from one reliant on a scattered network of local jails and private prisons to a centralized one designed specifically for civil detainees.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
August 5, 2009 | Jack Leonard and Richard Winton
Charles Samuel, the parolee accused of killing Lily Burk, was convicted 22 years ago of another violent robbery that bore a striking similarity to last month's abduction and slaying of the high school senior in downtown Los Angeles, according to court records reviewed by The Times. As in the Burk case, Samuel was accused of kidnapping someone -- this time an elderly man -- and driving in the man's car to an ATM, where he demanded that the man withdraw cash.