Criminals

Re "Pay the Dorner rewards," Editorial, March 31 This debate over paying out the reward money for Christopher Dorner's capture and conviction should be less about who deserves this money and more about why a reward is necessary in our supposedly just society. In the case of the two groups now vying for a piece of the reward, it's very likely both would have brought their information to the police regardless of any compensation. Rather than turning people into mercenaries, we should inform citizens and encourage them to do the right thing.

The suspect in the abduction and sexual assault of a 10-year-old Northridge girl this week has a criminal history dating back to 2002 and includes arrests for kidnapping, robbery, explosives possession and petty theft, Los Angeles police said. Tobias Dustin Summers was released from custody in July 2012 because of a sweeping new law that transfers authority over some felons from state prisons to county jails and, on their release, from state parole to county probation departments.

Los Angeles police on Saturday identified a suspect in the kidnapping and sexual assault of a young Northridge girl last week as a 30-year-old transient with an extensive criminal history. Tobias Dustin Summers, who was released from jail in January after serving six days for a probation violation, is the primary focus of the police investigation, LAPD Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese said at an afternoon news conference at police headquarters downtown. Summers has a criminal history dating back to 2002 that includes charges of kidnapping, robbery, explosives possession and petty theft, Albanese said.

NEW YORK - Preet Bharara, the man dubbed the new sheriff of Wall Street, notched another arrest in the government's vast insider trading probe. This time the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan nabbed a top portfolio manager at one of America's biggest hedge funds. SAC Capital Advisors' Michael Steinberg was led out of his Park Avenue apartment building in handcuffs early Friday morning. It's a major arrest at a fund that has long drawn government scrutiny. Bharara, 44, has carved out a reputation for being a tough prosecutor who has overseen some of the most high-profile white-collar criminal cases since the 1980s.

In a Georgia courtroom last year, a poor, 17-year-old high school freshman, charged as an adult with stealing a go-cart, entered a guilty plea to a felony charge of theft. It was his first time in court, and he was startled and confused when the judge asked if he was satisfied with his lawyer. "I don't have one," he answered. He had not spoken to a lawyer. A public defender's investigator had told him what the charges against him were and suggested he plead guilty. A public defender quickly spoke up and asserted that he was representing the youth.

Florida in March is the vacation destination your mother warned you about. Which is one of the reasons Disney Channel sweethearts Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens were drawn to the candy-colored sleaze that is Harmony Korine's "Spring Breakers. " It's their chance, with ABC Family's Ashley Benson ("Pretty Little Liars"), to break free of the parental-guidance considerations that have ruled their careers. Lewd, lush and mind-emptying, "Spring Breakers" mixes the commercial lure of its bikini-clad good girls turned bad with Korine's brand of subculture excavation ("Gummo," "Trash Humpers")

CAIRO - The young policeman with scuffed boots and sleepless eyes sat on a motorcycle in a neighborhood that no longer feared or respected him. Khaled Sayed wore the colors of his trade: a black beret adorned with a silver eagle. An officer for three years, Sayed patrols streets where guns flow and jobless youths roam with knives and rage. Uniformed men with badges and battered side arms once held sway here, but their swagger has been clipped by a new and dangerous order. Egypt's police and central security forces, for decades the thuggish protectors of Hosni Mubarak's repressive state, now safeguard a new government run by Islamist elements they once persecuted.

When Whitey Bulger was arrested in Santa Monica late on the afternoon of June 22, 2011, it brought to an end one of the longest, and strangest, manhunts in U.S. history. Nearly 82, Bulger had spent 15 years hiding in plain sight in an apartment complex near the Pacific with longtime girlfriend Cathy Greig. In that time, he had literally reinvented himself: from a ruthless murderer and extortionist, who for more than a quarter century ruled South Boston, or Southie, to a grandfatherly figure, white-haired, bearded and nondescript.

Don't look for "The Sweeney" to win any awards. It's not going to, not even close. But that doesn't stop it from being a briskly involving British crime entertainment of the old school. You've seen the type, and more than once, but the genre still has enough juice to take us for a ride. A tale of crafty criminals battling it out against tough cops, "The Sweeney" benefits greatly from Ray Winstone 's performance as Jack Regan, one of London's most cantankerous law enforcement professionals.

OUTSIDE SAN LUIS DE LA LOMA, Mexico - Don Polo's heavily armed convoy wound its way through the hills above the lush coastal plain of Guerrero state, its groves of slender palm trees now far below him. The two-lane country road twisted eastward, and upward, for miles. But around each bend, there were no campesinos , no burros, no dogs, no cars barreling down toward the Pacific. Fields of yellow grass, grown taller than a man, covered the landscape, animated only by the wind. This, though, was no vision of tranquillity.