Deputies

After a jury handed him a death sentence in 1989, the serial killer known as the Night Stalker reacted with a shrug. "Big deal," said Richard Ramirez, a devil-worshiping drifter whose spree of break-in murders terrorized California in mid-1980s. "Death always went with the territory. " The end turned out to be much further away and different than Ramirez likely envisioned that day. After more than two decades on death row, Ramirez died Friday morning of natural causes at Marin General Hospital, state corrections officials said.

A Compton jury Friday awarded $7.5 million to the parents of a man shot dead by a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy. According to the parents' attorney, Robert Thomas Jr. was standing outside with about 60 others at a party in Willowbrook in 2010 when two deputies pulled up. One stopped Thomas and frisked him. Thomas then bolted, and the two deputies gave chase. A sheriff's spokesman said the deputies saw Thomas reach for a gun that was sticking out of his pocket. Deputy Victor Lemus fired nine shots, hitting Thomas seven times and killing him, said John Sweeney, the Thomas family's attorney.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - With his shaggy hair, bushy mustache and obstinate ways, Jeffrey Allen Wright was well known to sheriff's deputies in Santa Rosa County, Fla. Wright, 55, drove around with a phony license plate. When stopped, he refused to produce a driver's license. Once he threatened to sue a deputy who pulled him over. After he was fined for traffic offenses in September, Wright paid with counterfeit money orders. When deputies served warrants for felony counterfeiting March 8, Wright barricaded himself in his garage and declared that he would not be "a servant of the king.

After allegedly gunning down his wife and two young daughters, Shane Franklin Miller drove 200 miles to the isolated Northern California town where he grew up. A day later, investigators found his abandoned Dodge pickup, with live rounds for a firearm and a note to his family inside. "He briefly addressed members and made implied threats toward some of them, and apologized to others," according to the Shasta County Sheriff's Office. The killings sparked a large manhunt that began the night of May 7. Authorities said Miller, 45, shot his wife Sandy, 34, and daughters Shelby, 8, and Shasta, 5, near Shingletown.

A carjacking suspect who fled police and barricaded himself inside a Boyle Heights apartment was shot and killed early Tuesday by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies, officials said. Deputies entered the building in the 500 block of Fairview Avenue between 3:30 and 4 a.m. and shot the man during a confrontation, officials said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene. He was not identified. Authorities said the incident began about 10:30 p.m. Monday, when the man carjacked a driver and was soon spotted by police.

Re "Official possibly hindered probe of jails," Aug. 5 Your article took the unusual tack of protecting the identity of an inmate while revealing the name of three deputy sheriffs. The Times should not have released the names of the deputies. Protecting an inmate's identity may be appropriate. Printing the names of the deputies is dangerously irresponsible. Floyd Hayhurst Los Angeles Lee Baca Los Angeles Hayhurst is president of the Assn.

A man at the center of a videotaped altercation with Kern County sheriff's deputies earlier this month died from heart disease, not baton blows, authorities said Thursday. The county coroner's office labeled David Sal Silva's death accidental, adding that the primary cause was hypertensive heart disease. Videos taken by witnesses showed baton blows and a struggle between Silva and deputies. But at a news conference Thursday in Bakersfield, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said those blows were mainly to his midsection and were not fatal.

Two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies have been arrested and charged with lying about a drug bust.  Authorities say they discovered a videotape that contradicted the deputies' account of the arrest. Two deputies were charged with filing a false police report and conspiracy to commit a crime. RELATED: Scandal at L.A. Sheriff's Department Sheriff's deputies Robert G. Lindsey, 31, and Charles G. Rodriguez, 38, were charged Wednesday and surrendered to Sheriff's Internal Criminal Affairs Bureau investigators Thursday in connection with the charges related to a June 3, 2011, drug arrest they made.

The sharp cracks echoing from the East Bakersfield street were loud enough to jolt Ruben Ceballos from a midnight slumber. Then he heard screams. The 19-year-old jumped from his living room sofa and hurried to the kitchen door, which offered a view of the violent scene outside - Kern County sheriff's deputies repeatedly striking a man in the head with batons as he lay on the pavement. "I saw two sheriff's deputies on top of this guy, just beating him," Ceballos said in an interview Monday.

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies shot and killed two men this weekend in separate incidents, including one in which a man was slain when he pulled a gun on deputies who were trying to disperse partygoers Friday night at a Lynwood house. In a separate incident, deputies shot a man behind a condominium complex Saturday in Carson. A preliminary investigation into the first shooting indicates that Guillermo Saucedo, 23, of Cudahy died of multiple gunshot wounds, said county coroner's spokesman Lt. Joe Bale.

A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy wore a wire for the FBI last month, secretly recording a department supervisor as part of an investigation into allegations of improper fundraising, the deputy and his attorneys said. Deputy Edwin Tamayo told The Times that FBI agents asked him to wear the wire after he told them that a captain gathered him and other subordinates at a patrol station barbecue pit and ordered them to sell tickets to a 2011 fundraiser for Carmen Trutanich's unsuccessful bid for district attorney.

WASHINGTON - President Obama plans to nominate James B. Comey, a former senior Justice Department official who famously challenged warrantless eavesdropping under President George W. Bush, to replace Robert S. Mueller III as director of the FBI, officials said Wednesday. For the Obama White House, Comey's Republican credentials and record as a federal prosecutor made him an appealing candidate for the nation's top law enforcement job. By tradition, the FBI director is considered nonpartisan.

Orange County is paying $4.4 million to settle a federal lawsuit brought by the family of an unarmed U.S. Marine sergeant who was shot to death by a deputy in a school parking lot, the county said Wednesday. The fatal shooting of 31-year-old Manuel Loggins Jr., a married father of three, occurred before dawn on Feb. 7, 2012, in the parking lot of San Clemente High School. Authorities said that about 4:40 a.m. Loggins was at the wheel of his GMC Yukon, with two of his daughters in the vehicle, when he crashed it through a school gate.

WASHINGTON - Deputy Solicitor Gen. Sri Srinivasan, a rising star in legal circles, won an easy and unanimous Senate confirmation Thursday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, giving President Obama his first appointee to a conservative-leaning court that decides major regulatory disputes. Srinivasan, 46, who was born in India and grew up in Lawrence, Kan., was praised as being exceptionally smart, highly qualified and even-tempered. Republicans said they had no hesitance in approving Srinivasan, unlike other Obama nominees.

A man at the center of a videotaped altercation with Kern County sheriff's deputies earlier this month died from heart disease, not baton blows, authorities said Thursday. The county coroner's office labeled David Sal Silva's death accidental, adding that the primary cause was hypertensive heart disease. Videos taken by witnesses showed baton blows and a struggle between Silva and deputies. But at a news conference Thursday in Bakersfield, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said those blows were mainly to his midsection and were not fatal.

An Orange County sheriff's reserve deputy was in critical condition Wednesday afternoon with severe head injuries after what appeared to be a domestic incident, authorities said. A 17-year-old male who also lives in the home in the 21000 block of Shadow Rock Lane in Rancho Santa Margarita is being questioned by investigators as a person of interest, Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said. Amormino said he could not confirm the relationship between the victim and the teenager.

When Compton jurors recently deliberated the fate of a man charged with possessing a concealed firearm, they thought the evidence was overwhelming - not that the man was guilty but that the Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies who testified against him had lied. Jurors said a video of the arrest and inconsistent testimony from deputies left them no choice earlier this month but to vote for acquittal. The five jurors who spoke to The Times said authorities should investigate the deputies from the sheriff's anti-gang-unit who were involved in the case.

When battling street gangs across Los Angeles County, sheriff's deputies rely too heavily on suppression and not enough on gang intervention, according to a study released Monday. By not doing more to connect with the communities they police, the report found, sheriff's deputies are missing an opportunity to gain the public's trust. However, the report - put out by Merrick Bobb, special counsel to the county Board of Supervisors - acknowledged that crime rates inside sheriff's jurisdictions have fallen dramatically, and comparably to the areas patrolled by the LAPD, which more commonly uses gang interventionists.

Authorities are investigating a deputy-involved shooting in which an armed man on a bicycle was killed in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood of South Los Angeles. Los Angeles County sheriff's homicide detectives responded to the 6100 block of Miramonte Boulevard , an unincorporated area, on Saturday about 9:15 p.m, the department said in a statement. Deputies with the sheriff's Century Station had made contact with a man riding a bicycle who had a handgun, the statement said.