Deputies

A jury has awarded $1.1 million to a Palmdale teenager who, while holding a toy gun, was shot in the back by a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy. Deputy Scott Sorrow used excessive force when he shot William Fetters on May 10, 2009, a jury found Wednesday. Fetters was 15 at the time of the shooting. "He's had a lot of emotional distress being the victim of a wrongful shooting," said Fetters' attorney, Bradley Gage. "He's hopeful that the verdict will send a message to the Sheriff's Department that it needs to protect the community better.

A jury has awarded $1.1 million to a Palmdale teenager who, while holding a toy gun, was shot in the back by a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy. Deputy Scott Sorrow used excessive force when he shot William Fetters in Palmdale on May 10, 2009, a jury found Wednesday. Fetters was 15 at the time of the shooting. “He's had a lot of emotional distress being the victim of a wrongful shooting,” said Fetters' attorney, Bradley Gage. “He's thankful that he has a chance to let the healing process begin.

Parents and players from the East L.A. Bobcats, a youth football league banned from county parks after gang-affiliated adult fans got in a fight that led to a fatal stabbing at a pizza parlor after a game, called on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to allow the children to return to Salazar Park. The county gave the league a list of conditions in order to get their permit back. Among them: the league must change its name and pay to have four sheriff's deputies on site at every practice, at a cost of about $774 a night.

A fundraiser being hosted by Los Angeles County sheriff's officials Thursday night ended in violence, with one guest arrested and more arrests possible, a department spokesman confirmed. Sheriff's deputies were hosting a party at Cities, a bar and restaurant in East Los Angeles, to raise money for an annual law enforcement relay race. About 2 a.m. Friday, there was an altercation that involved off-duty deputies and guests. One woman invited to the party was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer.

After a series of missteps in her run for mayor of Los Angeles, City Controller Wendy Greuel has hired a senior aide to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as her new campaign manager for the final weeks before the May runoff. Janelle Erickson, who is on leave of absence as Villaraigosa's deputy chief of staff, will take over day-to-day management of the campaign. Rose Kapolczynski, who had been playing that role, will stay on as a senior strategist. The replacement of a campaign manager just two months before an election is highly unusual.

A fundraiser being hosted by Los Angeles County sheriff's officials Thursday night ended in violence, with one guest arrested and more arrests possible, a spokesman confirmed. Sheriff's deputies were hosting a party at Cities, a bar and restaurant in East Los Angeles, to raise money for an annual law enforcement relay race. About 2 a.m. Friday, there was an altercation that involved off-duty deputies and guests. One woman invited to the party was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer.

Investigators have matched the brand and caliber of shell casings from a Colorado parolee's gunfight with north Texas authorities to those found at the home of Colorado's prisons chief, who was killed earlier this week. Evan Spencer Ebel, 28, died after he was critically wounded by deputies at the end of a high-speed chase Thursday in Texas. Hornady 9-millimeter casings were found at the Texas scene, the same type found at the home of Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements, according to an application for a warrant to search the car filed by officials in Wise County, Texas.

This is the first of a series on some of the top character actors in Hollywood. Over the years, Nick Searcy has played everything from a German shepherd in an off-Broadway musical rip-off of "Cats" called "Dogs" to astronaut Deke Slayton in the Emmy Award-winning 1998 HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" to a drag queen who performs as Cher and Christina Aguilera in the 2007 sports comedy "The Comebacks. " It's all in a day's work for a character actor such as Searcy, who can change personas in a flash but always brings a down-home authenticity to all his roles.

As the FBI broadened its probe into violence in the L.A. County jails, Sheriff Lee Baca this week brought in an outsider with a reform background to run the troubled lockups. Baca's decision to hire Terri McDonald to manage the nation's largest jail system marks a major milestone in his reform effort, which was sparked by the federal investigation into allegations that jailers beat inmates and visitors. McDonald, who started Monday, left her post with the state prison system to oversee Baca's jails, where her annual salary is $223,087.

The East L.A. Bobcats will have to change their name and pay as much as $774 a day for added sheriff's patrols if they want to come back to Salazar Park with the blessing of Los Angeles County officials. The Bobcats were booted from the park, where the youth football and cheer league had practiced for decades, after a fight at a pizza parlor involving adult fans escalated to a fatal stabbing. Jose De Jesus Ruiz, 23, of Bakersfield is charged with stabbing to death a Los Angeles man, Patrick Raymond Ortega, 25. Ruiz was at the restaurant with a Bobcats team of 9-to-11-year-olds and their parents after a game in Bell Gardens.