Drug Arrests

Rapper and actor Coolio was charged Tuesday with battery and possession of cocaine after a run-in at Los Angeles International Airport. The entertainer, whose real name is Artis Leon Ivey, 45, was arrested Friday at LAX after authorities searched his luggage and allegedly found rock cocaine. Coolio grabbed a screener's arm to prevent the search, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said.

Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey told reporters Friday that the Justice Department may attempt to derail new sentencing guidelines that are expected to allow the early release of thousands of convicted drug offenders. But that train already appears to be leaving the station. In a surprising development, federal judges in Portland, Ore.

A Boyle Heights gun battle between Los Angeles police officers and a group of drug suspects Thursday left a narcotics detective wounded and a suspect dead. The detective, a 14-year veteran, suffered a non-life-threatening injury to one leg, but escaped a potentially deadly wound to his head when a bullet ricocheted off his helmet, authorities said. The firefight occurred about 3 p.m.

The estranged wife of a Fullerton high school teacher and her boyfriend documented in a series of text messages nearly every step of a plan to plant a shotgun and marijuana in the instructor's car, according to court documents released Monday. Gregory Abbott, 31, a teacher at Sunny Hills High School, was arrested last month when police, acting on a tip, searched his car in the school parking lot and found a shotgun, marijuana and prescription drugs.

A Canadian immigrant living in Newport Beach was charged in federal court Monday in one of the largest Ecstasy-smuggling busts in the region, authorities said. Alexandru Sabau, 37, was taken into custody Friday by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after being intercepted near his apartment in the 9000 block of Residencia. Sabau was arrested as he arrived to meet with an informant to finalize a drug trade, authorities said.

The capture was worthy of an action thriller: elite Mexican troops rappelling from a helicopter onto the deck of a mysterious submarine. The 33-foot vessel turned out to be crammed with parcels apparently containing cocaine, possibly tons of it. The disheveled crew of four had emerged in stocking feet and baggy shorts, claiming to have shipped out from Colombia a week earlier under threat of death.

Two Mexican federal agents were charged Friday with possession of alleged drug money after they were arrested at a West Covina home with more than $500,000, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

Stephen David Royds, the high-living drug dealer who kept his girlfriend's corpse frozen in a 2-by-3-foot plastic bin at the Fairmont Newport Beach hotel for as long as a year, pleaded guilty Monday to drug charges and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Mexico detained a former senior police official Friday on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers, as well as an alleged founder of a vicious gang of drug cartel hit men. Police arrested Jaime Gonzalez Duran, also known as "The Hummer," in the northern city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas. Gonzalez Duran is allegedly one of the founding members of the Zetas, a group of army deserters who went to work as hit men for the Gulf cartel.

Federal agents Wednesday raided 11 medical marijuana outlets in Los Angeles County, seizing several thousand pounds of processed drug, hundreds of marijuana plants, an array of guns and bagfuls of cash. The simultaneous raids, part of an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, were the largest such operation in the county in recent memory. Five dispensaries in West Hollywood were raided with the other six in Venice, Hollywood, Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills.