Guards

It seems that Latino is now the new "L" word in Orange County partisan politics. What an incredible lack of judgment on the part of the person responsible for the "guards" placed at selected polling places for the purpose of intimidating Latinos as they sought to exercise their civic right to vote! This new "L" word in American politics is becoming more and more important. Currently, 30.7% of all students enrolled in California public schools are Latino, and Latino political participation will increase.

Two elementary schools in Northeast Los Angeles were chosen to participate in a pilot program designed to train neighborhood volunteers as crossing guards, Councilman Mike Hernandez announced Monday. The program at Monte Vista Elementary in Highland Park and Aragon Avenue Elementary in Cypress Park will last one year, and is expected to start by mid-February. The program will be run by the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Traffic Division and the schools.

Louisiana legislators have asked state officials to investigate charges that prisoners who were evacuated to a rural facility due to Hurricane Katrina are being physically abused by guards. Many of the evacuees have been awaiting trial or are being held on misdemeanor charges.

U.S. Army headquarters in West Germany, situated at the southern edge of this medieval university city, is closely guarded by sharp-eyed military policemen with loaded automatic weapons. Concrete flower boxes are positioned to ward off car bombers. Visitors are subjected to a rigorous security check by guards who refer to photos of wanted terrorists. But just around the corner lies the sprawling Mark Twain housing complex for American dependents.

Eight guards at the U.S. Embassy were fired and two resigned following allegations of misconduct. The Kabul senior management team of ArmorGroup North America, the private contractor that provides guards for the State Department, was also being replaced, an embassy statement said. The terminated guards all appeared in photographs depicting them and supervisors in various stages of nudity and engaging in lewd acts at parties flowing with alcohol, the embassy said.

Assistant Principal Rosalba Manrique was shocked when she came to Fair Avenue Elementary school two years ago and saw small children darting in and out between cars as impatient parents honked their way through busy intersections after school. "I walked out and started stopping traffic with my bare hands," Manrique said Wednesday, standing on the corner of Kittredge Street and Fair Avenue, where four volunteer guards now help children and parents cross the street.

Olga Falcon will remain a crossing guard at John Marshall Elementary School for the next month, but after that the children could be on their own. Falcon's job of guiding students across Bushard Street at Westwood Drive is threatened because of a dispute between the city and the Garden Grove Unified School District.

Assistant Principal Rosalba Manrique was shocked when she came to Fair Avenue Elementary school two years ago and saw small children darting in and out between cars as impatient parents honked their way through busy intersections after school. "I walked out and started stopping traffic with my bare hands," Manrique said Wednesday, standing on the corner of Kittridge Street and Fair Avenue, where four volunteer guards now help children and parents cross the street.

Orange County jail and juvenile hall guards beat and starved adult inmates and tied two teen-agers to their beds "as on a medieval rack," an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit filed in federal court has charged. "Prisoners who are shackled and unresisting are beaten for no reason other than the sadistic gratification of the guards," said ACLU attorney Harry Lerner, who filed the suit in court in Santa Ana on Thursday. On Aug.

If today's architects have their way, prisons with clanking rows of cellblocks and grizzled guards will fade into pages of history. State and federal prisons, which house nearly 500,000 people, may never become Holiday Inns, but they could come to resemble life locked aboard the Starship Enterprise.