Harassment

Just a few blocks off Oakland's busy Jack London Square, Walter Hoye, a soft-spoken Baptist minister, was standing outside an abortion clinic, doing his best not to get arrested. Dressed in black and wearing his "Got Jesus?" ball cap, Hoye, 52, of Union City, Calif., held the hand-lettered sign he always brings: "God loves you and your baby. Let us help you." His black wire-rimmed sunglasses, perched halfway down his nose, gave him a faintly Hollywood air.

Four animal activists have been arrested for their alleged roles in attacking and harassing animal researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz over the last 18 months, the FBI announced Friday. The arrests are a breakthrough in the investigation of attacks against a number of University of California animal researchers that have long frustrated police and school officials.

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether employees are protected from being fired or demoted if they cooperate with an internal investigation of a supervisor who is accused of discrimination. Under federal law, it is illegal to discriminate against employees based on their race, religion or sex. The law also protects from retaliation workers who file a federal civil rights lawsuit or a federal discrimination complaint.

It wasn't just that his fellow firefighters put dog food in his spaghetti at a fire station and watched him eat it, laughing. It was what happened in the months after former Los Angeles Firefighter Tennie Pierce reported the incident that led him to sue his department for racial harassment, Pierce and his lawyer said at a forum Saturday in Leimert Park. "As I've always said about this case, it's the retaliation, stupid," said lawyer Genie Harrison. "The dog food incident was really the catalyst.

The former head of the California Highway Patrol and other top agency officials retaliated against a chief who had sought the top job and reported unfair practices in the agency, a state panel has concluded. The California State Personnel Board found that former CHP Commissioner Dwight "Spike" Helmick and four other command officers improperly acted against former CHP Chief Hubert Acevedo.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge agreed Thursday to sharply limit the contact between animal rights activists and researchers at UCLA who had been targeted for their work with animals. In a Santa Monica courtroom, Judge Gerald Rosenberg granted most of the terms sought by attorneys for the Regents of the University of California in a temporary restraining order against five individual activists and three animal rights groups.

Gizelle Studevent was a 13-year-old eighth-grader at prestigious La Jolla Country Day School when the harassment began. She returned from a basketball tournament to find an unsigned note in her suitcase: Addressed to "Senorita," it mocked the girl's skills on the court and suggested she go home to Mexico. Over more than two years, an anonymous band of bullies tormented Gizelle. Their acts grew increasingly cruel -- on the Internet, in notes and around school. Finally, she transferred.

Depending on the city official, the testimony of singer John Mayer and actors Milo Ventimiglia and Eric Roberts at Los Angeles City Hall on Thursday was either a courageous stand against the dangerous tactics of the paparazzi or a foolish waste of time. The performers were the first speakers at the inaugural meeting of a task force of elected officials, law enforcement leaders and others investigating ways to regulate what they described as an aggressive new breed of tabloid photographers.

Two firebomb attacks last week on UC Santa Cruz scientists who conduct animal research have angered and worried academics throughout the UC system, who said their work has broad public support and that they will not be intimidated by bombers who crossed the line by targeting families. "It is outrageous when people's families are targeted," said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. "This is incredibly serious because it could have led to loss of life. It's chilling."

Acting Los Angeles Fire Chief Douglas L. Barry eclipsed his own news conference about his first 100 days Tuesday by announcing that he had just learned of a new report of possible firefighter harassment. But city officials said that Barry's swift launch of investigations into the allegation of anti-Semitism at a fire station, and another case disclosed last week, were a better demonstration than a speech about reforms being underway.