James Allen Beck

Every month or so, the women of Brooks Circle gathered for a girls' night out. Usually, there was a birthday to celebrate; sometimes not. Mainly, they met just to get out of the house and gab. Whether there was a specific reason or not, there was always plenty to talk about. This summer, on the Saturday night after Independence Day, eight or nine of the ladies of Brooks Circle met at BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse in Valencia. A couple of the women had a very specific reason for meeting.

Relatives of Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Hagop "Jake" Kuredjian will receive $650,000 under a settlement reached Monday with the insurer of James Allen Beck, the Santa Clarita resident who shot and killed the officer two years ago during an armed standoff at Beck's home.

A neighbor whose house was accidentally fired on by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies during their standoff with gunman James Allen Beck has filed a $500,000 claim for damages, asserting that the county showed "deliberate indifference" to his safety. Phil Lombardi and his wife cowered with their 2-day-old daughter on their bathroom floor during the Aug. 31 shootout between Beck, the deputies and agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

A neighbor whose house was accidentally fired on by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies during their standoff with gunman James Allen Beck has filed a $500,000 claim for damages, asserting that the county showed "deliberate indifference" to his safety. Phil Lombardi and his wife cowered with their 2-day-old daughter on their bathroom floor during the Aug. 31 shootout between Beck, the deputies and agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

James Allen Beck had a love of guns, a desire to be a cop and an inability to get along with others. That potent combination would land him in trouble again and again with the law. On Friday it got him killed. Beck, a former Arcadia policeman, opened fire on a team of law enforcement agents, killing one of them, as they approached his house to search it for illegal firearms. He had attracted the attention of federal authorities because he had told neighbors that he was a deputy U.S.

The violence that claimed the life of a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy in the Santa Clarita Valley caught authorities off guard, plunging a quiet neighborhood into such chaos that officers fired not only at the suspect but into homes on both sides of his, officials said Saturday.

Relatives of Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Hagop "Jake" Kuredjian will receive $650,000 under a settlement reached Monday with the insurer of James Allen Beck, the Santa Clarita resident who shot and killed the officer two years ago during an armed standoff at Beck's home.

The city and county of Los Angeles approved payments totaling more than $1 million to settle lawsuits stemming from two separate police shootings, officials said Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved payment of $925,000 in the lawsuit of Grover Smith of Northridge, a bystander shot in the leg nearly six years ago by officers who mistook him for a robbery suspect.

Re "For Gunman, Life Spent as Misfit Ends in Violence," Sept. 9: Let's see if I understand this correctly. James Allen Beck's neighbors--a bunch of middle-aged women, mostly--were watching him with binoculars and otherwise spying on him because they had some vague suspicions about him, because he wasn't conforming to their idea of white middle-class suburbia. This caused them to call in the troops, and this provoked a confrontation. That sounds a lot like what happened at Waco and in several other incidents around the country over the past few years.

The city and county of Los Angeles approved payments totaling more than $1 million to settle lawsuits stemming from two separate police shootings, officials said Wednesday. The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved payment of $925,000 in the lawsuit of Grover Smith of Northridge, a bystander shot in the leg nearly six years ago by officers with the Los Angeles Police Department's elite Special Investigations Section, who mistook him for a robbery suspect.

Every month or so, the women of Brooks Circle gathered for a girls' night out. Usually, there was a birthday to celebrate; sometimes not. Mainly, they met just to get out of the house and gab. Whether there was a specific reason or not, there was always plenty to talk about. This summer, on the Saturday night after Independence Day, eight or nine of the ladies of Brooks Circle met at BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse in Valencia. A couple of the women had a very specific reason for meeting.

The violence that claimed the life of a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy in the Santa Clarita Valley caught authorities off guard, plunging a quiet neighborhood into such chaos that officers fired not only at the suspect but into homes on both sides of his, officials said Saturday.

James Allen Beck had a love of guns, a desire to be a cop and an inability to get along with others. That potent combination would land him in trouble again and again with the law. On Friday it got him killed. Beck, a former Arcadia policeman, opened fire on a team of law enforcement agents, killing one of them, as they approached his house to search it for illegal firearms. He had attracted the attention of federal authorities because he had told neighbors that he was a deputy U.S.

Family members, fellow officers and residents gathered Thursday to dedicate a Stevenson Ranch park to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Hagop "Jake" Kuredjian, who was killed in an August shootout a few blocks away. Sheriff Lee Baca and other officials unveiled a plaque in Kuredjian's memory at the small, grassy park at Stevenson Ranch and Poe parkways. Kuredjian, a 17-year department veteran, was shot in the head during an Aug.

When Stevenson Ranch grabs headlines, it's for the subdivision's award-winning but crowded schools, the quick turnover of its comfortable homes and the safety of its curving streets, where so many big-city cops have chosen to live. On Friday, Stevenson Ranch's Blue Ribbon school was evacuated, a $340,000 house was in ashes and a sheriff's deputy was dead.