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Los Angeles police will not pursue through the courts scores of motorists with unpaid tickets from the city's defunct red-light camera program. The city Police Commission voted this week to end its contract with the company that operated L.A.'s cameras until they were shut off last summer. And authorities are now planning to reassign a small group of officers who regularly appeared in court to testify in contested photo enforcement cases. With the cancellation of the contract, officers will no longer have easy access to the photo and video evidence that courts require.

In the face of privacy concerns, the Los Angeles Police Department has agreed to change the way it collects information on suspicious activity possibly related to terrorism. The department, after coming under fire from civil liberties and community groups, will no longer hold on to so-called suspicious activity reports that the LAPD's counter-terrorism unit determines are about harmless incidents. Until now, the department stored the innocuous reports in a database for a year.

Hollywood's production community is yelling "cut!" to a plan by the LAPD to take over the jobs of handling security -- many of which are filled by former cops -- on film sets. A coalition of labor and industry groups, including the Teamsters and the Motion Picture Assn. of America, is seeking to block the Los Angeles Police Department's effort that would force production companies to hire only off-duty active police officers to control crowds and direct traffic at film locations.

A retired LAPD homicide detective was arrested this week in the fatal beating of his wife in Hawaii six years ago. He had been a suspect since her death. Dan DeJarnette, 59, was taken into custody without incident Monday night at his home on the Big Island in connection with the slaying of his wife, Yu Dejarnette. He appeared in a Hawaii courtroom Tuesday to face formal charges. He said at the time of her November 2006 death that he had awakened and found her lying on a lava embankment about 20 feet from the couple's home in Ka'u on the southern end of the island.

The Los Angeles Police Department announced plans to bring aggressive crime-fighting tactics that it employs on city streets into Dodger Stadium as part of a security crackdown a week after a visiting fan was attacked in the ballpark's parking lot. Overriding a Dodger policy against armed police inside the stadium, Police Chief Charlie Beck said Friday that uniformed officers will be posted throughout the ballpark and will be more aggressive about...

In the face of privacy concerns, the Los Angeles Police Department has agreed to change the way it collects information on suspicious activity possibly related to terrorism. The department, after coming under fire from civil liberties and community groups, will no longer hold on to so-called suspicious activity reports that the LAPD's counter-terrorism unit determines are about harmless incidents. Until now, the department stored the innocuous reports in a database for a year.

In the wake of 14 killings that occurred across Los Angeles County this weekend -- most within the city of Los Angeles -- authorities attempted to reassure the public Monday that the spike in violence was rare and no cause for alarm. Los Angeles Police Department Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger said that while homicides were up 8% so far this year, overall violent crime -- as well as shootings -- was down. He called the recent spike in violence that left 10 dead in the city "troubling but an anomaly."

For months, the budget crisis in Los Angeles has hamstrung and frustrated the city's homicide detectives. With no money to pay for the long hours of overtime they typically work, LAPD officials saw no choice but to force detectives to take time off from the job. Cases started taking longer to solve or going cold. The LAPD's struggles weren't lost on Robert Clark, an FBI assistant special agent in charge of the bureau's anti-gang efforts in Los Angeles. Clark's concern grew as he watched the number of gang-related killings in the city's violent southern swatch spike in early summer.

LAPD--Los Angeles' most dysfunctional family. KENT DEL ROSSO Culver City

On March 12, Juan Garcia, a 53-year-old homeless man, was brutally murdered in an alley off 9th and Alvarado streets in the Westlake District, just west of downtown Los Angeles. At first, the police were stumped; there were no known witnesses and few clues. Then a 43-year-old undocumented immigrant who witnessed the crime came forward and told the homicide detectives from the Rampart station what he saw. Because of his help, a suspect was identified and arrested a few days later while hiding in skid row. Because the witness was not afraid to contact the police, an accused murderer was taken off the streets, and we are all a little bit safer.

Thirteen Los Angeles Police Department officers were recognized for heroism during a recent ceremony in Hollywood. Police Chief Charlie Beck last week presented the officers and detectives with the department's highest honors, the Medal of Valor and the Purple Heart. This was the second year the Purple Heart was bestowed on officers who suffered grave injuries in the line of duty. The officers included men and women, some injured or put at risk while on patrol, on undercover assignments or headed home after work.

Re "Beck, panel again at odds on shooting," May 7 It has been said that if the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. That's what happened when police officers beat Rodney King worse than an animal and then were absolved of any wrongdoing by the same court system that gets tough on everyone else. Now Los Angeles Police Det. Arthur Gamboa shoots a man in the back twice, and Chief Charlie Beck wants the public to believe Gamboa was in fear for his life, so it's OK. Maybe Beck should have the motto "to protect and to serve" removed from the police cars.

It was a murder that prosecutors say was committed in a fit of rage and jealousy and then covered up for more than two decades. But on Friday, as she was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for killing her ex-boyfriend's wife, former Los Angeles Police Det. Stephanie Lazarus masked any emotion, other than a glance and wave in the direction of her mother as she was led away in handcuffs. The sentencing brought to a close a case that garnered national attention for its sensational story line of a lovelorn cop killing a woman she viewed as a romantic rival and then harboring the dark secret for 23 years.

May Day rallies brought immigrant rights, labor and Occupy protesters onto Los Angeles streets Tuesday, snarling traffic and drawing a police force that at times outnumbered the demonstrators. Only several hundred people heeded the call from organizers to gather for the annual May Day immigrant and labor-rights march, echoing a similarly poor turnout last year. The numbers were a far cry from previous years when tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of marchers filled the streets to make Los Angeles the nation's focal point in the debate over immigration.

In 1992, I was a young Los Angeles Police Department sergeant assigned to the Internal Affairs Division and had just returned home after a long shift only to see on television the Florence and Normandie assaults, the beating of Reginald Denny and fires spreading all over the city. I was stunned at the absence of any response by my beloved LAPD. I quickly got into my personal car and drove westbound into a sunset that highlighted a city on fire and in crisis. Reporting to the LAPD Command Post at 54th Street and Van Ness Avenue, I found myself among hundreds of fellow officers of all ranks, all of us waiting for orders.

A group of downtown residents and their dogs were romping on a small patch of grass next to the glass edifice that headquarters the Los Angeles Police Department when the playful mood was broken. "Hey, hey, look out!" someone shouted. A dog off its leash ran into the street, and was causing drivers to swerve. A similar incident had occurred just hours before, one park visitor said, when another dog escaped its owner and ran into the street, only to be saved by a homeless person.

Despite a massive Los Angeles police presence Thursday night, sporadic violence broke out near Staples Center after the Lakers defeated the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals. Crowds hurled bottles and other objects at police, smashed marquees, jumped on vehicles, broke windows, and set rubbish dumpsters and vehicles on fire along Figueroa Street north of Staples Center and on Flower Street. Police fired non-lethal rounds to disperse the crowd at Figueroa and Venice Boulevard after several small fires were set, as well as at 11th and Hope streets.

The Los Angeles riots represented the culmination of many failures: the failure to provide hope for young people; the failure to supply education and jobs in the numbers that would stabilize communities; the failure to engage those communities in their own protection instead of relying on harsh and coercive law enforcement. But on the night of April 29, 1992, 20 years ago today, the overriding failure was that of the Los Angeles Police Department and its chief, Daryl F. Gates. The LAPD has a civic duty "to protect and to serve"; that night, it did neither.

A plan to expand the Los Angeles Police Department by adding public safety officers from another city agency would leave 37 fewer officers to patrol the city's libraries, parks, buildings and zoo, officials said Friday. Under the proposal, which drew objections from several city employee labor unions during a City Council committee meeting, the LAPD would assume control of scores of sworn police and civilian security officers now working for the General Services Department. About 40 transferred General Services officers would give up their assignments and become full-fledged LAPD officers.