Lapd Officers

A party atmosphere prevailed Thursday night at downtown Los Angeles' Art Walk, a month after violence erupted at the popular event. Art Walk, which began as a local art crawl in 2004, has evolved into a showcase for a revitalized downtown, attracting thousands of people who crowd sidewalks, visit clubs, eat at restaurants and food trucks, and turn the historic core into a colorful festival on the second Thursday of each month. But at the July event, Occupy L.A. activists armed with chalk scrawled political slogans and drawings on the sidewalks to protest downtown gentrification, which has pushed out some of the area's poorer residents.

Three Los Angeles County law enforcement officers were arrested Wednesday in a pair of unrelated incidents - one involving accusations of perjury and the other the alleged theft of thousands of dollars during narcotics investigations, authorities said. At the Sheriff's Department, 28-year veteran Bonnie Bryant III was arrested by the department's internal investigators after a two-week probe. The sergeant, who was in charge of an investigative team, is accused of stealing thousands of dollars, not from evidence lockers but at the scene of drug probes, authorities said.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Friday called a police officer's decision to work on a movie about the so-called bling ring "stupid," but refused to dismiss charges against one of three defendants in the case. Judge Larry P. Fidler said LAPD Officer Brett Goodkin's decision to serve as a technical advisor on Sofia Coppola's docudrama "The Bling Ring" while still assigned to the case had harmed the prosecution of the defendants charged with burglarizing the homes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.

A confrontation in downtown Los Angeles late Thursday between police and Occupy L.A.protesters appeared to have stemmed from a sidewalk chalk-drawing demonstration, witnesses said. At least two officers were injured and several arrests had been made. A woman who identified herself as part ofOccupy L.A. said protesters attended the monthly L.A. ArtWalk on Thursday night with the intention of showing support for people previously arrested for chalking on the sidewalk. A Facebook event advertised the planned demonstration.

After midnight on a quiet street in a posh Los Angeles neighborhood, one of the music world's rising stars was punching his pop singer girlfriend in the face and slamming her head against the dashboard of a rented Lamborghini. Ninety-five minutes later, a rookie police officer picked up the phone across town and called TMZ.com. The gossip site went on to post a picture, leaked from police evidence, showing the battered face of the victim, Rihanna. LAPD officials vowed an immediate investigation to get to the bottom of the embarrassing breach.

Payroll records appear to contradict how much money a Los Angeles police officer who brought down the so-called "bling ring" said he was paid to work as technical advisor on a movie about the case. Officer Brett Goodkin, who is currently under investigation by the LAPD for consulting on Sofia Coppola's docu-drama while assigned to the case, was paid between $5,000 and $6,000, authorities said. But payroll records turned over to defendants in the burglary case show he was paid $12,500 by the filmmaker and her production company.

Rodney King spoke candidly of death. I recall a time last March when he and I were walking through his Rialto home. He looked at photos of the LAPD officers who'd beaten him. Without prompting, he opened up. "I'm just glad I survived what he did to me," he said, speaking of one of the officers, Stacey Koon. He held his two fingers about a quarter-inch apart. "I was this close to death," he said. "This close. " He went on to say there were long moments that night in Lake View Terrace in 1991 when it felt as if he had, in fact, died.

Daryl F. Gates was in his 13th year as head of the Los Angeles Police Department when four of his officers pummeled Rodney King on a darkened roadside in Lake View Terrace. If the reforms later inspired by the King episode had been in place at that time, Gates would have been in his third year of retirement. Among the sweeping changes brought to the Los Angeles Police Department because of the 1991 King beating was a voter-approved law limiting police chiefs to two five-year terms.

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 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.