Law Enforcement

The sharp cracks echoing from the East Bakersfield street were loud enough to jolt Ruben Ceballos from a midnight slumber. Then he heard screams. The 19-year-old jumped from his living room sofa and hurried to the kitchen door, which offered a view of the violent scene outside - Kern County sheriff's deputies repeatedly striking a man in the head with batons as he lay on the pavement. "I saw two sheriff's deputies on top of this guy, just beating him," Ceballos said in an interview Monday.

WASHINGTON - The head of the FBI said Thursday that there were lapses in tracking accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's visit to Russia last year, saying that U.S. security officials failed to act on "text" alerts to a U.S. Customs agent about his trip. The inaction came after U.S. officials interviewed Tsarnaev and his parents about Russian concerns that he was traveling there "intent on returning and perhaps participating in jihad," FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said. Mueller told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that in March 2011, Russian authorities asked the U.S. for a background assessment on Tsarnaev and his mother.

WASHINGTON - The head of the FBI said Thursday that there were lapses in tracking accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's visit to Russia last year, saying that U.S. security officials failed to act on "text" alerts to a U.S. Customs agent about his trip. The inaction came after U.S. officials interviewed Tsarnaev and his parents about Russian concerns that he was traveling there "intent on returning and perhaps participating in jihad," FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said. Mueller told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that in March 2011, Russian authorities asked the U.S. for a background assessment on Tsarnaev and his mother.

Four people who provided crucial information in the hunt for former Los Angeles Police Officer Christopher Dorner will split what is expected to be a $1-million reward in the case, authorities announced Tuesday afternoon. The division of the highly anticipated reward, sought by at least 12 people after a February gun battle that led to Dorner's death, was overseen by three retired judges and made public in a 12-page report released by the Los Angeles Police Department. The money will be paid in installments to a couple held captive by Dorner, a ski resort employee and a tow truck driver.

VALLEY SPRINGS, Calif. - On any given day, this is a quiet, rural town surrounded by miles of hills stacked with golden hay bales. But on Sunday, the sun was hot and weeks of fear had pivoted into confirmation of a sickening suspicion: the brother of a slain 8-year-old girl, Leila Fowler, was now the suspect in the April 27 stabbing death. The community of 7,500 southeast of Sacramento let out a collective breath now that a suspect was in custody. Longing for normalcy, most people took their children to the nearby lake.

NEW YORK -- Herbalife stock fell more than 6% after the New York Post reported the company was subject to an unspecified law-enforcement investigation. In early trading on Wall Street, Herbalife shares lost $2.25, or 6.42%, to $32.82. Herbalife's stock is off 44% from where it was a year ago. The Post cited documents the newspaper obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the Federal Trade Commission. According to the Post, the FTC cited "pending law-enforcement action" and withheld some information the Post requested about Herbalife.

Technology executives and law enforcement officials are clashing over a nearly 25-year-old law that protects Internet users' private information. Some of the world's largest technology companies, including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., are pushing for changes to the law — written before the World Wide Web existed — saying it makes it too easy for government investigators to gain access to their customers' Web-based e-mail and documents. That, the companies say, is bad for the bottom line.

Citing a disturbing increase in gang activity, top Ventura County law-enforcement officials on Friday pledged to crack down on gangs like they never have before. At the county government center, the district attorney and police chiefs unveiled a master plan to unite police agencies throughout the county in a coordinated war against the growing gang problem. The Ventura County Gang Strategy, as the new effort is called, advocates a two-pronged approach to fighting gangs, Dist. Atty. Michael D.

A system of federal "boot camps" to rehabilitate first-time drug offenders is being studied, drug czar William J. Bennett said Sunday. Bennett, whose formal title is national drug policy director, raised the subject of the need for more and different penal facilities for incarceration of users during an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation." He had previously called for an intensified effort to lock up sellers of narcotics, possibly on ships and abandoned military stations, as part of his "war plan" against drugs.

In Tijuana, schoolchildren get lessons on how to duck during gangland shootouts. Ciudad Juarez cops patrol with military escorts, and the morgue there is spilling over with gunshot victims. But here in Mexicali, people fear the desert sun more than drug hit men. The city of 700,000 has a homicide rate comparable to that of Wichita, Kan., and one of the biggest police deployments is Operation Beat the Heat, in which officers haul blocks of ice to shantytown residents. There hasn't been a bank robbery in Mexicali in 18 months, or a reported kidnapping in a year.

WASHINGTON - Shortly after the FBI released photos of two Boston bombing suspects on April 18, several college friends texted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on their cellphones. One said Tsarnaev looked like suspect No. 2, who wore a white cap backward over tufts of brown curls. "LOL," Tsarnaev texted back. Later, he wrote again: "Come to my room and take whatever you want. " That night, according to an FBI complaint filed Wednesday in Boston, three young men entered Tsarnaev's dorm room at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where they all had met as students, and removed a laptop and a backpack full of fireworks that had been emptied of gunpowder.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Bagpipes wailed, law enforcement badges were striped in black, and a squadron of state police helicopters flew by as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and hundreds of officers from around the country paid their respects Wednesday to Sean Collier, one of their own. At an outdoor memorial service for the 27-year-old campus police officer, Vice President Joe Biden called the brothers accused of killing Collier and detonating the...

On Monday morning, Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. According to a transcript of that proceeding, a magistrate at Tsarnaev's hospital bedside read him the Miranda warning, informing him of his right to counsel and his right to remain silent. But among the things we don't know is if, or to what extent, Tsarnaev was interrogated before being informed of his rights. Over the weekend, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. gave every indication that he intended to have Tsarnaev questioned without the Miranda warning.

A former elementary school teacher who had been on the run for nearly five years was arrested in Nicaragua over the weekend on suspicion of producing pornography of young boys, the FBI said Tuesday. Eric Justin Toth, now 31, was once a third-grade teacher at Beauvoir, an exclusive elementary school attached to the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. When Beauvoir officials confronted him about pornography of a student on a school camera, he fled. "That media card contained many images that you expect to see on the camera of a teacher: pictures of kids smiling, playing in the classroom," U.S. Atty.

WASHINGTON - On the third day of hearings on a bill to overhaul the immigration system, senators took a break from partisan sniping and grilled Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on whether the Boston bombings had exposed shortcomings in the nation's immigration security apparatus. Conservative Republicans have tried to slow the Senate bill since two brothers, ethnic Chechens granted political asylum from Russia as minors with their family, were identified as the suspects in last week's bombings.

BOSTON -- After citywide demonstrations of resilience on Saturday, Boston will pause Sunday in prayer as it ends a week of shock, grief and anxiety that began Monday with the marathon bombings. “I don't know that we'll ever be quite the same,” Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said on CBS' “Face the Nation.” “People are moving out and moving back into their regular routines, but vigilance is still the order of the day and of course we're still trying to heal from a shocking tragedy less than a week away.” One of three victims at the marathon blast site, Krystle M. Campbell, will be buried Monday in nearby Medford.

MASINLOC, Philippines - The fishermen were sailing the azure waters off the Philippine coast when Richard Caneda saw the morning sunlight glinting off a vessel "bigger than the biggest ship in the Philippine navy. " Caneda could see a red Chinese flag. The words "Chinese Maritime Surveillance" were written on the ship's side. The ship came close enough that Caneda could see crew members on deck making hand gestures as though to shoo away a fly. Caneda, who had moved from the fishing boat to a tiny skiff to haul in nets left out overnight, soon saw a large gun mounted on the ship's deck pivoting directly toward him. A helicopter whirred overhead.

Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said. Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

Angelenos taking to car-free streets along CicLAvia's 15-mile route say they came out to have fun, enjoy family and give back to the community. One volunteer, who rode in the past, said she wanted to help Sunday because it was important to let people know that biking can be fun, and family-friendly, particularly when you don't have to worry about potential danger from cars. But some came to the streets with other means of transportation, For Spencer Knight a skateboard was the way to go. What made him want to skateboard the entire route?

WASHINGTON -- President Obama on Saturday praised the law enforcement officers who worked to search for suspects and secure the Boston area in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. In his weekly video and radio address, Obama praised officers who “worked together throughout the week, often at great risk to themselves, to keep our communities safe.” “As a country, we are eternally grateful for the profound sacrifices they make in the line of duty -- sometimes making the ultimate sacrifice to defend the people they've sworn to protect,” Obama said.