Law Enforcement Officers

Amid an aggressive push to bolster its ranks with thousands of new deputies, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department loosened its hiring practices and gave jobs to recruits who in the past would have been rejected, according to a department watchdog report released Thursday. Among those hired were applicants with criminal records, drug and alcohol problems and financial woes. One recruit, for example, had been released from another police agency after using excessive force.

Guinea-Bissau policeman Edmundo Mendes got a tip that South American drug traffickers had dumped 2 tons of cocaine off the coast of his West African country and marked it with a buoy so confederates could pick it up, then smuggle it to Europe. But Mendes, part of his country's tiny counter-narcotics force, was powerless because he didn't have a boat with which to seize the drugs. Even if he had, he and his colleagues were pitifully short of weapons to defend themselves if a fight ensued.

After Sherri Rae Rasmussen was beaten and shot to death in 1986, her father urged Los Angeles police to investigate a fellow officer who had had confrontations with his daughter in the months leading up to her death, according to attorneys for the victim's family. But Nel Rasmussen's pleas, which he said he made during several interviews with police and in a letter to then-Chief Daryl F.

Shortly after she sat down at her desk on the third floor of LAPD headquarters Friday morning, Det. Stephanie Lazarus was told a suspect in the basement jail had information on one of her cases. The 25-year police veteran went quickly downstairs. As Lazarus removed her firearm to pass through security, she unknowingly walked into a trap. There was no suspect -- only questions about a terrible secret police believe she has been harboring for more than two decades.

The Los Angeles City Council approved a $20.5-million settlement Wednesday to bring to a close lawsuits brought by four Los Angeles Police officers who alleged that they were falsely arrested and maliciously prosecuted during the city's Rampart police corruption scandal that began in the late 1990s.

The city of South Gate has paid out $18 million to settle lawsuits filed by a group of officers who said they faced racially-motivated discrimination, harassment and retaliation in the aftermath of the ouster of a Latino police official in 2002, the officers' attorney said Tuesday. Sixteen police officers filed suits against South Gate, a working-class, predominantly Latino city with an annual budget of about $100 million, alleging that they were subjected to racial slurs and false internal affairs investigations, unfairly disciplined, and passed up for promotions.

Los Angeles police union officials hoping to sway public opinion against a recent anti-corruption reform have launched a radio ad campaign this week warning that forcing hundreds of narcotics and anti-gang officers to disclose personal financial information will prompt them to leave those specialized units and "cripple the fight against drugs, gangs and crime."

An LAPD officer was injured slightly by an underground explosion that sent two manhole covers into the air in downtown L.A. on Monday. The explosion, which was apparently triggered by a short-circuit in an electrical vault under the street, occurred just after 2 p.m. in Little Tokyo near a shopping center and two apartment complexes. Officer Craig Allen, 34, was responding to reports of smoke coming from a manhole cover near the intersection of 3rd and Alameda streets, authorities said.

The state attorney general is reviewing whether interim Orange County Sheriff Jack Anderson broke the law by appearing in uniform while trying to dissuade the San Clemente City Council from endorsing a former sheriff's lieutenant as a replacement for indicted Sheriff Michael S. Carona, who later resigned. During a council meeting in November, shortly after Carona was indicted on corruption charges, Anderson, then an assistant sheriff, told the council members that Lt.

An off-duty Costa Mesa police officer who fatally shot one man and wounded another during an altercation outside a Temecula restaurant was recovering at home Monday from serious head injuries, a department spokesman said. Authorities did not release the officer's name, citing an impending internal affairs investigation into the weekend shootings. "We consider him the victim of a crime," Costa Mesa Police Department spokesman Lt. Clay Epperson said. The incident occurred about 7:20 p.m.