Law Enforcement Officials

Surrounded by sand, slathered in sunscreen and holding the coldest of beers in your hot hand, you are sprawled out and gulping down the California Dream. Until an ominous shadow blocks your sun, pours out your beer and hands you a $50 ticket. If Los Angeles beaches are known nationwide as the place to catch West Coast rays and a summer beer buzz, law enforcement officials are going out of their way to change half of that image.

On the same Concordia University campus where they met and fell in love, friends and family of Monica Quan and her fiance, Keith Lawrence, remembered the young couple Sunday for their humility, selflessness and love of basketball. Helped to the podium by family, Lawrence's younger brother, Kris, whispered, "I can do this, I can do this" as he struggled against tears to pay tribute to the protective older brother who he said always did the right thing and comforted him as a child when he was scared of the dark.

About 200 California law enforcement officials converged in Irvine on Monday for a statewide seminar on extradition. During the two-day seminar, sheriff's deputies, correction officers and assistant district attorneys will learn about handling extradition requests and orders from interstate and international agencies. "There is a growing tendency now for wanted persons to flee the jurisdictions of courts," said Al Howenstein Jr.

WASHINGTON - President Obama on Monday met with police chiefs from around the country -- including three from communities affected by mass shootings -- as part of his effort to build support for the gun control measures he wants to push through Congress. At a morning meeting at the White House, Obama asked the law enforcement officials to put pressure on lawmakers to act on the measures he endorsed in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. “If law enforcement officials who are dealing with this stuff every single day can come to some basic consensus in terms of steps that we need to take, Congress is going to be paying attention to them and we'll be able to make progress,” Obama said.

The Anaheim City Council on Tuesday approved an ordinance, believed to be the first of its kind in California, that bans the use of fake firearms in a threatening manner. Under the ordinance, which was approved unanimously and without discussion, violators could be found guilty of a misdemeanor and receive up to six months in jail and a maximum $1,000 fine. Don C.

The controversy surrounding the Christmas Day shooting death of Orange County Sheriff's Deputy Darryn Leroy Robins was momentarily forgotten Friday during a funeral service that celebrated the life of an outstanding lawman, a fun-loving prankster and a dedicated husband and father. More than 1,200 law enforcement officials in full dress and friends and family gathered for a wrenching, two-hour eulogy at First Church of God to honor the 30-year-old deputy.

The Eagle County (Colo.) sheriff who supervised the investigation that led to Kobe Bryant's arrest said Tuesday he "would not agree" if the local district attorney's office chose not to file a felony sexual assault charge against the Lakers star guard. "We would not have done what we did unless we thought charges should be filed," Sheriff Joseph Hoy said as first-year District Attorney Mark Hurlbert continued to weigh the evidence.

Streets cleared. High school students from Oak Park to Ventura put down their books. Judges at the Ventura County Hall of Justice halted their trials, and deputies huddled around a courtroom television set. Cafeteria cooks at Oxnard College stopped work to see the jury pronounce O. J. Simpson not guilty of double murder, and students roared with applause. "I think it was the right verdict," said a jubilant Curtis Clay, 19.

With narcotics use rampant, the gap between haves and have-nots will widen as crime and violence swell. Class conflict will engulf Los Angeles, pitting the able against those debilitated by drug abuse. This is 1995 as Sheriff Sherman Block envisions it. "When the people reach a point where they realize that the government cannot provide them safety," Block said, "they're going to take that responsibility unto themselves." Such a bleak picture is hardly the sheriff's alone.

Orange County law enforcement agencies will receive more than $8 million to beef up their ranks, buy new equipment and develop anti-crime programs under a one-time state funding program approved this week by Gov. Pete Wilson. Local law enforcement officials said Thursday they were grateful for the money and expressed hope that the state will create an annual funding stream that would augment cash-strapped public safety departments in the future.

WASHINGTON - Traditional pillars of the Republican base, such as police groups, evangelical pastors and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have begun to push skeptical GOP lawmakers to change federal immigration laws to allow most of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants to apply for legal status. The issue has long been fought mostly between Republicans and Democrats. But the fate of a potential immigration overhaul may be determined by battles erupting inside the GOP. "Now it's conservatives versus conservatives over how much immigration reform should happen," said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington that has advanced a free-market argument for opening up the immigration system.

Joey Rovero's quest for pills ended at Pacifica Pharmacy. It was the same for Naythan Kenney, Matt Stavron and Joseph Gomez. All four were patients of a Rowland Heights physician who was a prolific prescriber of narcotic painkillers and other addictive drugs. To get their fix, they needed more than a piece of paper. They needed a pharmacist willing to dispense the drugs, and at Pacifica they found one. All four died of drug overdoses after filling prescriptions at the tiny pharmacy in Huntington Beach, court and coroners' records show.

Two years after taking the first tentative steps toward establishing common guidelines for fan behavior at local sports events, Los Angeles sports, government and law enforcement officials are scheduled Monday to announce the adoption of a uniform Southern California Fan Code of Conduct. The 10-point code, intended to promote fans' enjoyment and safety, will be applied at every major pro and college venue in the area. Every professional sports league has a fan code of conduct and teams have their own policies, and the new Southern California code will not replace those.

WASHINGTON - Concerned about possible cyber spying, U.S. national security officials are debating whether to take the unprecedented step of recommending that a Chinese government-owned mobile phone giant be denied a license to offer international service to American customers. China Mobile, the world's largest mobile provider, applied in October for a license from the Federal Communications Commission to provide service between China and the United States and to build facilities on American soil.

WASHINGTON - The nation's largest wireless carriers are banding together with regulators and law enforcement officials to launch an effort to make stolen cellphones and other mobile devices as useless as an empty wallet. The goal is to cut down on increasing thefts of smartphones by making them less appealing to criminals. AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless,T-Mobile USA andSprint Nextel Corp. said Tuesday they will create a central database to track stolen devices and prevent them from being reactivated.

The family of slain teenager Trayvon Martin traveled to Washington on Tuesday to meet with lawmakers studying racial profiling. The parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, and the family lawyer, Benjamin Crump, will meet with some members of the House Judiciary Committee to discuss racial profiling and hate crimes. Crump is expected to speak in the afternoon. “We're looking at profiling and hate crimes and the role that the Justice Department can play,” Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.)

The annual marijuana harvest was a bust, and local law enforcement officials couldn't be more pleased. "If we don't find and destroy fields, that means they're either hidden fairly well and we didn't discover them--or they aren't there," said Ventura County Sheriff's Lt. Paul Anderson of the narcotics division. "We'd like to think there weren't that many there." More than 700 plants worth about $2.

The computer hacking group Anonymous took gleeful pride Friday in announcing that it had sneaked onto a conference call between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and foreign law enforcement agencies concerning how to deal with the cyber-pirate organization. To boost its claim, the group posted a 16-minute recording of the conference call in which intelligence was shared about two British teenagers allegedly tied to Anonymous. But at FBI headquarters in Washington, officials brushed off the incident, saying that while a "criminal investigation is underway" into how the conference call was compromised, the episode was not a major incident in the annals of cyber stealth.

Reporting from San Diego -- Former drug kingpin Benjamin Arellano Felix pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal racketeering and money-laundering conspiracy charges, marking the end of a decade-old case that targeted what once was Mexico's most powerful organized crime group. Arellano Felix, 58, the former leader of the Arellano Felix drug cartel, transformed Tijuana into a major trafficking corridor into the U.S. during a 16-year reign that ended with his arrest in Mexico in 2002. The organization, also known as the Tijuana cartel, poured tons of drugs into California and generated profits that fueled a criminal empire that terrorized rivals, partnered with corrupt Mexican law enforcement officials and funded flashy lifestyles that became the template for Hollywood depictions of Mexican organized crime.