Los Angeles County District Attorney

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti on Friday made public a cost-saving plan that he said will temporarily avert layoffs of deputy prosecutors and enable him to continue to prosecute all kinds of crime for the time being. Garcetti also said he would strongly support voter approval in November of the extension of a half-cent sales tax whose revenues could be used to bring his office and other law enforcement agencies up to last year's spending levels.

Chris Brown is due in a downtown courtroom Friday afternoon for the first time since February when prosecutors accused him of failing to complete court-ordered community service. Prosecutors had argued that proof of the R&B singer's service for a 2009 assault conviction was fraudulent. Superior Court Judge James Brandlin has yet to rule on whether Brown must serve additional community service time in Los Angeles County. If the singer does not fulfill his obligation to the court, he could be sent to jail.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner said Thursday that former Lincoln Savings & Loan operator Charles H. Keating Jr. should receive the maximum 10-year sentence for cheating investors because anything less would "diminish the gravity" of his crime.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley continued Wednesday to cling to a lead of about 28,500 votes in the race for California attorney general, according to a Times review of website updates by all 58 counties. Cooley's margin has held relatively steady over San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris during the last few days. The secretary of state reported late Wednesday that counties have more than 1 million ballots still to count statewide ? mostly mail-in ballots that arrived too late to be counted on election day and provisional ballots.

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office said Wednesday that it is reopening its investigation of the drowning of Delores Jackson, former wife of entertainer Tito Jackson and former sister-in-law of pop superstar Michael Jackson. The district attorney's office acted in response to new evidence released Tuesday by coroner's officials, who said Jackson may have died of an "assisted drowning." Jackson, 39, was pulled from the pool of her boyfriend, businessman Donald J.

For three miles, the police officers chased the car, sirens blaring. When the suspect finally stopped, as the officers would explain it later, he ignored their orders and tried to bull his way past them. Five bystanders told a starkly different story: the policemen beat and kicked an unarmed black man as he lay on the street. It was not Rodney G. King whom the witnesses saw being pummeled that night in 1988, but a suspected auto thief named Tyrone Demetri Carey.

Chris Brown is due in a downtown courtroom Friday afternoon for the first time since February when prosecutors accused him of failing to complete court-ordered community service. Prosecutors had argued that proof of the R&B singer's service for a 2009 assault conviction was fraudulent. Superior Court Judge James Brandlin has yet to rule on whether Brown must serve additional community service time in Los Angeles County. If the singer does not fulfill his obligation to the court, he could be sent to jail.

Workers' Comp Panel Established: The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. and the Los Angeles County district attorney's office have named an 18-member task force to make recommendations on the best ways to prosecute workers' compensation fraud. The panel, headed by trial lawyer and former County Bar Assn. President Larry R. Feldman, expects to submit its report in two months.

Gov. Pete Wilson on Wednesday appointed a veteran prosecutor in the Los Angeles County district attorney's office to be a Superior Court judge. Norman J. Shapiro, 52, of Beverly Hills, will replace Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John Zebrowski, who was appointed to the 2nd District Court of Appel. Shapiro has been a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County since 1970. The annual salary of a Superior Court judge is $107,390.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, candidate for Los Angeles County district attorney, will speak today at a Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. general membership meeting. The event is scheduled from 11:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom of the Beverly Garland Hotel, 4222 Vineland Ave., in North Hollywood. Admission is $20 per person, and the event is open to the public. For information, call (818) 888-2228. KGIL-AM radio and the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn.

A former Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent pleaded no contest Thursday to unlawfully displaying a badge while allegedly trying to pull a woman over in Pomona. Ruben Zacarias, 81, waved a school district police badge at a woman driving on the 57 Freeway last July and said he was a cop, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. Zacarias, who was superintendent for 2 1/2 years before being bought out of his contract by the school board in late 1999, was fined $250 and must pay a $100 restitution fee. Superior Court Judge David Brougham also ordered that the badge -- which was seized by the California Highway Patrol -- be returned to the school district, according to Deputy Dist.

A union representing deputy district attorneys filed a lawsuit last week against Los Angeles County and Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley alleging the department's senior managers retaliated against employees for unionizing last year. The complaint accuses Los Angeles County's top law enforcer of using "19th century thuggery commonly employed against union organizers," including punitive work transfers. The Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys, which began representing about 1,000 Los Angeles County prosecutors in March 2008, is currently in the midst of contract negotiations with the district attorney's office and the county.

Prosecutors have long been shielded from lawsuits brought by people who were wrongly convicted. Even if a defendant is later shown to be entirely innocent, the prosecutor who brought the charges cannot be held liable for the mistake. The Supreme Court has ruled that "absolute immunity" is needed so that prosecutors -- and judges -- can do their jobs without fear of legal retaliation. But a California case that the high court is considering taking could open a back door for such lawsuits.

The Los Angeles County district attorney's Public Integrity Unit is reviewing whether a high-level consultant for the Los Angeles Unified School District's building program engaged in a conflict of interest. David Demerjian, head of the unit, said Wednesday that his office has been looking at Bassam Raslan, a district regional director of construction and an owner of TBI Associates, which he co-founded to supply staff to the district's $20-billion school construction effort.

Despite facing a looming budget crunch, county supervisors will today consider giving Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley a 23% pay raise in an attempt to keep his salary on par with those of other county department heads and top prosecutors elsewhere in the state. If three of the five supervisors approve the proposal, Cooley would make $292,300 a year, up from his current $236,829. Such a raise would make Cooley the highest-paid elected official in Los Angeles County government.

Los Angeles County prosecutors acknowledged Tuesday that they failed to inform a West Covina woman about a plea deal in December that allowed her estranged husband out of jail after he pleaded guilty to threatening her with a stun gun. The lapse is one of several decisions the district attorney's office is investigating after Curtis Bernard Harris, 34, kidnapped Monica Thomas-Harris, 37, and killed her before taking his own life over the weekend at a Whittier motel.

A former prostitute serving life in prison for murdering her abusive pimp sued Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley on Thursday, contending that he reneged on a promise that would have shaved significant time off her sentence, attorneys said.

The Los Angeles County district attorney has charged a former radiologist at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center with failing to pay state taxes in 2004, when he was billing the county for marathon shifts at the troubled public hospital in Willowbrook, just south of Watts. The district attorney's office Tuesday charged Dr. Harold A. Tate, 46, with one felony count of tax evasion, which carries a maximum term of three years in state prison.