CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 3, 2010 | By Rich Connell
Los Angeles' red-light traffic camera program, which officials report netted more than $6 million last year after expenses, could be significantly expanded under a new contract to be negotiated over the next 14 months, records and interviews show. While adding more cameras could offer a welcome boost to city revenue in the midst of a fiscal crisis, officials say any expansion will be based on safety considerations. No goal has been set, but internal City Hall discussions have included the possibility of adding cameras to blocks of eight intersections at a time and eventually doubling the overall reach of the program to 64 intersections, Los Angeles Police Department officials told The Times.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 28, 2010 | By Richard Winton and Hector Becerra
Two off-duty Los Angeles Police Department officers were arrested for allegedly attacking and pistol-whipping a man in Whittier on Tuesday night. In a separate incident, an off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy got into a fight in Highland Park and suffered wounds, while her foe was shot by a relative of the deputy, authorities said. LAPD Officer Brandon Valdez, 29, and LAPD Officer Patrick Fitzgerald, 38, were arrested Tuesday night by Whittier police on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon after the victim was hospitalized with head trauma.
BUSINESS
January 28, 2010 | By Stuart Pfeifer
With former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton on board, Virginia-based Altegrity Inc. is launching a global investigations company with ties to the city. Bratton is chairman of the new firm, Altegrity Risk International. He's tapped former L.A. City Councilman Jack Weiss to run the company's Los Angeles office and former Deputy Police Chief Michael Berkow as president of its security consulting unit. Bratton retired from the Los Angeles Police Department in August after eight years to work for Altegrity Inc., which had more than $900 million in revenue last year and is headed by Mike Cherkasky, former chief executive of the Kroll Group.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 27, 2010 | By Joel Rubin
In an abrupt reversal of an earlier decision that drew the ire of rape victim advocates, city officials have cleared the way for the Los Angeles Police Department's crime lab to hire more staff capable of DNA analysis. The about-face amounts to a belated attempt by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and City Council members to salvage a city plan to eliminate a backlog of untested DNA evidence from rape cases and to prevent a new one from piling up. Despite the renewed commitment to hire more DNA analysts, the bureaucratic wrangling has pushed back the city's initial timetable for eliminating the backlog.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 25, 2010 | By Jack Leonard
It was meant to be a smoking gun: A grainy security video that proved police corruption. Officers said they had stopped Rafat Abdallah because his white Mercedes was missing a license plate. During a search of the car, they discovered a loaded handgun -- a serious crime for a convicted felon like Abdallah. But the footage, taken from a surveillance camera, clearly showed a license plate on Rafat Abdallah's white Mercedes as he left his business just moments before officers pulled him over.
OPINION
January 23, 2010
The Los Angeles Police Department is the city's largest cost center and has been growing, as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has worked to increase the numbers of officers. Fiscal reality last year forced police hiring to be scaled back to simply keep pace with attrition. Now, as Villaraigosa and the City Council are confronted by revenues falling even further behind projections, it's understandable that some would consider letting the total number of officers fall backward, at least in the short term.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 23, 2010 | By Joel Rubin
Nearly two decades have passed since the Los Angeles Police Department was first called upon to outfit all its patrol cars with video cameras. Today, the number of vehicles with functioning cameras stands at zero. Over the years, while other law enforcement agencies around the country put cameras into wide use, various LAPD chiefs and mayors failed to acquire the technology, as pilot programs fizzled amid budget constraints and tepid political support. Despite having secured funding for hundreds of cameras, LAPD officials acknowledged this week that the project continues to founder because of technical malfunctions and poor planning.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 22, 2010 | By Joel Rubin
Nearly two decades have passed since the Los Angeles Police Department was first called upon to outfit all its patrol cars with video cameras. Today, the number of vehicles with functioning cameras stands at zero. Over the years, while other law enforcement agencies around the country put cameras into wide use, various LAPD chiefs and mayors failed to acquire the technology, as pilot programs fizzled amid budget constraints and tepid political support. Despite having secured funding for hundreds of cameras, LAPD officials acknowledged this week that the project continues to founder because of technical malfunctions and poor planning.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 22, 2010 | By David Zahniser and Maeve Reston
Even as city officials plan to shed 1,000 jobs to patch a nearly $200-million budget gap, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa intends to continue hiring police officers, a top aide said Thursday. Deputy Chief of Staff Matt Szabo said Villaraigosa wants to keep recruiting enough officers to replace those who resign or retire -- leaving the Police Department with 9,963 sworn officers -- as he and the City Council press ahead with major reductions elsewhere. "I think there's consensus on that concept," Szabo said.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 16, 2010 | By Bob Pool
His widow was too poor to buy a headstone for his grave. So Los Angeles' first black police officer to be killed in the line of duty was buried in an unmarked grave when he was laid to rest 87 years ago. This week, city leaders took steps to remedy that oversight by designating the downtown intersection of Central Avenue and 6th Street as "Officer Charles P. Williams Square." Williams was a 35-year-old vice squad officer when he was gunned down Jan. 13, 1923, while responding to a report of an armed man threatening people at a house at 1101 E. 8th St. near the intersection.