Los Angeles Police Department

The Los Angeles Police Department's online crime map intended for public use has failed to include nearly 40% of serious crimes reported in the city, a Times analysis has found. The omissions, which date back at least six months, include thousands of crimes known to LAPD officials and are included in their official crime statistics. Among the 19,000 incidents between Jan. 1 and June 13 that do not appear at lapdcrimemaps.

To the casual observer they look like the real thing: Uniformed Los Angeles police officers on motorcycles controlling traffic around action-packed chase scenes and sprawling film sets on the streets of L.A. Gawkers and paparazzi who get up close, however, might realize something is a bit off. The stripes signifying the officers' rank are gone, the motorcycles are without emergency lights and their badges read "Retired" across the top.

He came to Los Angeles in 2002, a brash New Englander in a hurry to make his mark and unwilling to mince words. When a community activist attacked the department, Chief William J. Bratton went on CNN and labeled him a "nitwit." When the City Council refused his request for more officers, he bellowed: "Let them start attending some of the funerals of the victims of crime."

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.

The City Council on Wednesday agreed to pay nearly $13 million to people injured or mistreated in a May Day melee in MacArthur Park, bringing to more than $30 million the money spent over the last two weeks to settle lawsuits alleging LAPD misconduct. The action served as a reminder of the Los Angeles Police Department's troubled past and its continuing path toward regaining the trust of some city residents and elected officials. For the LAPD, Wednesday's $12.

On the evening of Feb. 24, 1986, LAPD homicide detectives found Sherri Rae Rasmussen's badly beaten body on the living room floor of her Van Nuys town house with wounds from three .38-caliber bullets to her chest. Weeks later, Stephanie Lazarus, a young Los Angeles police officer, called the Santa Monica Police Department to report that someone had broken into her car on 2nd Street, blocks from the pier. A gym bag had been stolen, she said.

Los Angeles police are riding a crest of goodwill that has pushed the department's popularity to levels not sustained since the late 1980s as cops continue to post gains on fighting crime and building closer ties with the people they serve.

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.

Declaring that the Los Angeles Police Department has reformed itself significantly after decades of corruption and brutality complaints, a U.S. judge on Friday ended a long-running period of federal oversight. U.S. District Court Judge Gary A. Feess terminated the consent decree federal officials had imposed on the LAPD in 2001, after the Rampart corruption scandal.

For more than four decades, a dreary, two-level jail in a corner of the Los Angeles Police Department's downtown headquarters has been an unwelcome pit stop for thousands of men arrested in the city each year. Accused of petty theft, murder or anything in between, the Parker Center Jail is where one waits -- sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a few days -- to see a judge. Never a pleasant place, the jail has fallen into increasing depths of disrepair and inadequacy over the years.