Los Angeles Police Department

The annals of child kidnapping are replete with heartbreaking tragedies, but probably none have been quite as bizarre as the crime that first mesmerized, then convulsed, Los Angeles more than 70 years ago. By the time it was over, it would involve not only an apparent abduction, but also impersonation, police coercion, false imprisonment, psychiatric abuse and--this being Los Angeles--a court fight that stretched on for more than a decade.

Ron Von Gober has had his share of close calls as a Los Angeles police detective, including the time a group of toughs patted him down during an undercover drug buy in Hollywood and discovered he was wearing a wire. Surrounded, Von Gober pulled his gun and held the angry thugs at bay while he backed off and then ran to safety. But Von Gober's closest brush with death happened far from the streets of L.A.

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton said Thursday that he was assigning more than 200 officers to a crackdown on the city's most dangerous street gangs, even as officials acknowledged that their plan of attack was controversial. Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa formally announced the initiative during a roll call of patrol officers at the Mission Community Police Station, which serves an area of the north San Fernando Valley where gang crime increased 160% last year.

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.

Police on Friday released detailed reports that identified some of the worst pockets of crime in the San Fernando Valley and blamed much of the violence on spreading gang activity, increased drug use and a "large victim pool" of illegal immigrants.

Merchandise bearing symbols of the LAPD, one of the most recognized law enforcement agencies in the world, is peddled by entrepreneurs without the department's permission. Everything from LAPD key chains and money clips to coffee mugs and T-shirts is sold. LAPD images also flood Internet Web sites, often by people hawking department items. One Web site entrepreneur is selling "North Hollywood Shootout" mouse pads.

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.

A Los Angeles police officer said Thursday that she was raped by a fellow officer, but the department launched an investigation of her private life rather than probe of her assailant's actions. In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Officer Teresa Wallin said Officer James Joy, assigned to the elite Metropolitan Division, raped her last May 30 after driving her home from a bar on the Police Academy's grounds.

They called it the "Rampart way," a cocky, swaggering attitude among anti-gang officers who felt they were above department rules. "We do things differently here," the officers would tell those who dared to question their hard-charging brand of policing.

Four people were arrested early Wednesday and more than 300 were ticketed in a crackdown on illegal street racing in the San Fernando Valley, police said. Capping weeks of investigation, a team of 27 officers, six reserve officers, three Explorer Scouts and eight members of a citizens volunteer surveillance team barricaded hundreds of mostly young people on Plummer Street just as races were about to begin, said Lt. Joe Eddy of Devonshire Division.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.