Los Angeles Police Department

What LAPD Sgt. Rick Arteaga remembers most about the first night of the riots is a curbside history lesson at the intersection of Manchester and Vermont. Six police officers were trying to face down 400 angry residents. The Los Angeles Police Department brass had just ordered the officers to withdraw. "Get in the car!" Arteaga yelled. But his rookie partner froze, unwilling to turn his back on the advancing mob. In those menacing seconds, a single fear grabbed them both: This was a crowd bent on vengeance and they were about to be lynched.

Privacy rights groups on Monday filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County's two major law enforcement agencies after they refused to turn over information collected by electronic license plate scanners, the suit claimed. The Los Angeles Police Department and L.A. County Sheriff's Department have made use of the plate-reading technology for several years. Typically mounted on patrol vehicles, the small cameras continuously scan license plates and check them against criminal databases in search of stolen cars and cars registered to known fugitives.

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.

After bombs ripped through the crowd gathered along the final stretch of the Boston Marathon on Monday, Los Angeles police officials did what they could to calm fears among their own residents. Standing before a bank of television cameras, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck on Tuesday reiterated that upcoming sporting and cultural events would be patrolled by a higher-than-normal number of officers and bomb-sniffing dogs. He talked cryptically about the secretive work being done by the department's counter-terrorism units.

Three have been fired and 10 have quit. Nine have been promoted. Two have killed suspects while on duty. And one stands accused of falsifying evidence in a murder case. For most of the 44 Los Angeles Police Department officers labeled "problem officers" in the landmark 1991 Christopher Commission report, the past four years have been tumultuous. The commission said its intention was to illustrate, not define, what it called "the problem of excessive force in the LAPD."

There's no place in Torrance more thick with thieves than the Del Amo Fashion Center, the city's largest mall. But you wouldn't know that if you looked at the crime map published on the city's website. Launched last year, the city's map promised to use cutting-edge technology to notify residents of the latest crimes in their community. But a Times review has found that the Torrance Police Department deliberately withholds information on hundreds of crimes across the city, including some of the most serious.

For weeks now, Tony Everfield has been planning a June vacation with his three children to Disneyland. But after watching two nights of rioting across Los Angeles on the television, Everfield was racked Friday by second thoughts. "I don't want my kids involved in seeing the violence," said the Oakland chef. "Los Angeles was a beautiful city. It just looks awful from what I've seen on the news. It will frighten the hell out of you.

Los Angeles Police Officer Henry J. Cousine--a police ring on his finger, an LAPD tattoo on his leg and battle scars on his body--says the officers accused of beating Rodney G. King swung their batons like "little girls." Then he ticks off some of his own episodes of violence during a decade as a beat cop: three fights and three shootings. "You get in my face, I'm going to fight back," Cousine said. "You swing at me, I'm going to knock you off your feet. And you pull a gun, I'll kill you."

A Chatsworth woman was arrested on suspicion of elder abuse after authorities found her 85-year-old mother, who later died, covered head to toe in her own waste, a Los Angeles police spokeswoman said Sunday. Belinda Feldman, 54, was arrested at the home she shared with her mother. Elise Glatstein died 11 hours after authorities took her to a hospital. Police went to the house in the 21900 block of Dupont Street on Saturday after receiving a call about Glatstein. Officers found her in her bedroom in "very poor condition," Officer Karen Smith of the Los Angeles Police Department said.

Inside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck paid tribute Tuesday to his deceased predecessor, Daryl F. Gates, the 56th chief of the Police Department. "He was 56th, but there will never be another like Daryl," Beck said during the private funeral for Gates, who died this month after a short battle with cancer at the age of 83. "Daryl was the Los Angeles Police Department," he continued. "The Los Angeles Police Department was Daryl Gates." Beck said Gates led a far smaller department when the crime rate was high and the murder rate was triple what it is today.

The Los Angeles Police Department announced Thursday that it would take the unusual step of no longer issuing press releases or immediately confirming instances of celebrity "swatting," saying intense media coverage seems to be fueling more incidents. Cmdr. Andrew Smith, who oversees the LAPD Media Relations Section, said the procedural change keeping celebrity swatting calls a secret, was necessary because of concerns about the privacy of the victims as well as the belief that publicizing such incidents targeting individual celebrities was emboldening copycats.

In the three-plus years since Charlie Beck put on the chief's badge at the LAPD, his goal has been to consolidate a modern, multiethnic, publicly responsible 10,000-officer department, as envisioned in the rattling reforms of 15 and 20 years ago. The chief's recent trial by fire was about one ex-probationary cop named Christopher Dorner and the manhunt that ended in Dorner's death, consumed millions in law enforcement dollars and ate up, for the moment...

What appears to be the fiery finale to Christopher Dorner's violent rampage across Southern California nearly upstaged President Obama's State of the Union address. As the seconds ticked down to the start of the speech, it seemed as though Anderson Cooper and the folks at CNN were awfully reluctant to break away from the burning cabin near Big Bear where the disgruntled, unhinged ex-cop from the Los Angeles Police Department appeared to be holed up.  Nevertheless, the cable news organizations did their duty and switched from the sensational to the substantial.

Back in the early 1990s, when the Los Angeles Police Department was the source of much fear and brutality, about 1% of its arrests involved the use of some force, from a firm grip to a gunshot. Over the last two years, during a period when the LAPD has been justifiably lauded as a restrained and professional agency, about 1% of arrests involved the use of force. That remarkable constancy is true despite wide fluctuations in the number of people taken into custody - the department arrested almost 300,000 people in 1990, twice as many as last year - and reflects two aspects of the interaction between police and the public: Most officers do their jobs with good intentions, and most suspects know better than to resist.

Twenty years ago Sunday, on a warm spring afternoon, Los Angeles fell apart. It started with the announcement of not-guilty verdicts on all but one count against the police officers who had beaten Rodney King into submission. It flared in confrontations in neighborhood after neighborhood, was fanned by television images of a truck driver being dragged from his vehicle at the intersection of Florence and Normandie, and was inflamed by a raucous mob that rampaged through downtown that night, starting at police headquarters and spreading out from there.

In 1992, the acquittal of four police officers accused of beating Rodney King was the match that ignited a city, setting off a wave of violence that left 53 dead, thousands injured and hundreds of businesses destroyed. There was a lot of accumulated tinder to burn. Los Angeles was struggling with a faltering and de-industrialized economy that left too many without good jobs, a wave of demographic transition that caused ethnic and generational tensions, and a widening gap between rich and poor that was just beginning to emerge into public view - a bit like the U.S. today.

Even Hank Cousine admits that he's not the sort of fellow you would expect to find suing the Los Angeles Police Department for excessive force. On the other hand, having been labeled as one of the department's 44 "problem" officers by the Christopher Commission several years ago, perhaps he is something of an expert on the topic. "I've never been on this side of the table before," Cousine said in an interview this week, noting the irony in his status as victim and plaintiff.

Police dispersed a large gathering of residents and gang members in the Imperial Courts housing project in South Los Angeles after a Saturday morning party deteriorated into brawls, leaving one person wounded by gunfire. Five people were arrested. It was the third consecutive weekend that police moved in to break up unity parties among large numbers of rival Crips and Bloods gang factions.

The Los Angeles riots were sparked by the acquittal 20 years ago of four police officers in the beating of Rodney King, but civil rights attorney Connie Rice says the kindling for the fire was laid years before, by decades of hostile policing in black neighborhoods. "The reason we had this riot was because we had the total emasculation and humiliation of an entire community," she said. "It was kindling built on kindling built on kindling. " Rice reflected on the riots Sunday at the L.A. Times Festival of Books along with former L.A. County Dist.

What LAPD Sgt. Rick Arteaga remembers most about the first night of the riots is a curbside history lesson at the intersection of Manchester and Vermont. Six police officers were trying to face down 400 angry residents. The Los Angeles Police Department brass had just ordered the officers to withdraw. "Get in the car!" Arteaga yelled. But his rookie partner froze, unwilling to turn his back on the advancing mob. In those menacing seconds, a single fear grabbed them both: This was a crowd bent on vengeance and they were about to be lynched.