Los Angeles Sheriff S Department

For people like Sally Garcia it all comes so naturally--this ability to provide comfort, this calling to help others. It is what put her in the center of last spring's riots as a sheriff's volunteer, and what drew her to the side of a grieving mother whose son had been shot and killed in a gang-related incident several months ago.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department improperly concealed the identities of at least two reserve deputies who are political supporters of Sheriff Lee Baca and were given access to county cars. The Sheriff's Department denied a public records request last year from The Times regarding take-home county car use and gasoline consumption by four reserves who have given Baca political support or gifts. The department declined to even confirm that the men were reserves, citing "the confidential nature of some assignments.

The elusive drug dealer known as "Freeway Rick" figures he grossed $1 million to $2 million a day selling cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and customers in several other states. "I didn't really care about the profit," Ricky Donnell Ross, 31, told a federal grand jury last fall. "You know, I made enough that whatever I wanted to do, I could do."

Drivers passing through Vernon were confronted by an unusual sight on the afternoon of Dec. 29, 2008: a naked man, running down Grande Vista Avenue in the middle of traffic, babbling and punching cars. Soon after, the man was comatose after a confrontation with Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies and Vernon police. Three years later, Parrish Batchan remains at a rehabilitation center in Van Nuys in what the attorneys representing his family call a "minimally conscious" state.

Clutching a remote control with both hands, Lt. Sid Heal stared into the video monitor and squeezed the dual triggers six times, sending bullets through the air and a series of tremendous booms across the small canyon. Moments later, checking the results on a target nearly 100 yards away, Heal was impressed. All of the holes were in the innermost ring. "That's dead on, I'll tell you that," he said. "If I wanted to take my time I could have put them all in the same hole."

Faced with continued jail overcrowding, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is pushing forward with efforts to place nonviolent convicts--many of them white-collar criminals--on a house arrest program. Sheriff's officials say they are prepared to send up to 4,000 convicts home with electronic monitoring bracelets, more than double the current number, to free up jail beds and ensure that more hardened convicts serve their full sentences behind bars.

Los Angeles Councilman Nate Holden alleged Tuesday that he and his son, the mayor of Pasadena, were asked for a bribe by a Sheriff's Department official who said the money would make an unlawful sex case against the lawmaker's daughter-in-law "go away." The councilman said he and his son, Chris Holden, were solicited for an undisclosed sum of money by a lieutenant at a Pasadena restaurant three months ago.

A West Covina police officer shot and killed a jaywalker Saturday morning, believing the man had a gun tucked in his waistband when in fact he had cookies, papers and a Bible, a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman said. The victim, believed to be in his late 20s, died a few minutes after being shot in the unincorporated Los Angeles County area of Valinda, Deputy Benita Nichol said. The man did not have a gun, Nichol said.

It's approaching midnight as Kevin Lamar Evans is maneuvered in an L.A. County wheelchair into the forensic inpatient unit of the mammoth Twin Towers jail--a banal brown behemoth of postmodern prison architecture that stands like an unwelcoming sentinel on the eastern fringes of downtown Los Angeles. Just 4 years old, Twin Towers is a vast improvement over the old, dungeon-like Men's Central Jail.

They came jumping out of the Sikorsky helicopter like a force of Green Berets. A Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department SWAT team was airlifted some 40 miles onto a busy road in Canyon Country two weeks ago while stunned motorists looked on. They were dispatched to deal with a man who had stuck a rifle out of a second-story window and shot his estranged wife in the thigh. The couple's 3-year-old son was believed to be with him.

Battlefield technology is coming to the streets of Los Angeles County. Starting this month, one of the nation's major military contractors is outfitting the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department's patrol cars with sophisticated computer systems and high-tech gadgetry that has been perfected for the battlefield. At a total cost to taxpayers of $20 million, Raytheon Co. promises to deliver technology that will enable deputies on the road to sort through key intelligence information in mere seconds, where it once took hours or days.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in the Antelope Valley, where deputies have been accused of discriminating against mostly minority residents of government-subsidized housing, officials said Thursday. The announcement comes after allegations from civil rights lawyers that elected leaders in Lancaster and Palmdale have tried to drive out black and Latino residents in the historically white area. Residents there have complained of surprise inspections of government-subsidized, or Section 8, housing intended to ensure residents are meeting the terms of their assistance.

In conversations with Lee Baca, you sometimes find yourself wondering, "OK, is this guy a sheriff or a shaman?" He's different. Spiritual. More of a social worker than any other cop I know, and he and I have served together more than once on panels involving mental health matters. All that's to the good, I'd say, although you're never quite sure where Baca's next globe-trekking retreat will take him or whether he'll return in sandals and robes. But holy Jehoshaphat, when it comes to running a department, it's been one screw-up after another at the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.

At the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, Jaime Iniguez was awakened Friday morning and told to get ready to leave. Iniguez, 53, was serving a four-month sentence for drunk driving, his second DUI offense. He wasn't scheduled to be released for another month. "It's time to celebrate," said Iniguez as he put on his belt outside the downtown jail complex. Iniguez is a member of a distinct group that benefits during a sour economy: jail inmates. When times are flush, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has the money to keep jails open and staffed, and the vast majority of sentenced inmates serve most of their time behind bars.

Sheriff's deputies shot and wounded a robbery suspect at a Rosemead motel early Sunday after he pointed a gun at them, authorities said. The suspect was hit once in the lower torso and was in stable condition Sunday afternoon at a local hospital, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Sonia Parra said. Deputies responded to a report of an attempted robbery at the Nice Days Inn around 4 a.m.

Shootings by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies in the department's Century Station are increasing dramatically after several years of declines, according to a report released Monday. Merrick Bobb, an attorney who oversees reforms in the Sheriff's Department for the Board of Supervisors, said the trend is "a matter of grave concern" in part because most violent crime in the area has not increased.

Authorities Saturday identified the Pico-Union mother killed Friday in gang cross-fire outside her home as Esmeralda Rodriguez, 56. Officials earlier said the woman's son was among those targeted in the 4 p.m. Friday attack near 15th Street and Magnolia Avenue. In other incidents, three Southern California peace officers were recovering from wounds suffered in a spate of unrelated shootings the last several days. Maywood reserve Officer Richard Elizondo Sr.

Citing a "massive law enforcement effort" in recent months, the Los Angeles Police Department announced Monday that gang-related murders in South-Central Los Angeles have dropped by 17% since the start of the year. During the first eight months of 1988, according to LAPD statistics, there were 82 gang-related killings in South-Central, compared to 99 in the area during the same period in 1987.

Disagreements over how much the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department should share personnel, equipment and space in a planned state-of-the-art crime lab have delayed the process by seven months--and cost the county about $1.5 million, according to a city report.

It's approaching midnight as Kevin Lamar Evans is maneuvered in an L.A. County wheelchair into the forensic inpatient unit of the mammoth Twin Towers jail--a banal brown behemoth of postmodern prison architecture that stands like an unwelcoming sentinel on the eastern fringes of downtown Los Angeles. Just 4 years old, Twin Towers is a vast improvement over the old, dungeon-like Men's Central Jail.