Police Academy

The Neighborhoods for the Atwater Village Police Academy will sponsor a town hall meeting March 11 to update area residents on the effort to bring the police academy to the former Franciscan Ceramics property. The meeting will cover legislative efforts to address liability issues, actions taken by the Police Commission, the status of the property, efforts to work with the Police Protective League and volunteer opportunities. Running from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

WILMINGTON, Mass.--Police officers lined the road outside the Boston medical examiner's office Saturday afternoon, preparing to pay respect to MIT police officer Sean Collier, shot to death late Thursday when the bombing suspects came upon him in his car on campus. More than a dozen officers saluted as the hearse passed with a police escort, including officers f rom Somerville , Mass., the department Collier had been preparing to join in June. A small crowd gathered on the sidewalk to watch and thank police officers.

Is Warner's "Police Academy" series--which to date has grossed half a billion dollars internationally--losing some of its audience appeal? "Police Academy 6: City Under Seige" opened at $4.0 million at 1,627 theaters, down nearly 35% from the opening weekend grosses at the same time last year for "Police Academy 5." Another new opener, Tri-Star's "Chances Are," starring Cybill Shepherd and Robert Downey Jr., looked better on a per-screen basis ($4,378) than its total weekend gross of $3.

OAKLAND -- Amid raucous cheers from family members, Oakland's strapped Police Department on Friday welcomed 38 new officers to the force -- marking the first graduating academy class in four years. The ceremony comes as the department's number of sworn officers has plummeted from 809 to 611 over the last four years, a drop that marks the lowest staffing levels in a decade. As in other cities, the reductions came as a result of recession-era hiring freezes combined with attrition.

The first Ventura County Police Academy class for 1996 graduated Friday in a ceremony at Camarillo Community Center presided over by Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury and Sheriff Larry Carpenter. The 47 graduates of the intensive six-month training course will head to police agencies in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. The Ventura County Sheriff's Department will take most of the graduates, 27 men and women set to be sworn in as deputies.

The nation's first middle school Junior Cadet Police Academy, which begins this fall at Mulholland Middle School, is still recruiting students. An orientation and recruitment dinner will begin at 5 p.m. Tuesday in the school's multipurpose room. The event is free, said Roberta Weintraub, executive director of the academy, which offers specialized classes to give students a close look at law enforcement careers.

Want to be a police recruit but you're a bit rusty on criminal law? Want to back up Long Beach's finest but you can't manage even 10 push-ups? There's hope yet. Long Beach police hope to sign up 35 people to attend their first community police academy. With classes scheduled to begin Feb. 1., officers have already gathered more than a dozen recruits, said Sgt. Michele Miller.

Each morning a group of San Diego police officers saddle their mounts at Gold Gulch in Balboa Park, then head for the Gaslamp Quarter downtown. And if enforcing the law is not difficult enough, these officers must work with animals that sometimes are spooked by their own shadows. It takes a special officer to be on the city's horse-mounted patrol, officials say. It takes an officer with enough confidence to master more than 1,400 pounds of leaping, snorting and kicking muscle.

Classes have been suspended at Rio Hondo College's police academy and officials are being forced to rewrite questions on officer tests used statewide after someone obtained those test materials and put them in a study guide. The state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training ordered that all future classes of trainees at the Rio Hondo academy in Whittier be suspended until it completes an investigation into a breach of test security. Officials say that of the 122 trainees at the academy, 22 were being sponsored by regional police departments, which they were expected to join as officers.

A Los Angeles police officer killed in a motorcycle accident last week had been drinking at a bar on the department's training academy campus the night he died and had a blood-alcohol level "well over" the legal limit, a police official said Wednesday. After the early-morning crash Dec. 3, department officials launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Officer Kenneth Aragon's death in an effort to determine whether he was plied with too much alcohol by academy bartenders or got drunk at another location, said LAPD Cmdr.

Re "Take guns from fired cops," Column, Feb. 11 George Skelton's argument is illogical. The ex-cop Christopher Dorner was fired for making false reports, which doesn't necessarily indicate a predisposition toward violence that would require his gun-ownership rights to be revoked. Several years had passed since his firing before he allegedly went on a killing spree. Several journalists have lied in print. I would expect Skelton to give equal accounting to them and have their guns confiscated.

ALBUQUERQUE - Mike Gomez was in Las Vegas on business last May when an early-morning phone call delivered terrible news: His son Alan had been shot dead by an Albuquerque police marksman. The 22-year-old construction worker had been acting erratically while in the throes of drug-induced hallucinations, said police. They mistakenly believed he had a gun and was holding two people hostage. The shooting was one of 23 officer-involved shootings, 17 of them fatal, since January 2010, a string that has given Albuquerque one of the highest police shooting rates in the country.

Describing his road back from the Hollywood hinterland, actor Steve Guttenberg uses a preferred tactic: He reaches for a metaphor. "I've played at the small ballpark. But now I want to be at Yankee … Stadium," the actor said, punctuating his words with the gerund form of a certain four-letter word. "I'd rather be a batboy on the Yankees than a power hitter on the … Blue Jays. " Deploying the Blue Jays as a symbol of his box-office futility may be putting it kindly. Over a four-year period in the 1980s, Guttenberg had a stunning run. Though only in his 20s, the actor anchored seven hit films: He was the diaper-changing cartoonist in "Three Men and a Baby," the robot-protecting scientist in "Short Circuit," the unsuspecting boat owner in "Cocoon" and the wisecracking police cadet, Carey Mahoney, in the "Police Academy" franchise.

Classes have been suspended at Rio Hondo College's police academy and officials are being forced to rewrite questions on officer tests used statewide after someone obtained those test materials and put them in a study guide. The state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training ordered that all future classes of trainees at the Rio Hondo academy in Whittier be suspended until it completes an investigation into a breach of test security. Officials say that of the 122 trainees at the academy, 22 were being sponsored by regional police departments, which they were expected to join as officers.

A Los Angeles police officer killed in a motorcycle accident last week had been drinking at a bar on the department's training academy campus the night he died and had a blood-alcohol level "well over" the legal limit, a police official said Wednesday. After the early-morning crash Dec. 3, department officials launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Officer Kenneth Aragon's death in an effort to determine whether he was plied with too much alcohol by academy bartenders or got drunk at another location, said LAPD Cmdr.

It was all pomp and pageantry at the LAPD's downtown headquarters Thursday as newly appointed Chief Charlie Beck was sworn in to office -- for a second time. Beck officially became the department's leader a few weeks ago when the City Council unanimously approved his nomination by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Beck, 56, took the oath of office in a brief ceremony after the council vote. Thursday's event was for show and celebration. Against the backdrop of City Hall, elected officials, department brass and a few hundred other guests filled the courtyard outside the Los Angeles Police Department's gleaming new headquarters.

Six men wearing camouflage uniforms and carrying assault rifles stormed a police academy and a jail, demanding loyalty to the disbanded Haitian army. Three policemen were killed and four wounded. Before dawn, the gunmen drove up to the suburban Petionville academy and headed for the barracks, spraying them with gunfire, police said. The attackers seized senior officer Eddy Cantave from a dormitory and forced him to lead them to a SWAT team compound, where heavy arms are stored.

What's so amazing about the "Police Academy" movies is that they keep being made even though they stopped being funny after the hilarious original. We're now up to No. 4, and the most you can say for it is that it is the teeniest bit better, not quite so crass as the last two. "Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol" (citywide) takes its subtitle from an idea of absent-minded Commandant Lassard (George Gaynes).

The City Council agreed Friday to keep the Los Angeles police force at 9,963 officers this year, but said it would assess the city's ability to maintain that size on a monthly basis. With the council trying to close a $405-million shortfall this year, council President Eric Garcetti said the city would proceed with new Police Academy classes only "as we can afford them." Each month, the LAPD, city personnel officials and top budget analysts will be required to submit reports to the council detailing attrition rates, retirements and the number of new recruits scheduled to enter the academy.

Two committees of the Los Angeles City Council recommended Monday that the city stop hiring police officers starting next month and wait until January to see if the budget picture has improved enough to resume recruitment. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will veto the proposal if the full council approves it next week, officials in the mayor's office said. The Budget and Finance and Public Safety committees agreed to discontinue a new recruit class in November as part of the effort to eliminate a $405-million budget shortfall.