Police Car

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.

On Thursday, the Twitter feed of @BookaliciousPam was full of the normal posts: plans to attend an upcoming writers' conference, which galley service she preferred, enthusiasm for good books. Then she wrote that she had just been the victim of attempted carjacking. But it wasn't a carjacking; it was an attack by an author whose work she had rejected. Pam van Hylckama Vlieg began working as a literary agent for San Francisco's Larsen Pomada Literary Agency this summer. For years she's been blogging about romance as Bookalicious and running a separate kids' literature blog . She's one of those people who has been comfortable living online, using Twitter, Facebook, and the check-in app Foursquare.

Facing public concern over three videotaped incidents in which police used serious force to subdue people, the Los Angeles Police Department plans to host a series of community meetings to discuss with the public why officers use force and how the department investigates such encounters. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck ordered meetings held by the department's 21 stations throughout the city, Lt. Andrew Neiman said. The dates of the meetings have not yet been set, Neiman said, adding that he expected them to occur in the near future "because it is such a hot topic right now. " The meetings will give the public an opportunity to ask questions about the three incidents that reignited old concerns about Los Angeles officers using excessive force.

At least five Los Angeles police officers are under investigation in the death of a woman who stopped breathing during a struggle that included an officer stomping on her genital area and the use of additional force by others to take her into custody, police officials confirmed Thursday. The altercation in front of her South Los Angeles apartment was captured by a patrol car's video camera. When asked by The Times about the incident, LAPD Cmdr. Bob Green confirmed that one officer, while trying to get Alesia Thomas into the back of a patrol car, threatened to kick Thomas in the genitals if she did not comply, and then followed through on her threat.

New details have emerged in the strange case of Chavis Carter, the 21-year-old man Arkansas police say committed suicide by shooting himself in the head while handcuffed in a police car. But along with those details come new questions and, from critics, increased skepticism. Carter's girlfriend told an investigator that Carter had called her from the car and said he had a gun. Investigators in Jonesboro, Ark., detailed the woman's account, without identifying her, in a four-page statement about Carter's July 28 death, which was ruled a suicide in an autopsy report released this week.

HOUSTON -- Police in Jonesboro, Ark., have drawn scrutiny after a suspect handcuffed in a police car apparently managed to shoot himself in the head. Jonesboro police stopped Chavis Carter, 21, of Southaven, Miss., on July 28 while he was riding with several other people in Jonesboro, about 130 miles northeast of Little Rock. Carter was held on an outstanding warrant, frisked, found in possession of a small amount of marijuana, placed in a patrol car and handcuffed, according to police reports . A short time later, officers noticed Carter slumped in the backseat of the cruiser, covered in blood, according to an autopsy report released Monday . The report found Carter had managed to conceal a handgun, which he used to shoot himself in the right side of the head.

The Los Angeles City Council agreed Friday to pay $6.6 million to the family of a woman killed by a speeding police car, the largest amount the city has ever paid to resolve a police traffic collision. Crashes in which officers are partly or entirely to blame have emerged as an intractable and costly problem for the city. Forced to either settle the lawsuits that commonly arise from the accidents or fight them in court, the city now has spent about $30 million in negotiated payouts and verdicts in about 400 LAPD traffic-related lawsuits over the last decade, according to city records.

The family of Abdul Arian remembered the 19-year-old young man who was fatally shot by Los Angeles police officers after a high-speed chase Thursday morning for his desire to become a police officer. "He wanted to be an LAPD cop," said Hamed Arian, the youth's uncle, "and the LAPD killed him. " But as details of Arian's life emerge, the picture of his ambitions becomes more complicated. A police narrative of the shooting on the 101 Freeway in Woodland Hills suggests a troubled end for the young man who placed a 911 call during the pursuit and told authorities he was armed with a gun. Police did not recover a gun from the scene.

The two officers who fatally shot an unarmed African American college student in Pasadena last weekend are veteran members of the force with no previous record of shooting anyone, authorities said. Pasadena Police Chief Phillip Sanchez confirmed that Officers Jeffrey Newlen and Mathew Griffin shot Kendrec McDade, 19, on a dark, narrow street last weekend. Sanchez said the only notable incident in their records was Griffin's shooting of a Rottweiler in 2007. The incident, involving two white officers, has sparked tensions in a community with a long history of divisive relations between the Police Department and African American community.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Anna Brown was homeless and had so much pain in her legs that she couldn't walk. When Brown, 29, refused to leave the emergency room at St. Mary's Health Center in Richmond Heights, Mo., a suburb near inner St. Louis, the police thought she was on drugs and arrested her for trespassing. She'd already been examined, and a doctor said she was healthy enough to go to jail. The police carried her into a jail cell by her arms and ankles, her body slackened.