Police Chiefs

He came to Los Angeles in 2002, a brash New Englander in a hurry to make his mark and unwilling to mince words. When a community activist attacked the department, Chief William J. Bratton went on CNN and labeled him a "nitwit." When the City Council refused his request for more officers, he bellowed: "Let them start attending some of the funerals of the victims of crime."

The chief of the Burbank Police Department announced Monday that he is stepping down, a month after the FBI revealed it was investigating several current and former officers at the agency. Tim Stehr, 51, who became chief in 2007, made his announcement in a statement released by the city. He did not give a reason for his resignation. "It has been my absolute privilege to serve as chief in the city of Burbank," Stehr said in the statement. "Our department is facing challenging times.

Few in Inglewood had heard of Jacqueline Seabrooks or knew anything about the new police chief. After the City Council interviewed three finalists and then announced the appointment, Inglewood police officers and residents wondered how the new boss would adjust. After all, Seabrooks, 45, is a 26-year police veteran of Santa Monica, a city that had two homicides in 2006; Inglewood had 36.

The bullet holes pockmarking the walls of his home were just three days old when Alberto Capella Ibarra took over the police force of this violence-plagued city. Twenty gunmen dressed in black had swarmed his yard in the middle of the night, and he'd fought them off, firing an automatic rifle. Taking office Dec. 1 as the city's secretary for public security, Capella, a longtime activist, declared war on organized crime and challenged citizens to join him in the battle.

Seeking to capitalize on his popularity, Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton has embraced a starring role in a high-stakes campaign to persuade voters to preserve a utility tax this week that would bolster the city's flagging revenues. Bratton's effort reflects his growing influence as a city power-broker, overshadowing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa -- at least on this issue.

The controversial selection Friday in Maywood of an interim police chief with a checkered past has dismayed some residents, infuriated rank-and-file officers, put his supporters on the defensive and launched a nasty bit of back-and-forth mudslinging. At a tense meeting that ran late into the night Friday, a divided City Council picked Al Hutchings to take over the department, which has a reputation as a haven for misfit cops.

A potential security crisis loomed Saturday in troubled Diyala province as significant numbers of a U.S.-funded force of Sunni fighters left their posts, demanding the ouster of the provincial police chief. "You can imagine what danger will face the region in the next days," said Abu Talib, commander of 2,000 to 3,000 so-called Sons of Iraq fighters. His men, many of them former insurgents, turned against the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq last year under the Awakening banner.

A man who nearly two weeks ago was tapped to become the city of Maywood's interim police chief -- despite having been convicted of theft and resigning from the Los Angeles Police Department -- has stepped down from the position at the request of the city's mayor. On Tuesday night, Maywood city leaders voted 5 to 0 to appoint Maywood Cmdr. Frank Hauptmann as their interim chief while a search for a permanent replacement was conducted. Unlike Al Hutchings, whose selection for the job on Feb.

The 26-year-old Sunni Arab man sat in the restaurant of a fashionable Baghdad hotel, his business suit covering marks where he said a power drill had penetrated his thigh and acid dissolved his calf. The former Iraqi SWAT commander had traveled to Baghdad for meetings with Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and other high-ranking officials in which he plans to provide an account of torture he says he endured on the orders of Maj. Gen. Ghanim Quraishi, the Shiite Muslim police chief of Diyala province.

Just beyond the reach of the North Coast fog, this little community of 1,150 basked until recently under the protection of a police force of just four officers. Four officers packing 31 submachine guns. The Blue Lake police force was armed on a par with a big-city SWAT team. And no Blue Lakers knew until Police Chief David Gundersen's life began to very publicly unravel. In February, Humboldt County sheriff's deputies arrested Gundersen on suspicion of crimes in his own bedroom.