Police Station

Even the elders of this small Egyptian city in the shadow of the great pyramids of Giza could not remember weekly prayers like this one. The three extra truckloads of police officers who always sat outside the mosque to prevent trouble after the weekly gathering were nowhere to be seen Friday. The police station immediately across the street, as well as the headquarters of the hated security force next door, had been looted, gutted and burned. The government has always censored his sermons, but this time Imam Mohamad al Saba, whose name means lion, spoke freely.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to seek a speed limit for skateboarders and penalize them for failing to follow a range of traffic rules, from stopping at stop signs to yielding to pedestrians. On a 12 to 0 vote, the council instructed City Atty. Carmen Trutanich to draft an ordinance that would prohibit "unsafe" skateboard activity and limit riders to a speed of 25 mph. The proposal was initiated by Councilman Joe Buscaino, who described it as a response to the death of two skateboarders over the last year.

For sale: One police station in the middle of Los Angeles. Slightly used. Looking for an office building with bulletproof windows, mirrored interrogation rooms and a big vault? It could be yours for just $4.5 million. The seller is motivated. The two-story structure west of downtown is also rather notorious. Among its previous occupants were members of the Los Angeles Police Department's anti-gang CRASH unit (short for Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums), who were accused of running a rogue operation that framed suspects, administered beatings, stole drugs and committed other crimes.

Bill Lee Jr., who had stepped aside as Sanford, Fla.'s police chief during the investigation of the shooting of unarmed African American teenager Trayvon Martin, has officially resigned as the community's top cop, a city commissioner said Monday. Commissioner Patty Mahany said the chief submitted his resignation over the weekend; Lee temporarily left his post last month amid complaints about how his department handled the investigation of the Feb. 26 shooting. The city commission is scheduled to hold a special meeting late Monday afternoon to discuss Lee's severance package, Mahany said.

Our City Council just approved spending $4 million in taxpayer dollars to buy land on Sepulveda Boulevard in Mission Hills to build a new police station ("City Votes to Buy Valley LAPD Site," Oct. 20). Once again we are shaking our heads in disbelief. Why would our City Council spend $4 million in taxpayer dollars when they have been sitting on five acres of land at the old GM site in Panorama City, which was donated to the city by General Motors for building a much-needed north Valley station?

A law enforcement official investigating this week's massacre of 72 migrants in northern Mexico was missing Friday, while possible car bomb explosions rocked a television station and police station in the same violence-torn state. Meanwhile, authorities in Tamaulipas state said they had so far identified the remains of 31 of the massacre victims and determined that they were from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Brazil. Tamaulipas officials said Roberto Suarez, an agent for the state prosecutor's office involved in the investigation, went missing Wednesday.

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Peshawar, Pakistan -- A suicide car bomber today targeted a police station in the volatile northwest city of Peshawar, killing 15 people in the sixth major attack by militants in less than two weeks. The attack occurred at the Crimes Investigation Agency headquarters, an interrogation wing of the city's police department. A car filled with explosives drove up to the agency's main gate, where the driver detonated the blast, said Peshawar Police Chief Liaqat Ali Khan.

The City Council will hold a meeting Tuesday to allow the public a chance to comment on the proposed financing of a new $8.8-million police station. The public hearing will be held at 7 p.m. in the Kay Dalton Room of the Monrovia Community Center, 119 W. Palm St. The focus of the hearing will be the formation of a special assessment district that would raise the funds for the proposed 30,000-square-foot station.

The City Council on Tuesday approved a $1.29-million bid for construction and remodeling of its overcrowded, 30-year-old police station. The project is a compromise that will serve the city eight to 10 years, Mayor Robert Bartlett said. Monrovia residents have twice rejected ballot measures that would have raised funds to build a new police facility.

In most police stations the "fish" are the ones in the jail cells. But at the Los Angeles Police Department's Foothill Division, the fish were in the front lobby Thursday. And none of them wore handcuffs. In an effort to become more "user-friendly," police unveiled some new lobby furnishings in the Pacoima station--three new couches, a coffee table and a 60-gallon aquarium. The new look gave the sometimes rough-and-tumble station the ambience of a doctor's office.

The news coming out of Georgia today revolves around a 6-year-old kindergartner who threw such a violent tantrum that school officials called police, who handcuffed her for her own safety. But the real story is this: Many people are siding with police. "I agree with the school, let the police cuff her. If anyone at the school would have touched her the parents would have sued and said how wrong they were," said one commenter at WMAZ-TV in Georgia, where coverage of the story is leading to a lively discussion on parenting skills.

In a case that heightened long-simmering tensions between Los Angeles police and residents of one of the city's most troubled housing projects, a federal jury has awarded $3.2 million to the survivors of a Ramona Gardens man who died after an altercation with officers. The civil judgment in the wrongful-death case, reached Monday, comes five years after 31-year-old Mauricio Cornejo, a wanted parolee described by police as a known gang member, was pronounced dead in a holding cell at the Hollenbeck police station.

  Young men wearing surgical masks and hurling stones rushed police barricades Friday against the pop-pop of tear gas rounds that spread white smoke like a gauze over the street as other protesters retreated with the injured draped in their arms. A new band of men waving flags and splotching their faces with yeast to cut the sting of gas made their run toward the barricades and black-clad riot police in front of the Interior Ministry. Surge and retreat has become a dangerous dance of revolt, full of fury but unable, so far, to break the grip of the nation's military rulers.

  The death toll in five terrorist attacks in Colombia this week points to the increasing threat posed by unholy alliances between leftist rebels and criminal bands engaged in drug trafficking, killings and extortion, Colombian officials say. The alliances extend over several regions of Colombia and present powerful threats to President Juan Manuel Santos' efforts to end a decades-long conflict with insurgent groups and push through ambitious...

His eyes tearing up with emotion, Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos embraced his rescuers Saturday and said he had wondered whether he would survive a two-day kidnapping ordeal that ended when commandos swept into his captors' mountain hideout in Venezuela. Ramos said that he was happy and thankful to be alive a day after his rescue, saying that his final moments as a prisoner were hair-raising as police and the kidnappers exchanged heavy gunfire in the remote area where he was being held.

Heavy fighting was reported Tuesday as Syrian security forces mounted an offensive in the volatile city of Homs, where activists said seven people were killed. The government said that "armed terrorist gangs" had carried out assaults at a police station, a hospital and on a roadway and tried to assassinate the head of the hospital's emergency room. Authorities confiscated heavy weapons and explosives and arrested more than 100 "wanted men," according to the official Syrian Arab News Agency, or SANA.

On a sunny summer afternoon in downtown Manhattan, several uniformed cops are nervously pacing outside a police station. Inside, a hostage situation is brewing. A sinister-looking man hovers in the corner while a police officer lies on the ground. Across the hall, a tall man with a ski mask threatens two detectives. Scared and confused, the officer on the floor reaches for his revolver and squeezes off a round. Then the director yells cut. The incidents aren't part of a New York City crime scene; instead, they represent key moments in an episode of the CBS thriller "Person of Interest," which offers a dark and conspiracy-minded view of the country's biggest metropolis.

She was Jewish, but to live she needed a Christian name. She could not be Natalie Leya Weinstein, not in wartime Warsaw. Her father wrote her new name on a piece of paper. Natalie Yazinska. Her mother, Sima, sobbed. "The little one must make it," Leon Weinstein told his wife. "We got no chance. But the little one, she is special. She must survive. " Photos: A wartime sacrifice and a father's quest He fixed a metal crucifix to a necklace and hung it on their daughter.