Public Safety

One of the top law enforcement advisors to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has been appointed an assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the third senior member of Villaraigosa's administration to head to Washington since President Obama's election. Arif Alikhan, the city's deputy mayor for homeland security and public safety, will join the federal agency's office of policy development. Alikhan, whom Villaraigosa appointed as a deputy mayor in 2006, previously worked for the U.S. Department of Justice overseeing the national computer hacking and intellectual property program.

Investigators say a tire blowout may have caused a rollover accident that killed eight people and injured several others who were being smuggled into the U.S. late Saturday. Early reports had put the death toll at 10. The crash occurred about 40 miles southeast of Tucson. Joy Craig of the Arizona Department of Public Safety said investigators suspect the blowout was caused by the weight of the 27 people crammed inside the smuggler's Ford Excursion.

While crafting their budget earlier this year, Los Angeles city officials requested federal stimulus money to hire up to 450 new officers. But instead the city was awarded what City Council President Eric Garcetti called "a drop in the bucket" from the COPS Hiring Recovery Program -- a $16.3-million allotment that will allow L.A. to hire and retain just 50 officers for three years. He and other city officials questioned Tuesday whether the grant formula discriminated against big cities.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Thursday officially opened the city's new $107-million, high-tech Emergency Operations Center, the nerve center where officials will coordinate the city's response to major earthquakes, wildfires, acts of terrorism and other potential disasters and public safety threats. The new downtown building replaces the cramped, outdated operations center that was in the basement of a City Hall building. The new center on East Temple Street, east of the federal courthouse, was paid for with funds from Proposition Q, a $600-million public safety bond measure approved by L.A. voters in 2002.

State police aren't chuckling at a driver who triggered Phoenix-area freeway speed cameras more than 80 times in a year while wearing monkey or giraffe masks. The Arizona Department of Public Safety says the driver is a 47-year-old flight attendant named Dave VonTesmar. But VonTesmar says authorities can't prove he's the one behind the wheel of his car, and he's vowing to fight every ticket. By the time police realized the masked man's ploy, more than 50 tickets had been voided because the deadline for prosecution had passed.

The Orange County Sheriff's Department anticipates a possible $71-million budget shortfall next year as sales tax revenue continues to plummet, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens told the county board Tuesday. She said she has asked division heads to find ways to cut up to 20% in each of their sections. Hutchens made $20.5 million in cuts this year, including a 40% reduction in her command staff and 24 layoffs to sworn and non-sworn staff. Hutchens said the cuts to command staff prevented her from making cuts to front-line public safety resources such as investigators.

The union that represents 9,000 police officers said Friday it has given $250,000 to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's campaign for Proposition S, a $243-million telephone utility users tax on the Feb. 5 ballot. The head of Los Angeles Police Protective League said the tax revenue is needed to preserve Villaraigosa's plan for adding 1,000 police officers by 2010. "If it doesn't pass, a lot of city services, including public safety, will be reduced," said union President Timothy Sands.

Less than three weeks after an escaped tiger killed a teenager at the San Francisco Zoo, two new incidents have surfaced that are bringing fresh attention to the facility's handling of its exhibits. Zoo officials said Friday that a nearly 100-pound snow leopard ripped a small opening in its wire mesh cage -- which was inside a bigger secured enclosure -- Thursday afternoon and got part of its head and paw through the gash.

MySpace says it can't guarantee that the people who sign up for its social networking site aren't underage or sex offenders. But it averted a potential legal battle Monday by agreeing to keep trying. A group of 49 state attorneys general probing safety issues at MySpace and other online social networks signed a deal with the Beverly Hills-based unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Re "San Onofre workers disciplined over safety lapses," Jan. 16, and "Lapses found at San Onofre," Jan. 15 More than 2,000 people work at our San Onofre facility. During the last two years, we became aware of seven employees or contractors who, in unrelated incidents, violated the strict work rules in place at U.S. nuclear plants. None of the incidents jeopardized plant or public safety. In each case, we notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and, after careful review, took disciplinary actions.