South Los Angeles

In the ongoing search for a serial killer who has claimed at least 11 lives in South Los Angeles since 1985, police officials released a series of sketches Thursday that picture what the killer might look like today. The three new sketches were based on a description given to police in 1988 by the only woman known to have survived an attack by the man. Deputy Chief Jim McDonnell, head of detectives for the Los Angeles Police Department, said he hopes the images will jog the memory of someone familiar with the killer.

They had names like Rebuild L.A., Community Coalition, the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance. Their goals were nearly identical: provide new jobs and services to an underserved community. Improve neighborhoods. Build better relationships. The aftermath of the 1992 riots was a galvanizing moment for community activism, spawning groups formed out of City Hall, churches and local nonprofits. Some have endured over the last two decades, shifting their priorities as the city changed.

Cyrus Yazdani is a 24-year-old San Jose State University graduate with a degree in art and a job as a convention planner in Las Vegas. But authorities say Yazdani is also "Buket," one of Los Angeles' most prolific taggers who is featured in several heavily viewed YouTube videos defacing signs and buses. His most popular video -- with nearly 170,000 page views -- shows him clambering behind the Hollywood Freeway sign near Melrose Avenue and tagging the structure as traffic speeds below.

In addition to 1992, let's remember 1985, when Los Angeles was cocky. Twenty years had passed since the notorious Watts riots, and civic leaders congratulated themselves on what their city had become since then. They had just wrapped up the wildly successful Olympics. L.A. was the capital of the emerging Pacific Rim and held a key position on the international stage. An African American mayor presided over a multiethnic city of the future. South Los Angeles residents had access to a full-service medical center, and there were promises of new grocery stores and retail centers in the very near future.

A leading California foundation plans today to announce a broad campaign to help Los Angeles immigrants become more active citizens with a new $3.75-million, five-year program to help them learn English, improve job skills and increase civic participation. The California Community Foundation in Los Angeles also is set to release a 75-page report that documents the essential and dynamic role immigrants play in the regional economy and suggests ways to help them become even more productive.

One man was killed and two others were injured in a head-on collision in South Los Angeles early Sunday, police said.   The accident occurred just after 2 a.m. when a motorist going west on Manchester Avenue attempted to make a left turn onto Figueroa Street and struck a vehicle going east on Manchester. The driver of the eastbound vehicle was taken to California Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. His male passenger suffered serious injuries but was expected to live, said Los Angeles police Sgt. Cy Feliciano.

Hundreds of South Los Angeles homeowners will no longer be required to buy costly flood insurance after a federal agency decided that it had mistakenly put them in a high-hazard zone. After reviewing new topographic data, the Federal Emergency Management Agency removed 876 parcels in the Parks Mesa Heights neighborhood, according to a Dec. 28 letter from FEMA to the Los Angeles Department of Public Works. FEMA added the homes to existing flood-hazard zones when it updated maps in June 2008.

One of two teachers accused of abusing students at Miramonte Elementary School was charged Tuesday with three felony counts and fired by the Los Angeles Board of Education. Martin Bernard Springer, 49, was arrested Friday after two students at the school accused him of fondling them. But the charges filed Tuesday - three counts of committing lewd acts - involve a single girl. A law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation said the second girl recanted her accusation.

A botched attempt to tamper with a gas meter resulted in a massive explosion at a South Los Angeles building Friday morning, killing one man and severely injuring another, authorities said. Gas service was cut off Thursday at JL Spray after the metal-coating business failed to pay its monthly bill, Southern California Gas Co. spokesman Dennis Lord said. Sometime after that, the meter outside the plant was manipulated so gas bypassed the regulator and flowed into the building at a powerful rate.

When the destinies of Tae Sam Park and Lee Arthur Mitchell crossed one day in South Los Angeles, little did they know that their encounter would result in yet another ugly confrontation between a Korean merchant and African Americans. First there was the shooting death of Mitchell and now a boycott against Park's store. To many African Americans, Mitchell's death was not only a tragedy but another insult leveled against them by Korean merchants, and a boycott is a logical response.

Two decades after the L.A. riots brought pledges of help to rebuild South Los Angeles, the area is worse off in many ways than it was in 1992. Median income, when adjusted for inflation, is lower. Many middle-class blacks have fled in search of safer neighborhoods and better schools. And the unemployment rate, which was bad at the time of the riots, has reached even more dire levels. In two areas of South Los Angeles - Florence Graham and Westmont - unemployment is almost 24%. Back in 1992, it was 21% in Florence Graham and 17% in Westmont.

One of two teachers accused of abusing students at Miramonte Elementary School was charged Tuesday with three felony counts and fired by the Los Angeles Board of Education. Martin Bernard Springer, 49, was arrested Friday after two students at the school accused him of fondling them. But the charges filed Tuesday - three counts of committing lewd acts - involve a single girl. A law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation said the second girl recanted her accusation.

An elementary school in South Los Angeles was left reeling Friday after authorities arrested a second teacher accused of lewd acts with students. The arrest of Miramonte Elementary School teacher Martin Bernard Springer, 49, came three days after L.A. prosecutors accused former teacher Mark Berndt of bizarre acts in his classroom that have generated national attention. Berndt, 61, allegedly spoon-fed his semen to blindfolded children as part of what he called a "tasting game.

The cafeteria lunch offering at Santee Education Complex on Friday included a sad little hamburger on a bun the color of sawdust, cold sweet potato nuggets and a bag of sliced apples. I had lunch upstairs, in Bistro Mundo, a small cafe run by Santee's culinary arts students. Young chefs cooked and served a lovely French omelet, homemade muffins and a tasty salad that included fresh ingredients grown in their own garden near the athletic fields. The student cooks wore starched white chef jackets, and one of them, 17-year-old Ernesto Calixto, told me over a hot grill that he cooks only with olive oil, because it's healthier.

As Los Angeles County faces an influx of state prisoners and Sheriff Lee Baca grapples with scandals in his department, Gov. Jerry Brown made a show of support for the sheriff at a gathering of clergy in South Los Angeles on Saturday. Brown, a powerful ally of Baca's, is the first sitting governor to appear at his annual multi-faith prayer breakfast, now in its 11th year. At the gathering, Baca spoke in support of the governor's prison realignment plan and touted his own education programs in the jails, while Brown made a pitch for his proposed tax increase, which will go before voters in November.

With nearly two dozen parents and others standing behind her, community activist Martha Sanchez announced Monday the end of an eight-year battle to close a metal finishing plant that residents say has contaminated their South Los Angeles neighborhood, making their children and teachers sick. The plant, the target of lawsuits, fines and repeated calls for its closure, is across the street from 28th Street Elementary School. Wearing matching yellow T-shirts, members of Alliance for Californians for Community Empowerment and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry took turns decrying the facility and celebrating its end. No one was happier than Sanchez, who learned English and began pursuing a bachelor's degree while leading the charge to shutter the plant and protect the health of her three children.

Big Mike hitches up in front of Jordan High School in Watts like a bull snuffling for trouble. He scans the stoops down Juniper Street. He peers in the windows of passing cars. And he keeps a firm eye on the three chain-link gates of the Jordan Downs housing project down the block. As a gang interventionist, Michael Cummings trolls the streets here every day making sure students get to and from school safely -- and that gangbangers mind their manners.

Re "Safe in War, Sailor Slain at L.A. Club," May 26: The tragic murder of Brian Butler Jr. should remind readers of the unbearable costs of our war on terror as well as the narrowness of our definition of terror. As Congress approves billions of dollars to secure the streets of Fallouja in Iraq, 9th and Florence avenues remain as deadly as ever. No one should be so naive to think that simply throwing money at South L.A.'s myriad problems would create an inner-city utopia. But any reasonable person can see that if even a tiny fraction of the mounting cost of our Iraq war were devoted to improving the quality of housing, education and healthcare -- and increasing the presence of law enforcement -- the streets of South L.A. and the hundreds of U.S. communities like it would be far safer.

Residents who live around 45th Street and Central Avenue cheered when they learned the city of Los Angeles was working to transform a vacant lot across from a public library into a small park for children in the neighborhood. The city spent more than $600,000 designing and building Vernon Branch Library Pocket Park in South Los Angeles, according to documents reviewed by The Times. But no one got to use it. Instead of a grand opening, workers put a fence around it. Then, after two years, it was bulldozed.

What started as a routine pedestrian stop turned into an unprovoked attack and gun battle Thursday that left one police officer seriously injured and dozens of blocks of South Los Angeles locked down for hours as authorities launched a massive dragnet for two men. The officer, assigned to the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th Division, was being treated at California Hospital Medical Center for non-life-threatening injuries, including bullet wounds...