Vina Camper

Jaime Guadado was walking in his Mid-City neighborhood with a friend two months ago, drinking a beer in the early evening, when Los Angeles police officers in a patrol car pulled up behind him. "Stop!" they ordered. "Put the beer down." Guadado, 18, did as he was told, and officers then ordered the youth to put his hands above his head. He put one up but kept the other arm against his body, holding an unopened bottle of beer under his jacket with his elbow.

Jaime Guadado was walking in his Mid-City neighborhood with a friend two months ago, drinking a beer in the early evening, when Los Angeles police officers in a patrol car pulled up behind him. "Stop!" they ordered. "Put the beer down." Guadado, 18, did as he was told, and officers then ordered the youth to put his hands above his head. He put one up but kept the other arm against his body, holding an unopened bottle of beer under his jacket with his elbow.

Even though it fared far better than most other departments when the Los Angeles County budget was passed, the district attorney's office Friday informed its staff that prosecutors will be cut from important specialized units, including a high-profile group that independently investigates police shootings. In a memo issued to district attorney's employees Friday, a top aide to Dist. Atty.

A much-touted effort to expand the Los Angeles Police Department's unit that investigates police officers, one of the central recommendations of a reform panel convened in 1991, has stalled far short of its goal, thwarted by the drive to put more police on the street.

In a major blow to the state's tough "three strikes" law, the California Supreme Court decided Thursday that judges have the power to spare defendants lengthy sentences by overlooking prior convictions. The unanimous ruling is expected to have major ramifications for defendants sentenced under the 1994 law, potentially sparking a deluge of nearly 20,000 appeals in an already crowded court system.

John Burton got his first taste of police brutality as a long-haired flower child just out of high school in 1971. On his way home from a party in Bradbury, he and a friend were stopped by sheriff's deputies, who rifled through his friend's pockets and seized several joints of marijuana. As Burton recalls it, the officers then shoved his friend to the ground, handcuffed him and, laughing, punched him in the face. "Being a hippie . . .