Violent Felons

A police advocacy group has criticized an appeals court judgment last week overturning a law that prevented violent felons from owning body armor, saying the ruling will put officers and the public in danger. The decade-old ban was enacted after the 1997 North Hollywood shootout, a confrontation between police and two heavily armored bank robbers that injured officers and civilians. The state Legislature passed the ban in 1998 as a measure to protect police. Thursday's ruling by the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles overturned the state law, saying it was unconstitutional because the definition of body armor was too vague.

The brother of a taxi driver killed in a crash on the Las Vegas Strip last month said he wants the suspect in the case punished - and stiffer gun control to keep weapons out of the hands of people with criminal pasts. Michael Boldon, 62, died Feb. 21 after suspect Ammar Harris, a self-described pimp, allegedly shot and killed Oakland rapper Kenneth Cherry Jr. after an altercation at the Aria Casino. Cherry's Maserati crashed into a taxicab, which exploded in flames, killing Boldon and a passenger, Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, according to prosecutors.

It costs about $600,000 to lock up a man for life but nearly $10 million to execute him, after exhausting all proper appeals. I wonder if the reader who suggested (Letters to the Valley Edition, Jan. 21) that when the death penalty is abolished, bleeding-heart liberals who have opposed capital punishment should board violent felons in their homes at government expense, would also let us keep, say, half the difference saved to the taxpayers? Sign me up. KIRT THIESMEYER Glendale

A judge handed a death sentence Monday to the violent felon convicted of setting the 2003 Old fire that destroyed more than 1,000 homes, charred the northwestern face of the San Bernardino Mountains and killed five people. His eyes fixed on the judge, Rickie Lee Fowler, 31, didn't show a twitch of emotion as the sentence was announced in a San Bernardino courtroom. Fowler, a methamphetamine user since grammar school, already is serving three life terms for brutally sodomizing a cellmate in county jail.

Re Proposition 66: I think two violent crimes is enough reason to keep someone locked up, even if that isn't the name of the law. If you haven't decided to straighten up after one term in prison, when would you? I shudder when I think of someone being let out who has such poor control of his temper that he has beaten and decapitated a dog because it reminded him of a former girlfriend. What might they do to me or my loved ones if we accidentally cross him? Just remember, they usually have committed many other crimes that they either didn't get caught for or weren't convicted of. The crimes we should be letting people out of prison for are crimes like drug use. Even though I think it is stupid to use drugs, I don't think we should lock people up for it unless, of course, they commit other crimes that hurt other people.

State Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown has come out against a recent appellate court judgment overturning a law that bars violent felons from possessing body armor. His office will petition the state Supreme Court next month to review the decision, his office said Tuesday. "Every day, California's law enforcement officers put their lives on the line to protect our communities," Brown said in a prepared statement. "Allowing violent felons to possess military-grade body armor puts their lives further at risk and jeopardizes public safety."

The budget package that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Friday restricts violent felons from working in the state's home healthcare program for the elderly and disabled. The new rules follow a Times report last month that scores of people convicted of crimes such as rape, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon are permitted to care for some of California's most vulnerable residents through the In-Home Supportive Services program. The changes take effect in 90 days. Under existing law, only a history of specific types of child abuse, elder abuse and defrauding of public assistance programs can disqualify a person from working in the program.

Re "Bank Robber Bled to Death Unnecessarily," April 21: Let me get this straight. Emil Matasareanu takes an assault rifle into a bank and starts indiscriminately shooting. Now some people are crying because he bled to death of gunshot wounds? I say he got the logical consequences of his actions and justice was served. This ought to be the message to would-be violent felons: If today is the day you decide to shoot up a bank, it'll also be your last day on Earth. Anybody who wastes two seconds worrying about what happened to this guy needs his head examined.

I was deeply disturbed by ACLU attorney Rebecca Jurado's comments in the May 28 issue of The Times. Jurado opposed legislation sponsored by state Sen. Marian Bergeson that would allow us to keep criminals in jail (and out of our neighborhoods) because she thinks the problem is that "we've got to have more jobs so people can earn an income and stay out of trouble." Jurado frankly misperceives the nature of reality. Orange County we all know, is riding the tide of an economic expansion, to which no end is in sight.

Lawmakers in California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York have sought for several months to withdraw from Secure Communities, a supposedly voluntary federal fingerprint-sharing program designed to identify and deport dangerous immigrants. The Obama administration is now trying to make the states' opposition moot — a tactic that may provide the legal basis for expanding Secure Communities but does nothing to improve the program's damaged credibility. Launched in 2008 and due to be in effect nationwide in 2013, Secure Communities requires the FBI to share with the Department of Homeland Security the fingerprints of everyone booked into local jails.

Lawmakers in California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York have sought for several months to withdraw from Secure Communities, a supposedly voluntary federal fingerprint-sharing program designed to identify and deport dangerous immigrants. The Obama administration is now trying to make the states' opposition moot — a tactic that may provide the legal basis for expanding Secure Communities but does nothing to improve the program's damaged credibility. Launched in 2008 and due to be in effect nationwide in 2013, Secure Communities requires the FBI to share with the Department of Homeland Security the fingerprints of everyone booked into local jails.

As some commentators — and some rightward-leaning justices on the U.S. Supreme Court — would have it, it's time for Californians to lock their doors and bar their windows, because the court's majority this week upheld a federal court order for the Golden State to shed more than 30,000 inmates from its prison population within two years. But are "terrible things sure to happen" as a result of the ruling, as Justice Antonin Scalia stated in his dissenting opinion? A report released Wednesday by the state's inspector general makes Scalia's words look prophetic, yet crime statistics suggest such fears may be groundless.

The budget package that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Friday restricts violent felons from working in the state's home healthcare program for the elderly and disabled. The new rules follow a Times report last month that scores of people convicted of crimes such as rape, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon are permitted to care for some of California's most vulnerable residents through the In-Home Supportive Services program. The changes take effect in 90 days. Under existing law, only a history of specific types of child abuse, elder abuse and defrauding of public assistance programs can disqualify a person from working in the program.

Although Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has demanded that the Legislature prevent violent felons from working in the state's home health aide program, activists say his administration's inaction has kept vulnerable recipients from learning if their caretaker has a criminal record. Under a law that Schwarzenegger signed more than two years ago, the 440,000 elderly, ill and disabled recipients of In-Home Supportive Services are supposed to be entitled to request free criminal background checks of the people hired to care for them in their residences.

Californians would no longer get plastic bags at supermarket check-out stands, and many children would have to wait longer to enter kindergarten under proposals advanced Wednesday by state lawmakers. Other bills among the nearly 200 that legislators acted on would put the brakes on future fee increases at state universities and release on medical parole dozens of prison inmates who are physically incapacitated. Meanwhile, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday signed into law a measure banning violent felons from owning body armor, such as the bullet-proof padding used by two bank robbers in the infamous 1997 North Hollywood shootout with the Los Angeles Police Department.

State Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown has come out against a recent appellate court judgment overturning a law that bars violent felons from possessing body armor. His office will petition the state Supreme Court next month to review the decision, his office said Tuesday. "Every day, California's law enforcement officers put their lives on the line to protect our communities," Brown said in a prepared statement. "Allowing violent felons to possess military-grade body armor puts their lives further at risk and jeopardizes public safety."

Californians would no longer get plastic bags at supermarket check-out stands, and many children would have to wait longer to enter kindergarten under proposals advanced Wednesday by state lawmakers. Other bills among the nearly 200 that legislators acted on would put the brakes on future fee increases at state universities and release on medical parole dozens of prison inmates who are physically incapacitated. Meanwhile, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday signed into law a measure banning violent felons from owning body armor, such as the bullet-proof padding used by two bank robbers in the infamous 1997 North Hollywood shootout with the Los Angeles Police Department.

The brother of a taxi driver killed in a crash on the Las Vegas Strip last month said he wants the suspect in the case punished - and stiffer gun control to keep weapons out of the hands of people with criminal pasts. Michael Boldon, 62, died Feb. 21 after suspect Ammar Harris, a self-described pimp, allegedly shot and killed Oakland rapper Kenneth Cherry Jr. after an altercation at the Aria Casino. Cherry's Maserati crashed into a taxicab, which exploded in flames, killing Boldon and a passenger, Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, according to prosecutors.

A police advocacy group has criticized an appeals court judgment last week overturning a law that prevented violent felons from owning body armor, saying the ruling will put officers and the public in danger. The decade-old ban was enacted after the 1997 North Hollywood shootout, a confrontation between police and two heavily armored bank robbers that injured officers and civilians. The state Legislature passed the ban in 1998 as a measure to protect police. Thursday's ruling by the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles overturned the state law, saying it was unconstitutional because the definition of body armor was too vague.

Re Proposition 66: I think two violent crimes is enough reason to keep someone locked up, even if that isn't the name of the law. If you haven't decided to straighten up after one term in prison, when would you? I shudder when I think of someone being let out who has such poor control of his temper that he has beaten and decapitated a dog because it reminded him of a former girlfriend. What might they do to me or my loved ones if we accidentally cross him? Just remember, they usually have committed many other crimes that they either didn't get caught for or weren't convicted of. The crimes we should be letting people out of prison for are crimes like drug use. Even though I think it is stupid to use drugs, I don't think we should lock people up for it unless, of course, they commit other crimes that hurt other people.