......... NEWS
of the Day - October 3, 2009
on
some LACP issues of interest ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NEWS
of the Day
- October 3, 2009
on
some issues of interest to the community policing and neighborhood
activist
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following group of articles from local
newspapers and other sources constitutes but a small percentage
of the information available to the community policing and neighborhood
activist public. It is by no means meant to cover every possible
issue of interest, nor is it meant to convey any particular
point of view ...
We present this simply as a convenience to our readership ...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From LA Times
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City controller told to sever ties with private counsel
October 2, 2009 | 9:13 pm
The lawsuit between the Los Angeles city controller's office and the city attorney's office took a new twist today when the City Council ordered Controller Wendy Greuel to sever ties with her private counsel, Fred Woocher.
Woocher was hired by former Controller Laura Chick after then-City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo sued her for trying to audit a worker's compensation program in his office. Delgadillo argued that Chick was acting outside the scope of her authority. The new city attorney, Carmen Trutanich, contends that Greuel is not a party to the lawsuit, an argument Greuel disputes since Chick was sued in her official capacity as city controller.
Both sides will appear in court next week before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark V. Mooney, who sided with Delgadillo in a tentative ruling this summer. Mooney found that the City Charter does not give the controller power to conduct performance audits in the offices of other elected officials, including the mayor, city attorney and council members.
Fearing that the judge's initial ruling could severely hamper her ability to audit taxpayer-funded programs, Greuel has urged the city attorney's office and the City Council to dismiss the lawsuit.
Trutanich has said the City Council must grant him permission for a dismissal, and it did just the opposite last month — directing the city attorney to tell the judge that his initial ruling should stand.
After conferring in closed session with the city attorney's office today, the City Council directed Greuel to seek any future legal representation from the city attorney's office, which has offered to provide either conflict counsel or an attorney who would be walled off from the rest of the office.
“We are counsel to the controller and if the controller wants to expend funds for outside counsel, the controller has to make that request to the City Council,” said Chief Deputy City Atty. William Carter.
Greuel said she was exploring her legal options, but that the arrangement proposed by the council would put her at a disadvantage.
“I think clearly if the city attorney is suing the controller, and the controller's office, there is no wall that can protect the objectivity of a lawyer that is in the city attorney's office,” she said. “My position is there is no need for any more discussion about involvement with lawyers if the council had dismissed the lawsuit today.”
Phoenix man who posed as a Westside fertility doctor may be responsible for 24 sexual assaults in two states
October 2, 2009 | 4:46 pm
A Phoenix man who posed as a fertility doctor at a West Los Angeles clinic and solicited patients over the Internet may be response for two dozen assaults in California and Arizona, police said today.
Jeffrey Lynn Graybill, 40, was arrested Thursday in connection with two sexual assaults on the Westside. But detectives said they believe there are many more victims.
Graybill is a former emergency medical technician in Arizona but has no medical license, authorities said. He alleged stole the identity of a San Francisco doctor and carried a stethoscope around with him, prosecutors said.
Known as “Dr. Richardson,” he allegedly lured potential clients by offering them up to $4,000 monthly for sperm donations in support of stem cell and other medical research, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
He would communicate with his victims by telephone or e-mail before scheduling physical examinations in Marina del Rey or Santa Monica, police said.
Graybill has been charged with several counts of sexual battery by fraud, sexual penetration with a foreign object, practicing medicine without certification and identity theft, police said. Bail bail was set at $590,000.
Investigators are concerned that there may be additional victims and are asking anyone who may been assaulted or dealt with Graybill to contact the sexual assault detail at the LAPD's Operations West Bureau at (213) 473-0404.
Roman Polanski was to pay Samantha Geimer a $500,000 settlement
October 2, 2009 | 2:31 pm
Roman Polanski agreed to pay Samantha Geimer at least $500,000 as part of a settlement after he fled from the U.S. to avoid sentencing for sexually assaulting her, according to court documents reviewed by The Times today.
But the documents indicate that Geimer's attorneys battled with Polanski to get him to pay the settlement, and it remains unclear exactly how much money the director gave her.
Media outlets requested access to the court file for Geimer's civil suit this week after Polanski was arrested in Zurich, Switzerland, in connection with the more than 30-year-old case.
The terms of the settlement were confidential. But many of the details are contained in court filings arising out of Geimer's efforts to get Polanski to pay. The documents were retrieved from archives and made available today in a Los Angeles courthouse.
Geimer filed the civil lawsuit in 1988, accusing the director of, among other things, sexual assault, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and seduction. Polanski was deposed in Paris in 1993.
In October 1993, Polanski agreed to pay Geimer $500,000 with interest, according to the settlement documents. He was given two years to pay. But her attorneys said in a filing that the director missed the 1995 deadline. At one point, her attorneys attempted to garnish wages to Polanski from movie studios, his agent and the Screen Actors Guild, the records show.
The case file does not make clear if Polanski paid Geimer. The last document in the file is an August 1996 statement saying the director still owed her $604,416.
Geimer was 13 when Polanski plied the aspiring model with Champagne and Quaaludes and told her he was photographing her for French Vogue. The 1977 incident occurred in a bedroom in Jack Nicholson's house. Actress Anjelica Huston, who was also in the home, was a potential witness.
Polanski was arrested in L.A. and pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. He then fled to France.
Geimer, now a mother of four, has said repeatedly and publicly that she thinks Polanski was treated unfairly and expressed a desire for the case to be resolved without prison time.
When Polanski sought to have the rape charge dismissed in 2008, she told The Times she welcomed an opportunity to finally end the case. "It's been a long time," she said. "I don't wish for him to be held to further punishment or consequences."
In 2003 she wrote an opinion piece for The Times saying the case should not be a barrier to Polanski's winning an Academy Award.
Polanski ended up winning best director for "The Pianist."
First shipments of H1N1 flu vaccine expected in L.A. within a week
October 2, 2009 | 1:50 pm
Los Angeles public health officials announced today that they expect to receive the first shipments of H1N1 flu vaccine within a week.
Local clinics and doctor's offices will receive small shipments of the FluMist nasal spray vaccine as soon as Wednesday, according to a statement from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health this morning.
"While the FluMist nasal spray vaccine may not be appropriate for everyone, we do encourage those who can receive this form of the vaccine to get it," said Jonathan E. Fielding, the county's director of public health. "We especially encourage eligible, school-aged children to receive the FluMist H1N1 vaccine. We had expected to see an increase in flu cases once the school year started, and those predictions have come true. Most cases of the pandemic H1N1 flu continue to present mild to moderate symptoms, but some individuals have had serious complications."
Larger shipments of the vaccine -- in both the nasal spray and the traditional injectable form -- are expected to arrive later this month, according to the department's statement.
Residents eligible for the vaccine are encouraged to contact their doctor. Those eligible include people ages 2 to 24; healthcare and emergency medical workers and those who live with or care for infants under 6 months old. For more information about flu prevention and eligibility for the H1N1 vaccine, visit http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov .
FluMist is not approved for pregnant women, those with chronic health conditions, weakened immune systems, or a history of asthma.
Later this month, public health officials plan to begin providing the H1N1 vaccine to the uninsured and those who do not have a regular healthcare provider. To find a private clinic, pharmacy or provider offering the H1N1 vaccine or the seasonal flu vaccine, visit http://www.findaflushot.com
"It is vital that residents of Los Angeles County do everything they can to protect their health and the health of their loved ones and community. This is best done through getting vaccinated against the flu, and practicing good, basic hygiene," Fielding said. "This includes washing your hands often; covering your nose and mouth with a tissue or your elbow when you cough or sneeze; avoiding touching your mouth, nose and eyes; and staying home if you are sick or keeping your child home if he or she is sick."
Immigrant-smuggling boat drops 21 at Carlsbad State Beach in darkness, officials say
October 2, 2009 | 12:58 pm
Twenty-one suspected illegal immigrants were arrested early this morning at Carlsbad State Beach, Calif., after U.S. Border Patrol agents spotted a smuggling boat bringing its passengers ashore, officials said.
The 21, all Mexican nationals, consisted of 15 men, five women, and a 16-year-old boy, officials said. Only three were wearing safety vests.
The boat, with two people aboard, was spotted leaving the beach and was not located, officials said.
The incident, which occurred about 2:30 a.m., is the latest in which smugglers appear to be dropping their passengers further north than in previous years, attempting to evade authorities.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's top executive, H. David Nahai, has resigned from the agency effective immediately, the mayor's office announced this morning.
In a letter to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Nahai said he was leaving to take a position as an advisor to former President Clinton's climate initiative.
Nahai had served two years as a DWP commissioner before Villaraigosa elevated him to the post of chief executive and general manager in 2007. Ever since, he had been under fire from an array of forces.
He drew strong criticism from the head of the powerful International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, which represents thousands of DWP workers, who accused Nahai of doing too little to secure the passage of Measure B, a solar power ballot proposal that narrowly fell short of passage in March.
Neighborhood councils also complained of a proposal to increase electric rates. Residents of the San Fernando Valley have been upset in recent weeks over the DWP's water conservation measures, which limited sprinkler use to two days per week. And residents across the city were perplexed by a string of water main breaks, including one that resulted in a sinkhole that gobbled up a portion of a fire truck.
Nahai did have support from environmental circles, however. Last spring, a series of environmental leaders sent Villaraigosa a letter urging him to ignore the complaints and keep Nahai.
"I would like to thank David Nahai for his four years of service at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, where he led the team responsible for increasing the city's renewable energy portfolio, reducing water consumption to record levels, and putting us on the path to be coal free by 2020,'' Villaraigosa said in a statement released this morning.
Villaraigosa has asked the DWP's board of commissioners to temporarily appoint his top environmental advisor, David Freeman, as interim general manager of the utility. Freeman is a former DWP general manager and also served as president of the city harbor commission.
L.A. County district attorney defends pursuit of Polanski case
Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley says director Roman Polanski must be brought to justice and that his decades-old guilty plea to sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl should not be taken lightly.
By Jack Leonard
October 2, 2009
Los Angeles County's top prosecutor responded Thursday to criticism from Roman Polanski's supporters over his office's pursuit of the case, saying fugitives must be brought to justice and that the famed director committed a crime.
"It's about completing justice," Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said. "Justice is not complete when someone leaves the jurisdiction of the court."
Cooley took issue with attempts to minimize Polanski's admission that he had sex with a 13-year-old girl, particularly movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's recent description of the offense as a "so-called crime."
"Mr. Polanski pled guilty to a crime, so apparently Mr. Polanski believes there's a crime," Cooley said. "There are still five or six other much more serious charges pending that have yet to be resolved."
Cooley declined to talk about how his office intends to handle the 3-decade-old case should Polanski be extradited to the United States from Switzerland, where he was arrested over the weekend. Under California law, the state will pick up the county's costs associated with extradition.
Polanski, now 76, fled Los Angeles on the eve of his 1978 sentencing after he admitted to having sex with the teenage girl. As part of a 1977 plea deal, the director pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor while prosecutors promised to drop rape, sodomy and other charges after sentencing. A judge was to determine Polanski's sentence.
Also on Thursday, the filmmaker of a 2008 documentary that triggered allegations of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct in the case defended her work and questioned comments made by a now-retired prosecutor who says he lied in the film.
Marina Zenovich said in a statement that she was "perplexed by the timing" of David Wells' comments this week, adding that the former prosecutor had never raised concerns with her in the four years since his interview for the HBO documentary "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired."
"I am astonished that he has now changed his story," she said.
Wells' comments in the film were the basis of a portion -- but not all -- of the misconduct allegations that Polanski's lawyers leveled recently at Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Laurence J. Rittenband over his handling of the original case. In February, another Los Angeles County judge refused to consider the defense request to dismiss the case while Polanski remained a fugitive, but said he found evidence of "substantial . . . misconduct."
In the documentary, Wells, who at the time of the alleged misconduct was not assigned the case, recalled in vivid detail how he advised Rittenband to send Polanski to prison for 90 days for diagnostic testing. He said he told Rittenband that the move would put the director behind bars without giving Polanski the opportunity to file an appeal.
"That was not true," Wells said earlier this week. "I like to speak of it as an inept statement, but the reality is that it was a lie."
Wells, 71, said he was assured that the documentary would never be shown in the United States -- a statement that Zenovich disputed.
"Embellishing a story sounded like a good idea," Wells said, adding that he deeply regretted his comments. He insisted that he never discussed the case with Rittenband, who died in 1993.
"I'm known to the world as a liar," Wells said. "It's mortifying."
Schwarzenegger: Roman Polanski talented but should get no special treatment
October 2, 2009 | 7:35 am
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said director Roman Polanski should be "treated like everyone else" and is not due any special status.
The governor said he respects Polanski's work, but it should not be a factor in the case of his sexual assault on a 13-year-old girl 30 years ago.
"It doesn't matter if you are a big-time movie actor or a big-time movie director or producer. I think that he is a very respected person, and I am a big admirer of his work," he told CNN. "But nevertheless, I think he should be treated like everyone else. And one should look into all of the allegations, not only his allegations but the allegations about his case. Was there something done wrong? You know, was injustice done in the case?"
Polanski, now 76, fled Los Angeles on the eve of his 1978 sentencing after he admitted to having sex with the girl. As part of a 1977 plea deal, the director pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor while prosecutors promised to drop rape, sodomy and other charges after sentencing. A judge was to determine Polanski's sentence.
Los Angeles County's top prosecutor responded to criticism from Polanski's supporters over his office's pursuit of the case, saying fugitives must be brought to justice and that the famed director committed a crime.
"It's about completing justice," Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said. "Justice is not complete when someone leaves the jurisdiction of the court."
Cooley took issue with attempts to minimize Polanski's admission that he had sex with a 13-year-old girl, particularly movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's recent description of the offense as a "so-called crime."
"Mr. Polanski pled guilty to a crime, so apparently Mr. Polanski believes there's a crime," Cooley said. "There are still five or six other much more serious charges pending that have yet to be resolved."
Cooley declined to talk about how his office intends to handle the 30-year-old case should Polanski be extradited to the United States from Switzerland, where he was arrested over the weekend. Under California law, the state will pick up the county's costs associated with extradition.
Sheriff's deputy fatally shoots burglary suspect in Azusa
October 2, 2009 | 7:30 am
A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy shot and killed a suspected burglar in Azusa this morning after he pulled a knife on the deputy, authorities said.
The shooting was reported about 1:15 a.m. at Renwick Road and Rockdale Avenue, said Deputy Aura Sierra.
Deputies were attempting to detain two suspected car thieves when they ran away, Sierra said. When they cornered one of the men, the suspect pulled out a knife, she said.
“Fearing for his safety, one of the deputies fired several rounds from his weapon, hitting the suspect,” Sierra said.
The man was pronounced dead at the scene, Sierra said. No deputies were injured.
A knife was recovered at the scene, she said.
The second suspect remains at large, authorities said.
[ Updated at 2:40 p.m.: The dead suspect was identified by authorities as Efrain Lara Gutierrez, 31, of Azusa.]
Gunman sought after shooting six people outside Rosemead bar [Update]
October 2, 2009 | 7:52 am
A search is underway for a gunman who shot and wounded six people outside a Rosemead bar, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said today.
Deputies were dispatched about 1:30 a.m. to Garvey and Muscatel avenues where they found six gunshot victims outside of the Casa Latina bar, said Sgt. Tri Hoang. The unidentified victims included males and females and their injuries varied from minor to serious, he said.
“The victims are being treated at various hospitals in the area,” Hoang said. “At this time we have no report of any fatalities.” [For the record: An earlier version of this post misspelled Sgt. Tri Hoang's last name as Hang.]
The Los Angeles County Fire Department said paramedics transported five people to hospitals and one was taken by a private vehicle. Their conditions were not immediately available.
At least two of the victims were taken to trauma centers, fire officials said.
Authorities are not sure what triggered the shooting. The investigation is ongoing, Hang said.
City Council, one of several threatened with suits, votes after hours of debate, to continue the practice.
By Steve Chawkins
9:48 PM PDT, October 2, 2009
Reporting from Lodi, Calif.
Small cities in California are facing high unemployment, drained treasuries and now what some residents see as an assault on the only sacred moment in municipal affairs: the invocation at the start of city council meetings.
Turlock, Tracy, Tehachapi, Lancaster -- all have been threatened in the last few months with lawsuits claiming that prayer at meetings breaches the wall between church and state.
Nowhere has the ensuing debate played out more dramatically than in Lodi, where, after a tumultuous five-hour meeting this week, the City Council voted not only to continue invocations but also to allow phrases such as "in Jesus' name."
"For whatever reason, Lodi seems to have become ground zero for deciding this issue," City Atty. Steve Schwabauer said at Wednesday's meeting, which drew a passionate crowd of more than 700.
At times, rhetoric boiled over as speakers trooped to the microphone in a local auditorium -- the only room in town that could hold the anticipated crowd. A woman who identified herself as an atheist blasted Christianity, blaming it for the decimation of native Americans, the Salem witch burnings and "the oppression of all non-Christians." Several speakers countered with stories of their personal salvation and dire warnings about the consequence of snuffing out prayer at city hall.
Frank Nolton, a local pastor, lamented the loss of school prayer, which was found unconstitutional in 1962.
"Our schools have become veritable war zones and playgrounds for immorality," he said. "If we disregard prayer, will our city follow the same fate?" The crowd applauded heartily. When another speaker recalled the Lodi that once was as "a town that honored God so well everything was locked down from Friday night till Monday morning," an "Amen!" rang out.
A city of about 61,000, Lodi is the commercial center of a huge vineyard industry south of Sacramento. It has a substantial number of Sikhs and Muslims, but only one or two non-Christians have delivered invocations at its City Council meetings in the last decade, according to city officials.
Public prayer has been a battlefield for years. In Central California, the fight has been revived in a flurry of letters from a Wisconsin-based group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
"It was just our summer for Jesus prayers," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, one of the organization's founders. "The more action you do on it, the more you hear from people across the country who are concerned."
She said the group is planning to sue over the issue in California, though it's still unclear which city will provide the strongest case.
Gaylor said she was alerted to Lodi's prayer practice by a group member who lives in the area and felt "horrified and excluded" by the invocations' frequent references to Jesus. The city required three years ago that prayers be "nondenominational and nonsectarian," but the policy has not been enforced.
In Lancaster, objections to similar prayers at council meetings came from the ACLU of Southern California. In response, the city in August adopted a policy much like the one approved this week in Lodi: Make an effort at finding non-Christians to give invocations, tell people not to proselytize and don't censor what they have to say.
"It was the typical 'gotcha' thing from the ACLU," said Ron Smith, Lancaster's vice mayor. "We basically told them to pound sand."
In Lodi, the issue exploded after it was taken up by a former Navy chaplain named Gordon James Klingenschmitt, founder of an effort called Pray in Jesus' Name. A resident of Colorado Springs, Colo., he organized a Lodi prayer rally that drew more than 300 people chanting the name of Jesus as a couple dozen opponents wielded signs. Last week, he vowed to buy a year's worth of billboard space around Lodi naming any council members who voted against invocations.
On his website, he claimed that threat changed the mind of Mayor Larry Hansen, who had earlier leaned toward a moment of silence rather than a spoken prayer. In an interview Friday, the mayor, a retired police officer, rejected Klingenschmitt's claim. But he said the ex-chaplain was at least partly responsible for Lodi's unwanted national exposure.
"There's been nothing close to it. It was unprecedented," Hansen said, adding that he received 1,500 e-mails, mostly supporting prayer, from across the U.S.
For the Lodi council, the moment-of-silence idea represented a needless retreat from principle. And prayers scrubbed of overt religious references are, as one speaker put it, "a banquet without food."
Members crafted their new policy with help from attorneys for the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based network of Christian lawyers.
"There's no reason to censor or silence a cherished tradition," said Mike Johnson, the group's senior legal counsel. "Over the last five or six years, atheist groups have swiped at it with radical demand letters to relatively defenseless, small, hometown governments."
Only one U.S. Supreme Court ruling has directly addressed prayer at public meetings. In that 1983 case, Marsh vs. Chambers, the court held that the Nebraska legislature's paid chaplain and opening prayers followed a long, historic tradition and were constitutional. However, the court noted that the chaplain had quit mentioning Jesus after a complaint from a Jewish lawmaker.
That case is cited on both sides of the current debate.
In California, a state appeals court ruled that prayers in Burbank that alluded to Christ were impermissible because they advanced a particular religion.
But the case does not have the weight of more favorable federal rulings, said Smith, Lancaster's vice mayor.
In Lodi, prayer opponents fear that the city's new policy will end up changing little.
Despite the city's assertion that it will ask even atheists for invocations, most prayers likely will name Jesus -- making non-Christians uncomfortable and putting the city at risk of a lawsuit, said David Diskin, an opposition leader.
Diskin, a software trainer who received the Chamber of Commerce's Volunteer of the Year award in 2004, said he anticipated a load of hate messages when he got involved.
"It was quite the opposite," he said. "A very pleasant Christian woman came up to me at the rally and gave me a DVD about an atheist reporter in Chicago who was born again. She said I was the first atheist she'd ever met."
Victim's daughter tracked suspect in Cabazon killings
The man she pursued, James Hughes, has been arrested in the deaths of her father and two other people.
By David Kelly
October 3, 2009
For years, Rachel Begley tracked the man suspected of killing her father and two other people in 1981. All three victims were gunned down in an apparent plot to silence them before they blew the whistle on corruption at the Cabazon Indian casino near Indio.
The scope of the conspiracy, with tentacles stretching across the nation and around the world, led investigators to dub the slayings the Octopus Murders.
Last Saturday, Begley's efforts paid off with the arrest of 52-year-old James Hughes, the director of a Miami-based ministry and self-described former Mafia hit man. Hughes stands accused of murdering Begley's father, Ralph Boger; former Cabazon Vice Chairman Alfred Alvarez; and their friend Patricia Castro.
Hughes, an ex-U.S. Army Ranger and former security director at the casino, was arrested at Miami International Airport as he was about to return home to Honduras. Riverside County sheriff's detectives along with U.S. Customs agents took part in the arrest.
Begley followed Hughes' movements for two years and finally confronted him in 2008 at a religious conference in Fresno. She and Michael Alvarez, the son of Alfred Alvarez, checked in under assumed names and carried hidden cameras.
The event was sponsored by the Full Gospel Businessman Fellowship International. The group's website has an autobiography describing Hughes as a former "professional hit man for the Mafia."
"I know what it's like to cut the throat of a man, see a man die, or throw a man in the trunk of a car and take him to his death," he wrote.
Hughes recalled a hit when he "walked into the man's house one day, pulled out my pistol, and put a bullet in everybody's head. . . . I had been paid to kill one man but had killed half a dozen people. The rest were in the wrong place at the wrong time."
When it came time for his speech, Begley secretly filmed it. Afterward, she approached Hughes and introduced herself as Ralph Boger's daughter.
With the camera still running, Hughes turned on her and Alvarez.
"Your parents got killed in a Mafia hit. That's life. That's what happened," he said. "Your parents were involved in some very dangerous things -- your dads. That's the only thing I can tell you. . . . I want to forget about the past. . . . I don't live there anymore."
He told Alvarez that he knew his father and had ridden motorcycles with him.
"Your dad and I were friends. He talked to somebody, they gave an order and that's what happened to him," he said. "It's a lot bigger than the murder of this guy or that guy. You're talking political people. I have told you more than I should."
Hughes told Begley to back off.
"You have children. You don't want to put your children in danger," he said. "Those children need a mother."
Begley took that as a threat but thinks the video helped build a case against Hughes.
"Before I went in, I sat and thought about all the things that could happen, and there was a little fear, but more determination," she said. "The fear hit me afterward."
When Begley began looking into the Octopus case, she was overwhelmed. The stories went in every direction. There were connections with Saudi arms dealers, Nicaraguan Contras, the manufacturing of weapons on Indian land, renegade private security companies and a journalist who apparently committed suicide while investigating it.
"A lot of it was lies, but a lot of it was true. I was able to confirm it," she said. "I was finally able to persuade the police to assign a detective to it. I just kept badgering them until they finally listened."
Begley, 41, worked closely with the detective as authorities began closing their net around Hughes.
At the time of the killings, the Cabazon casino -- run by a tribe of 25 -- was small but growing. Alvarez was troubled by reputed mobsters skimming casino profits and decided to take his evidence to the authorities.
But he never got the chance. On June 29, 1981, he, Boger and Castro were each shot in the head with a .38-caliber handgun as they sat on the back patio of his home.
In 1985, the Los Angeles Times reported that Alvarez had told a local newspaper that he feared for his life. Hughes told police that he had been ordered to take $25,000 to Idyllwild to partly pay off an unidentified man for the murders.
But the investigation stalled and Hughes left the country.
He returned in 1995 as head of Jimmy Hughes Ministries, helping abused women and drug addicts throughout Central America.
Begley said she's continuing to investigate the Octopus.
"There are still dangers involved," she said. "But I was in a lot more danger when I was not so public."
With disturbances and attacks on the rise, police in the Colorado resort town patrol for unsecured trash containers that attract the beasts -- and are learning to shoot to kill.
By Nicholas Riccardi
October 3, 2009
Reporting from Aspen, Colorado
Dan Glidden hit the brakes on his Aspen Police Department hybrid SUV. The evidence of wrongdoing was scattered all over the street.
Piles of soiled paper and plastic wrap. A torn plastic coffee cup. An empty ketchup bottle. And, on the curb, an overturned garbage bin with one of its two hatches hanging open.
Glidden began to search for the lawbreaker -- not the bear who had knocked over the Dumpster in search of goodies, but the person who had failed to secure the lid against what has become a nightly incursion in this ritzy mountain resort. As Glidden said earlier as he drove past row after row of bulging trash bins, "Why are you going to go eat berries when you can really chow down?"
Black bears have lived in this fertile, 8,000-foot-high valley for millenniums, long before the arrival of skiers, celebrity homes and a shop that sells Prada. But suddenly, beginning this summer, the bruins have gone wild.
"People say, 'There are bears in most of these mountain towns,' " said Randy Hampton, a spokesman for the state's Division of Wildlife. "But not like this. Not like this year."
In August alone, Aspen police responded to 275 bear calls. In the same month last year, there were 18.
Three Aspen residents were injured -- two in August, one in September -- when bears broke into their homes and attacked them. Wildlife officials killed 11 bears near Aspen that became too aggressive toward humans, and relocated an additional 22.
Night after night, police returned to headquarters and a reminder of Aspen's problem: a bear who had taken up residence in an oak tree outside the station. Officers had to duck under the bear, perched in the tree, to get inside.
So many bears have been killed and relocated that the number of encounters has returned to normal in recent weeks. Still, the incidents have forced the town and state to contemplate the once unthinkable: Local police are now being trained to kill bears because wildlife officials are overwhelmed.
Aspen is considering spraying the crab apple trees that line its streets to destroy fruit that lures bears into town. State officials talk about resuming the spring hunt for bears that was banned in 1992 on humanitarian grounds. One Aspen businessman proposes a form of shock therapy.
After bears repeatedly destroyed the outdoor freezer behind his cafe this summer, Bill Dinsmoor installed an electrified mat at the urging of wildlife officials. It seems to work. Why not expand that approach, he asked, explaining that "it's better than killing them."
Aspen seems to be the epicenter of this unusual year for bear-human conflicts in Colorado. Though other mountain states report no significant rise in incidents, wildlife officials in Colorado, where 8,000 to 12,000 black bears roam, say their officers are so busy responding to frantic calls for help that they haven't had time to quantify the problem.
In the most highly publicized incident, a 74-year-old woman who had been feeding bears for years near her home outside the southwestern Colorado town of Ouray was mauled to death in August. When authorities moved in to recover the corpse, they had to shoot a bear that aggressively tried to take back the body. A second bear shot at the scene a day later was found to have human flesh in its stomach.
More than 40 bears have been killed in the state this year.
For decades in Aspen and elsewhere, bears had occasionally forced their way into homes, tearing open French doors, ripping off sliding glass doors or simply bashing their way through windows. But not until recent years have the incidents occurred so often, and with such violent results, officials say.
The first bear attack in Aspen this year happened late Aug. 18, when a woman was startled by a 400-pounder that smashed through French doors into her home on Sneaky Lane, a narrow byway that runs up against the lush bottomlands of the Crystal River. The bear swatted at the woman as she tried to open another door to let it out, deeply gouging her in the chest and back.
The woman ran, leaving the bear inside the kitchen nibbling on chocolate toffee and other candy. After the beast finally left the house, wildlife officials tracked it down and killed it.
On a recent afternoon, Hampton drove past the home and pointed to lush greenery on the other side of the lane. Hanging in the bushes were red serviceberries, traditional food for local black bears.
"It's not that there isn't natural food available," Hampton said.
There have been other bad years for bear visits -- notably 2007, when the serviceberry bushes died off in an exceptionally dry spring, sending the huge animals into Aspen's trash cans.
This spring was very wet, and many berry bushes rotted. But even with some of their natural food sources surviving, the bears are displaying a marked preference for human food.
"Bears are feeling more comfortable coming into human environments," said Stewart Breck, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Wildlife Research Center who is studying Aspen's bear problems. "The ultimate answer is to clean up garbage in these urban environments."
The change in bear diet is perhaps most obvious in what wildlife agents have turned up during recent wintertime den inspections. Even after harsh years when natural foods are scarce, bears here are multiplying rapidly. Some sows are having triplets -- highly unusual and indicative that the bears are finding plenty to eat. (Bears usually have two cubs in normal years, and one or none in lean years.)
On one evening recently, police Sgt. Chip Seamans drove through town, scanning empty streets and alleys for potential bear food. "This is their turf," he said. "This is where they graze."
Seamans and his fellow officers have noticed that bears don't run from humans anymore. Seamans knows this firsthand.
About three weeks ago, he and a partner answered a nighttime call at a spacious hillside house, where a bear had torn open French doors, blithely stomping up steps that were covered with a "bear board" -- a piece of plywood studded with sharp upward-facing nails -- and into the house.
From the patio, Seamans and his partner peered through a window into a darkened kitchen. The refrigerator door had been torn off. But no bear.
The men eased their way into the house. Still no bear.
When Seaman flipped the light switch in the sitting room, his partner's whisper brought him up short.
"Bear. Big . . . bear."
Seamans turned slowly around and found himself eye to eye with a 600-pounder. It stared back.
The animal, on all fours, lowered its head as if it were about to charge, so the men inched away, stepping on the bear board as they went, and waited outside for a state wildlife officer to arrive with a tranquilizer gun.
Only when the bear was shot an hour later did it decide to leave the house, blowing past Seamans on its way to the woods. It was found days later, face-down in a watery ditch, dead.
Seamans, 49, a former Los Angeles police officer, observed, "I'd rather deal with an armed gangster any day."
Like other Aspen police officers and Pitkin County sheriff's deputies, Seamans soon will be trained in how to fatally shoot a bear. The state's Division of Wildlife says it's not likely that its lone officer can be at every potentially dangerous bear encounter.
But even before the others are trained, the Aspen Police Department had assigned Dan Glidden to focus exclusively on bears.
Glidden, 67, retired last year after 17 years as an Aspen cop. But this year he agreed to return as the agency's wildlife officer, a part-time job that runs during bear season, from May through October. His job: Patrol Aspen's glitzy streets and look for improperly secured trash.
During his recent morning patrol, Glidden surveyed the trash strewn about the toppled Dumpster. Any of the building's dozen residents could have failed to secure the latch. "To trace this back, who's responsible, I don't know," Glidden muttered. He jotted down a serial number on the bin and concluded that, ultimately, the owner could face a citation. "The captain of the ship's responsible."
A few doors down, Glidden saw evidence that the bear had struck again. In front of a sprawling home, a so-called "bear-proof" plastic trash can was upended. One of the ties that seals the lid was not fastened. "That's a no-brainer, isn't it?" Glidden said, striding up the flagstone path to the home's door to hang a citation.
He noted that the town's municipal court judge, who lives nearby, recently had a bear break into his house. "I don't think he's going to be very sympathetic" if the homeowner challenges the tickets, Glidden said.
The city does not levy a fine for the first offense, but a second offense costs $250, and the cost doubles for each subsequent one. The approach has drawn criticism from some who say that Aspen needs to be more aggressive.
"The law's not going to do any good if there isn't the enforcement," said Breck, the researcher studying Aspen's bear problem.
Glidden and others at the Police Department argue that it's more important to get people to change their behavior than to collect fines. They say that 80% to 90% of residents don't reoffend. "Our job isn't just to have people suffer monetary fines," said department spokeswoman Stephanie Dasaro. "We want compliance."
Most of the town's approximately 6,500 full-time residents, police argue, understand the importance of keeping trash inaccessible to bears. But Aspen sees tens of thousands of tourists and temporary residents, who usually don't arrive with bear safety in mind.
On another mid-September morning, Glidden spun through the alleys of downtown, eyeballing Dumpsters tucked behind brick buildings housing high-end restaurants, fur shops and condos. They were tightly sealed. He drove past an Alpine-style house and noted that he had written the owner a ticket for improper storage weeks ago, spurring the purchase of a new bear-proof canister. It was locked.
He pulled back in to the station hours later, proclaiming it the first morning he had seen no violations or signs of bears. Then he began chatting with his supervisor, Gretchen Born.
Just before Glidden's 6:30 a.m. shift, Born had been awakened by pounding on the door of her apartment a few blocks from the station.
Deal buys Iran time to obscure activities at nuclear plant, officials say
After acknowledging the plant's existence, Iran has nearly a month to admit inspectors. Swifter access would have provided an advantage in information gathering, some officials say.
By Paul Richter
October 3, 2009
Reporting from Geneva
Iran's promise to admit inspectors to a secret nuclear plant, though hailed as a major step this week by U.S. officials and their allies, may come too late to glean key information about the facility's design and history, experts and foreign government officials said Friday.
Allowing access within two weeks of the announcement would in effect give Tehran almost a month after its Sept. 21 acknowledgment of the plant's existence to obscure evidence, they said.
David Albright, a former international weapons inspector and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said it would probably take Iran some time to conceal activities. But, "if you have a month, you have the time," he said.
A European official who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue said the six world powers "did well" to win Iran's agreement to permit access. But the official acknowledged that swifter access would have been better.
U.S. officials contend that inspectors will be able to gather essential information if they are admitted within two weeks.
But Albright said faster is better. "It's not good that the inspection has taken so long," he said.
"There is no reason it could not have happened yesterday," he said. "It should have."
Iranian officials pledged Thursday during high-level international talks near Geneva to allow United Nations nuclear inspectors access to the plant "within the next couple of weeks," European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said.
The United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has stated that inspectors need access to facilities as soon as possible.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA's director-general, complained bitterly when inspectors were unable to scrutinize a suspected Syrian nuclear plant until eight months after it was destroyed in a September 2007 bombing raid by Israel.
Iran has previously gone to great lengths to conceal nuclear activities.
Charles D. Ferguson, a nonproliferation expert and former State Department official now with the Council on Foreign Relations, recalled that when the so-called Lavizan site on the outskirts of Tehran came under suspicion as an undeclared nuclear site in 2003, Iran delayed access. Ultimately, the Iranians razed the building and covered it with topsoil, satellite photos have shown.
In the case of the new plant near the holy city of Qom, Iranian officials contend that they did not violate their treaty agreement because the facility was more than a year from completion, and rules did not require them yet to notify the IAEA.
Western officials contend that under agreements in force, Iran was required to notify international authorities.
It is still uncertain when the IAEA inspectors will be able to tour the plant. U.S. and European officials said ElBaradei was planning to go to Tehran this weekend. But IAEA officials said only that he intends to visit the Iranian capital soon.
An Israeli official said it remains uncertain whether inspectors will be permitted to visit the plant. "We don't know whether they will be let in. There are so many unknowns at this point," he said.
Israel views Iran's nuclear activities as a mortal threat, but an official said the government is willing to let developments take their course.
The deal to give IAEA access was included in a three-part agreement worked out with Tehran by the U.S., Germany, Britain, France, China and Russia. Under the terms, Iran has agreed to discuss a full range of nuclear issues with the six nations and to convert most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to medical isotopes, making the material unavailable for any bomb-making.
The administration's immigration policies callously cost 1,800 Angelenos their jobs.
Tim Rutten
October 3, 2009
This week, unemployment among American workers climbed to its highest level in a quarter of a century. In parts of Los Angeles, joblessness has reached levels unmatched since the Depression. In many predominantly African American and Latino neighborhoods, nearly one in four people is out of work.
Yet the Obama administration has chosen this moment to deprive more than 1,800 Angelenos, nearly all Latino immigrants, of jobs that not only pay a living wage but provide health insurance and other benefits. The workers are employed by American Apparel, the largest employer in downtown L.A.'s garment district. The company and its workers are victims of a shift in federal law enforcement that began under George W. Bush and now has taken a particularly callous turn under President Obama.
The firings are taking place because the American Apparel workers were found to be using identity documents that federal immigration authorities have deemed illegitimate. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has called the firings "devastating."
In 2007, the Bush administration began investigating the documents American Apparel's workers had presented when they were hired. The probe was part of a nationwide focus on companies known to employ large numbers of immigrant workers, launched in the wake of Bush's failure to push comprehensive immigration reform legislation through Congress. Under Bush, when investigations turned up irregularities in employees' papers at other companies, workplace raids and deportation proceedings followed. (Previously, federal immigration authorities had probed only employers alleged to be routinely violating health, safety or labor laws.) In the case of American Apparel, officials went after a firm that pays its workers $10 to $12 an hour -- well above the federal minimum wage -- and provides health benefits (including an on-site clinic), subsidized lunches and transportation, a stock-purchase plan and guaranteed year-round employment, a rarity in the garment industry.
Obama's administration, which came to office promising immigration reform, has continued the investigations, but instead of concluding with a raid, Immigration and Customs Enforcement simply compels the employers to fire anybody whose papers aren't in order under pain of ruinous civil penalties. As John T. Morton, the career federal prosecutor Obama appointed to run ICE, smugly told the New York Times this week, the administration intends to "change the practices of American employers as a class."
This is Barack Obama's idea of reform?
"As far as the families involved are concerned, it's just your old immigration raid without the photo-op," said Msgr. Jarlath Cunnane, pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in the Pico-Union area, where many of American Apparel's workers live.
The company's founder and chief executive, Dov Charney -- himself a Canadian emigrant -- has been perhaps the most vocal supporter of immigration reform in the garment industry. As he wrote on the company's blog this week, "Although the current administration has moved away from ICE raids, the nearly 2,000 hardworking American Apparel employees affected can tell you the new policies are anything but fair. Because of a broken system, we were forced to let go of many factory workers -- people who have been part of our family for nearly 10 years -- and the country seems further from addressing this issue than ever."
In fact, the most appalling aspect of the Obama administration's wretched conduct of this affair is its studied indifference to the fate of the men and women it has thrown out of work. Cunnane's church serves as a vital social service agency in a neighborhood that is bursting at the seams with working people from southern Mexico and Central America. The mass firing at American Apparel, he said, "is going to put all these families under terrific pressure, and who's going to pick up the pieces?" Cunnane, himself an immigrant from Ireland's County Sligo, points out that it is "crazy to think that people are going to go back to their homelands when they've married and have American-born children in school here."
As one fired American Apparel worker told a reporter this week, "I'm going to have to go to one of those sweatshop companies where I'm going to get paid under the table."
If the Obama administration wants to force employers to more scrupulously examine the documents of new applicants for employment, that's all well and good. But legally coercing companies to fire workers who've been on the job and paying taxes for, in some cases, more than a decade is far worse than folly.
It may be strictly lawful, but the justice involved is the sort that sent Pilate to wash his hands.
Obama should keep his promise that religious groups getting federal funds can't discriminate in hiring.
October 3, 2009
The conventional wisdom is that President Obama has embraced some of the Bush administration's foreign and anti-terrorism policies while charting a generally liberal course on domestic issues. But there is one controversial domestic priority Obama has retained: his predecessor's "faith-based initiative" to provide federal funds to religious social service agencies.
Obama never said he would dismantle the program, even though it was part of Bush's outreach to conservative "values voters." But he promised to do away with its most troubling component: permission for faith-based social service programs to discriminate in hiring on the basis of religion. That hasn't happened.
In February, Obama said that his White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships would abide by "fundamental constitutional commitments" and that the office could consult the attorney general on the constitutionality of specific programs. Left undisturbed, however, was a 2007 Justice Department memo concluding that the government couldn't condition grants to religious groups on compliance with laws against bias in hiring.
The memo cited the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which exempts believers from laws that substantially burden their exercise of religion unless there is a "compelling governmental interest" in making them comply. A commonly cited example is an exemption from drug laws for Native Americans who use the hallucinogen peyote in religious ceremonies. But that and similar concessions don't have the broad effect of a rule allowing a host of government-funded social service programs to discriminate against job applicants of the "wrong" religion.
Federal aid shouldn't be withheld from a soup kitchen or a drug treatment center because it's affiliated with a church, synagogue or mosque -- as long as those serving food or counseling addicts aren't proselytizing, a scenario that is less likely if employees aren't screened for their religious views. So where does that leave the "faith" in faith-based services funded by government? Where it belongs -- as a spur to good works performed for the larger community.
Last month, groups supporting the separation of church and state sent a letter to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. asking him to rescind the 2007 memo. A new administration shouldn't casually reinterpret the law to serve a political purpose, as the Bush administration did with its memos justifying torture. In this case, however, both the 1st Amendment and a reasonable reading of federal law require a reversal of the Bush policy. In his campaign, Obama promised that groups receiving federal money would no longer be allowed to discriminate in hiring based on religion. He should keep faith with that principle.
The governor should sign legislation requiring ID and a thumbprint to purchase handgun ammo.
October 1, 2009
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Law-abiding Californians must provide a thumbprint to renew their driver's licenses. It's perhaps a nuisance, but worth it in to order to combat identity theft, track criminals and keep unsafe drivers off the road. To buy a product containing pseudoephedrine, cold sufferers need to ask a retailer to grab it from behind the counter or to open the locked case. Overly intrusive? Hardly, especially considering how much of the stuff used to be shoplifted, a dozen boxes at a time, to supply home meth labs. Grocers, bartenders and others who sell or serve alcohol must demand identification from people who look like they may be underage. It's more ritual than burdensome governmental dictate, and a reasonable step to keep youths from boozing up.
So why would Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger block a very reasonable requirement that people present ID and leave a thumbprint when buying handgun ammunition? Let's hope he won't. The governor should sign AB 962 and give law enforcement statewide the same useful tool in fighting crime and gang violence that Los Angeles police currently have.
The bill, by Assemblyman Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), would require anyone selling handgun bullets to check a buyer's identification, take a thumbprint and make the records available on request to police. There would be no waiting period; leave your print, show your ID as the vendor records the information, take your bullets and go. Ammunition would have to be held behind the counter or in some other shop-lift resistant place, just like pseudoephedrine.
The bill also would require that mail-order or Internet sales of bullets follow the same requirements now in place in California for guns: Sales are allowed, but delivery must be made to a retailer, where the same ID and thumbprint procedure applies.
A broader Los Angeles law has helped police investigate gang shootings, allowing them to identify the people who bought the ammunition and either passed it to criminals or used it themselves. But many smaller cities in the region don't have such laws, so bullets from elsewhere continue to load the guns of L.A. criminals.
By the way, it's now legal to sell bullets to a felon; De Leon's bill would prohibit such sales.
It's almost embarrassing how modest the bill is, yet Schwarzenegger is being pressured by GOP lawmakers, who in turn are being pressured by gun-rights groups. That's shameful. In ostensibly defending the right of law-abiding American citizens to keep and bear arms, gun advocates are ensuring that crime remains convenient for criminals, and that anti-gun sentiment continues to get a boost from police and the communities they serve.
Prosecutors said Friday that the motorist charged with murder in the death of a pedestrian during a police chase in Woodland Hills might enter an insanity plea.
Kelly Keller, 28, of Ladera Heights, is being held in lieu of $3.7 million bail on charges of murder and attempted murder in the Sept. 26 death of Dean William Greenwalt, 66, of Woodland Hills.
Prosecutor Anya Artan said that during an arraignment hearing on Wednesday, defense attorney Omar Bakari requested a mental competency exam for Keller and questioned his client's sanity. A judge ordered the test and set the next hearing for Oct. 28.
Keller is accused of leading the California Highway Patrol on a high-speed chase that began when he failed to stop at a traffic break set up on the southbound Ventura Freeway at Parkway Calabasas.
The chase wound up on Ventura Boulevard, where Keller's Cadillac hit Greenwalt, who was in the crosswalk at Don Pio Drive, officials said. Greenwalt died at the scene.
Police said Keller continued driving and then rear-ended a sport utility vehicle carrying four people. At that point, he opened fire on the CHP officer, they said. The pursuit ended when Keller crashed into a chain-link fence.
Because the case includes an officer-involved shooting, the Los Angeles Police Department is handling the criminal investigation.
Both CHP and LAPD have policies regarding pursuits, which are based on minimizing harm to the public, officers and suspects, officials said.
Greenwalt's death marks the first of three pedestrian tragedies involving vehicles this week in the west San Fernando Valley.
A 75-year-old man died at a local hospital Thursday after being struck by a car at 11:10 a.m. as he walked in a crosswalk at Variel Avenue and Sherman Way, said Detective Bill Bustos.
A 52-year-old La Habra man also died at a local hospital Thursday after he was struck by a 70-year-old man from Calabasas who lost consciousness behind the wheel. Authorities are investigating the medical reasons behind the crash and have not issued a citation.
The La Habra man was standing on the sidewalk at the corner of Dumez Road and Topanga Canyon Boulevard when he was struck.
Villaraigosa pledges to reduce pollution that causes global warming
Daily News Wire Services
Updated: 10/02/2009 02:58:57 PM PDT
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was among the mayors who signed a pledge to help their cities meet or exceed Kyoto Protocol targets for reducing pollution that causes global warming, his office announced Friday.
At the fall leadership meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Seattle, some 1,000 mayors representing more than 86 million Americans signed the conference's Climate Protection Agreement on Thursday.
"Cities are on the front line of climate change," said Villaraigosa, the second vice president of the group. "More than half of the world population lives in an urban environment, and any real solution must begin where people live."
"In Los Angeles, we've made real, tangible change in the way we power our homes and businesses, in the way we transport our goods, and in the way we conserve our water," Villaraigosa added. "We have the flexibility to do what these times demand."
The Climate Protection Agreement calls on mayors to urge the federal government and state governments to meet or beat the target of reducing global warming pollution levels to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Mayors signing the agreement also pledged to try to reduce the nation's dependence on fossil fuels by encouraging conservation and developing fuel- efficient technologies, such as methane recovery for energy generation, wind and solar energy, fuel cells and biofuels.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors is the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. There are 1,139 such cities in the country today.
Villaraigosa is scheduled to return to Los Angeles in time to attend a reception at the Hollywood Bowl Friday night welcoming the new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel.
Cheesecake Factory collects more than 300,000 cans of soup
Daily News Wire Services
Updated: 10/02/2009 02:13:54 PM PDT
CALABASAS HILLS - Customers of a locally owned restaurant chain donated more than 300,000 cans of soup -- three times the initial goal -- during a "Drive Out Hunger" campaign, the company announced Friday.
The effort was part of a month-long, coast-to-coast promotion at Cheesecake Factory's 146 locations -- including 32 in the Southland -- that allowed customers to receive a free slice of red velvet cake in exchange for two cans of soup.
The sponsors hoped to collect 100,000 cans but ended the campaign on Sept. 30 with a donation of 321,992 cans of soup to food banks.
"From California to Washington, D.C., and every place in between, we've seen Americans, young and old, all ethnicities, coming together in support of our communities," said David Overton, Cheesecake Factory's founder.
"We are touched to see the enthusiasm for combating hunger in America by The Cheesecake Factory guests and staff members nationwide who have donated these cans of soup in order to make a difference," he said.
To honor the donors, The Cheesecake Factory commissioned a sculpture in the shape of a slice of Stefanie's Ultimate Red Velvet Cake made from 30,000 cans of soup donated by Campbell's Soup Co., and a photo mosaic of people who attended the "Drive Out Hunger" events.
The Cheesecake Factory co-sponsored the soup drive with Feeding America, formerly known as America's Second Harvest, a domestic hunger-relief charity.
Supervisor: Public employees should donate to American Red Cross for tsunami relief
Daily News Wire Services
Updated: 10/02/2009 01:56:31 PM PDT
Calling the tsunami that decimated seaside villages in the South Pacific a tragedy felt strongly in Los Angeles, a Los Angeles County supervisor on Friday announced plans for a local relief effort.
Mark Ridley-Thomas said he will ask the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors Tuesday to designate the American Red Cross as the nonprofit organization where public and county employees can make donations to assist those affected by the disaster.
"We encourage all Los Angeles County residents and employees to consider making a donation," Ridley-Thomas said at a prayer vigil for tsunami victims held at a church in Carson with a largely Samoan congregation.
Los Angeles is home to nearly 13,000 Samoans, more than any county in the nation, Ridley-Thomas said.
An earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 occurred Tuesday in the Pacific Ocean near the Tongan and Fiji islands, generating a powerful tsunami that devastated villages on the islands of American Samoa and Samoa. Almost 200 people were killed and many more are missing.
Billionaire donates $100 million to Saint John's Health Center
Daily News Wire Services
Updated: 10/02/2009 08:45:53 AM PDT
A billionaire Los Angeles pharmaceutical executive bent on creating a national medical data-sharing network has donated $100 million to turn Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica into a cutting-edge hub, it was reported Friday.
The gift from Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder and chief executive of Los Angeles-based Abraxis BioScience Inc., and his wife, Michele Chan, a former actress, is the hospital's largest donation by an individual and one of the largest received by a community hospital in California, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The gift comes on top of the couple's $35 million donation to the hospital two years ago.
About $35 million has already been spent on the expanded and renovated 380-bed hospital, and $10 million more to attract doctors and scientists, according to The Times. That leaves $55 million to create several research centers and fund future projects, Saint John's Chief Executive Lou Lazatin told The Times.
Soon-Shiong, a former UCLA surgeon who made his fortune developing cancer drugs, last year sold generic drug-maker APP Pharmaceuticals Inc. for $3.7 billion, The Times reported. He has since pledged $1 billion from the sale to improve healthcare and address healthcare disparities in places such as Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles.
"We have the wealthy in Beverly Hills where we can treat them at Cedars- Sinai and UCLA, and 10 miles south you have people who cannot get care, and that's unconscionable," Soon-Shiong, who was raised under apartheid in South Africa, told The Times.
Soon-Shiong said his gift will help link Saint John's doctors and patients to hundreds of other hospitals as well as researchers at UCLA and USC so they can access medical discoveries quickly.
Council to help Pacoima homeowners stem foreclosures
Daily News Wire Services
Updated: 10/02/2009 08:29:38 AM PDT
The City Council is poised to approve on Friday the release of $1 million for a pilot Foreclosure Prevention Program aimed at keeping families in their homes by lending them money for so-called "silent second" mortgages.
The program itself was unanimously approved August. Friay's vote will fund it.
The plan is to take $1 million from the Community Redevelopment Agency's coffers to give lenders an incentive to reduce the loan principal and monthly payments of 20 to 30 homeowners in Pacoima, where one out of every nine homes is in default.
The Los Angeles Housing Department will administer the money, lending up to $75,000 to homeowners who are upside down on their mortgages. The loans will be paid directly to lenders -- but only if the lenders agree to reduce the mortgage balance to current market value.
In some cases, lenders may have to write off more than $100,000.
When the home is sold, the lender and the city will receive a portion of the profit, and the loan will be repaid.
However, it is unclear whether banks would be willing to write down principal and take losses -- even if the losses were smaller than what they would end up with if they foreclosed.
"This pilot program provides the needed incentives for a bank to reduce the homeowner's mortgage balance to reflect the real value of the home, saving families from the pain and heartache of foreclosure and saving communities from the devastating impact of so many empty homes," said Councilman Richard Alarcon, author of the measure, after the City Council signed off on the plan Aug. 14.
"It is very simple," Alarcon said. "If we can get banks to agree that it is within their fiduciary responsibility to lower the principal because they're going to get cash up front from us, in the form of a CRA soft second, with an equity share, then they would reduce the balloon payment."
Alarcon's 7th District -- which includes Pacoima, Lake View Terrace, Panorama City, Mission Hills, North Hills, and Sylmar -- has the second-highest number of foreclosures in the city.
It is topped only by Councilman Bernard Parks' 8th District, which spans most of South L.A.
One L.A. -- a nonpartisan group of religious congregations, schools, unions and nonprofit organizations -- came up with the concept for the Foreclosure Prevention Program, and will help choose the families who will benefit from it. 02:39
Wednesday night, September 30th, 2009, was the last night of 6 LADWP Workshops that are part of a "Scoping Plan" which is part of the CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) process.
This meeting was conducted at the Van Nuys "Marvin Braude Constituent Center" in Van Nuys. The first problem of the day was my call to the LADWP on the day of the event to RSVP. I was told that the event was full. I asked for David Nahai's office – the GM of the LADWP. I finally got a reservation. Is that why my evening with the LADWP started out all wrong – they wanted to limit the crowd – which represented most of the West San Fernando Valley – to about 100 people?
Normally I consider myself a "neutral" - someone who listens to all sides of the story and applies the science and logic to it. But tonight - the LADWP managed to get me in rare form - livid at what they were doing with the public on the heels of "Measure B".
It would appear that the LADWP failed to grasp that “Measure B” did not pass. No matter how much money they put into it - the IBEW backed it, some greens backed it, it FAILED. And that is the same thing that they were putting out for public comment today - as it has been coined by my friend Mike Cohen - "Measure B Redux".
The LADWP has hired a consulting firm to handle its public relations - boy, are they good. “Joan” who works for a "Public Participation Consulting Practice" opened the meeting. And as I looked at the Power Point, I saw why we needed to implement solar energy. "#1 - Global Warming"
My first comment to "Joan", David Nahai, and his LADWP - along with our Mayor - please show us a little respect. This was a "Snow Job".
The way the "Public Participation Consulting Practice" managed to design this forum is so that no one heard any public comment from the whole group. Randy Howard, the Resource Procurement Manager of the LADWP, gave a 20 minute presentation to the whole crowd which included a few Neighborhood Council Members, Al Abrams, the Vice Chair of the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners, and LADWP Commissioner Jonathan Parfrey. And when Mr. Howard stated that there would be No Questions from the whole audience - that questions would be answered in one of the three "Break Out Sessions" – I went into hyper mode.
After the introduction of the Renewable Portfolio Standard in the main room, you had to choose from three “Break Out Sessions”, but only over two periods. So that meant that you missed one third of the public comment opportunity - depending on which room that you chose.
In other words, while Jack Humphreville of "No on Measure B" and Mike Cohen of City Watch were in one room discussing the “Utility Built Solar” with Aram Benyamin of the LADWP, I was in the main room with the majority of the community members. This larger group was interested in the costs associated with putting solar on their own roofs or the “Sun Shares” program, where a group could join together to create a small local solar project that they would have “shares” in, which in turn, would reduce your LADWP rates.
I could go on for hours pointing holes in the problems associated with the “400 MW solar plan” which is supposed to go on “City owned buildings and property”. Please do not lead me there. But for a brief glimpse, please envision any “City owned property” covered in solar panels or wind mills. They don't have to be huge wind mills to produce energy. And you do not have to legally be notified of the project – unless you live within about 500 feet – or some similarly unreasonable distance. I can't wait for some of these solar panels or wind mills to appear on the mountainsides along the 405 freeway – in view of all of the million dollar homes on the top.
Randy - please - you told me tonight that you are an engineer. Do not give me the "the sun is free - the wind is free" speech. That was your very first mistake. Nothing that involves the production of energy is free in any manner. You discussed energy efficiency - but hey, you went to the "Al Gore speech" from "An Inconvenient Truth". "What will happen as the result of global warming?" “We will have rising tides, violent storms, more fires (we just had the "Station Fire", reduced water, and problems with energy reliability.” “A Consensus of Scientists” Do I hear a Nobel Prize here somewhere?
First, Randy, we did not have time to cover the fact that I was on the committee to "Draft Al Gore" for President in 2008. I have a signed copy of Gore's "The Assault on Reason" - which is what you were trying to do tonight. And I blogged on the algore.org website. And did I fail to mention that my husband's text book talked about global warming BEFORE Al Gore made it popular? So this presentation was an insult to me and anyone with any “reasoning” capability.
So the LADWP "Snow Job" was about reaching the greens that believe in global warming, or who want to save their energy costs, and they believe that putting solar on their roofs is the right way to go. And they were not given any answers to their questions.
The whole LADWP Renewable Portfolio was discussed. But this discussion was not much different - just not as in depth, as the one that the LADWP Committee (members of the Neighborhood Council LADWP MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) and LADWP Advocacy group, had in a presentation from David Nahai the General Manager of the LADWP on January 10, 2009.
I cannot discuss here all of the issues that were put on the “Public Comment” papers that were in each room. So what I will conclude with is a few things that I stated – and others stated - at that meeting:
This process is bypassing the Neighborhood Councils which is a violation of the MOU. You should have taken this whole presentation to each Neighborhood Council.
I see the “Sun Shares” Program as another “Bill Board 2” - another nightmare like the Neighborhood Councils trying to track the number and location of Bill Board and Cell Phone Towers. The Neighborhood Councils will now have to have “Hearings” on whether a “small solar project” should be put in the middle of the Sepulveda Basin or if wind mills should go in the Chatsworth Nature Preserve. The community members tonight thought that the projects should be kept local to lessen the impact on the desert (Sharon).
The Federal, State, and local governments (City of Los Angeles and LADWP) all want their own “alternative energy projects, and each group is making their own plans without consulting the other.
The LADWP “Green Path North” – which actually goes south to the Salton Sea, was essentially killed by Senator Feinstein's protection of the desert ecosystem.
Again, no costs are mentioned for any of the 5 projects that the LADWP plans to implement – yet – the plan is to get to 20 % renewable by 2010.
I will conclude with this message – “50 MW of Utility Built Solar by 2010”? The ink is just dry on the contract for the 55 watts of solar in the desert. That is a minimum 5 year project to go online.
So please – to my green friends – I am for solar. I am for wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and biomass. But these are all “New Technologies”, and their costs fluctuate. We need to know the real costs – to the rate payers – and on the environment.
The overall message should be this one – as the countries like Spain and Germany implemented solar, they sold their “pollution credits” to countries like Poland. And Poland did not cut back as much on their coal. So for the European Nation, there was no overall reduction in green house emissions. And if you do not reduce your overall green house emissions, you cannot slow “global warming”.
Why Water Pipes Are Bursting, Why We've Got No Clean Energy, Why DWP Bills Are Soaring
By Ron Kaye on October 2, 2009 8:04 AM UPDATE: David Nahai resigns as DWP general manager. Find out more at OurLA.org
Councilman Bernard Parks recently described DWP contract negotiations with the IBEW union boss Brian D'Arcy in these terms:
Bully boy D'Arcy hands the DWP officials a list of dozens of demands and gives them five minutes to give him everything he wants or he'll take the 95 percent of the utility's work force -- including most of the managers -- out on strike and throw the city into chaos.
With the city now in the worse financial crisis in its history, D'Arcy's union is due to get a 3.25 percent pay hike this month after successive 5.9 percent increases the last two years and he's playing hardball.
Here's a report to members (it will take some effort to read but it's worth it) on how he's demanded a lump sum payment for this year and a four-year contract extension with a guarantee of 2 percent and a maximum of 4 percent if inflation returns..
That's what D'Arcy calls "shared sacrifice" for IBEW workers who are paid 20 to 40 percent more than city workers or other utility workers who do the same job. I don't know the exact state of the talks but I have every reason to believe this is pretty much what the deal will turn out to be.
It's why your water and power rates are soaring and will double and triple in the coming years, why LA has the least renewable energy of any big city in California, why water mains are bursting all over town and the rest of the DWP infrastructure is old and deterioriating and dangerous.
Frankly, we are all working for the IBEW, only we don't get the same pay and benefits -- just the bill.
