Law Enforcement

Crime alerts for Hancock Park, Playa Vista and seven other L.A. neighborhoods
Crime reports are up significantly for the latest week in nine L.A. neighborhoods, according to an analysis of LAPD data by the Los Angeles Times' Crime L.A. database. Five neighborhoods reported a significant increase in violent crime. Hancock Park was the most unusual, recording five reports compared with a weekly average of 0.8 over the last three months. Playa Vista topped the list of six neighborhoods with property crime alerts.
Los Angeles Times

LAPD's off-road patrols chase crime wherever it leads
Going where no patrol cruiser can go, the Off Road Enforcement Unit, little known even within the LAPD despite its nearly 50-year history, traverses the rugged and rural terrain of the San Fernando Valley, including some 165 miles of fire roads and trails. The unit has seven officers and two sergeants, who mount the dirt bikes a few times a month, spending most of their time otherwise as traditional motorcycle traffic officers.
Los Angeles Daily News

Car slams into parked police cruiser, injuring 4 LAPD officers
Four LAPD officers responding to a party call in West Hills were hurt -- one seriously -- early Saturday morning when a woman apparently fell asleep behind the wheel of a sports car and collided with one of their parked patrol cars, authorities said. The accident took place about 2 a.m. on Fallbrook Avenue just north of Victory Boulevard. Two officers were outside their patrol cars and two others were nearby when the sports car, a late-model black Jaguar, slammed into one of the cruisers, police said.
Los Angeles Times

Video shows LAPD preventing potential suicide
The Los Angeles Police Department is circulating a link to dramatic video footage it says shows officers hoisting a suicidal man back from the edge of the 13th floor of a downtown apartment building. In the incident, caught on tape Thursday, several officers can be seen scrambling to pull a man back onto a ledge. Officers lean through safety railings then grab him by his underwear and grapple with him for several minutes as his legs flail over the abyss.
Associated Press Watch Video

Man shot to death in south L.A.'s Chesterfield Square
A man was fatally wounded early Sunday in an apparent gang-related shooting in the south Los Angeles neighborhood of Chesterfield Square, police said. The incident occurred about 12:40 a.m. in the 5500 block of Cimarron Street when a gunman walked up to the victim and shot him in the back, said Los Angeles police Officer Karen Rayner. The victim, whose name was not released, was taken by paramedics to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Los Angeles Times

Man shot after Leaping from ambulance, stabbing officer in church
A man being transported from jail to a hospital was shot to death by an LAPD officer after a confrontation in a church when another officer was stabbed with a butcher knife. Investigators are trying to unravel the mysterious circumstances that lead to the shooting death of a man who, after being released from jail, leaped out of a moving ambulance and later stabbed an officer with a butcher knife. The bizarre chain of events started about 3:00 p.m. Saturday after the suspect posted bail at the Twin Towers jail.
NBC4

LAPD chief on Dodgers beating case: 'We can do much better'
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck defended his department's handling of the Bryan Stow beating case but said the chain of events show possibilities for improvement. In a commentary in The Times, Beck wrote about the initial focus on Giovanni Ramirez as a suspect and then the conclusion that Ramirez was not responsible. The case culminated last week with the arrests of two other suspects.
Los Angeles Times

Attorney general starts push for statewide crime database
California Attorney General Kamala Harris wants the state's police departments to talk to each other. That is, she wants them to exchange crime data and information about parolees as part of a broad effort to create a statewide electronic network. Such a system would pump local police intelligence into the Attorney General's Office. In turn, the state's top lawyer would distribute research on how officers can better police their streets, as well as details on international gangs operating here.
California Watch

FBI, police go high-tech to fight crime
In an age when the biggest cases can often hinge on the smallest pieces of evidence, some bits no bigger than a fingernail-sized microchip, the FBI's Regional Computer Forensics Laboratories are fast becoming crucial law enforcement tools. Last year, the agency's 14 labs and their 244 examiners, including 155 from state and local agencies, processed more than 3,000 terabytes of information - the equivalent of 3 million copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Associated Press

Prisons & Parole

Los Angeles and Culver City police unions express outrage over parolee who murdered
Sadly, and as the Los Angeles Police Protective League predicted, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's ill-conceived non-revocable parole program claimed innocent lives. Zachariah Timothy Lehnen, 31, should have been behind bars until November 2013. Instead, he was free on an early prison release when he murdered 89-year-old Lucien Bergez and 27-year-old Erica Evelyn Escobar on May 3, 2011.
LAPPL Press Release LAPPL Blog

California may curb use of unsupported jailhouse testimony
A bill passed by the state Legislature earlier this month would prohibit convictions based solely on the testimony of jailhouse informants, who often have something to gain by lying. It's been a long struggle to get the law changed, and the California District Attorneys Assn. and other tough-on-crime groups remain opposed to the law, which would block convictions in cases without corroborating testimony by uncompromised witnesses or forensic evidence to tie the defendant to the crime.
Los Angeles Times