Law Enforcement

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

A tale of two riots
Experience is the best teacher, and London's Metropolitan Police should have learned a lot in the weeks since thousands of rioters looted and burned swaths of the city in response to a police shooting in Tottenham. Much like the Los Angeles Police Department in 1992, where officers had to develop tactics on the run, the police in London adapted, coalesced, and brought relative calm to the city after three days and nights of widespread violence. And also like the LAPD after 1992, London police are incorporating into their routines the lessons they've learned.
Jack Dunphy/City Journal

Law enforcement officials praise success of South LA task force
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said Tuesday he was proud of the results from the second year of Save Our Streets, a three-month collaboration between South Los Angeles police officers and the FBI. This summer, the task force solved 50 murders, 85 percent of them gang-related. They included the Christmas Day shooting of Kashmier James ,who was killed in front of her 3-year-old daughter, and the killing later that week of Taburi Watson a 14-year-old boy riding his bicycle.
Intersections South LA

Cops on the trail of crimes that haven't happened
Rather than predicting who will commit crimes, like the fictitious "precrime" system from the 2002 film Minority Report, the software that the Santa Cruz police department has recently started field-testing looks at where crime might be committed. It uses the locations of past incidents to flag up likely future crime scenes. Police can then target their patrols on these areas, in the hope that their presence might stop the predicted crimes from happening at all. At the very least, they will be on the spot to help victims and make arrests.
NewScientist

Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, Christina Aguilera hacked, FBI says
A 26-count indictment unsealed Wednesday named a Florida man as a hacker responsible for accessing the emails and cellphones of celebrities, including Mila Kunis, Christina Aguilera and Scarlett Johansson, and then distributing their private images to others. Christopher Chaney, 35, was arrested without incident at his Jacksonville home for allegedly hacking into the accounts from Nov. 13, 2010, to Feb. 10, 2011, when he obtained hundreds of emails, messages and images that he sent to others.
Los Angeles Times

Prisoner Transfers

California cities warn of 'public safety crisis'
As California begins redirecting new inmates and parolees to counties this month, nine big-city mayors are asking the cash-strapped state for money to address a "brewing public safety crisis." The mayors, including Sacramento's Kevin Johnson and Los Angeles' Antonio Villaraigosa, contend in a letter they sent Thursday to Gov. Jerry Brown that his "realignment" plan will result in higher police costs. Villaraigosa led the charge earlier last week by calling the program "political malpractice" and saying his city needed to move 150 police officers to help the probation department supervise offenders.
Sacramento Bee

Supervisors vote to add jobs to handle influx of state parolees
Although jobs are scarce almost everywhere, Los Angeles County is adding nearly 500 employees to handle the increased workload created by the shift of state parolees to local authorities. The Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to spend $33.7 million through December to beef up the Sheriff's, Probation and other departments tasked with supervising thousands of low-level felons sentenced or paroled after Oct. 1. Because the so-called realignment program already is under way, some Probation workers have seen their caseloads double or even triple in size.
Los Angeles Daily News

Pensions

Would-be 'good governance' watchdog's troubled history with the truth
Self-described pension expert and venture capitalist David Crane is apparently eager to keep his name in the public light. Crane is back, this time attaching himself to two other wealthy people seeking to influence California politics. According to a Sacramento Bee story, Crane has announced he will fund the campaigns of legislators who have the "courage" to tackle the major issues facing California. Unsurprisingly, Crane and his wealthy associates have their own idea of what constitutes political courage when confronting our state's problems.
LAPPL Blog

Politics

Joe Buscaino, dark horse
Just when it looks like grassroots politics is dead and buried in Los Angeles, a candidate named Joe Buscaino, who's never run for anything but class president, goes and raises $100,000 for his L.A. City Council bid. Add to that another $100,000 in city matching funds and however much money the police union throws in, and longtime cop Buscaino is starting to seem a serious dark-horse contender. About a dozen high school kids are packed into Buscaino's San Pedro campaign headquarters. They sit in tiny rooms and call voters from their cell phones. For this, they will earn credit for a community service requirement.
LA Weekly