Law Enforcement

Assaults on police rise in Los Angeles this year
There is a disturbing trend in Los Angeles this year where both assaults on officers and officer-involved shootings have risen, despite violent crime dropping nearly 8 percent across the nation's second largest city. Police have been unable to find why there have been more attacks on officers, but say more training and taking added precaution have been essential to ensure their safety.
Associated Press

Group wants cops to keep guns
A statewide lobbying group for police officers said Thursday it will pursue legislation next year that would allow officers to keep assault weapons after they retire, seeking to overturn an opinion issued last year by the state Attorney General's Office. Officers can own assault weapons that are illegal for civilians to buy, even for officers' off-duty use. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that more than 7,600 officers have bought such firearms since the state began allowing the practice a decade ago.
Associated Press

Rating LA's safety levels by ZIP code
Crime in Los Angeles has been falling for years. The numbers have gotten smaller the last nine years in a row, and in 2010 the city's murder rate fell to the lowest it has been in four decades. In celebrating that macro-level trend, though, it's easy to lose sight that a wide gap still exists between the city's safest neighborhoods and its roughest ones, where homicide remains the leading cause of premature death for young men. In these neighborhoods, researchers have found that 90 percent of children report having seen or suffered from felony-level violence, and a third have tested at war-zone levels of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Miller-McCune

Man killed in apparent gang-related shooting in Glassell Park
Police were looking Thursday for a gunman who killed another man in an apparent gang-related shooting in Glassell Park. The 20-year-old victim was outside his home at Fletcher Drive and Estara Avenue a few minutes after midnight when the suspect approached and asked him about his gang affiliation, said LAPD Sgt. Sanford Rosenberg. The victim was affiliated with a gang, Rosenberg said. The suspect then fired "numerous rounds," hitting the victim, who died at the scene.
Los Angeles Times

North Hollywood search warrant yields 21 pounds of pot, 1 arrest
A Santa Rosa man was arrested Tuesday morning for possessing 21 pounds of marijuana with intent to sell. L.A. County Sheriff's deputies served a search warrant at a Best Western hotel on the 12600 block of Riverside Dr. at 7 a.m. Tuesday. Deputies discovered 16 pounds of marijuana bud and 5 pounds of concentrated cannabis, according to the department. Deputies also found cash in excess of $10,000. The street value of the marijuana was estimated at $260,000.
ABC7

Southland activists defend LA impound policy revamp, warn undocumented drivers of checkpoints
Southland immigration activists are warning undocumented, unlicensed drivers to be careful behind the wheel as authorities conduct holiday checkpoints in Los Angeles. They spoke Thursday at a downtown Los Angeles news conference. The message rubs some the wrong way. "A great majority of people who are losing their cars are undocumented people," said Ron Gochez of the Southern California Immigration Coalition. "And the great majority of those undocumented people are Latinos."
Southern California Public Radio

$4 million in fake designer goods seized at L.A.-Long Beach ports
Federal authorities in Los Angeles have seized more than $4 million in fake designer jeans, apparel and shoes as part of an international effort cracking down on counterfeit goods, they said Thursday. From Nov. 1 to Dec. 16, agents and local police seized more than $80 million in counterfeit goods in the U.S., Mexico and Korea in Operation Holiday Hoax, officials said.
Los Angeles Times

FBI searches costume store in 'Geezer Bandit' investigation
Authorities probing the case of the Geezer Bandit have served a search warrant at a costume store in the San Luis Obispo area, demanding a list of all customers who bought a mask known as The Elder. Based on surveillance video and witness interviews at the site of the bandit's latest heist - the Bank of America in San Luis Obispo, hit Dec. 2 - the FBI is now working on the theory that the prolific bank robber is not an elderly man but a younger man wearing an elaborate mask.
Los Angeles Times