Law Enforcement

Crime alerts for Leimert Park, West Adams and other L.A. areas
Crime reports are up significantly for the latest week in 14 L.A. neighborhoods, according to an analysis of Los Angeles Police Department data by the Los Angeles Times' Crime L.A. database. Ten neighborhoods reported a significant increase in violent crime. Leimert Park was the most unusual, recording seven reports compared with a weekly average of 1.5 over the last three months. West Adams topped the list of five neighborhoods with property crime alerts.
Los Angeles Times

Beck, civilian panel again at odds on shooting
A majority of the five-member Police Commission concludes that a detective who said he shot and killed a man last year was not believable. The chief determined that the shooting was within department policy. With that decision, the shooting became the latest in a series of incidents in which Beck and his civilian bosses disagree on whether an officer's decision to use deadly force was appropriate.
Los Angeles Times

Standoff at Sunset & Vine-- heroes speak
It seemed like a normal morning on the job for Los Angeles police Detective Craig Marquez and Officer Kevin Cotter. Marquez stopped by a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Hollywood to get a cup of coffee. Cotter was planning to check out a nearby traffic accident. That's when they heard shots fired and ran to the scene. It was the December 9 shooting rampage that rocked one of Hollywood's busiest intersections: Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street.
KTLA

'Smash-and-grab' jewelry heist at Westside Pavilion nets $130,000
Three men used a hammer to shatter glass cases and made off with jewelry worth $130,000 in a "smash-and-grab" robbery at the Zales store in the Westside Pavilion mall in West Los Angeles Thursday night. The robbery was reported at 8:32 p.m., said Officer Norma Eisenman of the Los Angeles Police Department's Media Relations office. Witnesses told police the suspects fled to a car in the shopping center parking structure, with one of them jumping into the car's trunk, before driving off, Eisenman said.
Los Angeles Daily News

Missing Tujunga woman found at her home
A 52-year-old woman who police suspected may have been kidnapped from her Tujunga home was found safe Saturday evening. Family and friends of Margarita Stephens reported her missing Friday after not seeing or hearing from her for three days, according to a statement from the Los Angeles Police Department. Stephens was found at her home around 7 p.m., according to Senior Police Service Representative Victoria White of the LAPD Foothill Police Station. Stephens had been in a hospital out of the area, White said.
Los Angeles Times

Child sex trafficking in Los Angeles: 'It happens way too often'
He plied her with pot and promises. I'll give you a car, he told her, an apartment of your own. I'll protect you from the streets. She was 16. He was 70. For Matilda Evans (a pseudonym to protect the identity of a sexual assault victim) those two weeks spent in Michael Mersola's Burbank home, manipulated into having sex with him, left a scar on her heart. Evans told her story to the Burbank Police Department in 2007, but it was a Los Angeles Police Department detective who linked Mersola to an ongoing investigation into a larger problem in Los Angeles: sex trafficking.
Los Angeles Daily News

North Hills purse snatching leads to crash at plant nursery, 6 hospitalized
Two cars collided during a chase that occurred on the heels of a purse snatching in North Hills today. The collision at Plummer Street and Langdon Avenue was reported about 12:25 a.m., Los Angeles police Sgt. Bernard Fitzpatrick of the Mission Station said. Someone grabbed a purse from a woman and fled in a vehicle, and the victim and a man got in a vehicle and chased the suspects to the intersection where the collision occurred, police told a videographer at the scene. The suspect car, containing two men and two women, overturned and came to rest in a plant nursery.
Los Angeles Times

'Explosives Threat Bandit' charged in string of robberies
A man known as the "Explosives Threat Bandit" for threatening tellers with a bomb device was charged last week in a string of bank heists he allegedly pulled off in the Los Angeles area. William Joseph Allen, 32, of Los Angeles was indicted by a federal grand jury on eight counts of bank robbery and attempted bank robbery, the FBI said Saturday. He was arrested by Los Angeles police in mid-April and is being held without bail in a federal detention facility in California City.
Los Angeles Times

Capital Punishment

The cost of California's death penalty
In a one-month span from December 2005 to January 2006, California carried out its last two executions, administering lethal drugs to condemned killers Stanley "Tookie" Williams and Clarence Ray Allen. But execution day was not the end of the line for just Williams and Allen. It also ended more than two decades of taxpayer-funded legal costs for challenging their convictions and death sentences.
San Jose Mercury News

City Government

Mayor's roles changing
For the past year, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has been basking in his roles as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and as chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Both of those jobs come to an end next month, but he will continue to stay busy through the summer in preparation for his role as chairman of the Democratic National Convention in September. After that, he will be forced to begin winding down his term as mayor as term limits take effect and his successor is elected.
Los Angeles Daily News