Law Enforcement

Services for LAPD motorcycle officer Chris Cortijo to be held Monday and Tuesday
Services will be held Monday for a 51-year-old Los Angeles Police Department motorcycle officer who died from injuries he suffered when he was struck by an SUV driven by an allegedly drug-impaired driver in Sun Valley. Officer Chris Cortijo, a 26-year veteran and former Marine, was struck around 5:30 p.m. April 5 while waiting at a red light at Lankershim Boulevard and Saticoy Street, and he died four days later. A viewing will take place from 3 to 9 p.m. Monday at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, according to the LAPD. A memorial service will be held inside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles at 9 a.m. Tuesday, followed by traditional honors outside in the cathedral plaza, police announced.
City News Service

Police seeking public help in Los Angeles delivery truck homicide
Los Angeles police asked for the public's help Saturday to find the person who shot and killed a 36-year-old man during the course of a robbery, as he sat in the cab of his delivery truck in South Los Angeles. The shooting took place about 7:30 a.m. Friday, in the 4700 block of South Flower Street, near 47th Street, police said. Pedro Antonio Rodriguez was pronounced dead at the scene by fire department paramedics, authorities said.
City News Service

Man shot to death in Boyle Heights
A man, possibly in his early 20s, was shot dead Saturday in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles. A woman walking home in the 3000 block of Sussex Lane heard some gunshots shortly midnight and discovered the victim, said Los Angeles police officer Norma Eisenman of the Media Relations Section. Officers arriving at the location said the victim was shot dead at the scene, Eisenman said. There was no other immediate information.
City News Service

Call center worker evaluated after Times building threat, police say
A 28-year-old man who worked at a call center inside the Los Angeles Times building was being held for a mental health evaluation Saturday after he allegedly made threatening statements and handed his supervisor a pillowcase containing ammunition rounds, authorities said. The incident prompted a lockdown of The Times building Friday night as police searched the structure. The suspect, Matthew Lowes, is an employee of VXI Global Solutions, which rents space in The Times building.
Los Angeles Times

2 boys sexually assaulted in South Bay park restrooms, police say
Two boys were sexually assaulted in public bathrooms in Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach, police said. Both incident occurred last week, and authorities are trying to determine whether they are connected. According to KTLA-Channel 5, a teenage boy reported entering a restroom at Polliwog Park in Manhattan Beach on Friday afternoon. A man forced him into a stall and fondled the boy's genitals, police said.
Los Angeles Times

Link between attempted abduction, murders in L.A.?
Police are investigating a possible link between the attempted abduction of a teenage girl doused with flammable liquid and two deadly attacks in Los Angeles County, reports CBS Los Angeles. LAPD Commander Andrew Smith identified 30-year-old Robert Ransom as a suspect in the latest case, and says facts surrounding the girl's attempted abduction last month are startlingly similar to those surrounding the deaths of two other women.
CBS News

2 men stabbed on oceanfront walk at Venice Beach
Two men were stabbed Saturday night on the oceanfront walk at Venice Beach and were undergoing treatment at a hospital while police investigated at the scene, a sergeant said. The men were stabbed at 9:40 p.m. at Pacific and Windward avenues, said Sgt. Laura Curtin of the Los Angeles Police Department Pacific Station. Both victims were in their 20s and were transported to hospitals for treatment, Curtin said. Their conditions were not known.
City News Service

LAPD officer hurt in Northridge 4-car crash
An LAPD officer was transported to the hospital in fair condition after a collision in Northridge on Sunday. According to LAPD Capt. Charles Phillip Hearn with the Topanga Division, a female officer was responding to a call around 4:30 p.m. when her cruiser was hit at the intersection of Parthenia Street and Tampa Avenue. The car that hit the cruiser spun out and hit a truck head-on, causing the truck to back up into another car. A total of four cars were involved in the crash, including the police car, Hearn said.
ABC7

How technology helped crack the Kansas City highway shooter case
For almost a month, Kansas Citians lived through what amounted to a horror movie without an ending. According to the narrative described in court documents, it would take cutting-edge and occasionally controversial law enforcement technology, including license-plate readers, to put an end to the horror show. The story of this very 21st century hunt began playing out on the tangle of freeways just south of Kansas City, Mo., where, starting in March, one driver after another reported being shot at by a mystery gunman - nobody they knew, for reasons nobody could fathom.
Los Angeles Times

DMV Regulations

DMV going to school on undocumented residents' driver's license rules
Documentation is one of the key issues under review by California's Department of Motor Vehicles, which is working to roll out new regulations that will allow some 1.4 million undocumented residents to apply for driver's licenses, under a bill approved by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last fall. As California officials work on new documentation regulations, they are learning from the experiences of other states that have had to deal with fraud and trickery.
Orange County Register

Pardons

Jerry Brown grants 63 pardons
Gov. Jerry Brown announced 63 pardons Friday, with the vast majority of the recipients convicted of long-ago drug crimes. The people pardoned, Brown wrote in the pardon messages, have "lived an honest and upright life, exhibited good moral character" and conducted themselves as law-abiding citizens. Of the 63 pardons, more than two-thirds were for people convicted of crimes for selling, transporting or manufacturing controlled substances, including marijuana.
Sacramento Bee

Prison Realignment

Counties want more money to deal with crush of additional inmates
Gov. Jerry Brown has been quietly visiting California counties since the start of the year to see how they are faring under his 3-year-old realignment law that dramatically altered the state's criminal justice system by increasing the burden on local governments. He gave his verdict recently to a gathering of the state's major law enforcement organizations: "I can report ... that realignment is working." Interviews with some of the local officials the governor has met with reveal a more nuanced picture.
Associated Press

City Government

L.A. should be more selective with hotel tax breaks, some say
Nearly a decade ago, lawmakers in Los Angeles took an aggressive step to boost the city's languishing Convention Center, granting tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks to spark construction of a 54-story hotel nearby. But as downtown continues to boom, some inside and outside City Hall say Los Angeles should be much more selective in giving out tax breaks to lure new hotels. With the City Council poised to consider a new crop of downtown hotel subsidies one high-profile project in particular is being seen as a test case.
Los Angeles Times