Law Enforcement

LAPD Junior Cadets Program Offers Safe Sanctuary For Kids
The Los Angeles Police Department's junior cadets program offers a free, safe sanctuary for kids. The idea? Stop gang violence before it starts. "We're changing our modeling of policing in America and changing our modeling of policing in Los Angeles," Los Angeles police captain Cory Palka said. "If people just walked into a police station, they'd see there's a lot of opportunity to do a lot of different things other than the traditional police station as they once knew," Palka said.
ABC 7

LAPD's long-awaited body cameras will hit the streets on Monday
Starting Monday, many Los Angeles police officers will hit the streets with new equipment: body cameras. After nearly two years of fundraising, testing and negotiating policy, Monday's rollout marks a significant moment for the police department's long-awaited body camera program. The city plans to purchase and deploy more than 7,000 devices in the coming months, making it the largest in the country to use the cameras on a wide scale.
Los Angeles Times

LAPD will Be Out in Full Force to Catch Drunk Drivers
As summer comes to an end, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is joining the National “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign to combat drunk driving. The “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” is an 18-day, high-visibility campaign coordinated by the California Office of Traffic Safety to curb impaired driving and save lives. From August 21 to September 7 (Labor Day), law enforcement partners throughout Los Angeles County, the State of California and Nationwide will have zero tolerance for drunk driving. The campaign seeks to drastically reduce the toll of drunk driving through heightened state and national public service announcements, checkpoints and increased deployment of officers on the road.
Public Slate

2 Men Killed In Possible Gang-Related Shooting In South Los Angeles
Two men were killed in a possible gang-related shooting Wednesday in front of a house in South Los Angeles. The incident was reported at about noon in the 100 block of East Century Boulevard. A lone gunman walked up to the two men and opened fire before fleeing on foot, Los Angeles police officials said. "We do not know whose fault it is. All we know is that it was a drive-by or a walk-by. They were shooting and got caught in the crossfire," said Leticia Terrell, the sister of one of the victims. Terrell's brother, 41, lived in the home with his girlfriend and her kids.
ABC 7

One Killed, 2 Injured in South LA Shooting
One person was killed and two people were injured after a shooting in South Los Angeles on Wednesday night. The shooting was reported around 10:55 p.m. in the 500 block of 94th Street while two of the victims were outside of a house and another victim was sitting in a car, according to the LAPD.
NBC Los Angeles

Search Continues For Suspected Kidnapper In Koreatown
Police continued to search on Thursday for a suspected kidnapper in the Harvard Heights area. On Aug. 10, a man scaled a fence and attempted to kidnap a 2-year-old boy and a toddler by physically grabbing them from inside an apartment, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
CBS Los Angeles

LAPD: Girl, 2, taken by father at gunpoint found safe
Los Angeles police say a 2-year-old girl whose father took her at gunpoint from a county social worker during a supervised visit has been found safe and the father is in custody. An Amber alert had been issued for Lamees Issa after she was taken at about 2 p.m. Wednesday. She was found about eight hours later. Lt. Bob Long says the girl's father, 27-year-old Jordanian national Louai Issa (loo-AYE ee-suh), was in the parking lot at the end of the visit when he showed the gun, took the girl and got into an SUV driven by another man.
The Sacramento Bee

Why L.A.'s crime rise is no surprise
After more than a decade of decline, violent crime in Los Angeles rose more than 20% during the first half of 2015, with felony assaults up 26% and robberies up 19%. Why, no one yet definitively knows. But there's plenty of speculation. Straight off, most criminologists will tell you that crime goes up, crime goes down, and sometimes it's a trend, or just a blip, apart from anything the police are doing. Others will point out that violent crime in cities like Los Angeles may have plunged so deeply in recent years — to historic modern lows — that it simply bottomed out.
Los Angeles Times

Lawsuit over license plate scanners heading to California Supreme Court
Two advocacy groups suing the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for access to data from automated license plate readers have won a chance to argue before the California Supreme Court. The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation took the two departments to court in 2013 in an attempt to get one week's worth of data that shows how officers use the technology.
Daily Democrat

Homelessness

L.A.'s homeless encampment laws war continues
A Los Angeles City Council committee Wednesday backed the removal of criminal penalties and fines from a recently adopted law that created a process for impounding property, including belongings of the homeless, left in public areas. The City Council earlier this summer approved the law that set rules for removing items left on sidewalks, streets and other areas in public rights-of- way.
mynewsLA.com

Pensions

Dave Low: Reed's state pension reform measure would be financial disaster
Backers of an effort to slash the retirement of public servants got a stiff dose of reality this month when leaders of the state's top public investment funds raised red flags about the plan that could be headed for the 2016 ballot. They said the latest proposal on public pensions from former San Diego Councilman Carl DeMaio and former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed would undermine decades of labor law and collective bargaining precedent and threaten retirement security for tens of thousands of working families.
San Jose Mercury News