Law Enforcement

Boy With Cerebral Palsy Gets Special Gift From LAPD After Thieves Steal His Leg Braces
The LAPD presented a special gift to a disabled boy on Wednesday after thieves had made off with his leg braces. The LAPD Newton division raised money over GoFundMe after 10-year-old Geovanni Ramirez, who suffers from cerebral palsy, lost his leg-braces to thieves.
CBS Los Angeles

Police leaders, including L.A.'s, call for reforms to reduce prison population
Leaders of some of the nation's largest law enforcement agencies, including Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, banded together in Washington on Wednesday to call for criminal justice reforms they said would greatly reduce the U.S. prison population. “I've been through the war on drugs, the war on gangs," Beck said. "What I've learned in the past 40 years is that police departments cannot be at war with the communities they serve.”
Los Angeles Times

A Police Officer's Take on Crime in Koreatown
“When I found out I was being sent to the Olympic Division, it was like moving across the world. I'd been patrolling South L.A. and wasn't familiar with Koreatown other than driving down Wilshire Boulevard, stuck in traffic. I was aware of the '92 riots—the LAPD had done a disservice to the shop owners there. I was a part of the department back then, but I didn't know the community. We got in our cars and just handled radio calls, looking for bad guys."
Los Angeles Magazine

LAPD Warns Of ‘Porch Pirates' As Holiday Season Nears
The Los Angeles Police Department is warning residents to be on the alert for "porch pirates" who are stealing delivered packages from their front doors. Surveillance video from earlier this month shows a man walking up to Rick Deckman's Tarzana home and walking off with his packages. "I said, 'What happened to the package?' So then I start looking at the rest of my cameras," said Deckman.
ABC 7

The LAPD body worn camera program, Part 2: When will officers record?
A 2014 project by the U.S. Department of Justice outlined three different approaches for when officers are to activate body cameras: Officers recording all encounters with the public, officers activating a camera when responding to service calls, or during enforcement encounters, and activating only when consent is granted. LAPD policy gives officers the discretion to activate cameras depending on the situation, but officers are required to turn on their cameras during vehicle/pedestrian stops, calls for service, vehicle/foot pursuits, searches, arrests, uses of force, in-custody transports, most witness and victim interviews, crowd management and control, and “other investigative or enforcement activities where, in the officer's judgment, a video recording would assist in the investigation or prosecution of a crime or when a recording of an encounter would assist in documenting the incident for later investigation or review.”
Examiner.com

Donated Human Leg Stolen From Van After Leaving Coroner's Lab
A human leg that was being transported for tissue donation was stolen from a parked van in downtown LA while employees of the nonprofit in possession of the body part were grabbing a bite to eat, county officials confirmed Wednesday night. The nonprofit reported the theft to LAPD and the Coroner's office, according to the OneLegacy. According to its website, OneLegacy is the only group that transports dontated body parts and tissue from the coroner's facilities to hospitals and transplant centers. "The OneLegacy team immediately called 911," said Mone's statement. "The LAPD responded to the call by 5 a.m. and helped the OneLegacy team conduct a search for the stolen items."
NBC Los Angeles

City Government

LA City Council mulls gun lock law, changes on mag limits for cops
The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday advanced measures to exempt retired and reserve police from a new magazine ban and mandate gun lock usage. Mayor Eric Garcetti in August signed a citywide ordinance prohibiting the ownership of what the state deems large-capacity detachable firearm magazines – those capable of holding more than 10 cartridges.
Guns.com

Almost half of L.A.'s city employees can retire in 2018; what's next?
Nearly half of the city's non-sworn employees are expected to reach retirement age by 2018, creating an opportunity to recruit the next wave of promising, young city workers in the coming years, Controller Ron Galperin said Wednesday. More than a third, or 10,863 out of 29,679 full-time employees in the 21 largest city departments — not including sworn police and firefighters — will be eligible for retirement starting next year, according to the report using payroll figures. In three years, the number of retirement-eligible employees will grow to 13,794, which is about 46 percent of the total civilian workforce, Galperin said.
mynewsLA.com

Pensions

U.S. public pension funds slowly wake up to risk
U.S. public pension funds are cutting investment return assumptions because of years of zero interest rate policies and changing how they manage risk to avoid a repeat of the damage caused by the financial crisis. The growing recognition that short-term volatility can have a devastating impact on mature pension plans in the $4 trillion sector could herald a sea change in the way public funds invest in the future.
The Fiscal Times