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Los Angeles
Police Protective League
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the union that represents the
rank and file LAPD officers
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Daily Local & Regional NewsWatch
Daily News Digest
from LA Police Protective League
April 28, 2017 |
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Law Enforcement News
Garcetti Budget Would Reduce Police Patrols In Neighborhoods And Increase Response Times, LAPD Union Warns
The union that represents Los Angeles police officers launched a broadside against Mayor Eric Garcetti's budget on Thursday, warning that the spending plan will divert funds away from neighborhood patrols and to the policing of Metro buses and trains. Garcetti's budget proposal for 2017-18 calls for $121 million for sworn-officer overtime, up from the $90 million planned in the current year. But about a third of the money would go to patrol the county's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which signed a contract with the Los Angeles Police Department earlier this year. “This budget is a sneaky and disingenuous affront to every resident that wants safer neighborhoods, swifter response times and more community policing,” said union board member Robert Harris, appearing Thursday before the council's Budget and Finance Committee, which is reviewing Garcetti's spending plan. For months, the police union has been pressuring city leaders to take action with what league officials believe is one of the most pressing issues facing the city: how officers are deployed.
Los Angeles Times, KTLA 5 Video
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LA Police Union Alleges Mayor's Budget ‘Shenanigans' Would Reduce Officers On Streets
A budgetary “sleight of hand” proposed by Mayor Eric Garcetti would result in fewer officers out patrolling Los Angeles streets, even as crime is on the rise, the union that represents Los Angeles police officers alleged Thursday. “The shenanigans that occurred in the mayor's budget will put neighborhood safety at risk,” Los Angeles Police Protective League Vice President Jeretta Sandoz told the City Council's Budget and Finance Committee, which is reviewing the mayor's $9.2 billion budget proposal. Officials for LAPPL, which represents more than 8,000 rank-and-file police officers, said Garcetti's proposed $121 million allocation for police overtime is an inflated amount, with $41 million of that funding actually going toward providing security on buses and rail, under a recently approved contract with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, LAPPL officials said.
Los Angeles Daily News
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Man, 25, Gunned Down In South LA
Homicide detectives are investing a shooting Thursday afternoon that left a victim dead and a suspect at large. KCAL9's Rachel Kim said the victim was found in an alley in the Crenshaw district. Kim said the body was found in the alley next to a Bank of America with a nearby Smart & Final. Police told her the victim was not a gang member, but it was unclear if the shooter is. The LAPD said the shooting happened just after 4 p.m. Two people were sitting in a car when someone in a dark SUV pulled up next to them and stopped. Officials said the driver of the SUV got out of his vehicle and approached the two people in the car and fired multiple shots. The passenger, a 25-year-old man, was struck and killed, police said. The shooter took off and so did the driver in the victim's car. People who live in the area say they are fed up with the violence.
CBS 2
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Man Arrested For Allegedly Burglarizing Vehicle At FlyAway In Van Nuys
A 43-year-old convicted violent felon who was the subject of an outstanding warrant was arrested for allegedly burglarizing a vehicle at a bus terminal near Van Nuys Airport, police said Thursday. Jesse Gutierrez was arrested about 8 p.m. Wednesday in the employee parking lot of the FlyAway Bus Terminal in the 7600 block of Woodley Avenue, according to the Airport Police Division of Los Angeles World Airports. Officers had responded to a report of a suspicious person attempting to open vehicle doors in the lot and found Gutierrez sitting in the front seat of a late-model Hyundai, police said. “Officers approached the suspect who exited the vehicle with several items in his possession,” according to a police statement. “A subsequent investigation revealed that the registered owner did not know the suspect ....” Gutierrez was arrested on suspicion of burglary and for his outstanding warrant, police said.
Los Angeles Daily News
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‘911 Abuser' Arrested For Allegedly Threatening Police In Downtown LA
A man was arrested Thursday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles for abusing distress calls to 911 after numerous streets were closed down so L.A. police and California Highway Patrol officers could execute a search warrant. The search warrant was served at 1:35 p.m. by the CHP, with help from a Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team, at an unknown location at Sixth Street and Broadway and concerned a criminal case for threats made against law enforcement — a “911 abuser” who constantly calls 911 in an emergency, said LAPD Officer Sal Ramirez. “Situation under control,” Ramirez said. “He was arrested.” The unidentified man was arrested at roughly 4:10 p.m., Ramirez said. He said it wasn't clear what criminal charges would be filed. Broadway between Fifth and Seventh streets was shut down, plus a stretch of Sixth Street between Spring and Hill streets, the LAPD tweeted about 3 p.m.
Los Angeles Daily News
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FOX 11 EXCLUSIVE: Woman Allegedly Raped By Man Posing As Uber Driver
After several drinks at a club in Hollywood, 28-year-old Carla Westlund ordered an Uber. Shortly after, a car drove up and Carla, who was intoxicated, got inside. She says, “I thought it was my Uber. It looked like an Uber. He was parked out on the street and I just sat in the back seat.” The driver pulled away and Carla says she fell asleep. She woke up to find the driver in the backseat hitting her head against the seat. She says she was raped. “The more I fought him, the more hurt I was getting...and you just make that mental connection, OK, this isn't working. So you totally switch tactics. Its just like a survival thing," says Carla. She gave up fighting and even tried to befriend her attacker. It worked. He eventually let Carla go. She called the police and filed a report. She's now focused on capturing her attacker. She gave the LAPD a description of man but so far, detectives have not released a sketch.
FOX 11
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Prison Inmate Escapes From L.A. County Halfway House After His GPS Monitor Is Removed
A state prison inmate serving out the rest of his sentence at a Los Angeles halfway house managed to escape Thursday after his GPS device was removed, authorities said. The search for Chance Locke, 47, began at about 1:30 p.m., when officials learned that his GPS device was removed while he was at an off-site medical appointment, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. How the device was removed is under investigation, but inmates typically would not have the GPS monitor removed during a medical appointment, CDCR Press Secretary Vicky Waters said. Locke's GPS monitor was later found, but he remains at large. According to records in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Locke pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree robbery in 2013 and was serving a seven-year, eight-month prison sentence.
Los Angeles Times
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Deaths, 'Self-Inflicted Violence' Up In LA County Jails
It's shaping up to be a bad year for deaths inside Los Angeles County jails: 10 people died from natural causes through March 24, county Inspector General Max Huntsman said Thursday. "There were a lot of deaths at the beginning of the year," Huntsman told the new Sheriff's Civilian Oversight Commission, which had requested the numbers. "If they continue at this rate, we will about double the rate of deaths from last year." The L.A. County Sheriff's Department operates the sprawling jail system, which houses more than 18,000 inmates on any given day. In 2016, 21 jail inmates died from natural causes. Deaths from "natural causes" include people who may have experienced a drug overdose on the streets then died of complications later inside jail, said Huntsman. He could not give a definitive answer on why the number of deaths might be up.
KPCC
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Scientists Hunt Hard Evidence On How Cop Cameras Affect Behavior
New York City is set to begin giving body cameras to its police officers on Thursday. Under the police department's pilot program, 1,200 officers in 20 precincts will receive the cameras. The officers will also be studied by scientists to see what effect the cameras have on policing. As police don body cameras across the country, scientists are increasingly working with departments to figure out how the cameras change behavior — of officers and the public. "Is the camera having an impact on the way officers use force? Is it reducing the number of citizens' complaints? Is it having a negative impact? All of those types of things I would like to know about these cameras," says Peter Newsham, the chief of police in Washington, D.C., where a similar study is just weeks from providing its first answers. When officials in D.C. decided to deploy cameras a few years ago, the city happened to have a bunch of researchers who were just waiting to do a big, well-controlled study.
KPCC
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‘Unprecedented' Doctor Shortage At California Prison Hurting Inmate Care, Audit Says
Investigators can't say for sure that poor medical care contributed to the death of an inmate with a common heart condition at a high-security prison east of Sacramento last year, but the overworked system that ignored him didn't help. The inmate diagnosed with coronary artery disease died several months after he ran out of pills from his prescription for a cholesterol drug. He did not get a refill, and he did not see a doctor in the eight months he spent at California State Prison, Sacramento. A summary of the unidentified inmate's death is included in the latest report by a state inspector general calling attention to “inadequate” health services at a prison with a difficult population of 2,400 inmates that sits next door to Folsom State Prison. The new report, released in late March by the state Office of Inspector General, faulted a “critical shortage” of doctors at the prison and a “seemingly unprecedented ability to recruit and retain” primary care providers.
The Sacramento Bee
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Pa. Police Ambush Killer Gets Death Sentence
The bell atop the Pike County Courthouse last tolled the fate of a condemned killer in the 1980s. On Wednesday, it rang again. Eric Frein, the would-be revolutionary who shot two Pennsylvania troopers, one fatally, in a late-night attack at their barracks, was sentenced to death late Wednesday. The jury's decision that Frein should die by lethal injection brought a shouted "yes!" from a gallery that included high-ranking state police brass, the slain officer's mother and the trooper who suffered debilitating injuries after Frein shot him with a high-powered rifle. "Jurors have delivered full justice in this case and issued the penalty that is so richly deserved by Eric Frein," said District Attorney Ray Tonkin. Frein, 33, did not react visibly to the sentence. Minutes after the jury issued it, a Pike County's sheriff climbed the courthouse cupola and rang the bell eight times, following a tradition that dates to the 19th century.
Associated Press
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Del. Trooper Fatally Shot ID'ed, Suspect Killed
A man suspected of fatally shooting a Delaware state trooper has been shot and killed by officers after an overnight standoff, state police said Thursday. The man, who has not been identified, walked out of the home where he had been holed up since the fatal shooting of the trooper a day earlier, "engaged officers" and was shot by law enforcement and died at the scene, police said in a statement. Police planned a news conference Thursday afternoon to release more details. The man had been barricaded inside the home since Wednesday afternoon, not long after Cpl. Stephen J. Ballard, 32, was shot several times after he approached a vehicle in the parking lot of a Wawa convenience store near Bear. State police superintendent Col. Nathaniel McQueen said the vehicle had two suspicious people inside. One man got out of the car and shot Ballard several times before running away, McQueen said Wednesday. The other man was arrested at the scene.
Associated Press |
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Local Government News
Lawmakers Propose Expanding L.A. County Board Of Supervisors From 5 To 7 Members With One Elected Executive
A group of nine state lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bill that would seek to improve representation of people of color on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors by expanding it from five to seven members and creating a position of an elected county executive. State Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) is the lead author on the legislation that would put the matter of changing the state Constitution to a vote on the California ballot in June 2018. “Counties with millions of residents deserve a government that is responsive, transparent and accountable,” Mendoza said Thursday. “By expanding representation and creating a professional management position, we address multiple issues and will actively improve local government for all Californians.”
Los Angeles Times
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LA Council Candidate Vows To Stay In Race Despite Losing Endorsements Over Online Slurs
Los Angeles City Council hopeful Joe Bray-Ali vowed Thursday to forge ahead with his bid for a seat representing northeast Los Angeles and MacArthur Park, despite mounting backlash over offensive remarks he made more than a year ago in an online discussion board. One of the biggest blows to Bray-Ali's campaign came from seven of his potential colleagues on the City Council who took the unusual step Thursday evening of demanding the candidate drop out of the race. The councilmembers, who include Council President Herb Wesson, joined progressive organization Courage Campaign and other groups in pressuring Bray-Ali to halt his bid.
Los Angeles Daily News |
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