2 LAPD Officers, BMW Driver Hospitalized After Mid-Wilshire Crash
An LAPD cruiser collided with a BMW in the Mid-Wilshire district early Thursday morning. Paramedics reportedly transported two officers and the driver of the BMW to the hospital with minor injuries. The collision occurred at Wilshire and Hauser boulevards just after 1 a.m. The cause of the crash is under investigation. CBS 2

15-Year-Old's Family Files Lawsuit After She Died Of Overdose In Helen Bernstein High School Bathroom
The family of a 15-year-old girl who overdosed at Helen Bernstein High School in Hollywood in September filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles Unified School District Wednesday. The family of Melanie Ramos says the district should have done more to protect her. They spoke out at a news conference, and wanted to know why the girl hadn't been found in the restroom until 8:30 p.m. when another parent looking for his child found Melanie. "They failed Melanie, and we want justice for her," the victim's aunt Gladys Manriques said. Melanie Ramos overdosed in a bathroom at the high school Sept. 13. The lawsuit filed states the family believes LAUSD was negligent. "The school district is responsible. They should take care of our kids," the girl's mother Elena Perez said in Spanish. According to LAPD investigators Melanie and another teenage girl bought what they thought were Percocet painkillers at Lexington Park near the school. Investigators believe those pills were laced with the often deadly fentanyl. NBC 4

LAPD Teams Up With Santa For An Early Toy Delivery
LAPD and Santa Claus created Christmas cheer yesterday for children at the Venice Boys and Girls Club. Following a long tradition of toy drives, Santa mounted his sleigh and made the trip across Pacific Division to waiting children at the Club. Senior Lead Officer Karwon Villery and Santa worked closely together to deliver the toys. It was an afternoon of music, refreshments, talks with Santa and hanging out with LAPD personnel, who acted as elves. Younger children received toys and older ones got gift cards from local stores, and some just wanted a hug from Santa. As Sergeant Brian Cook said, "the whole event is like chicken soup for our souls". 
Westside Current

Natalia Bryant Testifies She Feared For Her Life After Years Of Stalker Hounding Her
A Sun Valley man has been ordered by a judge to stay 200 yards away from Kobe Bryant's daughter for the next three years. Natalia Bryant testified in county court that she she feared for her life after years of stalking, online and in-person. "He was in love with me. He wanted to make love to me. He wanted to be together," Natalia testified in court. She was referring to Dwayne Cortez Toliver Kemp, 32, whom she's never met. She never responded to him online. "I was in fear, for the longest time, that if I did block him, he would act in rage or get angry," she said. The direct messages on social media date back two years to when Natalia Bryant, daughter of late Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and his wife Vanessa, was 17 years old. Now at 19, she's a sophomore at USC. She told the court she had been ignoring the messages, but became alarmed when Kemp showed up at her sorority a few months ago, with a bouquet of edible flowers. He then returned a second time with real flowers, and ended up wandering on to campus, asking staff if she was in class that day. "He says he wants to come visit me, and then…he does," she testified.
NBC 4

Man Gets 270 Days In Jail For Attacking Comedian Dave Chappelle On Stage In LA
A man who attacked comedian Dave Chappelle on stage at the Hollywood Bowl in May pleaded no contest Wednesday to one misdemeanor count each of battery and entering a restricted area during a live event. Isaiah Lee, 24, was sentenced to 270 days in county jail, according to the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office. The plea came about 1 1/2 months after a judge rejected the defense's request for a diversion program that could have eventually resulted in the dismissal of the charges against Lee, who remains behind bars in connection with an unrelated case in which he is charged with stabbing his roommate at a transitional housing facility last year. Authorities said Lee rushed the stage at the Hollywood Bowl around 10:45 p.m. May 3 while Chappelle was performing as part of the Netflix Is A Joke Festival.  Los Angeles Daily News

Authorities Seek Public's Help Locating 21-Year-Old Missing Woman
Authorities with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department are asking for the public's help in locating a missing 21-year-old woman. Angel Annamarie Hayward Simon, who also goes by the nickname “Pooty,” was last seen on Nov. 24, on the 5700 block of Manhattan Place in Los Angeles, according to a department bulletin. Simon is described as Black, approximately 5 foot, 3 inches tall, weighing around 115 pounds, with brown eyes and straight black hair. She was last seen wearing a white shirt with light-blue jeans. Authorities said the 21-year-old had a possible destination in the 11600 block of South Western Avenue. Anyone with information about Simon's whereabouts or who might have seen her is urged to contact LASD's Missing Persons Unit at 323-890-5500. Anonymous tips can be made through Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477 or online at L.A. Crime Stoppers.   KTLA 5

LAPD Doesn't Fully Track Its Use Of Facial Recognition, Report Finds
Two years after Los Angeles police leaders set tougher limits on the use of facial recognition technology, a follow-up report found the department lacks a way to track its outcomes or effectiveness. The report, by the LAPD inspector general's office, found that LAPD personnel used facial recognition software in an effort to identify criminal suspects nearly 2,000 times last year. Of those searches, about 55% resulted in a positive match — meaning that an image of an unidentified suspect was matched through artificial intelligence to a mugshot or other photo of a known person, the report found. On Tuesday, Inspector General Mark Smith told the department's civilian oversight commissioners that the LAPD was largely in compliance with a 2021 policy that set out rules for when and how specially trained officers can use a facial recognition program maintained by the county Sheriff's Department. The county program runs images against a database of roughly 9 million mugshots of people who have been booked into the county's detention facilities — a far less expansive pool than some third-party search platforms. Yahoo! News

Actor Danny Trejo, LASD Unveil Campaign To Warn People About The Dangers Of Counterfeit Meds
"Bad Meds Kill Real People," that is the message Danny Trejo and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is sending to the public. On Wednesday, authorities unveiled a multi-agency campaign to warn people about the dangers of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, many of which contain the deadly drug fentanyl. "The manufacturers of these counterfeit medicines only care about making money at the expense of our most vulnerable communities and community members," Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said at a news conference at the Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles. "These medicines contain no active pharmaceutical ingredients." The campaign's slogan is "bad meds kill real people," Luna said, adding that it comprised three pillars: "education, awareness, and enforcement." Luna also unveiled a public safety video featuring actor Danny Trejo.FOX 11

South Los Angeles Woman Pleads Guilty To Stealing Jobless Benefits Cards While Working As Mail Carrier
A South Los Angeles woman who worked as a mail carrier has admitted to stealing unemployment benefit cards from people on her route and selling some of them to a co-conspirator. Toya Toshell Hunter, 45, pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud for the yearslong series of thefts, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a press release. In her plea agreement, Hunter, a former mail carrier for the United States Postal Service, admitted to stealing mail from January 2019 to May 2020, and the DOJ said she also stole mail containing a Employment Development Department debit card in July 2021. Through the theft of credit cards, debit cards and other mail — including correspondence containing information like social security numbers that assisted in the theft — Hunter “aided and abetted her accomplice in making fraudulent and unauthorized cash withdrawals from 68 separate victims' accounts and stole approximately $145,191 from Bank of America,” the DOJ said. KTLA 5

Brother Arrested In Death Of Pregnant Woman Murdered, Set On Fire In California
A California man has been arrested in the death of his pregnant sister who police said was murdered and set on fire. Fresno Police said in a Wednesday afternoon press conference that Aaron Jamal Dudley, 41, was arrested in the death of his sister, 26-year-old N-Kya Rebecca Logan. According to police, Logan had been stabbed to death and was then intentionally set on fire. Police said several pieces of evidence led to the arrest of Dudley, including a crime scene at the home and multiple witnesses who saw the fire. Investigators believe that Dudley stabbed Logan multiple times with a sharp object while they were inside their home. He then allegedly transported his sister's body in a garbage bin to a nearby alley, before setting her body ablaze. Authorities said that Logan was 36 weeks pregnant and just had a baby shower on Sunday. FOX 11

'Officer Down, Officer Down': Good Samaritan Helps Unconscious CHP Cop Involved In Crash
A hotel owner on a smoke break is being hailed a hero after coming to the aid of an injured California Highway Patrol officer on Tuesday. The CHP officer was stopped on the right shoulder of a freeway – seated in his patrol car while conducting a traffic stop – when a driver lost control of their SUV and rear-ended the officer's vehicle. The impact of the crash pushed the officer's vehicle into anothe r car, rendering the officer unconscious. Shiraz Deayal, owner of a nearby Days Inn, hopped over a fence to reach the officer. “I was the first one on scene. I pry open his door and I'm trying to see if he's alert or not. I grab his radio and I say, ‘Officer down, Officer down.' The radio goes silent and they do an all-alert and they ask me where I'm at and who I am,” Deayal told  Fox11.com . Deayal stayed on scene until the officer gained consciousness: “He was trying to do something I thought he'd never do. He was worried about the people around him and I tell him, ‘Don't worry, I got you.' I tried to help him out as best I can.”  PoliceOne

Man Who Bought Gun Used To Kill Chicago Officer Gets 2.5 Years In Prison
An Indiana man who pleaded guilty to making an illegal “straw” purchase of a handgun that was later used to kill a Chicago police officer was sentenced Wednesday to 2 1/2 years in prison. Jamel Danzy, 30, of Hammond was sentenced in a federal courtroom full of Chicago police officers and the mother of Officer Ella French, who was slain in August 2021 during a traffic stop. Danzy had pleaded guilty in July to one count of federal firearm conspiracy. Two brothers, Eric and Emonte Morgan, are awaiting trial on first-degree murder and other felonies stemming from the shooting that killed French, 29, and wounded her partner after they had stopped an SUV with expired tags on Chicago's South Side. During Wednesday's hearing, Elizabeth French told the court about the impact her daughter's death has had on her, saying that “there will never be more birthdays, meals or trips together." Associated Press

Eight Finance Influencers Indicted In $100-Million Stock Manipulation Scheme
The promise was simple: Follow them and get rich. Eight influencers, based from California to Florida, promoted themselv es on social media as financial gurus who could pick winning stocks. But in reality, federal authorities said, it was a “pump and dump” scheme, in which the perpetrators work to inflate the prices of stocks while pushing them as good investments before dumping them for profit. In parallel cases filed by the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of Texas and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, authorities said the eight influencers rake d in more than $100 million by selling the stocks they'd promoted at artificially inflated prices. With a combined 1.5 million followers on Twitter, the defendants used their social media reach to send out “false and misleading information” about the stocks they pumped and dumped as part of the scheme, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Los Angeles Times

iPhone Feature Helps Rescue 2 People Stranded After Crash In Angeles National Forest
An iPhone feature is credited with helping crews find two people who were stranded two people who were stranded with zero cell service in the Angeles National Forest. According to the Montrose Search and Rescue Team, a volunteer agency that helped the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department with the rescue, the smart phone's "emergency satellite service" feature notified crews that a car went off-road Tuesday afternoon. The notification came despite the fact that neither people involved in the crash had the signal to call 9-1-1. When crews made their way to the rescue scene, they learned that a car fell about 300 feet off the side of the mountain. The two people in the crash not only miraculously survived the fall, but they were also able to get themselves out of the car and were conscious enough to use the phone's emergency satellite service to communicate with emergency crews via text, according to the Montrose Search and Rescue Team. FOX 11