Author: Monte Morin

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has launched an investigation into alleged misconduct by Maywood city officials, including whether they broke the law when they hired an assistant city manager from neighboring Bell to replace their own city manager.



Jennifer Snyder, a prosecutor in the Public Integrity Unit, said her office is looking into whether City Council members and other officials had “serial meetings” outside of the public eye to reach a consensus in violation of the Brown Act.

 

She said that investigators are also looking at other allegations of misconduct, such as the misappropriation of public funds. Snyder said prosecutors were examining whether there is a conflict of interest involved in the hiring of the Bell official to work in Maywood because that official will work for both cities.



“There’s a whole law about incompatible offices,” Snyder said. “We have to look at whether or not they played by the rules in making that decision.”



All but one of the Maywood City Council members declined to comment on the investigation, saying they were unaware of the specifics of the allegations. 



However, Councilman Felipe Aguirre said he knew of no meetings held outside the council chambers. “I’m very cognizant of the Brown Act and what it means,” Aguirre said. “If they think we’re making policies outside of the chamber, then go ahead and prove that.”



Maywood has been a politically tumultuous place for several years, with recalls, a state investigation involving brutality and other misconduct by its Police Department and conflicts over the City Council majority’s reluctance to extend a police contract with the city of Cudahy.

 

Four years ago, Maywood gained notoriety when Aguirre, then a newly elected councilman, declared the municipality a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants. Later that year, a city clerk was charged with trying to solicit the murder of Aguirre.



The city’s political leadership changed that year, in part based on outrage over the use of checkpoints to tow the vehicles of undocumented immigrants.



Even now, City Council meetings often feature shouting matches, and most of the city’s employees left their posts and went on strike last week.

 

Snyder said the inquiry was just starting.



“We don’t go looking for this stuff. It comes to us,” she said. “We’re dependent on active citizens… I don’t really care why someone [submits allegations], I care about whether or not we find evidence of misconduct.”



— Hector Becerra and Ruben Vives

A tree trimmer died in Pasadena on Saturday as he was cutting dead fronds from a 60-foot palm tree, according to police.



The man was at the top of the tree when a witness heard him yell for help. He was tethered to the tree and suspended there until firefighters arrived and removed his body with a ladder, according to the Pasadena Police.



It wasn’t immediately clear why he died, but a large quantity of fronds was discovered on top of him. "He may have had a heart attack. He may have suffocated," Pasadena Police Lt. Thomas Delgado said.



The incident occurred about 11 a.m. at a private residence in the 500 block of South Oak Knoll Avenue. The witness went into the house to call 911 after hearing the man’s cries for help.



Police said the man’s identity had not yet been released to the public because family members had yet to be notified. He was, however, described as a Sun Valley resident.



— Margot Roosevelt

A preliminary magnitude 4.1 earthquake was reported in San Bernardino County on Saturday afternoon, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake occurred three miles south of Redlands at 1:39 p.m.

[Updated 2:30 p.m.: Authorities said that they had not received reports of damage but that two smaller aftershocks were felt in the area. The first was magnitude 1.5 and the second was magnitude 1.4. Both occurred within eight minutes of the initial quake.]

— Andrew Blankstein

Authorities identified the victim of a fatal shooting in La Puente Friday evening as Carlos Torres Valencia, 30.

       

Valencia, of La Puente, was one of three men who were shot about 8:15 p.m. in the 300 block of South Stimson Avenue, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Valencia was pronounced dead at the scene, while the other two men were transported to hospitals with non-life-threatening wounds.



The victims were in front of an apartment complex when the gunman walked up to them and fired multiple times, authorities said. The shooting appears to be gang-related, according to Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Pedroza.



Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500.

— Margot Roosevelt

An employee who recently underwent a “nuclear-related” medical procedure set off alarms Friday afternoon at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, briefly interrupting service while authorities tried to track down the source of the sensor reading.



The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority employee had recently undergone a medical procedure that involved some sort of radioactive element, causing detection equipment to produce a “strong reading” about 12:50 p.m., airport Police Chief Ed Skvarna said.



Authorities would not elaborate on the type of medical procedure, citing employee confidentiality regulations.



Read the full story here.



— Christopher Cadelago, Glendale News Press

A Santa Monica man has been convicted on one count of arson and was sentenced to three years in state prison for setting fire to his car last year, authorities said Friday.

Sidney Porter’s 2006 Dodge Magnum was found burning at 1:45 a.m. on March 6 in the 1100 block of 9th Street in Santa Monica. Firefighters extinguished the blaze and determined that it was arson.

An investigation by police detectives concluded that Porter set the car on fire in a bid to collect insurance, according to Sgt. Jay Trisler of the Santa Monica Police Department.

Porter was convicted on Jan. 13.

— Monte Morin

Officials for the union representing Los Angeles police officers said Monday they are considering their legal options after a federal judge upheld a key provision of the federal consent decree that requires financial disclosures by gang and narcotics officers.



The 35-page order by U.S. District Court Judge Gary Feess turned away a challenge by union officials who went to court  to block a provision requiring officers joining anti-gang and narcotics units that frequently seize cash or other contraband to disclose personal financial information every two years.



The roughly 600 officers already assigned to the units were granted a two-year grace period in February 2009 before having to complete the records, although that could be delayed because of legal challenges.

In an e-mail sent to members, Los Angeles Police Protective League President Paul M. Weber called the disclosure provisions “unnecessary and dangerous invasion into the personal finances of our members and their families” and held out the possibility of further legal challenges to the provisions.



He also noted that the city  had proved “incapable of maintaining confidential personnel records.”



He cited two incidents in which hundreds of boxes of case materials were found in the corridors of the Northeast Division station and in a parking structure at a southwest-area station.



Officials said the boxes contained detailed criminal case materials, such as search warrants, detective logs, and victim and witness information. They included Social Security numbers and addresses and officers’ personal information pertaining to overtime.



In another incident in 2009, the Los Angeles Police Commission released a confidential report on the Internet that contained the names of hundreds of officers accused of racial profiling and other misconduct.



— Andrew Blankstein

Serial murder suspect Rodney James Alcala is expected to testify Tuesday morning and show a video clip of himself as the winning contestant on "The Dating Game."



Alcala, 66, is in court facing the death penalty for the third time in the June 1979 killing of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe of Huntington Beach. He is also charged with raping and killing four Los Angeles County women in the two years prior to Samsoe’s death.

 

Alcala is acting as his own lawyer in the trial, which is being held at Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana.



In his opening statement last week, the former photographer told the jury that "The Dating Game" would prove he is the owner of a gold ball earring. Toward the end of show, Alcala told the jury, they will see that his long hair flips back and reveals the earring.



The earring has long been considered a key piece of evidence in the case. According to prosecutors, Alcala took the earring as a trophy after he kidnapped and killed Samsoe. It was found in Alcala’s storage locker shortly before his arrest in the case.



Alcala says he bought the earring one year before Samsoe was killed, shortly after he had his ears pierced.



— Paloma Esquivel

The second of two cold fronts to sweep Southern California will hit the Los Angeles area Saturday, bringing  rain, possible thunderstorms and the threat of mud and debris flows in hillside areas scorched by last year’s wildfires, according to the National Weather service.



Rains on Friday snarled traffic and prompted road closures in foothill communities bordering the Angles National Forest, where more than 160,000 acres were charred in the Station fire. Rains in Los Angeles County were relatively light Friday, but Orange and San Diego counties experienced heavy thunderstorms and 45 mph wind gusts along the coast.

 

Forecasters predict up to 1½ inches of rainfall across the coastal and valley areas with as much as 3½ inches in the foothills and mountains.

A flash flood watch was put in effect for portions of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties on Friday and will remain in place through Saturday, according to Jamie Meier, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Oxnard.



Mountain resort areas can expect between a foot and 20 inches of snow at levels of 6,000 feet to 7,000 feet, dropping on Saturday to about 4,500 feet to 5,000 feet, just below the Grapevine on Interstate 5, Meier said.



It should also be quite windy, with mountain regions experiencing 20- to 30-mph winds and gusts up to 55 mph, Meier said.



Temperatures were not expected to rise above the low 60s, with overnight lows in the lower 50s through the weekend, she said.



Another storm could dampen the county Tuesday and Wednesday, Meier said. If it materializes as predicted, that storm is expected to produce less than an inch of rain to the county.



The county’s environmental health division is advising people to stay out of the ocean along coastal beaches until three days after the rain stops because of the possibility storm runoff could bring disease-carrying bacteria into coastal waters.



Strong El Niño conditions expected to last through this spring could contribute to above average rainfall in the southern United States, according to forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.



While forecasters can’t attribute particular storms directly to El Niño, the recent wet weather in our region fits the typical pattern for the climatic phenomenon, Meier said.

— Ann M. Simmons

Photos: Raindrops are falling on … L.A.

Quick action by two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies at a downtown courthouse Thursday may have saved the life of an attorney who suffered cardiac arrest while questioning a witness, authorities said.



Deputies Noel Furniss and Juan Rivera administered CPR to attorney Michael Dib when the lawyer collapsed while addressing a witness on the stand at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse on Hill Street. The incident occurred about 11:15 a.m.



According to Lt. Rick Nutt, the two deputies performed CPR for several minutes on the attorney before paramedics arrived at Department 67. Nutt said paramedics believe Dib would have died without the swift action by the deputies.



According to authorities, Furniss had equipped his desk with a breathing mask in preparation for such an emergency. Dib was taken to Good Samaritan hospital, where he underwent surgery, officials said.



— Richard Winton

A proposal to open the first Hebrew-language charter school in the state was dealt a major blow Wednesday when school trustees in the Santa Clarita Valley deadlocked over the project’s approval.



Two members of the governing board of the William S. Hart Union High School District voted against allowing the school, while two voted in favor of the institution. A fifth board member abstained from voting.



The proposed Albert Einstein Academy for Letters, Arts and Sciences is being touted by organizers as an institution where the Hebrew language would be a key component of the curriculum, but other languages such as Latin, Greek and Arabic would also be taught. Students would pursue a rigorous college preparatory program.



But school board members raised several concerns, including whether the school would be a religious institution, targeting Jewish students,  and violate the separation of church and state. Questions were also raised over whether the appropriate number of petition signatures  were acquired; whether efforts would be made to ensure ethnic diversity; and whether special needs students would be given sufficient support to cope with the intense language-learning requirements.

“We have no objection to the concept of the academy,” said school board member Steven M. Sturgeon, who moved to deny the petition for the Hebrew language charter school Wednesday. “The question is whether or not it meets the obligation of a public charter, and the district has said no.”

Hart School District Supt. Jaime Castellanos told the board members there was “enough doubt” not to approve the school.



Leaders of the proposed school said they had gone out of their way to address the board’s concerns, working late into the night to revise the charter. They insisted that the school would be open to children of all faiths, and would have no basis in religion or ties to a synagogue. They were disheartened that board members were not fully persuaded.

“It’s a mixture of confusion, frustration and disappointment,” said Rabbi Mark Blazer of the Newhall-based Temple Beth Ami, who is leading the effort. “Our goal was to provide something special for our district. The district had the opportunity to work in partnership with us.”



That opportunity would now go Los Angeles County, Blazer said. He planned to appeal to the county’s Board of Supervisors for approval of the school.

 

Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Mike Antonovich had sent letters to the Hart school board, confirming their support for the school.



“(It) will offer the type of interdisciplinary educational experience, especially in the language arts, that will afford students the ability to broaden their world views and understanding of a multitude of cultures,” Yaroslavsky wrote.



If approved, the school would open with 225 students in grades 7 through 9, adding 75 students each year until reaching full capacity at 450. The student body would ultimately expand to include the 12th grade.



Leaders of the school said they had received more than 350 requests for information and said a public lottery would be held to select enrollees.



–Ann M. Simmons

A Riverside jury has awarded an Arizona couple $16.5 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit against a Southern California neurosurgeon.



In Riverside Superior Court on Friday, jurors found Christopher Pham negligent in his treatment of Trent Hughes in 2003. They were unanimous on all counts except for one, for which one juror said the court should have awarded more money. 



Hughes, according to his attorneys, was jolted while off-roading in Arizona on Nov. 2, 2003, and felt a searing pain in his lower back and a "slight tingling" in his feet. He was airlifted to the Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs.



Hughes’ lawyers argued that Pham, the neurosurgeon on call, was required to report to the hospital within 20 minutes. Instead, the doctor did not examine Hughes until the next day and did not operate on him until Nov. 4. By that time, they argued, the damage was done, leaving the former owner of a Phoenix air-conditioning company a paraplegic.



The attorneys also said in court that Pham had planted documents that made it appear as if he were at the hospital when he was not.



"It appeared to be one lie after another in an effort to cover his tracks," said David Bricker, one of the attorneys representing Trent and Lisa Hughes.



The couple settled with the hospital two years earlier. 



Burt Rosenblatt, co-counsel for Hughes, noted that in spite of the multimillion-dollar verdict, a portion of the jury award totaling $3.75 million would be reduced to $500,000 due to California law limiting the amounts awarded in malpractice lawsuits.



"The law is very outdated and very unfair to plaintiffs who have legitimate claims and legitimate rights to be compensated," Rosenblatt said. "At least some money will now be available for Mr. and Mrs. Hughes to make their lives a little easier."



— Amina Khan

Monrovia detectives are searching for a woman who allegedly lured a mentally disabled 24-year-old man into an attempted bank heist, police said Friday.



The man was picked up at a day laborer site in Sierra Madre Wednesday morning and promised work as a painter. He told detectives that on the way to his supposed work site, the woman handed him a note and told him to deliver it to Citizens Business Bank at the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Huntington Drive, according to watch commander Lt. Nels Ortlund.



The bank was still closed when the man arrived but he entered the lobby and slid the note under the door. When bank officials read the note, which said that a remote bomb would be detonated unless they gave him money, they called police.



“They told him, we’ll do what you want. Stay here,” Ortlund said.



Ortlund said police responded to the 9:55 a.m. call, and surrounded the bank with swat team officers and crisis negotiators.They evacuated the bank building and surrounding buildings.



“He was wearing baggy clothing and carrying a black bag that appeared to be empty,” Ortlund said. “He was acting oddly. He was stressed out, and seemed to be deep in thought.”



It took more than five hours for police to persuade the man to emerge from the building. When he came out “he told us that he had been waiting for the people to come out with the money, but that he was tired and hungry,” Ortland said.



The man, who has a Monrovia address, was booked for attempted robbery. As soon as they learned where he was, his father and stepmother arrived with other friends who knew the family, Ortlund said.



“They were able to provide enough information that we believed it would be the merciful thing to release this guy into the custody of his family. He has been diagnosed with some kind of impairment. There is clearly an abnormality.”



— Margot Roosevelt

Riverside authorities are asking for the public’s help in apprehending a man who kidnapped and sexually assaulted a girl who was leaving an after-school event near La Sierra on Tuesday.



The attack occurred around 5:20 p.m., when the victim was forced into a vehicle and driven to another location, where she was assaulted, according to Riverside police. Authorities did give the girl’s age but said the assailant was a thin white man in his 20s or 30s with blond hair and a few days’ growth of facial hair. He wore a dark blue baseball cap and had a tattoo on his right forearm.



The vehicle he was driving was described as resembling a mid-1980s four-door Toyota sedan. The car was red, but faded and discolored. It also had tinted windows and appeared to be in “very used condition,” police said.



Anyone with information on the attack is asked to contact Det. Laura Riso at (951) 353-7126 or Det. Linda Byerly at (951) 353-7120.

— Monte Morin

Picture: Composite sketch of suspect. Credit: Riverside Police Department.

When he stepped off a plane 16 months ago, David Jassy, a rapper and record producer from Stockholm, planned to make it big in American pop music. On Tuesday, he finally got the rapt attention of an important audience, but the stage — the witness chair of a downtown Los Angeles courthouse — was one he never wanted.

Jassy, 35, took the stand at his murder trial today, speaking directly to a jury that will decide whether he may spend the rest of his life in a California prison or returns to Sweden, where he had a successful career, a child and a fashion-model girlfriend.

He is accused of punching, kicking and running over a pedestrian in what prosecutors have described as a horrifying act of road rage.

In two hours on the witness stand, Jassy repeatedly said that he never intended to harm the victim and was defending himself and his girlfriend after the man banged on the hood of their rented SUV in a Hollywood crosswalk.

“I was in fear for my life. I didn’t know if he had a gun, a knife. I know L.A. is way more dangerous than Sweden is,” Jassy testified.

— Harriet Ryan

Mexican authorities have “confirmed” that El Monte school board member Bobby Salcedo and five other men killed by suspected drug cartel gunmen in central Mexico were innocent victims, U.S. Rep. Judy Chu said Monday.



The San Gabriel Valley Democrat, who has been briefed by Mexican and American government officials, said that the killers left evidence at the scene in Gomez Palacio and that FBI investigators were helping Mexican police.



Chu said that she spoke with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week, and that

Clinton “asked me to pass on not only her condolences to the Salcedo family, but also assurances that she is personally keeping a close eye on the situation.”




Chu said she spoke with the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, about the case. He reportedly acknowledged that crimes by drug cartels often go unsolved in states like Durango, but that Salcedo’s case was high profile enough to warrant closer attention and might therefore be solved. 



“But we must maintain the pressure,” said Chu, who stood with Salcedo’s wife, mother, a sister and a brother at a news conference in El Monte. “We have to catch Bobby’s killers.”



The popular, 33-year-old Salcedo, who was also an assistant principal at El Monte High School, was celebrating the holidays in his wife’s hometown last month. He and his wife went to the Iguanas Ranas bar with some friends, when masked gunmen stormed into the business and abducted the men.

 

Some witnesses said the gunmen came looking for police officers. A senior law enforcement source who was briefed on the investigation but not authorized to speak publicly about it, said the gunmen asked who owned a vehicle outside with Tamaulipas plates, noting that that state has a cartel that is rivals with a cartel in Durango.

 

Calling Durango “the Wild West,” the source said preliminary investigations suggested that Salcedo and the five other men were killed in a case of mistaken identity. Weeks before the killing, the Gomez Palacio chief of police was executed by suspected cartel hitmen, and a former mayor was kidnapped days later. The mayor was later released.

 

Struggling not to cry, the educator’s mother, Graciela Salcedo, said she just knew “they killed my son and I’m never going to see him again.”



“I hope President Calderon does something,” she said of the Mexican leader. “I don’t want vengeance. But I do want them to arrest and imprison whoever did this.”



Asked whether she was hopeful that her son’s killers would be caught, his mother quietly said, “I don’t know. They almost never catch them.”



— Hector Becerra and Robert Lopez. 

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s investigators say a Palmdale man killed his sister, then drove to his ex-wife’s home and fatally shot her in front of their young child before fleeing and taking his own life Monday inside a truck on a Lancaster highway Monday.



The deadly rampage began around 7 a.m. and left detectives with three crime scenes in the Antelope Valley.



The 31-year-old gunman called his father about 7 a.m. Monday to inform him that he had killed his sister and intended to take his own life as well. The father, whom authorities declined to name, immediately dashed to a home in 38700 block of 31st Street East in Palmdale, where he found his 33-year-old daughter dead, investigators said.

About the same time, sheriff’s deputies responded to 911 calls of shots fired in 45300 block of Beech Avenue in Lancaster. There, sheriff’s deputies discovered the gunman’s 34-year-old ex-wife with multiple gunshot wounds. She died of her wounds at the scene.



According to Sheriff’s Lt. Pat Nelson, detectives subsequently learned that the man had shot his ex-wife in front of their daughter.



Deputies later found the gunman’s body inside his sister’s vehicle on Avenue E and Sierra Highway, Lancaster. He had apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, detectives said.

 

Investigators are withholding the identities of the dead, pending notification of their extended families.



— Richard Winton

An attorney under investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was convicted today of possessing child pornography and an assault rifle.



Walter Loustari, who remains free on bail, entered a no contest plea before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Ryan, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Schwartz of the Justice System Integrity Division.



Schwartz said the 58-year-old defendant entered an “open” plea, meaning it was not part of a negotiated settlement.



He could face up to three years and eight months in state prison.



Loustari, who had a law office in La Cañada Flintridge and lived in Glendale, was charged in October after an investigation by ICE and the Glendale Police Department.



The investigation began in October 2006 as part of ICE’s Operation Predator, in which the agency works  with local authorities to investigate child pornography.



— Richard Winton

The Los Angeles Fire Department firefighter who rescued a panicked dog from the brown, rushing waters of the Los Angeles River this afternoon said that unless firefighters acted, someone else was likely to have ventured into the concrete wash and wound up a casualty.

Joe St. Georges, 50, the firefighter who captivated much of  Los Angeles as he was lowered by a tether into the churning waters to rescue the hound, told reporters late Friday that he suffered a bite to his thumb but was otherwise OK.



“I didn’t have time to establish a rapport with the dog,” St. Georges said, in a classic understatement, as he held his heavily bandaged hand in the air. “He did what dogs do.”




St. Georges was treated for the bite and released from Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. From there, he traveled to the department’s air operations center in Van Nuys to meet with a throng of reporters.



St. Georges shrugged off his injury, which he described as a single bite on the thumb.

The firefighter said it was more “prudent” for him to do the rescue than to risk having a civilian jump in after the dog.

“I’m not sure there was a whole lot that could’ve been done differently,” St. Georges told reporters. “Somebody was going to go do it, and then we’d have to rescue a human victim.”

The dog was taken by [human] ambulance to a Downey shelter run by the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority, which serves 14 cities, including Vernon.



Animal Control Officer Justin Guzman said the 6-year-old German shepherd mix was cold and wet, but otherwise unhurt. He showed no further aggression, and shelter staff named him Vernon.



“He’s really lovable,” Guzman said. “He’s appreciating all the attention he’s getting here.“

Guzman said there were a “million” ways and reasons Vernon could have gotten into the river channel.



“Whether he got scared by the thunderstorm and jumped the fence, we don’t know,” he said.

The dog was never really swept away, but managed for the most part to maintain his footing on a slender ledge in the middle of the river, the officer said.



The dog will be quarantined and watched for signs of rabies.



Marcia Mayeda, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control, said the disease is extremely rare in domestic animals. Untagged and loose, the dog was technically in violation of city codes, but the owners will face no repercussions if they step forward and take him home, Guzman said.



If they don’t, the shelter by early evening already had a list of 20 people who want to adopt Vernon.



Mayeda said she was very impressed by St. Georges’ actions.



“That dog wouldn’t have made it out…I think the firefighter was very brave for rescuing him. I hope he gets a medal.”

— Gale Holland

Top photo: LAFD Firefighter Joe St. Georges rescues Vernon on Friday. Bottom photo: Vernon after rescue. Credit: KTLA