Author: Steve Marble

A Lomita mosque’s plan for a new center on its property has been rejected by the City Council, prompting the mosque’s congregants to allege that there was anti-Muslim bias at play.

But Lomita Mayor Don Suminaga said the four council members – one recused himself – who unanimously voted Monday against the expansion project of the Islamic Center of South Bay did so because of neighbors’ concerns and the potential increased traffic.

“I think it boils down to too big of a project for that area,” Suminaga said.

A traffic study, however, concluded that there would be no additional traffic on the road because the proposed prayer area – which the study noted was “the primary criteria used in determining traffic impact” – would be about the same size as the current prayer area.

A staff report from the city’s community development director recommended approval, and the city  planning commission last year recommended that the council approve the project.

“If you’re solely looking at the traffic study, maybe it’s OK,” Suminaga said, adding that he had a “feeling that they would be bringing more people in.”

Some neighbors of the mosque spoke against the project at Monday’s meeting and were countered by mosque supporters from Lomita and surrounding cities who urged the council to approve it.

“It seems to us that the City Council members, before they heard the four-hour testimony from our people, they had already made up their minds,” said Iraj Ershaghi, a founding member of the Islamic center. “This was such a total blow to our expectations.”

Ershaghi, an engineering professor at USC, said some of the comments made by neighbors opposed to the project had an anti-Muslim undertone. “The tone was that, ‘You don’t even exist,’ ” he said.

The Lomita Muslim community bought the property, located on a residential street, in 1985 and over the years has purchased adjacent properties and used the existing nine structures for prayer and community services, Ershaghi said.

The proposed project called for tearing down the smaller buildings and consolidated them into one two-story structure with classrooms, administrative offices, bigger bathrooms and a prayer area. Ershaghi estimated that 150 to 200 people attend Friday prayers.

"The idea was not to attract more people,” he said. “The idea was to have classrooms. We don’t have classrooms; we don’t have bathrooms. The idea was to make it convenient to park in the lot and not in the street.”

Mosque leaders plan to meet with city officials Thursday to discuss future options.

— Raja Abdulrahim

A dead newborn baby was discovered by a trash collector Wednesday in a household bin on a residential Redondo Beach street near Pacific Coast Highway, police said.

Redondo Beach Police Sgt. Phil Keenan said the employee of Consolidated Disposal discovered the body about 9:05 a.m. on Irena Avenue during regular curbside trash pickup. The trash collector noticed the body while preparing to empty the bin. 

Keenan said that the residential neighborhood is relatively close to heavily traveled Pacific Coast Highway and that it is possible the child’s body was dumped by someone passing through the area.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office has been called to the scene to assist investigators. A cause of death for the child has not been determined. Police did not say whether the newborn was a boy or girl.

Anyone with information is asked by Redondo Beach police to contact investigators at (310) 379-2477.

— Richard Winton

Photo: KTLA

More breaking news in L.A. Now:

Man sentenced for taking kickbacks at Los
Angeles Air Force Base

L.A. County probation workers elude punishment
for misdeeds

Michael Jackson’s children never in any danger
from stun gun, attorney says

Woman slain by gunfire in Lancaster

LAPD apologizes to family of slain Sen. Robert
F. Kennedy for homicide exhibit items

The Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday bid farewell to its inspector general; received a somewhat encouraging update on the saga to install video cameras in patrol cars; and heard that the city’s crime rates continued to plummet.

Andre Birotte Jr., who has served in the watchdog capacity for the last seven years, was awarded the Distinguished Service medal by the civilian oversight panel. As inspector general, Birotte ran a department responsible for conducting investigations and audits of the department’s handling of officer misconduct and other sensitive issues.

Birotte departs this week to assume his new position as United States attorney for Southern California.

On a less celebratory note, Maggie Goodrich, the Los Angeles Police Department’s top technology official, briefed the commission on the department’s error-plagued effort to install video cameras in its roughly 1,200 patrol vehicles.

Fed up after hearing about the latest technical glitches and inadequate testing, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck reassigned the previous project director and put Goodrich directly in charge in January.

On Tuesday, Goodrich told commissioners that problems with the cameras’ image quality and internal time-keeping system had been remedied. Testing by a few officers will begin soon and a general rollout could begin late next month, she said.

Beck, as he does each week, reviewed the latest crime statistics for the city. After several years of falling crime rates, the LAPD has posted a strong start in 2010. Homicides are down 28% from the same period last year, with 38 killings through Monday and the number of gang-related homicides down by about 50%.   Overall, serious violent crime, including rapes and robberies, fell 13% and property crimes dropped more than 9%.

— Joel Rubin

Photo: LAPD detectives investigating shooting at Valley temple last year. Al Seib / L.A. Times

A Los Angeles jury Monday spared two men the death penalty for killing a man and his teenage daughter during a robbery in Koreatown on New Year’s Eve 2006, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Matthew Ian Koontz, 36, and Jonathan Blackwell, 29, were convicted in early January on two counts each of first-degree murder in the pre-dawn shooting deaths of Raul Cruz, 31, and Jessica Cipriano, 17.

Jurors voted for life sentences without the possibility of parole for Cruz’s death, but deadlocked on what sentence the men should receive for Cipriano’s death, according to the district attorney’s office.

Koontz and Blackwell were also convicted of attempted murder for shooting Cruz’s wife, who was wounded in the stomach but survived, as well as three counts each of residential robbery.

Prosecutors alleged at trial that Koontz knew there would be cash at the family’s Koreatown apartment because he had purchased drugs from Cruz. Cruz’s son Henry, then age 9, was in the bedroom at the time of the shooting and testified in the trial.

The two men will be sentenced April 8.

— Victoria Kim

A forceful storm that is expected to hit the Southland on Friday night could bring heavy downpours, thunderstorms, flash flooding and possible mudslides, according to the National Weather Service.

Another round of evacuations are scheduled for residents of fire-ravaged foothill areas, but Los Angeles County public works officials said they were ready to confront nature’s blast.

The storm is expected to move across the Central Coast this evening, then southward into Ventura and Los Angeles counties overnight and Saturday, according to Bill Hoffer, a spokesman for the forecast office of the National Weather Service.

“We expect heavy rain across all counties with this storm system,” Hoffer said. “Los Angeles County will have the bulk of rain early Saturday morning.”

Rainfall rates are expected to peak to more than an inch-per-hour between midnight and 4 a.m. on Saturday. “A few south-facing slopes across Santa Barbara, Ventura and L.A. County could receive around 3 inches through Sunday morning,” Hoffer said.

A flash flood watch has been issued through Saturday for burn areas in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties in anticipation of debris flows.

Around 200 homes in La Canada Flintridge and La Crescenta are subject to evacuation orders, said Nicole Nishida, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Reverse 911 calls alerting residents to the orders would be enacted at 3 p.m. Friday, and deputies would go door-to-door at around 4 p.m. telling residents to be out of their homes by 6 p.m..

New evacuation protocols have been established for foothill neighborhoods threatened by mudslides, with color codes being used to designate danger levels.

When the level is green, residents will be advised to monitor weather conditions. A yellow level indicates mandatory evacuations. Residents who evacuate in yellow conditions will be allowed to return to their homes before the order is lifted but will have to sign liability waivers, Nishida said.

Under a red level, residents who leave their homes will not be allowed to return until the evacuation warning is lifted. Residents who refuse to heed evacuation orders will also have to sign waivers.

Officials said they hoped evacuation-fatigued residents would comply with the regulations.

“We are trying to balance public safety with the inconvenience residents are feeling with having to evacuate again,” said Nishida. “It’s the sixth time in a couple of months.”

Officials at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works said they were confident they were prepared for the possible deluge. Seven smaller debris basins had been emptied, and the remaining 21 larger basins had available capacities of between 50% and 80%, according to Bob Spencer, a spokesman for the public works department.

“We believe there is enough capacity in the debris basins, and we can handle whatever may come our way this weekend,” Spencer said.

–Ann M. Simmons

More breaking news in L.A. Now:

Marines called in after grenade closes Interstate 5 in San Clemente

Couple arrested after woman throws her boyfriend’s puppy into traffic

Audit finds L.A. County supervisors’ behind-the-scenes effort to control policy

Police search for 2 cars after 13-year-old girl fatally hit in Brentwood

The case against alleged serial killer Rodney James Alcala is expected to go to jury late Tuesday, setting the stage for a possible third conviction of a man who has twice been condemned to death row in the kidnapping and murder of a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl.

Each conviction has been overturned, though the case has expanded as authorities said they were able to tie Alcala to other 1970s-era slayings.

Alcala is accused in the 1979 kidnapping and murder of Robin Samsoe, 12, after a visit to the beach. He is also charged with murdering four Los Angeles County women between 1977 and 1979. Earlier this decade, investigators said they linked Alcala to the torture, rape and murder of Jill Barcomb, 18; Georgia Wixted, 27; Charlotte Lamb, 32; and Jill Parenteau, 21, with DNA, blood and fingerprint evidence.

In closing arguments Tuesday, Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Murphy called Alcala a “predatory monster.”

“Don’t feel sorry for him,” he told the jury.

Alcala, who is acting as his own attorney, gave a long, somewhat rambling closing argument in which he mostly ignored the four Los Angeles cases and focused on rebutting the prosecution’s contention that he killed Samsoe.

The prosecution’s case, Alcala said, was based merely on “magical thinking.”

The former photographer denied being the photographer who approached Samsoe and her friend the day she disappeared, though he conceded taking pictures of a 15-year-old girl in a bikini nearby on the same day.

— Paloma Esquivel

Photo: Mark Boster / L.A. Times

A former co-owner of City of Angels Medical Center was sentenced Monday to more than three years in federal prison for paying illegal kickbacks for patients recruited from the homeless on downtown’s skid row.

Robert Bourseau, 75, was sentenced to 37 months in prison and ordered to pay $4.1 million in restitution for his role in a scheme to defraud Medicare and Medi-Cal. He pleaded guilty in June to paying a recruiter to deliver homeless patients to his hospital for unnecessary medical services.

The scheme was uncovered after an investigation into alleged patient dumping in skid row. Federal prosecutors say Bourseau and a medical center co-owner, Dr. Rudra Sabaratnam, paid several hundred thousand dollars between 2004 and 2007 to recruiter Estill Mitts and others for patients.

Sabaratnam, 65, of Brentwood pleaded guilty in 2008 to paying kickbacks and is slated to be sentenced April 5. He and Bourseau have already agreed to pay $10 million to the government to settle civil litigation, prosecutors said.

Mitts, 64, who ran a downtown center recruiting homeless patients, pleaded guilty in September 2008 to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. Prosecutors allege he earned $20,000 a month in kickbacks.

A third City of Angels executive, Dante Nicholson, is awaiting sentencing in June. Last year he pleaded guilty to paying kickbacks for patient referrals.

In a related case stemming from an alleged patient recruiting scheme, a former Tustin Hospital and Medical Center executive, Vincent Rubio, 49, has also agreed to plead guilty to paying illegal kickbacks.

— Richard Winton 

Los Angeles and San Diego will no longer enforce limits on how much money corporations and unions can directly give in city elections, bowing to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that found such caps unconstitutional.

In Los Angeles, the city Ethics Commission passed a resolution saying it would no longer bar corporations and unions from using money from their own treasuries to expressly advocate for or against a candidate. The resolution, adopted last week, was made public Wednesday.

In San Diego, city officials were pushed by a federal lawsuit brought by the local Republican Party, a construction industry group and several individuals. A federal judge Thursday ordered the city to immediately lift its law limiting how much money corporations and labor groups can pump into municipal elections.

The plaintiffs praised the injunctions imposed by Judge Irma E. Gonzalez on several provisions of the city’s finance law. Ron Nehring, chairman of the state Republican Party, said the ruling would not favor one party over another but would make it easier for a challenger to defeat an incumbent.

“This ruling will make elections more competitive in San Diego while placing other localities on notice that the obligation to protect the 1st Amendment rights of citizens applies to them too," Nehring said in a statement issued after the judge’s ruling.

Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause, a nonprofit group that advocates for campaign finance laws, had a different take. Feng said it would now be easier for special interests to “drown out regular citizens’ voices.”

“The big concern is that both on the corporate and the union side this is going to lead to an arms race in political spending, “ she said. “It will allow well-funded special interests to try to influence elections.”

In Los Angeles, the ruling was not expected to yield  dramatic changes in the contributions made by unions and businesses, which have had a history of spending significant sums in campaigns.

Last year, the union that represents employees at the Department of Water and Power spent more than $148,000 to help then-Councilwoman Wendy Greuel win her bid to become city controller. Months later, two business groups — the Central City Assn. and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce –- spent nearly $39,000 in an unsuccessful effort to help onetime entertainment industry executive Chris Essel replace Greuel on the council.

But corporations will no longer need to form political action committees or participate in larger advocacy groups to spend money on behalf of city candidates, officials with the Ethics Commission said.

[Updated at 10:27 a.m. Thursday: Ethics Commission Executive Director LeeAnn Pelham said Thursday the Supreme Court ruling will not eliminate the city law that imposes limits on contributions from businesses and labor unions to candidates at City Hall — $500 for council members and $1,000 for citywide candidates.

However, the considerably larger “independent expenditures”–money that can be given to a political action committee to support or oppose a candidate–now will be allowed to come directly from the treasuries of unions and businesses.]

Meanwhile, other counties and cities are looking at their own campaign finance laws and making changes to ensure they don’t face lawsuits similar to the one brought against San Diego.

In Ventura County, for instance, supervisors are expected to amend a campaign finance ordinance that limited contributions from so-called independent expenditure committees.

Supervisor Steve Bennett, an advocate of tough campaign finance limits, said the board would try to raise disclosure requirements so voters will know who is contributing to candidates.

“We will at least do the best we can," he said. “This is a dramatic change for the worse for our local elections.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, issued earlier this month, has been received with both glee and alarm across the nation.

Supporters say the high court was correct in ruling that corporations and unions have the same rights as individuals and should be able to contribute directly to elections.

Opponents say that the ruling opens the floodgates to unlimited corporate and union cash flowing into the campaigns of candidates who will vote in their favor and that it removed a century-old prohibition on such spending in federal elections.

The impact at the state level is negligible because California is one of 26 states that have no limits on corporate and union contributions. But a handful of municipalities, including Los Angeles and San Diego, have tried to regulate spending by groups or companies in local campaigns.

— Catherine Saillant and David Zahniser

Andre Birotte Jr. was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday as President Obama’s selection to serve as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.

Birotte, who has served for the past six years as the Los Angeles Police Department’s inspector general, will oversee an office of about 275 prosecutors responsible for a seven-county jurisdiction covering much of Southern California.

Birotte 43, will be the first African American man to hold the post. Details about the timing of Birotte’s expected move from the LAPD to the U.S. attorney’s office were not immediately available.

Scott Glover

Soon after Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren began his speech Monday night at UC Irvine, the first student rose.

“Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech,” the student in a gray hoodie yelled.

The remainder of his words were drowned out by an uproar of cheering and clapping from students sitting around him before he was led away by university police.
It was the first of 10 interruptions throughout the speech, and by the end of the night, 11 UC Irvine and Riverside students were arrested and cited for disturbing a public event.

The students were held in a nearby room until Oren finished his speech and were then released, said university spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon.

They could face misdemeanor charges as well as university disciplinary hearings that could result in suspensions or dismissals, Lawhon said.

After the fourth disruption, Oren took a 20-minute break before he returned.

“I’ve spent most of my life living in and studying the Middle East and one of the great and eternal cultural facets of the Middle East is hospitality…even if you do not agree with them, even if they’re ostensibly your enemy,” Oren remarked, before continuing his speech. “I’m your guest here and I’m asking for the Middle Eastern hospitality for your guest, I’ve come into your house.”

The speech about U.S.-Israeli relations was organized by several organizations and campus departments “to address tough issues in an open kind of way,” said Shalom Elcott, president and chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Orange County.

Before the speech, Elcott said his group was aware of an orchestrated campaign in which he said students were assigned a position and statement to read in order to disrupt the ambassador’s speech. The group notified campus police.

Elcott and others blamed the university’s Muslim Student Union for the disruptions. A statement posted on that group’s website Monday condemned the university for inviting a man who “took part in a culture that has no qualms with terrorizing the innocent, killing civilians, demolishing their homes and illegally occupying their land.”

The union, however, denied responsibility for the protests.

“It was not put on by the MSU, but rather by students acting on their own,” said Hadeer Soliman, union spokeswoman.
Only one of the students arrested could be reached, and he declined to comment.

During the speech, both the UC Irvine chancellor and the political science department chair chided the protesting crowd and called the disruptions embarrassing.

“Shame on you,” Chairman Mark Petracca yelled at one point.

But despite the constant interruptions, there was also a strange routine to the disturbances.

A student would stand up and yell his statement followed by both cheers and jeers from the crowd. Then, as if on cue, he would make his way to the aisle where waiting police officers led him out of the room.

“They were very cooperative, they rose, they spoke and they began to leave their seats,” Lawhon said. “Because they had been told what would happen if they did this.”

— Raja Abdulrahim

The Illinois man who spied on an ESPN reporter through her hotel room door and posted nude videos of her on the Internet may face time in federal prison and more than $300,000 in restitution, according to a sentencing document filed Monday.

Prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles are seeking a 27-month prison term for Michael David Barrett, 49, who they said secretly filmed reporter Erin Andrews at three different hotels in three states as she showered and dressed for work. They said he removed the peephole device from her hotel room doors and use his cellphone to capture video of her in the nude.

Over the course of nine months, according to a sentencing document dated Monday, Barrett tracked Andrews across the country, running Internet-based background checks on her, calling several hotels to see where she would be staying and then deliberately requesting hotel rooms adjoining hers so he could access the door to her room with ease.

The sentencing document calls Barrett’s conduct “part of a long-term obsession involving Victim Andrews, as well as a significant number of other women.”
After attempting to sell the cellphone videos to Los Angeles-based entertainment news website TMZ, prosecutors wrote, Barrett posted several videos of the sports reporter online, with such titles as “Erin Andrews in a Pink Thong” and “Sexy and Hot Blonde Sports celebrity shows us her all.”

In July 2009, the document states, the videos topped Google’s “most searched items” list.
The court filing shows that the U.S. attorney’s office is seeking $334,808.27 in restitution on behalf of Andrews and her family members.

“The emotional distress caused to her and her family cannot be overstated,” said the filing document, calling Barrett’s actions “very horrific.”

Andrews was not the only woman the former insurance company employee targeted, prosecutors said. Barrett also filmed 16 other women similarly to the way he filmed Andrews. He ran Internet background checks on more than 30 women, including a number of other female sports reporters and television personalities.

Barrett pleaded guilty to one federal count of interstate stalking in December.

Reached at his Westmont, Ill., home, Barrett declined comment, and his attorney did not return calls.

–Amina Khan

Members of Los Angeles-area Islamic organizations said Tuesday they welcomed an apology from Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris, who drew criticism after telling an audience of mostly Christian ministers that he was “growing a Christian community.”

"This episode demonstrates that we must all come together as Americans to uphold the constitutional principle of separation of church and state, and to maintain the values of inclusiveness and fair treatment," Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the greater Los Angeles area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement.

Parris touched off a firestorm after saying in his Jan. 27 “State of the City” address that Lancaster was “growing a Christian community, and don’t let anybody shy away from that.” The mayor added that he needed the community to stand up and say “we’re a Christian community, and we’re proud of that."

On Monday, Parris acknowledged to a group of local leaders, including representatives of Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Jewish communities, that his remarks might have caused a lot of people to feel left out.

Kamal Al-Khatib, founder and president of the American Islamic Institute of Antelope Valley, said in a statement that he accepted Parris’ regret, and hoped the mayor would now “work with the rest of the community to help heal the division and tension that his remarks caused over the last 16 days."

— Ann M. Simmons

Serial murder suspect Rodney James Alcala took the stand Tuesday and in a soft-spoken tone methodically asked himself detailed questions about his whereabouts the week in 1979 when 12-year-old Robin Samsoe was kidnapped from the streets of Huntington Beach and murdered.

A packed Orange County courtroom watched as Alcala, acting as his own attorney, sat in the witness stand and answered his own questions.

Alcala has twice been convicted in the girl’s murder and sentenced to death, but each conviction was ultimately overturned. With the passage of time and the development of DNA testing, detectives said they tied Alcala to the murders of four Los Angeles County women in Malibu, Santa Monica and Hollywood between 1977 and 1979.

During the monthlong trial, Alcala has repeatedly demonstrated that he is most concerned with defending himself against charges in the Samsoe case.

In the first two hours of testimony Tuesday, Alcala, dressed in a tan sports coat and jeans, asked himself a series of broad questions such as “What was the next thing you did, Mr. Alcala?” and “After that, what did you do, Mr. Alcala?”

Alcala told the jury that on June 20, 1979, the day Samsoe went missing, he went to Seal Beach to visit a friend. He testified that the friend wasn’t there so he went to a picture frame store then headed toward Sunset Beach and took photos of a young woman roller skating on the beach. From there, he went to Knott’s Berry Farm, he said.

For nearly 20 minutes Alcala told jurors how, after several years pondering in prison, he realized he could use the angle of shadows in the photos he took that day to estimate what time of day he snapped them, and thus provide an alibi.

The angle of the sun, he testified, proved that he was at the beach at 2:20 p.m. that day.

Prosecutor Matt Murphy initially objected to the testimony, saying Alcala was hardly an expert in such matters, then withdrew his objections, saying the time was not inconsistent with what prosecutors say happened that day.

According to the prosecution, Alcala approached Samsoe and a friend on the beach and took photos of them after taking photos of Lorraine Werts, the young roller skater. Samsoe disappeared soon after as she rode her bike to ballet class. Her remains were found nearly two weeks later in the Angeles National Forest.

— Paloma Esquivel

Immigrant-rights activists said they plan to take legal action against a Santa Clarita councilman, who they say has refused to apologize for declaring himself a “proud racist” and has not been censured by fellow council members.

Leaders of the Los Angeles-based Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition said Monday they plan to go to court to force the city of Santa Clarita to discipline Bob Kellar, whom they described as a “rogue councilman” and a “poster boy for divisiveness.”

The controversy stems from a Jan. 16 anti-illegal-immigration rally in Santa Clarita, where Kellar, a veteran councilman and two-time mayor, spoke. In his speech, Kellar referred to a statement by former President Theodore Roosevelt that the United States has a place for only one flag and only one language.

Kellar, a former LAPD officer, said those remarks caused some people to accuse him of being racist, to which he replied that if believing in America causes people to think he’s a racist, "then I’m a proud racist."

The councilman has said that he stands by his remarks, which he said have been misconstrued. Kellar insisted that he abhors racism. Scores of Santa Clarita residents packed the council chambers last month to voice support for Kellar.

Opponents charge that Kellar violated the city’s ethics code by not making clear that his remarks were personal and that he was not representing the city council.

“Comprehensive immigration reform provides a pathway forward; the Bob Kellars of this world would lead us down a dark pathway back to our troubling racist past,” Robert Gittelson, a member of the Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition, said in a statement.

— Ann M. Simmons

A Santa Barbara judge on Friday sentenced Jesse James Hollywood to life in prison without parole, following the recommendation made by a jury last July.

The action by Superior Court Judge Brian Hill came nearly 10 years after the kidnapping and murder of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz in West Hills.

Prosecutors argued that Hollywood was the ringleader of a convoluted plot to avenge a $1,200 drug debt owed to him by Markowitz’s older half-brother. Four other men have been convicted in the crime.

“Today’s sentence finally concludes a long and very tragic case,” said Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown. “We hope it brings some measure of closure to the Markowitz family.’’

Nicholas Markowitz was held by his captors at a Santa Barbara motel and was shot to death at a popular hiking spot in the Santa Barbara foothills. The case inspired the 2006 movie "Alpha Dog,’’ which depicted an underworld of disaffected, frequently stoned, middle-class young people in the San Fernando Valley.

In lengthy legal proceedings, attorneys for Hollywood, now 30, tried unsuccessfully to have the case dismissed, contending that prosecutor Ron Zonen had turned over confidential investigative materials to the producers. The district attorney’s office took Zonen off the case.

Facing a possible death penalty, Hollywood was on the run for five years, finally settling in the Brazilian beach town where he was arrested in 2005.

–Steve Chawkins 

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has announced another round of layoffs in an attempt to grapple with massive budget shortfalls.

The cuts include a member of the sheriff’s command staff, Assistant Sheriff Michael Hillmann, and 23 personnel staff, said Sheriff Sandra Hutchens. In addition, 15 members of the sheriff’s staff have been asked to take on extra responsibilities without pay increases to make up for the loss of personnel.

“Every laid-off individual does represent a loss of service,” Hutchens said, “but I’m doing everything I can not to impact the emergency services we provide.”

Last year, Hutchens made $28 million in cuts, including a 41% reduction in command staff and 24 layoffs, only to later find out the department would need to cut an additional $24 million in the first six months of this year.

The cuts are due to continuing declines in Proposition 172 revenues – the ½-cent sales tax that helps fund public safety in the state, Hutchens said.

[Updated at 1:33 p.m.: Hillmann, a 42-year LAPD veteran, came to the department to assist Hutchens after she was appointed in 2008 to help the department rebuild from scandal and fill out the term of Michael S. Carona, who stepped down after being indicted on federal corruption charges.

Hillmann ran into controversy early on when he was caught sending text messages mocking activists and board members during a Board of Supervisors meeting on the department’s gun permit policies. He later apologized.

Hillmann, 64, said Friday’s announcement was “bittersweet.”

“I’ve had a career,” he said. “I want to be able to save some cops.”

In addition to rebuilding the department, the new sheriff has faced a wave of increasingly drastic budget cuts, which have forced her to reorganize again and again. The picture for the future is bleak. In fiscal year 2010-11 the department expects a $60-million budget shortfall.]

— Paloma Esquival

A crackdown on massage parlors believed to be fronts for prostitution and money laundering in Lancaster has been reaping positive results, city officials said Tuesday.

Last year, 67 massage establishments were closed for violating code enforcement laws, according to Lancaster’s Code Enforcement Department, which coordinates with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Major Crimes Unit, the State Employment Development Department and other agencies.

The shuttered businesses represent a 22% drop in services offered by massage parlors and other independent ventures, officials said.

While investigating the legitimacy of the businesses, code enforcement officials said they uncovered cases of prostitution, worker’s compensation insurance fraud, unlicensed massage therapists, money laundering, illegal occupancy and other violations.

— Ann M. Simmons

As the Los Angeles City Council weighed its options to address a $208-million budget shortfall, Councilman Bernard C. Parks on Monday ordered the city’s top budget analyst to prepare a plan that could include layoffs of police officers and firefighters.

Last week, the city’s Chief Administrative Officer Miguel Santana outlined plans for the elimination of as many as 1,500 city positions, but none of those cuts were in the Police Department or the offices of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or City Council members.

Building up the city’s police force by more than 1,000 officers has been one of Villaraigosa’s top priorities and he has enjoyed support from the City Council, though that support has waned as the city’s budget crisis has deepened.

Parks pointed out that the police and fire departments make up as much as 80% of the city’s general fund budget and that without cuts in public safety, other city departments will be carrying the brunt of the city’s budget crisis.

“You may have to use the word layoff and police and fire in the same sentence just to give us an idea of what those cost savings are,” Parks told Santana. “We need to give the council the grimmest picture we have.”

Councilman Greig Smith said that when City Council members agreed to hire police officers in November, they expected that their agreement allowing 2,400 city workers to retire early would cover the cost. Instead, the city is now grappling with a tax revenue shortfall of $186 million.

“I, for one, as chairman of public safety, am never going to lay off firefighters to keep hiring cops,” Smith said.

In his budget report, Santana suggested eliminating 64 firefighter positions, but those firefighters were already expected to move to other vacancies in the field to ease overtime costs.

The suggestion that the Police Department might face reductions brought a swift response from the mayor’s office and the police union.

Matt Szabo, one of the mayor’s top deputies, noted that Villaraigosa’s office has advanced a wide array of options for City Council consideration, including renegotiating salaries and benefits with labor unions, additional early retirements of city workers, consolidation of city departments and seeking private operators for the convention center, golf courses, parking garages and the Los Angeles Zoo.

“Solving this crisis is going to require the city to significantly refocus its resources on core priorities, and cutting the Police Department is not a priority that the mayor shares,” Szabo said.

The head of the city police officers union said reducing the size of the LAPD would be shortsighted, especially since the larger force has helped reduce violent crime in the city to levels not seen for decades.

 “It makes you wonder what they’re thinking,” said Paul Weber, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League. “Keep in mind, we were cut last year by over $130 million. We’ve gotten to the point where we’re not even buying new police cars anymore.”

— Maeve Reston and Phil Willon reporting from City Hall 

Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris drew criticism from a leading Muslim group today after saying in his annual State of the City address that the high desert town was “growing a Christian community.”

"We’re growing a Christian community, and don’t let anybody shy away from that,” Parris told the audience of ministers gathered for his address.

“I need [Lancaster residents] standing up and saying we’re a Christian community, and we’re proud of that," the mayor said.

The Greater Los Angeles area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations denounced the statement and said it plans to file a complaint about the mayor’s remarks with the civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department.

“Elected officials should not use their public positions to impose their religious beliefs on others," said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of CAIR.

The mayor, reached by telephone today, said his remarks did not intend to impose his faith on others, and he said he would make no apology. 

“This is just about very few people wanting to get their 15 minutes of fame,” he said. “I guess they got it.” 

 — Garrett Therolf