Bobbi Murray

AFTER A DECADE OF STOP-AND-START REFORM, of investigative commissions, a court-imposed consent decree and, most recently, the debate over whom the mayor should name as the city's new LAPD chief, the natural questions arise: Are things getting better or worse in the LAPD? Are police-abuse levels going up or down?......

Photos by Anne Fishbein WHEN PRODUCTION DESIGNER BRENT SWIFT WAS breaking into Hollywood, mentored by the designer who created the Bantha in The Empire Strikes Back, he never guessed that 25 years later he'd be leading his own political struggle against forces he feels are as formidable as the Evil......

As Angelenos contemplate civic surgery this fall, two questions are in order: Just who are these North-of-Mulholland crabgrass populists pushing secession, and what do they really want? Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment (VOTE), the noisy homeowner-business coalition behind the breakaway plot, officially formed in 1996. But leading members of the......

After lagging behind other law-enforcement agencies that routinely give polygraph tests to potential recruits, the Los Angeles Police Department started using lie-detector tests to screen recruits in February. One month later, the LAPD is faced with some eyebrow-raising statistics: Out of 59 candidates, 29 failed to show up for the......

Challenger Steve Cooley enjoys an anyone-but--Gil Garcetti mood in his race for Los Angeles County district attorney. The incumbent’s disapproval rating is up around 70 percent. His greatest asset: ”Steve Cooley is the un-Garcetti,“ said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, political commentator and senior associate at the School of Politics and Economics......

The 74,000 Los Angeles County home-care workers who feed, bathe and give medicines to the infirm and elderly who might otherwise be hospitalized are among the lowest-paid such workers in the state. And that‘s with a union contract. Even when the Board of Supervisors bumped wages up 50 cents an......

A televised police pursuit of a stolen car last week ended in a head-on collision when the driver went the wrong way on the Century Freeway. The crash critically injured the suspect, his passenger and three others in the oncoming car, prompting the obvious question: Why would police think it......

Photo by Ted Soqui A new L.A. city government department set up to run neighborhood councils, once touted as a link between far-flung communities and City Hall, is under fire these days. The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) came on the scene in January as part of the city-charter reform......

A 23-year-old jewelry vendor fatally shot by an off-duty Los Angeles Police Department officer on April 26 had only a trace amount of alcohol in his blood. Ruben Renteria Gonzalez, 23, had approached Officer Jose Cortez Amaya as he was having lunch on the patio at Lucy‘s Mexican Restaurant in......

Photo by Ted Soqui A 911 call made by an off-duty Los angeles police officer moments after he shot a man who tried to sell him jewelry at a restaurant in Lynwood raises questions about the official version of events. The timing of the call contradicts the Sheriff’s Department news......