Charles Rappleye

What if a cop kicks a gangbanger‘s ass in a seedy hotel in the Rampart division and there’s nobody but his homies and more cops to hear him scream? Does the beating really happen? Legally speaking, no, at least not according to Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, whose......

A curious thread of nostalgia ran through the ceremony this week at the Los Angeles Police Academy when William J. Bratton, the Boston cop already dubbed “Hollywood Bill,” formally took the reins of the LAPD. Stepping to a podium flanked by the department band, a color guard and a squad......

What a difference a plea makes. Just last week federal regulators were scratching their heads and wondering if there was any way to prove that Enron had manipulated the California energy market. Then former Enron energy trader Tim Beldon pleaded guilty to the criminal charge of conspiracy to commit wire......

For much of the past decade, Madeline Janis-Aparicio has been standing on the outside, pushing local government and developers in Los Angeles to provide better pay and working conditions to the city’s working poor. Now she‘s been invited to join the power players on the inside. Pending expected confirmation by......

Courtesy The Koplin Gallery LAST SEPTEMBER GARY WIGODSKY, an earnest, sometimes smoldering defense lawyer, arrived on the 15th floor of the Criminal Courts Building downtown with a sheaf of six new cases under his arm. Close to a hundred convictions had already been thrown out as part of the spiraling......

District Attorney Steve Cooley wasted little time answering calls for justice after the videotaped beating of a 16-year-old by an Inglewood cop. He referred the case to a criminal grand jury in a matter of hours, citing ”the lessons from Rampart.“ But attorneys for victims of rogue Rampart Division officers......

In the days after his incendiary video sparked protests in Inglewood and outcry across the nation, itinerant disc jockey Mitchell Crooks was seeking finder’s fees from media outlets and intervention by the county District Attorney‘s Office to erase an outstanding warrant for his arrest on past criminal convictions. That strategy......

For three weeks this spring, at the behest of District Attorney Steve Cooley, the county grand jury took extensive testimony from a clutch of top police officials in an effort to at last get to the bottom of the Rampart scandal. But rather than produce a definitive report on LAPD......

Is there any place on the planet where prisoners in the War on Terror can get a hearing on the merits of their detention? The U.S. government has asserted in several federal courtrooms that the answer is no. The Coalition of Clergy, Lawyers and Professors, an ad hoc group representing......

The millionaires who operate Staples Center tried the back door, attending league meetings to win assurances of a team and possible Super Bowl dates, but they dropped out at the first sign of public opposition. The board of the L.A Memorial Coliseum tried the front door, announcing plans to spend......