Jeffrey Anderson

Cardinal Roger Mahony has been admonished by a national lay-Catholic review board for his hardball legal tactics in the clergy sex-abuse scandal. Without singling out Mahony, the board also urged all pedophile-priest-concealing bishops to resign. Mahony, by his own admission, has protected such priests, and he is in no rush......

The National Review Board of lay Catholics released a report last week that detected “the smoke of Satan” in the Catholic Church. The board, of course, was referring to pedophile priests and morally bankrupt bishops. But where the hell did the term come from, and what does it mean? Students......

Journalists covering the clergy sex-abuse scandal have dogged the Catholic hierarchy from Boston to Phoenix, but the Los Angeles Times has skirted around Cardinal Roger Mahony and helped him craft his own public image. With the criminal and civil justice system favoring secrecy in examining charges that Mahony has concealed......

AP/Wide World Photos If she had never met the Rev. George Neville Rucker — had her mother never welcomed the priest into the family’s home — Jackie Dennis might still be singing in the choir at St. Agatha’s parish. Instead, on the rare Sunday she attends Mass, she sits alone......

Patricia Surjue sits on a bench outside the 16th floor courtroom of U.S. District Judge James Otero, feverishly jotting down notes. It is Tuesday morning, and today is her opportunity to voice objection to a secret settlement thrust upon her last October by Otero and her own attorneys in a......

Photo by Anne Fishbein Ask District Attorney Steve Cooley if he has concerns about how the Inglewood Police Department handled persistent charges of misconduct on the part of former Officer Jeremy Morse, and he’ll shrug and say, “Internal Affairs wasn’t real conscientious. Or they hadn’t gotten around to it. But......

Photos by Ted Soqui Moments before she surrenders to authorities, Vanessa Scott clutches a small backpack in a dank basement hallway of Kern County Superior Court in Bakersfield. She fights back tears, waiting to be taken to Lerdo Detention Facility for 30 days on a two-bit welfare-fraud charge. Her husband,......

The fatal shooting by a New York police officer of 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury Jr. in Brooklyn early last Saturday prompted New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to visit the scene — a rooftop in Bedford- Stuyvesant. “There appears to be no justification for the shooting,” Kelly, the city’s top-ranking cop,......

Photo by Ted Soqui Terrell Sherrills had big ears and hazel eyes. He loved to dance. And he loved women. Of the five archetypes of human imagination, Terrell was The Lover. The 18-year-old from Watts — son of peace activist Aqeela Sherrills — was fatally shot by someone who crashed......

Fired Inglewood Police Officer Jeremy Morse appears to be District Attorney Steve Cooley’s problem for now, as prosecutors prepare to retry him on brutality charges in the videotaped beating of teenager Donovan Jackson. Critical mistakes by prosecutors ended with a hung jury last July. But Morse is also Inglewood’s problem......