Marc B. Haefele

Every police-chief confirmation I’ve seen in this city has been a ceremony of anticipation. Last Friday‘s was something more: It also evoked the failed hopes in three past police chiefs -- Daryl Gates, Willie Williams and Bernie Parks -- and threw them onto the willing shoulders of 54-year-old William Bratton......

President George W. Bush’s court order opening the shuttered West Coast ports was either a good or bad thing, depending on whether you talked to the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) or the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). The order ended the management lockout of 10,500 dockworkers in 29 Pacific......

LAPD Chief-Apparent Bill Bratton talked a lot and talked tough last week, and he seemed to be saying what everyone wanted to hear. He said his new department was slack and inefficient. He told LAPD consent-decree dissidents, who not long ago were extremely vocal, to get out. He said he......

Here‘s a friendly hint for LAPD-chief candidates John Timoney and Bill Bratton. Assuming you really do want the highest-paying job in Los Angeles, it’s bad taste to be caught staying at the state‘s most notorious anti-union hotel. Let alone being followed there and interviewed by L.A. Times reporters. I mean,......

LAST WEEKEND, WHILE THE OP-ED BATTLE DRUMS beat ever louder, George W. Bush finally called the United Nations chicken for not endorsing his war plans against Iraq. Naturally, I took refuge among the World Federalists, whose local chapter was meeting at the local center of the Ba'hai faith -- itself......

CITY GOVERNMENT SANK INTO TROPICAL lassitude during the council's recent summer recess. But in one critical area, things actually sped up: Would-be council candidates were scurrying to roust signatures for their initial filings for the 2003 election. The new haste is because next year's city primary comes in March instead......

THE HEADWATERS OF MOST LOS ANGELES COUNTY police reporting is a very small pond known as the Norman "Jake" Jacoby Press Room. Named for a legendary City News Service police reporter who retired a decade ago, it sits to the rear of the first floor of Parker Center, the 40-year-old,......

LAST WEEK NOT ONLY DID THE COUNTY of Los Angeles resolve to close 11 public and four school clinics belonging to its Department of Health Services, reduce beds in one hospital and cut immunizations for more than 80,000 children. It also decided, on grounds that it was improving the urban......

Photo by Debra DiPaolo FOR A WHILE LAST YEAR, I SEEMED TO RUN into former District Attorney Gil Garcetti every week. He was hyperactive in his son Eric's successful campaign for the City Council, and wherever Eric, a dogged campaigner, turned up, so did Gil, his top adviser. On one......