Sal LaBarbera sees dead bodies. Driving from Watts to USC — up Central Avenue, west over on 83rd, up Figueroa — the LAPD homicide detective can envision the slain bodies of his cases. Hundreds of them. Hell, no, thousands of them. "There is not a street, not a corner, from......
There probably were more ex-convicts with knockout punches gathered outside a Watts Baptist church at 114th Street and Graham Avenue recently than there were in all the gyms in Los Angeles that day. The hard hitters — Bounty Hunter Bloods from Nickerson Gardens housing project — were convened at......
Asked if being poor, black and gay hurt him at the start of his career, author James Baldwin famously replied that his situation "was so outrageous ... you had to find a way to use it." Deshawn Cole knows outrageous and he, too, is trying to make the most of......
After it happened, it didn't make much of a media splash. A few lines on the Los Angeles Times website, a 13-second spot on local TV news. Nothing on the bl...
Last Friday was a festive day at City Hall and inside City Council chambers. Native American Indians were chanting and talking about being the original people o...
Carlos "Stoney" Velasquez receives a visitor on the fourth floor of the Twin Tower Jail, an area so secure it's used by just one inmate at a time. Velasquez...
Manuel Ramirez's bloodied body lay on the grimy Sixth Street sidewalk, partly obscured by a La Opinión newspaper rack, which would feature the Guatemalan-bo...
Betty Day doesn’t take shit from anyone. She’d tell off Obama if he pissed her off. Hell, she’d cuss out Putin in a heartbeat while walking the streets of Moscow at midnight. That’s Betty Day, the godmother of the Jordan Downs. At a weekly Monday-morning meeting of the Watts......
LeChein Taylor took out a cell phone and called his brother Bo. Bo Taylor, founder of the gang-prevention, intervention and life-skills program Unity One, didn’t pick up. His machine came on: “This is Bo, text me or leave a message.” Bo wasn’t far away — his body lay in a......
Around 7:30 on Friday night, the crew at the EZ Lube on Highland and Melrose lined up and started cheering. Three of them pulled out cameras and started taking shots like paparazzi. A fleet of SUVs filled with very tall men had pulled up across the street at Osteria Mozza......
