Michael Lee, L.A. Rec and Parks Employee, Allegedly Stole 800 Gallons From City Pumps; $6.9 Million in Gas Still Missing

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NOAH PATRICK PFARR
As if city leaders aren't doing the same.
So the LAPD just nabbed one (allegedly) conniving city employee on suspicion of "stealing more than 800 gallons of gasoline over a three month period of time" and selling it on the black market.

Michael Anthony Lee, a 12-year veteran of the Department of Recreation and Parks who worked at the Algin Sutton Recreation Center, was jailed along with L.A. resident Shane Anthony Gansterer yesterday.

But what about the $6.9 million in taxpayer-funded city gas that remains unaccounted for?

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LAPD Capt. Covered Patrol Car's Plate With Tape to Avoid Tolls, Lawsuit Claims

Categories: Above the Law

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Frederic Poirot
If you've ever felt like cops live by their own rules and laugh at you law-abiding peons, there's perhaps a little truth to the notion. At least -- allegedly -- sometimes.

And you know when an LAPD supervisor steps forward to say at least one lawman acted like the rules don't apply to him, there's got to be a little truth to it. Allegedly.

An LAPD whistleblower's lawsuit claims that a captain was less-than-legal on the road:

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Kelly Thomas Beating Video: 'Dad, They're Killing Me'

Categories: Above the Law

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Kelly Thomas.
Read complete coverage of the beating and trial from our sister publication OC Weekly.

Gut-wrenching security video of the Kelly Thomas beating by Fullerton police was aired in court today.

Officer Manuel Anthony Ramos faced charges of second degree murder and involuntary manslaughter; Corporal Jay Cicinelli, a former LAPD cop, was charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Warning: Video, after the jump, is graphic and hard to stomach:

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L.A. Fire Department's Public-Information Blackout: Is Withholding Response Times, Addresses Even Legal?

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Flickr
Chief Cummings with the mayor.
Update: "LA.'s top free-speech attorney says LAFD Chief Brian Cummings' media blackout is illegal and self-serving. And the department scrambles to make sense of its own rules.

It was terrifying enough when L.A. Fire Department Chief Brian L. Cummings recently admitted to lying about his department's emergency response times to L.A. City Hall, leading to more dangerous cuts for LAFD.

But the worst possible thing he could do, now that taxpayers have learned that their firefighters are only meeting the national response-time standard 60 percent of the time, is cram the concerning data in a file cabinet and swallow the key.

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Teflon Sheriff Lee Baca's Latest Problem: Sgt. Timothy Cooper, Who's Alleged to Have Pointed Gun at Fellow Lawman

Categories: Above the Law

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ACLU of Southern California
As if Sheriff Lee Baca needs more stress (not that he ever appears to feel it), reports today have outed a sheriff's sergeant alleged to have pointed a gun at a fellow law enforcer while on-duty.

Stupid b-movies about crime fighters almost always seem to feature a locker-room / squad room scene in which cops duke it out and / or pull a gun. But this shit is real, at least according to the Los Angeles Times and WitnessLA.com.

Not only that, but the outlets report that the copper in question, Timothy Cooper, is a reputed member of a law enforcement gang. Really:

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Remington Orr, Sheriff's Custody Assistant, Arrested After Allegedly Trying to Smuggle, Sell Cocaine Behind Bars

Categories: Above the Law

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Update on Wednesday: He pleaded not guilty.

As if embattled Sheriff Lee Baca needed another headline about an employee gone-bad, department officials today said they arrested one of their own trying to enter the Men's Central Jail with cocaine.

Remington Orr was arrested at 7:30 last night -- get this -- "as he was preparing to enter Men's Central Jail to distribute cocaine."

So goes the allegation in a statement just released by sheriff's officials:

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Devin Petelski's Death in Crash With LAPD Prompted $5 Million City Settlement: Cops Appeared to Lie

Categories: Above the Law

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Petelski.
The case of Devin Petelski vs. the LAPD came to a quiet end last year. The 25-year-old was killed when her BMW was T-boned by an LAPD cruiser on Venice Boulevard on the night Oct. 15, 2009.

Her family sued the department, alleging that the officer behind the wheel was speeding with no emergency lights on when the black-and-white hit her BMW shortly before midnight near Venice High School.

The city settled with her relatives for ...

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L.A. City Controller Wendy Greuel Finally Gets to Grit of Housing Authority Probe: Its Profitable 'Non-Profits'

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KCET
L.A. Housing Authority (center) gets roasted by City Controller (top right).
Through the end of 2011, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) received a thorough spanking from press and politicians alike.

L.A. City Controller Wendy Greuel scrambled to play catchup with an Earth-shaking investigation by local news station KCET -- revealing swanky dinners, limo rides and overflowing gift baskets at an insulated city department.

And even now that HACLA's top dog has been replaced amid the controversy (for a second freaking time), Greuel refuses to quit. It almost seems HACLA has become her grand finale of a pet project...

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L.A. Housing Authority Handed Out Over $500K in 'Performance' Bonuses in 2 Years

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KCET
So we paid Ken Simmons an extra $25K per year for a "no comment"?
Update: "L.A. City Controller Wendy Greuel Finally Gets to Grit of Housing Authority Probe: Its Profitable 'Non-Profits'."

The rap sheet for taxpayer-money-hungry execs at the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles just keeps getting longer.

Over the last year, KCET reporters for "SoCal Connected" have ripped the blinds off the HACLA executive offices. First, in spring, we found out that former CEO Rudy Montiel had been throwing around his city credit card on $400 lunches and the like -- the cherry atop a $450,000 salary. (He was fired when the scandal broke, and later handed $1.2 million by HACLA's Board of Commissioners so he wouldn't blow the whistle on them, too. Double sketch.) Then, this winter, KCET finally obtained documents showing Montiel's underlings had similarly spent hundreds of thousands on travel, meals and gifts. All the expenditures were approved by...

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Roderick Wright, Inglewood Senator Accused of Sexual Harassment, Pays Woman $120K in State Money to Shut Up: Report

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Bakersfield Now
OK, ew.
The most infuriating part about the California State Senate's reported $120,000 payout on behalf of Senator Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood) last year -- just now revealed by the Los Angeles Times -- is that officials are treating it like nothing out of the ordinary.

Wright was accused by former aide district coordinator Fahizah Alim of sexual harassment in the workplace.

A spokeswoman for Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) tells the Times that such secrecy is the norm for "personnel issues" like Wright's.

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Teflon Sheriff Lee Baca's Inmates Should go Home Instead of Building $1 Billion Replacement For Men's Central Jail, ACLU Says

Categories: Above the Law

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David Markland
The Teflon Sheriff.
Lee Baca's L.A. County Jail system, the largest in the nation, has been a large shop of horrors according to those inmates and even visitors who accuse deputies of beating them unnecessarily.

Now Baca is proposing to tear down Men's Central Jail and start over with a $1 billion redux. That's serious money, even for the deep pockets of Los Angeles County government. (Some on the Board of Supervisors want Baca to put it on the ballot if he wants it so bad).

The ACLU, for one, says if you don't rebuild it, prisoners won't come. Or something like that:

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Teflon Sheriff Lee Baca Has a Shadow Leader in Paul Tanaka, Report Says: Jail Beating Problems Lead Back to Him?

Categories: Above the Law

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LASD / WitnessLA
Tanaka.
The decade-long accusations of unjust inmate beatings by deputies at the L.A. County Jail has only recently caught the attention of the man we call the Teflon Sheriff, Lee Baca.

We had our doubts when the elected lawman said he really didn't know what was going on in the nation's largest jail system: Headlines have been coming at him since the dawn of the millennium.

But a new report in the website WitnessLA states that Baca is kept away from bad news like Michael Jackson in a Holmby Hills mansion, and that the jails have been run mainly by his right-hand yes man:

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Occupy L.A. Demonstrators Policed With Help of Private Security Known Downtown as 'The Shirts:' LAPD Says That's Not 'Typical'

Categories: Above the Law

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YouTube
LAPD gets an assist from purple-shirt-wearing security guards at an Occupy demonstration.
Updated at the bottom with comments from Commander Andrew Smith, who says private security guards often work with police downtown but that a skirmish line with cops might have been out of the ordinary. First posted at 7:02 a.m.

In video of a police confrontation with Occupy L.A. protesters outside a Bank of America branch downtown over the weekend a few private security guards are seen, batons-in-hand, helping the LAPD form a skirmish line.

In fact officers can be seen pushing security guards into strategic positions as they face off against the so-called 99-percenters. The security employees push people back with batons and aim the business ends of the weapons at citizens. At least one guard even appears to participate in the arrest of demonstrator Anthony Loscano.

What gives? Did the LAPD just deputize a group of civilians? LAPD Lt. Andy Neiman tells the Weekly:

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Teflon Sheriff Lee Baca's Inmate Beatings Problem Puts Him in Hot Seat as County Commission on Jail Violence Meets

Categories: Above the Law

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David Markland
Lee Baca.
We call him the Teflon Sheriff because despite a decade's worth of allegations that deputies sometimes allegedly beat L.A. County Jail inmates (and visitors) for no good reason, Lee Baca keeps getting reelected by you, the people.

Well, that nonstick coating will be put to the test this week as the County Board of Supervisors' Citizens Commission on Jail Violence gets to work looking into the accusations that Baca has only recently acknowledged.

The commission can't fire Baca, but it's made up of some tough characters, and if we were the county's top cop, we'd be a little scared:

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Congress Insider Trading: California Senators and 19 U.S. Representatives from L.A. Respond (or Don't) to 60 Minutes Scandal

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NorCal's Nancy Pelosi finds nothing shady about her convenient investment in Visa.
As we learned on "60 Minutes" last night, many of the politicians we've elected to U.S. Congress have clearly been using their backdoor V.I.P. passes to gather exclusive intel on when to buy and sell stocks, bonds and commodities.

For anyone else, insider trading is illegal. But Washington's elite have simultaneously avoided passing any laws to hold themselves accountable. After reviewing the trade history of several suspicious congressmen and -women, CBS News named a handful of names last night -- apparent abusers of this privilege.

None who represent L.A. County, though. So we decided to ask all 19 senators and representatives ourselves. Below are their answers...

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Teen Cellphone Photos, Texts, Contacts Being Searched at School: ACLU of SoCal Says It's Illegal

Categories: Above the Law

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ACLU
Those pesky bleeding-heart liberals at the ACLU actually want teachers and school administrators to keep out of your kids' cellphones.

A report issued by the ACLU of Southern California lists some anecdotal evidence that school authorities are searching the contents of students' phones when they're confiscated.

Fine, you say. But some of that information ...

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Capt. Daniel Cruz, Relieved of Duty Amid Sheriff's Jail Beating Scandal, Was Present During Deputies' Night Club Brawl -- Report

Categories: Above the Law

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So after years of ignorance and denial, Sheriff Lee Baca only recently acknowledged that -- yes -- deputies beat people, sometimes even visitors, in his L.A. County Jail.

Now comes word that Capt. Daniel Cruz has been relieved of duty as part of the department's internal investigation into the beatings.

Fall guy or bad guy? Journalist Celeste Fremon has unearthed some dirt on Cruz, and it ain't pretty:

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Lee Baca's Jail Beating Problem Gets Watchdog With Teeth: Fellow Top Cop Jim McDonnell

Categories: Above the Law

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Jim McDonnell from his LAPD days.
Sheriff Lee Baca has the FBI and the ACLU breathing down his neck over the alleged beatings of inmates (and even visitors) at his L.A. County jails.

Now the omnipotent if not low-profile County Supervisors seem to be in a pissing contest to see who can appoint the bigger hard ass to its Citizen's Commission on Jail Violence. Supervisor Gloria Molina showed her cards earlier this week: Her pick would be former state Supreme Court associate justice Carlos R. Moreno.

Not to be outdone, Supervisor Don Knabe upped the ante today with ...

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Lee Baca's Jail-Beating Problems to Get New Oversight From Judge Carlos R. Moreno

Categories: Above the Law

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Judge Carlos R. Moreno.
The county's top cop is about to get a new boss -- Judge Carlos R. Moreno, who was appointed to the Citizen's Commission on Jail Violence.

County Supervisor Gloria Molina today announced the appointment to the body that was formed "in response to allegations that Sheriff's Deputies working in county custody facilities engaged in unnecessary use of force--and that complaints about such behavior were systematically downplayed, ignored, or covered up."

Of course, Sheriff Lee Baca, who for years has seemed impervious to the allegations, really has only one boss:

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Lee Baca's Top Sheriff's Department Brass Had Issued Warnings About Deputies Beating Inmates

Categories: Above the Law

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David Markland
Lee Baca, under fire.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca claimed recently he wasn't aware of the inmate-beating issues at his jails, even though they've been generating headlines since the late 1990s.

Over the weekend the Los Angeles Times pulled that excuse out from under him.

The paper reported that it got its hands on documents that pretty much prove that ...

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