One thing kept the single most ridiculous police operation in the history of Los Angeles and Ventura counties from also being the funniest: An innocent man was killed. Now comes the final somber punch line to the Trail‘s End Ranch case: a bill to taxpayers for $5 million.You’ve heard similar stories: Police suspect a drug […]
Month: July 2018
Bad Conduct
It‘s a miserable LAPD practice that antedates Jack Webb and Dragnet, and it’s at least as antiquated: sending cops in civvies to entrap and entice men who like other men by posing as like-minded persons.But the Los Angeles Police Department — perpetually proclaiming itself short of law-enforcement personnel and now embroiled in a spreading and […]
God, the Mayor and Bernard Parks
The mayor once told us to thank ”dear God“ for Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks; as I recall, however, he forgot at the time to tell us why.But most of us realize that it isn‘t God we really have to thank for Bernie Parks. It’s Dick Riordan himself.So it was certainly appropriate for the […]
The Last Stand
The plaintiffs opposing Playa Vista this time around are called the Grassroots Coalition, Earthways Foundation and Spirit of the Sage Council. The last is, according to the filing, unincorporated. The Coalition, Foundation and Council‘s action, termed in its press release a “lawsuit,” was actually a petition for writ of mandate. In this case, this means […]
Daily Drips
”Tapping Toilet Water“ was the Hearst-like headline in the Daily News. It was both an attention grabber and a blatant falsehood in terms of what the story was about, which was something called the East Valley Water Recycling Project. This is our Department of Water and Power‘s planned dumping of some tertiary-treated sewage water into […]
Frittering Away
I can’t tell you exactly how many hours dribbled away in the process, but it was too many. There was a two-hour committee meeting early this month, and then another committee meeting that was shorter because almost no one attended. Then there was the 90-minute council-meeting debate and passage on Tuesday last week, through which […]
Victims of Prosperity
You won’t ever see a much happier crowd than the hundreds of nattily dressed people who sat in sunny Plummer Park late last month, celebrating a victory of a sort. The people were home health-care workers, and they were hearing our governor, Gray Davis, exultantly proclaiming how he was bringing them into the gladsome realm […]
Waving the Waiver
The Times columnist (this was more than a year ago) was trying to prove how much East Los Angeles needed the largest possible new County USC Medical Center. So he went down to a clinic adjoining the old hospital and spoke to some people standing in line to get inside. They said: If only the […]
Doctor’s Orders
One of the most senior doctor-professors at the county‘s Martin Luther King Jr. Medical CenterCharles Drew University Medical School has been accused, in a union grievance, of ordering faculty physicians to work, sometimes without pay, in his own private clinic.A top county Department of Health Services official acknowledged the grievance this week, and assured the […]
Sucker Among the Sharks
Never give a sucker an even break.–W.C. Fields, 1926Moments after the release last week of Los Angeles Unified School District auditor Don Mullinax‘s latest 600-plus-page report on the Belmont Learning Complex shipwreck, cynics were digging in their claws.This, one said, was exactly what you get when you give a bean counter subpoena power. Our own […]