Recently in Los Angeles Category

By CHRISTINA VILLACORTE
City News Service
The architect of the successful Summer Night Lights program was named today as Los Angeles' new anti-gang czar, tasked with overseeing the city's gang prevention and intervention programs.

Guillermo Cespedes will take over the mayor's Office of Gang Reduction and Youth
Development, replacing the Rev. Jeff Carr, who will become Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's chief of staff effective Sept. 19.

Cespedes is credited with developing the Summer Night Lights program, which in its
first year helped the city record its safest summer in more than 30 years. The program kept 16 parks across the city open until midnight, providing at-risk youths with organized activities aimed at keeping them out of gangs.

Those organized activities included basketball and soccer tournaments; workshops in
acting, dance, hip-hop, fashion, T-shirt printing, music and make- up design; and film screenings. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has praised the program as an "innovative approach to crime fighting."

According to the mayor's office, Cespedes' career in community service spans three decades. During the 1970s, he worked with various agencies helping low-income families and disenfranchised youth in Connecticut. He moved to California in 1981, and over the years has worked with agencies such as Clinica de la Raza, Oakland Children's Hospital, the East Bay Agency for Children and CalWorks.

In 2003, Cespedes served as the deputy director of the Summer of Success Baldwin Village, keeping Jim Gilliam Park busy with sports tournaments and family activities until 2 a.m. during the summer months. It became the model for the Summer Night Lights program.
From 2005 through 2007, Cespedes taught in the African Studies Department at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Cespedes has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Sacred Heart University and a Masters in Social Work from Columbia University. He also received post- graduate training from the Nathan Akerman Family Institute, Bronx State Hospital Family Studies Unit and Bristol Hospital Family Unit.

A native of Cuba, Cespedes has lived in South Los Angeles since 1999.

Former Daily Breeze staff photographer Branimir Kvartuc, who now freelances and does lots of other amazing things, was outside Staples Center last night chronicling fans' reactions to their favorite basketball team. It starts out harmless enough with the gold and purple jersey wearing smiling and pumping fists in the air. Police Chief William Bratton is even seen looking relaxed and smiliing.

Of course, as night falls and the team clinches its victory, the celebrating takes an ominous turn. Officers' faces, partially obscured by their riot helmets, look serious as they stand in smoke from small fires set by the crowd and hold back the group. The mini mart inside a gas station is trashed as people loot and someone else is captured hurling a trash can at a patrol car.

Yeah, good times. Woo-hoo. Way to go.

Losers.

When all was done, eight officers were injured and 18 people were arrested.

A man who didn't disclose during jury questioning that he was a convicted of a crime was arrested, and could face 10 years in prison. According to the District Attorney's Office:

LOS ANGELES - A former juror accused of twice lying under oath is due to be arraigned this morning on charges of perjury, the District Attorney's Office announced.

Manuel Basulto Soto, 52 (dob 2/28/56), is expected to be arraigned in Department 30 of the Foltz Criminal Justice Center. He was charged in a felony complaint for arrest warrant Jan. 21 with one count each of perjury by declaration and perjury under oath, said Deputy District Attorney Amy Pellman Pentz of the Justice System Integrity Division. The complaint also alleges a 1981 felony conviction for arson.

Soto, who was arrested yesterday by investigators of the District Attorney's Bureau of Investigation, is being held on $100,000 bail. He is charged in case No. BA351577.

Soto was a juror on a murder case in March 2008 when he allegedly committed perjury in his juror application and in his voir dire before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Pounders. Voir dire is the process of in-court questioning of jurors by judges and attorneys to narrow the pool of eligible jurors.

In his juror application, Soto purportedly failed to disclose his criminal past. Later, during voir dire, he continued to deny his involvement in any criminal matters when questioned by Judge Pounders, prosecutors said.

After learning about the defendant's alleged perjury, Judge Pounders dismissed Soto from jury duty - before the murder case reached the trial phase - and referred the matter to the District Attorney's Office.

If convicted as charged, Soto faces a maximum state prison term of 10 years.

Today's story, L.A. puts brakes on take-home car use, caught my attention because I had a conversation last week with a Los Angeles Police Department detective about this issue. I'm offering this just as another perspective on the issue that was not mentioned in the article - not as any kind of opinion:

The detective said that when he is called to an emergency from home, he has to first go to the station and pick up a police car because he doesn't have a drive-home city vehicle. He gets called out to investigations all over the city and says he loses a lot of time doing the car swap. The city will not let officers use their personal cars to drive to work, so this is a must.

From City News Service:

LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Unannounced searches of Los Angeles County probationers and their homes netted about 100 weapons and $245,000 in illegal drugs and resulted in 132 arrests in the month of December, Supervisor Michael Antonovich announced today.

The DISARM Program -- Developing Increased Safety through Arms Reduction Management -- is aimed at keeping probationers from committing new crimes by subjecting them to spot checks.

Since its inception in February 2000, the program has resulted in 10,446 arrests and the seizure of 4,856 weapons and more than $306 million in illegal drugs.

Ten percent of probationers in the program have been found in violation of the terms of their probation, Antonovich said.

The supervisor pushed for the program's creation in the wake of an attack carried out by white supremacist parolee Buford Furrow, who shot and wounded five people at a Jewish daycare center in Granada Hills before killing a Filipino-American mail carrier on Aug. 10, 1999