February 2008 Archives
A good meal for a hell of a good cause. Come out if you can.
(Saturday, March 1)
CANOGA PARK — A local restaurant will hold a 12-hour fundraiser Saturday for the families of fallen LAPD Officer Randal Simmons and critically wounded Officer James Veenstra.
The California Pizza Kitchen restaurant located in the Westfield Topanga Plaza will donate 20 percent of some of the proceeds to the families from all dine-in and takeout orders between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m.
Simmons was killed and Veenstra wounded in a shootout with a Winnetka man who had earlier killed his father and two brothers. The man was later killed by police.
The Westfield Topanga Plaza is located at 6600 Topanga Canyon Blvd. in Canoga Park.
A takeover robbery was reported last night at 7:30 in the 11600 Riverside Drive in North Hollywood. The suspect wearing a ski mask and gloves holding a pistol approached owners leaving the pharmacy and forced them back inside. The suspect tied the victims hands and forced them to give him narcotics and cash. The suspect then fled through a side door in an unknown direction.
Police reported a fatal traffic collision at 11:40 last night at Ventura Boulevard and Blue Canyon Drive. A Toyota Corolla was westbound on Ventura, crossed over into the eastbound lanes and became involved in head-on collision with a 2008 Honda Civic. One person died at Cedars Hospital. The second person suffered no injuries but his passenger suffered a broken leg.
A home invasion robbery was reported at 6:30 last night in the 6000 block of DeSoto Avenue in Woodland Hills. A female victim was walking into her apartment when a Latino man with a knife approached from behind, forced the door open and began choking her. The suspect demanded money and the victim, out of fear, complied and gave the suspect money. There were no injuries.
From the NYTimes:
For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.
Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.
The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.
Also, here's the link to the Pew Center for the States.
LAPD has purchased a block of Internet domain names and is looking to expand.
LAPDTV, LAPDtube, you get the point.
There's no immediate plans out there but head of the department's communications Mary Grady, a former television reporter said she eventually hopes the department can broadcast a 30-minute newscast. Already, the LAPD has it's own blog _ where it likes to promote itself, respond to criticism and of course spread the 411.
So from the agency that brought you Dragnet and Adam-12, may come a whole new cybercop.
The news grinds on ... A home invasion robbery was reported at 6:30 last night in the 6000 block of DeSoto
Avenue in Woodland Hills. A female victim was walking into her apartment when a Latino man with a knife approached from behind, forced the door open and began choking her. The suspect demanded money and the victim, out of fear, complied and gave the suspect money. There were no injuries.
Brandon covers a strange mix of stories - including whatever happens at night. Often, that means crime in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. Please feel free to contact Brandon about anything scary, funny or otherwise unusual you've seen or heard.
From the police blotter this morning ...
Someone held up a pizza deliveryman last night at 8:30 in the 5200 block of Corteen Place in Valley Village. The suspects approached the victim as he got into vehicle after delivering a pizza. The suspect produced a gun and stated, "Give me your money, mother(explitive)." The victim, in fear, complied and the suspect ran away.
A robbery was reported at 2:55 p.m. yesterday at MacClay and Foothill Boulevard north of the city of San Fernando. Two suspects approached the victim standing on the sidewalk outside a liquor store. The suspects demanded money. The victim refused and suspects began to beat him. The victim was stabbed in the chest with a knife. The suspects took the victim's wallet. The victim was treated at Olive View Medical Center and listed in stable condition.
We have the scoop this morning from the LAPD's North Hollywood Division about a series of raids on Vineland Boys gang members, the ones you may recall were responsible for the shootout in 2003 that left rookie Burbank Officer Matthew Pavelka dead and wounded his partner Gregory Campbell. I bet the gangsters are wishing they had chosen a lower-profile enterprise.
NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Nearly 200 cops blitzed the North Hollywood area this morning, arresting nine suspected members of the Vineland Boys gang on narcotics and gun possession charges in an operation dubbed 'Wild Card,' a detective said this morning.LAPD Metro officers, gang cops, and school police fanned out during pre-dawn raids at 15 homes mostly in the North Hollywood area where the Vineland Boys claim as their turf, police said.
Wild Card is the police department's effort to challenge a particularly active and violent clique of Vineland known as the Jokers, police said.
A Dallas family is mourning the loss of their father, motorcycle cop, Victor Lozada, who was killed in a crash Friday while escorting Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
While we honor the extraordinary life of police officers like LAPD SWAT Officer Randal Simmons, we shouldn't forget about those officers killed in the line of duty in less spectacular form.
Lozado, it turns out, earned more than 135 commendations during a 20-year career, reports the Dallas Morning News, and once saved the life of a baby choking on a toy. On top of that, he coached his son's soccer team and worked extra hours at a local Target stores to earn money to pay for his daughters' quinceañera ceremonies.
Lozado's son, Victor Lozado Jr., 22, is a studying classical singing at North Texas University.
He offered this as the best advice his father ever gave him:
"When choosing whether or not you're going to do something, don't choose it because of money. Don't choose it because of pride. Don't choose it for anything else but one thing -- that it will make you happy."
"My father was very happy being a motorcycle cop, and that is what he wanted to do," Lozado said. "He died doing what he wanted to do."
A stabbing was reported on Friday at 3:45 a.m. in the 14200 block of Gilmore Avenue in Van Nuys. Officers found the victim on the sidewalk with a stab wound to his left arm and two stab wounds to his back. The victim said that two unknown suspects approached him from behind and attacked him for no reason. The victim was treated at Holy Cross Hospital for his non-life threatening injuries.
A year after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and LAPD Chief William Bratton declared gangs public enemy No.1, crime has plummeted, homicides are at 30-year lows, and for the first time cops are working with hard-core gang interventionists to quell rivalries. Despite the gains, though, some of the boldest initiatives of Villaraigosa's anti-gang plan are barely getting off the ground, while other efforts that have been touted as "successes" aren't so clear-cut. A gang czar appointed in June who was supposed to bring the problems into sharper citywide focus so far has little power.
An armed street robbery was reported at 6 last night on Ventura Boulevard and Tampa Avenue in Tarzana. A 48-year-old man stopped in a parking lot to look up directions when a black man, 19 or 20 years old approached the vehicle and knocked on the driver's window while pointing a gun. He demanded that the victim roll down his window. In fear, the victim lowered his window and the suspect demanded his wallet and valuables. The victim surrendered his wallet and other property. The victim noticed that a second black man was standing at the passenger door and also was pointing a gun at him. Both Suspects fled to a vehicle.
While I'll let L.A. Times columnist Tim Rutten take Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for task for hypocrisy and poor taste for comments he made at Officer Randal Simmons funeral last week, when the mayor said "the newspapers" only "tell the truth" about LAPD officers in obituaries, Rutten wrote.
I on the other hand will give the mayor the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he, like many others, doesn't particularly like to read good news about cops, or anyone else for that matter.
How else can he explain his comments?
My colleagues and I here at the Daily News have written countless stories about the good deeds of officers and to suggest otherwise is both unfair and untrue.
Of course, it is our job to write about when individuals in the department are less than stellar, such as the May Day incident - In fact, it's our job to cover the job that police (and politicians) do. Good, bad and everything in-between.
Still, if the mayor glosses over the good news for perhaps its lack of carnage, he's not alone.
Check out our Top 10 story list online. It's a lot like the City's Top 10 gangs list, full of decrepit individuals who do bad things -- mixed in with stories about all things related to USC football, the state of Britney Spears' mind, and more recently, stories that display an unusual fixation with Kobe's right pinkie finger.
This suggests that while people might clamor for good news, they're not necessarily lining up to read it. It's human nature, I suppose. Nobody pays attention to the young man who helps an elderly woman to cross the street, but if he suddenly stopped to beat the hell out of her, that would be something folks would watch -- and hopefully intercede with.
So, if you (or the mayor) are looking for good stories to read about good people, including cops, take a peak under the Top 10 stories on our Web site. You'll usually find a story about somebody doing something good.
Yesterday, I rode along with LAPD Detective Michael Coblentz, and his son, Officer Mike Coblentz Jr., a 3-year veteran who normally works out of the 77th Division in South Los Angeles. He came to Van Nuys Tuesday night to work patrol with his father, who's retiring next month. The article is in today's paper.
Mary Coblentz, wife to big Mike and mom to junior, wrote a note on the Web site thanking me for the article, especially in light of the recent tragedy the LAPD family suffered.
It was a nice, classy comment.
I wonder if the mayor read it?
Wilfredo Rivera holds a press conference in downtown Los Angeles, where he apologized on behalf of his family for the death of Los Angeles Police SWAT Officer Randal Simmons and the injuries to James Veenstra during a raid on the Riveras' home in Winnetka earlier this month.
NORTH HOLLYWOOD - A burglary from a car recently at a gas station in North Hollywood has been tied to a South American jewelry theft ring that has been targeting the San Fernando, San Gabriel valleys and Los Angeles areas in recent years, a detective said today.
The latest incident took place just before 11 a.m. on Jan. 31 at a gas station in the 12500 block of Ventura Boulevard, said Los Angeles Police Detective Dan Nee. Two men, described as Latino, and one wearing a hat pulled low on his head, smashed through a vehicle window and stole from the backseat a case containing between $40,0000 and $50,000 in finished gold jewelry.
They had likely targeted the jewelry salesman and followed him from his home as he set out on his sales calls in the downtown Los Angeles Jewelry Mart for the day, Nee said. It wasn't the first time the victim had been targeted. Last year about the same time, thieves stole about the same amount of jewelry from him, Nee said.
"As a result, he's retiring from the business," said Nee.
No suspects have been arrested. A surveillance video from the gas station caught two suspects in a late 90s Nissan Maxima with no license plates.
Nee said he believes the thieves are among one of several crews from Colombia targeting the San Fernando Valley. Trained as pick-pockets in their home country, then graduating to jewelry thefts, Nee said he has seen several groups follow jewelry salesmen from their homes then rob them for 10s of thousands of
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dollars in loot.
A jewelry salesman was robbed in December outside a Starbucks in the 12800 block of Ventura Boulevard in Studio City.
Imagine this scenario: You're fast asleep. You hear rustling coming from outside your home. You grab a knife and step outside your home, prepared to fend off an intruder and protect your family. Only, instead of a criminal, you find yourself face-to-face with SWAT officers pointing assault weapons at you.
What the hell's going on?
You've been "swatted."
Turns out, somebody thought it would be a kick to make a fake 911 "I just killed somebody in my house" call. Using Internet technology, they're able to fool the dispatcher into believing they're making the call from your home, instead of thousands of miles away.
Read "Swatting" here.
A purse snatcher is now a attempted killer after he squirted pepper spray at her in Westminster. She's on life support. at a hospital and police are looking for the culprit, a woman about 20 wearing a gray sweater or sweatshirt.
The victim at first seemed OK, police said, then she had a stroke.
On top of it all, the would-be purse snatcher grabbed a bag that contained the woman's lunch.
Anyone with more information was asked to call Detective Kevin MacCormick at (714) 898-3315, ext. 340.
A violent roller coaster ride with injuries today for one LAPD cop in Pacoima.
A police sergeant was hospitalized after his patrol car was struck by a suspected drunk driver making an illegal U-turn near the LAPD station in Pacoima, a lieutenant said today.
The crash occurred on San Fernando Road, just north of Osborne Street, about 10:30 p.m. yesterday, said Lt. Ingrid Braun of the Los Angeles Police Department's Foothill Station, located on the corner of San Fernando and Osborne.
The LAPD sergeant, whose identity was withheld by the department, was traveling northbound on San Fernando when his patrol car was hit head on by a compact car with the headlights off. The collision forced the officer's vehicle into two parked cars, Braun said.
The driver of the other auto, a man 25-30 years old, had just made an illegal U-turn mid-block, she said.
The sergeant -- the sole occupant of the patrol car -- was transported to a local hospital with a bruised leg, Braun said, adding that the other driver was also transported after complaining of back pain. The unidentified driver was treated at the hospital and then released.
He was then transported to the LAPD's Foothill Station, where he failed a sobriety test. He was expected to be booked for felony DUI, Braun said.
The suspected drunk driver also had two other passengers in his car at the time of the accident. But Braun said the other two people were not injured.
My esteemed colleague Rick Coca today writes about an unusual 911 prank call - swatting, in which someone rigs a phone to call from a location not their own and reports an emergency, trying to provoke a SWAT callout. These are the kinds of people who didn't get enough attention growing up ...
While, rightfully so, the media has and will concentrate on why Steven P. Kazmierczak opened fire on students at Northern Illinois University, let's not forget the victims. More than one of them hoped to be a teacher and they include an only child, a veteran and girl whose family came from Mexico. Thoughts and prayers to their families, thoughts and prayers.
Simmons' former partner, SWAT Officer James Hart, who worked with Simmons for eight years, shared a number of personal, on- and off-duty memories.
Update at 12:03 p.m.
Holding back tears, LAPD Chief William Bratton spoke at length about Simmons' tireless contribution to the LAPD, the community, church life and especially to children.
"He had been given the opportunity to make his life as a cop count and he has succeeded far beyond anyone's expectations," Bratton said.
Bratton praised Simmons' extensive involvement with at-risk youth, including taking inner city kids on horseback riding outings for their first time.
"It is said no man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child. If that's so, then Randy was truly a giant.
"No man ever brought so many childten to God. That was his true passion in life.
Today, Rachel and I are teaming up to provide constant updates of the funeral for slain LAPD SWAT Officer Randal Simmons.
Here's the latest.
Throughout the morning, hundreds of officers and mourners poured into the arena-like church, including children wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Simmons' face. Officers from around the country also traveled from great distances to honor the fallen SWAT officer.
Child homicide was a hate-crime
The 14-year-old boy who shot a classmate in the head at an Oxnard middle school is facing murder charges with gun and hate-crime enhancements. Prosecutors are also looking to try the boy as an adult.
Classmates said that Lawrence King, the 15-year old boy shot, sometimes dressed in "feminine attire," and that caused some friction with other boys at his school.
Another campus, another shooting
And this tragic story about yet another calculated shooting at a college campus, this time Northern Illinois University. Apparently, the gunman was a former student.
Wasn't there supposed to be some reform following the Virginia Tech shootings in how administrators and staff deal with students with mental-health issues?
That's not to say this particular shooting could have been avoided. Some people do in fact, "just snap."
Police, friends and others pay their respects for LAPD Officer Randy Simmons today at the Glory Christian Fellowship International Church in Carson.
A little catching up this afternoon ...
Four men were in custody today in connection with a credit card theft ring that used a portable scanner the size of two fingers to swipe credit card numbers at at least two gas stations in Sylmar and Newhall, police said this morning.The scheme is alleged to have occurred Tuesday when a trio of men paid a $200 bribe to a Sylmar Mobil gas station clerk to have him use their portable scanner to steal customers' credit card numbers in transactions, said Los Angeles Police Lt. Loren Farell, who heads the Valley Forgery Section.
The men are believed to have also attempted to use the device at another gas station near Magic Mountain, Farell said. An employee at that gas station became suspicious and notified police, Farell said. The manager of the Sylmar gas station happened to be reviewing surveillance video and saw the suspects hanging around his station on Tuesday and police connected the suspects to the crime there, Farell said.
The suspects were identified as 18-year-old Tigran and Gevorg Vardanyan, 20, and Armen Sukiasyan, 19. All are from Van Nuys. All were being held on credit card theft charges at the Los Angeles County Jail.
The name of the clerk who allegedly took the bribe was not immediately available.
A check of Los Angeles County Superior criminal court records online shows that Gevorg Vardanyan was arrested in 2006 in connection with a vandalism case, charges that were later dropped. Farell said he believes the arrest occurred at a school, but had no details.
Forgery detectives are investigating the scope of the scheme, whether the men were involved in other similar cases around the region and who might have put them up to it.
Farell said that this was the first case he has seen in which someone has used a device that is so small, saying it was the size of two fingers.
My competitor over at The Times, Richard Winton, a prolific writer and stand-up all around guy, wrote a story today about a raid in which Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies nabbed a prolific tagger said to be responsible for over $100,000 in vandalism. In this photo above is Sheriff‘s Deputy James Johnson leading Gustavo Romero, 23, to a patrol car. The arrest warrant named Romero in 72 acts of vandalism, resulting in $108,000 of property damage.
The meat-cleaver attack that killed a psychologist in New York's Upper East Side Tuesday has shook that community, as police work to find the man who did it.
Kathryn Faughey died in the attack and another therapist who came to her aid was seriously injured.
A former Daily News reporter who's now covering crime at the San Francisco Chronicle had this bizarre tale today that reminded me of a similar case we wrote about here back in December in which police and firefighters overlooked the body of a woman who was found under an airbag after a crash in Tarzana.
The Chronicle writes:
The bizarre case of a San Francisco computer software developer who was apparently slain in December - and whose body lay undiscovered in the back of a van in a police impound yard for a week - finally became public Tuesday, as investigators said they were looking for two suspects who shared a home with the victim.Leonard Milo Hoskins, 49, was reportedly attacked with a piece of lumber Dec. 23 at or near his home at 60 Lamartine St. in Mission Terrace, authorities said.
From the Daily News Dec. 18:
Continue reading S.F. police overlook body in van; recalls case in Tarzana.
Coca went out last night to cover an event at the West Valley Division in Reseda at which Chief William Bratton and the mayor praised the work of officers during last week's deadly SWAT raid in Winnetka.
RESEDA - Police Chief William Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa thanked Los Angeles police officers from the West Valley station Tuesday for their heroism during last week's bloody shootout in Winnetka that left five dead, including one SWAT officer.At a somber roll call attended by about 30 LAPD officers and a handful of Los Angeles Fire Department officers, Bratton praised their response.
"So many of you the other night contributed so much - bravery, heroism. ... Thank you for all you did that night and thank you for all you do day in and day out."
While crime continues to go down in the San Fernando Valley, the Winnetka shootings will no doubt push the homicide numbers up. Police say while they'll continue to affect change where they can, there are certain "crimes of passion" that they're not going to be able to stop.
Understandably, LAPD Deputy Chief Michel Moore, could care less about stats at the moment, more concerned about the well-being of his officers while they mourn the loss of one of their own and hope for the speedy recovery of another.
Keeping you up to date on last summer's slaying of 31-year-old Eric Perez, a suspected gang member from Arleta. A man who was arrested last month was re-arrested last Thursday after a short search in the Sylmar area.
Murder charges have been filed against Santos Anthony Topete. He was arrested Feb. 7 at a gas station near Foothill Boulevard and Maclay Street, after a roughly 30-minute search by police, said Los Angeles Police Lt. Ernie Eskridge.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office has filed murder charges with gang and gun enhancements against Topete in connection with the death of Eric Perez, 31, a suspected gang member from Arleta, police said. Perez was shot at 12:30 a.m. July 1 after leaving a party in the 16000 block of Los Alimos Street in Granada Hills, police said. Topete was previously arrested Jan. 8 in connection with the slaying, but the DA's Office declined to file murder charges then for a lack of evidence.
A woman who said she was Topete's fiancee said the incident occurred before she was in the picture, but that, "he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"He's a good person," said the woman.
Los Angeles County Superior Court records online show that Topete was convicted in November 2005 of engaging in a speed contest and being an unlicensed driver.
At 9 p.m. last Wednesday, the clapping of a helicopter could be heard circling over Welby Way in Winnetka. The house across from Roxana's was awash in lights. Over a loudspeaker, she heard voices, saying something she couldn't make out.
She didn't pay much attention at first, instead focused on cooking quesadillas for her daughter. Later she went to her room to go to sleep. The house was quiet. Then she heard a helicopter again and the loudspeaker more clearly - "This is LAPD. Edwin come out. We're trying to help you."
It was the early stages of last week's predawn raid that left five people dead, including SWAT Officer Randal Simmons and Edwin Rivera who had called police out to his home saying he had killed several members of his family and to "Come get me."
Neighbors were under seige. One of them, Roxana, agreed yesterday to talk with me with the understanding that I'd not use her last name. She's still afraid.
As she tried to sleep, figuring the police would take care of the problem across the street, she was annoyed at the helicopter that never stopped circling. She looked out the window and didn't see police cars, but the house was awash in bright light.
She got out of bed and went to the living room window that looks directly on the street. She saw police with guns drawn and aimed at the house.
"Then I got really scared," She said. "There was a hostage situation and it was close to home, too close."
She told her brother-in-law to lock his door. She checked the doors and front and back windows to make sure they were closed.
"I was thinking maybe someone was inside the house," she said, recalling a case about a year ago in which cops came to the neighborhood to quell a neighborhood disturbance.
She went to check on her son. He appeared to be asleep. She took her young daughter into her room. "Everybody was OK. So I went back to bed ... Then, 'Oh my God, here we go again."
Daughter slept with Mom. Then mom began to worry about bullets coming through her walls, but she was hopeful police would break it up before it went that far. But just in case, she put herself between the wall and her daughter in case bullets came flying through.
They tried to sleep. The helicopter pounded. The police kept telling Edwin to come out, to answer his phone, to release the hostages. They wanted to help injured people. Over and over again the helicopter. Roxana tried to close her eyes.
11 p.m. she looked through her bedroom window. Police were still there, standoff.
She dozed off a little while.
At midnight, noise woke her up. Looking through her bedroom window again, she saw SWAT all in black from head to toe.
"Thank God the SWAT team's here," she said, "so they could stop this."
She saw more police. Two officers ran back and forth in the street. She saw SWAT in the rear side of her house. In the doorway of the house across the street, officers prepared to enter the house, one on one side of the door, another on the other side.
Some of them stood by the side of the house by a window, with guns drawn. One of them kicked the door open. One of them went inside. Gunshots.
"I grabbed my daughter and rolled over the bed and onto the floor and I was hugging my daughter, trying to crawl out of the room, thinking that bullets were going to come through my room."
More gunshots - "Pop pop, "really ugly, really bad."
She checked herself and her daughter for bullet wounds.
"She was hugging me so tightly, clinging to my shoulders, hugging me really tight."
When it stopped, she went to her son's room to check on him. He was quiet. She checked walls for holes. She heard an ambulance.
"Thank God it was over."
She went back to bed and tried to get her daughter to bed.
2 a.m., helicopter. She checked the window. Police were still there.
She went to sleep.
Gunfire awoke her at 5 - pop, pop, pop, pop. She grabbed her daughter, and threw themselves onto the floor, crawling out from the room.
Back to her son's room. All three climbed into bed.
The brother-in-law tried to go to work, but cops blocked off the street.
"Mommy, did you hear that? Bombs," her daughter said.
7 a.m., things quieted down. But the house across the way was on fire.
And it would be the beginning of a lengthy investigation and the extensive coverage by a long line of media crews that would descend on Welby Way.
Today, officers are gone and the yellow police tape has been removed. The tree-lined street began returning to normal, five days after the 10-hour standoff left three people wounded and five dead.
Wanted to thank Firefighter-Paramedic Hector Cazar for sharing his story about the aftermath of the Winnetka shootings.
Cazar drove the first ambulance onto the scene after Edwin Rivera opened fire on SWAT officers Randal Simmons and James Veenstra. Earlier, Rivera shot his father and two brothers.
After a few frantic and extremely dangerous moments, Cazar, his partner and a young LAPD officer gave emergency care to Veenstra in the back of the ambulance and hauled it to Northridge Hospital under police escort.
I sat down with Cazar on Saturday at the local fire department he works at and he relayed a story that was compelling, touching and shocking.
As we get closer to the date of Officer Randal Simmon's funeral set for Friday, check the blog as we are talking with SWAT officers and others who knew the selfless veteran cop and use this space for remembrances. On Friday I talked with retired SWAT Officer Rick Massa who recalls the day back in 1988 or so when he first saw the man come through the door at Elysian Park for his first day on the SWAT team after having been transfered from the South side of Los Angeles.
Massa was in awe of Simmons the first time he saw him.
He had come to SWAT from patrolling the Southside of Los Angeles. The former football player was a weight lifter, a muscle builder. He was well defined, fast, athletic, the perfect fit for the rigors of SWAT.
“We used to talk football from day one,” Massa said last week recalling his friend over the phone. “We immediately clicked.”
He was always there, always wanted to do more, always wanted to put time in.
Not only was he physical, but he also could shoot well and was mentally tough.
“When I say he's well-rounded, Randy was it.”
In all the craziness at the scene yesterday, I ran into Councilman Dennis Zine, who was getting reports from the commanders and talking to his old colleagues. Often times at police events, politicians will gratuitously show up to get in on the limelight, but that was not the case here. Zine, whom we often note is an ex-LAPD motor cop, was truly shaken up and genuinely concerned.
He grabbed me and took me past the yellow tape, remembering officers Randal Simmons and James Veenstra along the way. He held nothing back.
We bumped into Capt. David Baca, commanding officer of the LAPD's emergency operations division. The two exchanged a hug, stepped back and took deep breaths.
"God, we had dinner just last week," Zine said, referring to S.W.A.T.'s annual get-together. "Now, he's dead.
Baca's friendship with Simmons, shot in the neck by the suspect and pronounced dead at the hospital, went back more than 20 years. They'd both worked undercover in the Southend and survived similar officer-involved-shootings as young cops. Simmons was a hero, Baca said, one the LAPD should remember as one of the greats.
"To lose the best of the best, God!" he exclaimed. "He was a real role model. The tragedy is the loss, but the value is the life he lived. That's what shone through. ...
"You hear gunfire, your normal person's instinct is to run the other way. Our SWAT officers run to the gunfire. They run toward the sound of the cannons."
He'd served in the Metropolitan Division that oversees S.W.A.T. years ago and said he was never prouder in his career than to get the assignment. He figured his old friend, a former college football player, chose S.W.A.T. for the same reason.
"You look up to them as the ultimate," Baca said. "That's why he did it, I'm sure. That's the kind of guy he was. ...
"S.W.A.T. officers will be grieving all over this nation. In the City of Angels, one of its finest angels has been shot down."
Tense times for LAPD out there. We're still piecing together stories as quickly as we can get them going about the death of Officer Randal Simmons and the wounding of his partner James Veenstra. Meanwhile, check out these comments coming in from across the country, paying tribute.
Daily News readers from across the country expressed their appreciation and their sorrow for SWAT Officer Randal Simmons' death on the newspaper's Web site.
"Randy Simmons is a hero to all of us in this community," wrote Nasiha, a Winnetka resident. "I live across the street from the crime scene and I cannot express my gratitude and my sincere condolences to his family and fellow SWAT team members.
"God bless Randy Simmons. May he be blessed and rewarded in Paradise for his sacrifice."
Michele Gardiner, another Winnetka resident, sent her appreciation and her sympathy.
"I want to thank Officer Randy Simmons for his unique bravery - over 20 years of dangerous duty until the end, when he risked (and gave) his life to save others," she wrote. "This sort of courage is needed more than ever these days.
"As someone who lives in the very community he helped to defend, I want his family and fellow officers to know he and his service will be greatly missed."
Other tributes came from Escondido, Calabasas, Inglewood, Moorpark, Brea, Victorville, Downey, Tehachapi, Cypress, Lytle Creek and other California communities, and even from as far away as San Antonio, Texas, and St. Louis, Mo.
"Thank you for protecting and serving my community I used to live in," wrote Frank Reyes, who now lives in Texas. "God bless you."
"I read that (Simmons) ministered (to) youths and I cried," wrote Kevin Childress of Inglewood. "We try to make sense that he was doing the
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Lord's will and (he) should be here now, but everything is in God's divine plan and he was needed in the 'Upper Room.' May God bless his family and comfort them in this tragic time."
"While I did not have the honor to ever meet Randy Simmons, he is a true hero and I thank him for all his work in this community and giving his life to make the streets safer for us," wrote Michele Willer-Allred of Moorpark. "He will not be forgotten."
Some writers addressed Simmons directly.
"Thank you, sir, for a job well done," wrote Jeff Klepp of Calabasas. May God comfort your family, friends and fellow officers. Our world needs more people like you."
"This is never a good time when we lose a hero," wrote Terry Riestra of Lytle Creek. "You touched many lives; it's time to rest."
For reporters, police scanners provide background buzz to the newsroom, an endless drone of beeps, static and monotone voices speaking police code.
Through all that audio snarl, certain words, sounds, and tension pop through and grab your attention, like "shots fired" or the quickened breath of an officer running after suspects while shouting both the description and direction of the people he's pursuing.
As I prepared to head home last night a little after 9 p.m., what I heard over the scanner was chilling and stopped me in my tracks. A woman's voice said something like, "he said he shot three of his family members and to come get him."
I immediately told my editor, John Miller, who along with our content manager for our Web site, former reporter Eugene Tong, was still in the newsroom, along with a host of copy editors and designers.
John cautioned me that it could just be some tightly wound type trying to get a little attention, which has certainly happened before. A second riff came over the scanner about the incident on "Welby Way." I called the watch commander at West Valley Station and he told me couldn't comment at all, which is pretty rare. Normally, they give us something.
So, I decided that I would stop by Welby Way on my way home and see what I could find.
When I got there, before 10 p.m., I was the only reporter there. The air was crisp.
The police tape was already up, but I ran into LAPD Sgt. Jim Setzer, a watch commander at the West Valley station, who I spoke with earlier about a Pierce College student who was kidnapped by twins and forced to drive to a local bank and withdraw money.
Standing on the corner of Welby Way and Oakdale Avenue, Setzer shook my hand and asked me to move up a few feet, so "I wouldn't be in the line of fire."
It didn't feel dangerous then - little did I know what horror had already occurred there, with more still to come.
Later, Setzer confirmed that they had received a call from a man claiming he killed family members and who then said: "Come get me."
He told me that apparently the suspect had called 911 three times and officers tried to call him at least three times in the early stages of the investigation.
I called in what I had, along with Setzer's quote to Eugene Tong, who put the story online.
In the meantime, a video stringer showed up, and later still, CBS 2 news.
Still, nothing, it seemed, was happening. John Miller and I had agreed that I should hang out until 11, unless something big unfolded. Not much you can get in the paper past 11 p.m. anyway.
Listening to the radio this morning, my auditory senses were once again jolted: "Five people dead in Winnetka, including one police officer."
Shocking, completely and utterly, shocking.
My thoughts and prayers to the families of slain LAPD Officer Randal Simmons and injured Officer James Veenstra, as well as the surviving members of the the family killed by the gunman.
A SWAT officer was killed and a second was injured in a gunbattle with a barricaded suspect this morning in Winnetka. We're following this one closely. We've got a photographer at the hospital where cops are gathered and a reporter is heading out to the scene of the home where we're hearing that the suspect is still inside the home. Don't know if he's dead or alive. We'll keep you posted.
WINNETKA - A man who had telephoned authorities to say he had killed three family members shot to death an LAPD SWAT officer today and wounded another during a gunbattle inside a Winnetka home, police said.It was the first fatality in the history of the elite LAPD SWAT team, which was created in 1967.
Officer Randy Simmons died at 1 a.m. James Veenstra was injured, police said this morning. Both worked on the SWAT team for 20 years.
At 5 a.m., the man remained barricaded inside the home in 19800 block Welby Way, First-Assistant police Chief Jim McDonnell said in a briefing outside Northridge Medical Center on Roscoe Blvd. in Northridge.
Some 200 officers, included SWAT team members, surrounded the residence in a standoff that McDonnell referred to as an ongoing "dynamic tactical situation." An armored SWAT vehicle was at the scene and helicopters circled overhead.
Police did not immediately confirm that three civilians had been killed, as the suspect said when he called police last night, but people familiar with the operation told camera crews at the scene that two bodies were inside the residence in addition to the one that could be seen on the front lawn.
McDonnell said SWAT officers entered the residence shortly after 12:30 a.m., triggering an exchange in which two veteran officers were wounded. One died at Northridge Medical Center shortly after 1 this morning, and the other was in surgery as of 5 a.m., he said in a briefing also attended by Los
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Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.Each of the two officers who was shot spent more than 25 years in the Los Angeles Police Department, more than 20 in the SWAT team, McDonnell said.
Even though the SWAT team has been involved in thousands of incidents, this was the first to have claimed the life of one of the unit's members, he said.
"I want to say how deeply saddened we are this morning that we lost a member of our LAPD family," McDonnell said. "Our hearts and prayers go out to these families at this tough time."
Villaraigosa said the officer's death was a reminder of how perilous the work performed by police.
The incident began around 9 p.m. yesterday when a man locked himself up inside a home near Vanowen Street and Oakdale Avenue, according to an officer at the Los Angeles Police Department's West Valley Station.
Readers of It's a crime and dailynews.com have seen these stories crop up from time to time. Groups of folks getting together, buying medical clinics, and setting themselves up as providers of federal and state health care programs. They then forge documents saying they've performed medical tests when in fact they haven't. Then they get reimbursed by the government for those purported services. And then with the money, pay off associates, buy real estate, more phony clinics and stash money away for "retirement" in bank accounts overseas.
Pretty smart, right? Well, check out how one accused fraudster was caught - during a routine traffic stop. Go figure.
GLENDALE - An ex-con on probation for attempted extortion and who was wanted by the FBI in a federal health care fraud case was arrested last week after Glendale police spotted him driving a sport utility vehicle without license plates and straddling a lane, police said.Sarkis "Sako" Militonyan was arrested Jan. 27, the day before his 44th birthday, at West Glenoaks Boulevard and Sonora Avenue, after police noticed the white Chevrolet Tahoe he was driving was straddling lanes and had no plates, said Glendale Police spokesman John Balian.
Police discovered he was a fugitive and a search of his SUV turned up several copies of purportedly stolen California drivers licenses, social security numbers, and banking routing and account numbers, Balian said.
A search at his Los Angeles home turned up two boxes of .380 caliber automatic pistol rounds, which, under the terms of his probation, he was barred from possessing, police said.
Militonyan was being held in federal custody, Balian said.
In December, a federal grand jury charged Militonyan and a doctor identified in court papers as Michael Streams with health care fraud.
Militonyan is accused of financing and operating at least two illicit medical clinics in Los Angeles, according to the indictment. Using the doctor's legitimate Medicare provider number, the men are accused of billing the taxpayer-funded federal Medicare program for services and tests that were not necessary or were not provided, then taking the cash for themselves, according to the indictment.
Between July 2001 and March 2003, the men are accused of billing Medicare for some $5 million and receiving $1.5 million, court papers say.
Neither Militonyan's attorneys nor FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller immediately returned calls seeking comment for this story.
Militonyan was convicted Jan. 7, 1998 of property theft. On Aug. 1, 2005, he was convicted of attempted extortion, according to Los Angeles County Superior Court records online.
Details about the attempted extortion case could not immediately be confirmed.
Federal, state and local police say health care fraud is a massive problem in Southern California and is being perpetrated by a large number of individuals from Armenia and other former communist countries, some with murky ties to organized crime.
Last year, five members of a Russian-Armenian organized crime ring were convicted after pleading guilty in connection with a $20 million Medicare fraud conspiracy that operated out of clinics and labs in L.A., Glendale, Van Nuys and Pasadena.
It was a case that Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Searby said was "representative of a major problem in the area."
"It's widespread. Medicare expenses generally are busting the federal budget."
Last June, a husband and wife from Glendale and two female accomplices from the San Fernando Valley were charged in connection with running an adult day health care center out of a church community room, endangering senior citizens by having uncredentialed social workers conduct home assessments and filing false claims to the state's Medi-Cal program, state officials said.
Of course, it's not really a crime not to vote, unless you look at it the same way your momma did when she used to coerce you into eating your (canned) vegetables (found out years later I love vegetables, just not in a can).
Anyway, moms all across America would remind me us that "starving kids in China" would love to eat said canned vegetables. I don't know why it was always Chinese kids and not say, Italian kids or Canadian kids.
The point is this: Voting is a lot like eating your vegetables, canned or otherwise. They might not always leave a great taste in your mouth, but it's good for you. And there are people all over the world, who unlike the "alleged" starving kids in China, really are quite hungry to have the opportunity to vote in a democratic election.
When they don't, as in Kenya bad things happen, including people dying.
It's nice that at about 9 million Californians, representing about 57 percent of registered voters, are expected to vote today, which would be a record for a presidential primary, but still that's 43 percent that aren't participating.
So, if you didn't participate this time, next time around, get your political spoon out, wipe off the dust, hold your nose (you might have to) and take a big bite.
Joran van der Sloot was busted on video tape telling a man how Natalee Holloway died on the island of Aruba in 2005 -- This homicide has caught the attention of the world - others do not.
The L.A. Times Jill Leovy waxed today about the hundreds she's chronicled in that paper's Homicide Report. These brief straight-forward snippets are often the only news accounts that chronicle the death of L.A.'s homicide victims.
Here at the Daily News we try to flesh out as many of those stories as we can. In fact, telling the stories of homicide victims and their families is easily one of the most important things we -- or any news agency -- do.
Police released a sketch of a man they say tried to kidnap a boy from a Saticoy Elementary School about 2 p.m. on Jan. 17 by posing as the child's father. The man claimed to be the father of a 5-year-old student and said he was there to pick the boy up from class. Once at the classroom, he told the boy in Armenian that he was a friend of his father's, and told the teacher in English that he was in fact the boy's father. The teacher told him to wait because the boy needed to finish some school work. The man left when the boy's grandmother showed up.
The family did not send anyone to pick up the child and didn't recognize a composite sketch of the suspect, who's described as an Armenian, 35-40 years old, about 6 feet tall with a husky build. He has brown eyes and short black hair with gray in the temples and thinning in the back. He was seen driving a black Mercedes Benz.
Anyone with information is asked to call LAPD detectives at (818) 623-4075. After business hours and on weekends, call tollfree (877) 529-3855.
This one could go under the heading, "Stupid Crooks Stories:"
The guy pictured is accused of impersonating a cop, and of all things, falsely pulling over a motorist who turned out to be a real cop.
"That one-in-a-million scenario actually occurred over the weekend, Fairfax County police said yesterday, resulting in the arrest of a 19-year-old man at his Annandale home and relocation to the Fairfax jail with no bond and no court date for two months."
We've had our own cop impersonators:
Continue reading Cop impersonator tries to pull over real cop.
Something folks don't want to think about while enjoying a game, but this weekend's Super Bowl in Glendale, Arizona will feature more than the top two professional football teams battling for the coveted Vince Lambardi trophy.
With the Super Bowl designated a level one national security event, hundreds of FBI employees and other law enforcement officers will also be in town, albeit with less fanfare.
In 1977, Bruce Dern scared the hell out of the nation with a blimp in John Frankenheimer's "Black Sunday," when he played a demented war veteran bent on wiping folks out at the Super Bowl.
But like "Jaws," which could only scare people out of the ocean for so long (by "Jaws 3-D," we were completely cured), the fear of a terrorist attack at a major American sporting event eventually died down -- that is until Sept. 11, 2001.
Since then the possibility of an attack has hung in the atmosphere like Dern's lumbering blimp -- seemingly far off, but still within our view.
For Americans -- Janet Jackson's boob aside -- the Super Bowl is sacred. Let's hope it stays that way.
So, here's to a fun, competitive game, in which the only losers are men who play a child's game for a living, and in doing so, help the rest of us forget about the seriousness of the world, if only for a few brief hours.
A theft was reported yesterday at 2:50 in the 14000 block of Victory Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. Officers completed a grand theft report for five businesses that had their rooftop air conditioning units stolen. It was discovered when the service representative responded and found that the A/C units were not working because the main components were taken. No suspect was seen, although a hammer and locks were recovered and booked as evidence.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that when you have pot and cash at unsecured businesses - pot clinics - you're going to have a cottage industry of takeover robberies. The violence is making life hell for pot clinic employees, giving police more work, and in return forcing taxpayers to fork over more money to combat the problem. Talking with Joe Esquivel, a LAPD North Hollywood Division robbery detective, this morning, he gave me the tip about this latest pot clinic heist in Studio City.
STUDIO CITY - Police today were searching for two men involved in an armed takeover robbery of a Studio City medical marijuana dispensary that netted the crooks $4,500 in cash and an unknown amount of pot, police said this morning.Two men, described as African American, one armed with a shotgun, the other with a pistol, entered Wellness Caregivers on Ventura Boulevard about 1:30 yesterday, and ordered three employees to the floor, said Los Angeles Police Detective Joe Esquivel. One gunman tied up two employees with duct tape and locked them in a back room, while the second gunman took the manager room-to-room, seizing cash and pot, before taking off, Esquivel said.
No one was injured in the heist and no description of the gunmen was available. Nobody saw a getaway car. Police were hoping to retrieve surveillance video today.
Continue reading Takeover at Studio City pot clinic.
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