Rewards and politics

When vandals lobbed a Molotov cocktail at the Bernard Milken Jewish Community Campus last month, Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine immediately pledged to draw up a reward to catch the culprits. Rachel Uranga in the Daily News.

But it took Louisa Prudhomme more than a year to get city officials to offer a reward in the killing of her 21-year-old son, who was shot in the face by gang members.

Neither the $95,000 reward in the West Hills Jewish center attack nor the $25,000 reward in the case of Prudhomme's son in Highland Park has directly led to arrests.

But the differences in how they came about highlight a city reward system that some say is influenced as much by politics as by a quest for justice.