Recently in Baca Category

Sheriff Lee Baca responded to a series of articles that have appeared in this paper over the past week. Here's the top of our story:

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is reexamining how it collects towing fees in response to allegations a former traffic sergeant took nearly $500,000 from the city of La Puente in impound revenues, officials said.

"We are doing that now," Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said. "We are probably going to go to a cashless system. Using something like an ATM card to make it more difficult for theft to occur."

Whitmore also said the department is reviewing several other internal policies and will consult with the Board of Supervisors.

Former Sgt. Joe Dyer, who used to work out of the Industry sheriff's station until he retired in May, has been under investigation since the beginning of the year.

In an editorial published in today's LA Times (h/t LA Observed), Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca says what many other politicans and cops have refused ot say:

So let me be very clear about one thing: We have a serious interracial violence problem in this county involving blacks and Latinos.

Some people deny it. They say that race is not a factor in L.A.'s gang crisis; the problem, they say, is not one of blacks versus Latinos and Latinos versus blacks but merely one of gang members killing other gang members (and yes, they acknowledge, sometimes the gangs are race-based).

But they're wrong. The truth is that, in many cases, race is at the heart of the problem. Latino gang members shoot blacks not because they're members of a rival gang but because of their skin color. Likewise, black gang members shoot Latinos because they are brown.

This comes from John Schwada's blog on the FOX 11 website. Thanks to LA Observed for pointing it out.

Schwada is one of the few TV reporters I respect. That's primarily because he comes from a newspaper background and knows how to write, edit and speak proper English. Additionally, (and perhaps most importantly) he is a good reporter as this blog post should make clear.

Baca's deputies in Temple City and Monrovia city officials might want to take note of these remarks. During the late January and early February Monrovia crime spree that left four dead, there was constant denial of racial undertones in the crimes.

Here's an excerpt from Schwada's blog entry:

LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, on April 4th, told a largely African-American audience in Compton that when Latino gangs are at war with black gangs over drugs and turf they are sometimes satisfied to kill any young black living in their rival’s territory in order to flex their criminal muscle. In other words, Baca asserted innocents are being targeted for death by gangs just because of their race. Sounds like a hate-crime to most of us.

Appparently the official website of the Association of Los Angeles Sheriffs Deputies is a little too critical of the sheriff's treatment of Paris Hilton during her 23-day spa vacation at the Lynwood Greybar hotel. LAT had the story this a.m.