Recently in LAPD Category

From the Associated Press:

LOS ANGELES -- An audit says Los Angeles police have significantly reduced a backlog of DNA evidence from thousands of rape and sexual assault cases.
Controller Wendy Greuel said Thursday that the number of untested evidence kits has
dropped by 64 percent, from about 7,000 to around 2,500.
However, her audit says more precautions should be taken to prevent future backlogs.
The kits contain evidence such as body fluids or fingernail scrapings that could provide DNA
evidence of a suspect.
A proposed state bill would require police to notify the state of their progress in testing
rape evidence.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department also has decades of untested rape evidence from
cases submitted to its labs by smaller police agencies.

From the DA's office:

LOS ANGELES - Three Los Angeles Police Department officers who allegedly lied under oath about during a drug possession trial last year were charged today with conspiracy and perjury.

Deputy District Attorney Sean Hassett with the Justice System Integrity Division said former LAPD Officer Evan Samuel, and Officers Richard Amio and Manuel Ortiz are scheduled to surrender on Thursday for arraignment.

Hassett filed a felony complaint for arrest warrant on Monday charging 37-year-old Samuel, 30-year-old Amio, and 36-year-old Ortiz with one count each of conspiracy. In addition, Samuel is charged with three counts of perjury. Amio is charged with two counts of perjury and Ortiz is charged with one count of perjury. All are felonies.

During a preliminary hearing and later during the June 2008 trial for Guillermo Alarcon, the three allegedly falsely testified about seeing the defendant Alarcon throw away a black object near a trash bin that turned out to be cocaine base. Ortiz allegedly denied under oath that he was in fact the officer who found a package containing cocaine powder near a dumpster while the other officers were searching a laundry room for drugs.

Samuel and Amio also signed under penalty of perjury a police report that was allegedly false.

Alarcon's drug possession case was dismissed in June 2008 at the request of prosecutors after footage from the apartment building's security camera contradicted the sworn testimony of the officers.

All three are scheduled for arraignment after 1:30 p.m. on Thursday at the Criminal Justice Center, Department 30. Hassett is asking that bail be set at $120,000 for Samuel, $70,000 for Amio and $45,000 for Ortiz.

A stamp commemorating the 1950s TV show "Dragnet," which dramatized the Los Angeles Police Department, will be issued Tuesday during a ceremony at the LAPD Academy in Elysian Park.

The stamp is one of 20 that commemorates early TV shows and the only stamp to pay tribute to law enforcement, according to the U.S. Postal Service. The stamps go on sale at noon.

Opal Webb, surviving spouse of "Dragnet" creator Jack Webb, who played Sgt. Joe Friday, will be at the ceremony, along with Harry Morgan, who played Officer Bill Gannon in the 1960s TV revival of the show. One of the show's narrators, John Stephenson, is also to be at the ceremony, along with LAPD Chief William Bratton and Councilman Tom LaBonge.

At the event, people will be able to purchase an exclusive LAPD 140th anniversary postmark, complete with a commemorative envelope and a special "Badge 714" photo stamp, designed and offered through the LAPD Historical Society.

There's a lot of speculation in the news room this morning about Chief Bill Bratton's sudden announcement.  Is something up? Or is it just time to go?

Friday morning August 8, 1969.

The sun is fully visible at 6:10 a.m.

At 7:50 a.m. Steven Earl Parent, 18, leaves his parents' El Monte home on Bryant Road for work at Valley City Plumbing in Rosemead.

A recent graduate of Arroyo High School, Parent works two jobs. He plans on attending Citrus College in the fall semester.

Parent's co-workers say he is "clean-cut" and "intelligent." "A good worker."

He splits work at 5:15 p.m. and heads to the second job, at Jonas Miller Stereo on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

At 7:48 p.m. sunset envelopes Southern California.

Sometime after 11 p.m., Parent gets off work. He's driving his dad's 1966 AMC Rambler.

Parent heads up Beverly to Sunset, then jogs north again on Benedict Canyon Road.

A waning crescent moon barely lights the night sky. Oleanders and scrub oak line the unlit road. He turns again on Cielo Drive.

At 11:45 p.m., Parent demonstrates an AM/FM Sony Digimatic clock radio. He hopes to sell it to Bill Garretson, his 19-year-old friend.

The two met several weeks earlier, when Parent picked up Garretson hitchhiking and drove him home.

Garretson lives in the back house at the estate on Cielo Drive. He takes care of the owner's dogs.

Garretson declines to buy the radio. Parent drinks a can of beer. He calls a friend.

It's now Saturday morning August 9 - 12:15 a.m. Parent leaves.

In the dark, he walks back to his dad's white Rambler. He starts his car and heads toward the gate.

He rolls down the window to use a push button gate opener.

A figure approaches.

"Halt," a man calls out. The man's got a buck knife in one hand and a .22 in the other.

Parent pleads with the man, "Please don't hurt me. I won't tell anyone."

The man slashes at Parent with the knife, slicing the teen's wrist. Then, he opens fire with the revolver. Shots strike the El Monte teen in the head and chest. By 12:30 a.m. Parent is dead.

He would become the first victim in a two-night killing frenzy led by Charles Manson and carried out by members of his LSD-crazed "family."

Within minutes, Parent's murderer, Charles "Tex" Watson, and three women would enter the main house at Cielo Drive and kill actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, film producer Wojciech Frykowski and hair dresser Jay Sebring.

In hopes of inciting a race war that Manson called "Helter Skelter," the killers struck the next night at the Los Feliz home of and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

Parent's body was discovered about 24 hours after he left his parent's El Monte home for work. His mom and dad were disturbed that LAPD officials didn't notify them of their son's death for several hours.

His dad wondered what Steven was up to.

"I just can't understand what he was doing up there in the first place," Wilfred Parent said. "Hell, Steve wasn't a poshy kind of kid. I didn't even know he knew any of those people."

The LAPD and Riverside County Sheriff's Department Monday night rescued a man who had been kidnapped earlier in Van Nuys. Here's the top of our story:

The LAPD has set up a command post at the 15 Freeway and Limonite Avenue in Ontario. The post, essentially a BevMo parking lot will be used for media briefings.

Earlier this afternoon, a convoy including the LAPD Bomb Squad and several blacked out SUVs was spotted travelling at a high rate of speed east on the 10 Freeway toward Ontario.

MONTEBELLO -- Two additional suspects believed to be part of a nationwide burglary crew that was busted Tuesday at the Montebello Town Center are in custody, authorities said Thursday.
Los Angeles police did not release the names of the suspects citing the ongoing investigation.
The first three suspects were arrested while trying to break into a jewelry store at the shopping center, at 2134 Montebello Town Center, shortly after 5 a.m. Tuesday, Montebello police Lt. Brian Bart said.
LAPD officials had tipped off local authorities that the burglary crew may have been planning to strike at the mall that morning, he said.
"It was a good effort by multiple agencies," Bart said.
After the three suspects were arrested at the mall, Montebello and Monterey Park police searched the area seeking additional suspects, LAPD officials said, but none were found.
LAPD detectives then worked with the Orange County Sheriff's Department and the Glendale and Santa Ana Police Police Departments to serve search warrants at six Southland locations, according to an LAPD statement.
The two additional suspects were arrested during the search, and evidence connecting them to the crimes was recovered, police added.
Los Angeles police described all five suspects as black men in their mid-20s to mid-40s. They have been booked on suspicion of burglary and conspiracy to commit burglary.
"The crew's method of operation was to hit shopping malls during off-hours and burglarize predetermined jewelry businesses," the LAPD statement said.
Police added the alleged crew is believed to be connected to a commercial burglary ring "that has been active in at least five states, spanning from coast to coast."
Detectives from the LAPD's Southeast Area Property Crimes Unit had been looking into the suspected burglary crew for four months prior to the arrest, officials said.

Sherri Rasmussen was beaten and shot to death back in 1986. Originally police suspected burglars were responsible for the crime, but last week Detective Stephanie Lazarus, one of LA's finest, was arrested on suspicion of the crime after detectives made a DNA link to the case.

After Sherri Rae Rasmussen was beaten and shot to death in 1986, her father urged Los Angeles police to investigate a fellow officer who had had confrontations with his daughter in the months leading up to her death, according to attorneys for the victim's family.

But Nel Rasmussen's pleas, which he said he made during several interviews with police and in a letter to then-Chief Daryl F. Gates, apparently were ignored by detectives as they pursued a different theory of how his daughter had been killed.

This from LAObserved via the LA Times:

Stephanie Ilene Lazarus, 49, was arrested this morning at Parker Center. Cold case investigation into the 1986 beating death of the wife of her ex-boyfriend led to Lazarus, and her DNA was secretly gathered last week to help make the case.

In a City News story, the head of the Police Protective League is also quoted responding to the news:

Paul M. Weber, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said Lazarus'
arrest "is deeply disturbing to LAPD officers and the people of Los Angeles."
"If convicted, the actions of one police officer should not tarnish the trust and
respect the public has for the more than 9,800 dedicated police officers who serve and
protect the community and its residents every day," he said.

Here's the LATimes story archive on the case.