Recently in SGV Category

By LA Weekly's count of every murder within Los Angeles city limits, we are at 168 as of yesterday when a taxi driver stabbed earlier this month died of his wounds. Compare that to last yearJuly 18th, there were 208 compared to the 162 this year as of that date. That's a 22.1% decline in murders so far. Add to that, the murder rate has declined over the last few years. The LAPD's consent decree ended last week, which in theory should let officers be more productive in some aspects, but some oppose the lifting of the decree. The ACLU contends that there are still problems within the department in regards to racial bias.

To see the map and charts detailing SGV homicides for 2009 click here.

Rumored that "S&P Bandit" has been seen casing several banks in the San Gabriel Valley, same appearance and same "lucky" jacket, sorta hard to miss.
AND a new bandito popped-up again;"Yosemite Sam", White male, 30s, huge full beard (fake?), hitting 1st Bank, again, on Valley Bl., Alhambra Mon. 1-26 at 1000hr.
AND possibly Another serial bandit hit Another Citibank in La Cresenta Mon..
AND,in Riverside County Calimesa, the same serial bandit did violent Take-Over at same WAMU, second time this month, same scary disguise & big gun, assaults and pepper sprays innocent customer & employees as they lay on the floor.
For longer list click 'Bank Terrorism Alerts" on sidebar>

Today's massive earthquake drill will tie up a ton of county resources this morning. Probably a lot of private resources as well.

Crime Scene poll of the day:

There's an elaborate hoax making the rounds in the SGV  regarding In-N-Out's 60th birthday coming up later this month. An e-mail received by many boldly proclaims all-time low prices:

In-n-Out's 60th Year Anniversary is Wednesday, October 22nd. All hamburgers will be sold for 25 cents, Cheeseburgers 30 cents, Fries 15 cents, and drinks are 10 cents!!! So mark your calendars!

Responding to the hoax, In-N-Out issued a statement late Thursday:

Lions, Nazis, millionaire music producers, hard-boiled crime fiction authors and dead brides.

The SGV's got it all apparently, just ask Esotouric. They're putting together another blood and dumplings tour. Press release on the jump:

Wonkette has a copy of a letter sent by U.S. Rep. David Dreier to constituents in the 26th Congressional District.

Here's what Wonkette says:

Everybody in California's 26th congressional district got this crazy-ass ALL CAPS hand-written freakout from beloved conservative bachelor David Dreier today. You can read the second page of ALL CAPS "MUST DRILL 4 OIL AT SEA WORLD OR ISLAMO FASCISTS WILL KILL KILL KILL" in the comments of basically all blogs everywhere.

I think the reference to the second page is a joke. BTW, here's what folks in Washington think about the San Gabriel Valley: (this comes from the comments to the same post)

You East Coast Wankers have to realize with what you are dealing.

California's 26th Congressional District is way out in the San Gabriel Valley, where it's hot as hades; there are no jobs; real estate values are in the toilet, and EVERYBODY has to DRIVE to get someplace else that is more semi-habitable, e.g., L.A.

So the Fine Folks From The 26th would approve shoving a Hughes Tool Co. diamond-studded drill bit up the behind of a cherubic 9 month old baby if they thought it would bring gas prices down.

If you don't believe me, consider this: Rancho Cucamonga is one of the larger "cities" in the 26th. (I kid you not.)

And the demographics look like this:
Median Household Income: $68,968 (most of which is generated by meth labs)

8.4% are below the poverty line (that's the National poverty line. Applying California Cost of Living standards, it's more like 40%

Occupation:

17.3% blue collar (i.e., no teeth bikers who buy the meth)
70.7% white collar (tweeker lab techs)
As of 2002, there are 639,088 people in the 26th District of California.

35.4% are registered Democratic (White trash)
46.4% are registered Republican (More white trash)
5.2% are African American (Running scared from The Man)
16.7% are Asian-American (Running scared to school)
24.4% are Hispanic (Running scared from La Migra)

David Dreier is PERFECT for them.

We're halfway through hands-free Tuesday and cell phone users ignoring the new law are apparently plentiful.

I know I saw at least two people talking on the phone this a.m. on my way in. Both had something in common: both were women and both were driving slow and I was stuck behind 'em.

We've had reporters and photogs out in the field doing ride-alongs and they've seen some interesting stuff today.

KFI reporter Shannon Farren said she spotted nine people using their cell phones westbound on the 10 between downton and the 405 this morning. One was using the phone and smoking.

*As for now, I'm suffering through an extreme case of nomophobia.

Here's the photo caption:

Here's California Highway Patrol officer Joe Zizi from the Santa Fe Springs CHP office gives a citation to a female on Rose Hills Road in Whittier for Hands-Free Cell Phone violation on July 1, 2008.  Today is the first day the law goes into effect.  The La Habra woman, who did not want to give her name, said she had been working too long and forgot about the new law. (Raul Roa) 

 

Maybe we jumped the gun on the heat wave equaling a crime wave up in the SGV.

The scanner's been pretty quiet this morning...maybe its too hot to be stupid.

Anyway, the National Weather Service is predicting record temperatures. They've extended the red flag fire warning through Saturday night and issued an excessive heat warning.

Here's what the Associated Press is saying about the weather:

Firefighters worked in extreme heat to corral small brush fires as a strong high-pressure system cooked the air from the central coast south to Los Angeles and San Diego.

At Ice Station Valencia, a rink in the broiling Santa Clarita Valley, hockey director Larry Bruyere, 55, said: "You don't mind working here on days like this."

Los Angeles County opened 42 daytime cooling centers for seniors and suggested people visit air-conditioned malls and libraries in the evenings. The National Weather Service warned people to take precautions for heat that could quickly kill children or animals left in cars, even if the windows were cracked open.

As people cranked up air conditioners, energy use in Los Angeles peaked at 5,854 megawatts Thursday, breaking records for the month of June, according to the city Department of Water and Power.

Some links to monitor through the day:

CAL ISO -- Power usage in California.

NWS -- Warnings, forecasts, observations

INCIWEB -- Keeping track of fires for the Feds.

A few weeks ago, I had a surprise late-night encounter with three coyotes roaming the streets of Los Feliz.

It seemed like feral dogs were everywhere that week. Photographer Watchara Phomicinda snapped a picture of a skinny one rooting about an empty field in Irwindale. I can't remember where else they turned up, but they were around.

Last year at this time it was black bears. Bears in Monrovia; bears in Duarte; bears in Bradbury; bears in Azusa.

Old-timers probably know this already, but I was fascinated to find out that predators are nothing new in the San Gabriel Valley or Whittier for that matter.

Grizzlies, wolves, cougars and coyotes roamed pretty freely in these parts right up until the turn of the 20th century.
They're pretty much gone. If only we could say the same about their human counterparts.

***
Whoops.
In my haste to write a brilliant column each week, I've been making grammatical errors. To all you English teachers out there, my deepest apologies.

I had this pointed out to me via a marked-up column sent in the mail by Ms. Beryl Collins of Arcadia.

The mark-up, done nicely in red ink, actually contains just three sentences.
It begins with, "What school did you attend?"

To answer that I guess I have to tell you a little about myself. For the most part I am a product of the California public school system.

After my parents moved to California, I attended Laura M. Hansen Elementary in Saratoga and Joaquin Miller Junior High in San Jose.

The Jesuits took over from there, and although there were some summer school classes at Lynbrook High, I graduated from Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose.

Since then, I've attended UCSD, San Jose State, Pasadena City College and Mt. San Antonio College.

That seems like a lot of education. Even after all that, I still don't know how to construct a proper sentence.

The sentence below was one example pointed out by Ms. Collins. It appeared in a column that ran in this newspaper on June 3:

"I'm sure there's countless similar stories."

She suggests I should have constructed the sentence as: "I'm sure there are countless similar stories."

All I can say is that I'm really glad she hasn't been reading my text messages.

U no wot i mean?

Thanks for the tip, Ms. Collins, I'm sure there are countless similar examples.

***

Are the copper thieves getting bold or what?

Whomever hit an Edison substation in Whittier knew exactly what to take, and absconded with copper grounding wire. It could fetch a tidy sum at the recycling center.

What's probably most irritating about the theft is that Edison had to turn off the power in most of Pico Rivera and portions of Whittier on a hot afternoon.

One can only hope the thief's refrigerator was affected and his (or her) beer got warm.

One night last week, I found myself in a bookstore in a nice Los Angeles neighborhood.

It was one of those neighborhoods whose residents probably "don't get" the San Gabriel Valley -- or Whittier for that matter.

Anyway, I was perusing the magazines looking for something to take and read. There were no copies of MAD and my second choice, Pro Football Weekly, was also suspiciously missing in action.

Then I noticed a magazine that stood out among the art and fashion magazines on another rack. I can't remember the name, but it was devoted entirely to the "art" of graffiti and tagging.

I had to look.

The usual suspects stood out among the photos: New York subway scenes, Amsterdam murals, boxcars on the nation's rails. I turned to the index and found "Drive-by Shootings." (I'm sure you get the double entendre). The story devoted itself to decoding the gang graffiti of Los Angeles; marvelling along the way about the artistry of the whole endeavor.

In recent days there's been tales in the news about these virtuosos.

Like the story of a tagger who uses the moniker "Buket. Police busted "Bucket", a San Jose State art school grad and Las Vegas convention planner, after several videos cropped up on YouTube featuring the "artist" at work on freeway overpasses and in concrete riverbeds.

One of the most viewed stories on the newspaper's Web site last week told the story of a man and a teen arrested in Covina on suspicion of taking part in a spree that tagged 22 locations along Azusa Avenue.

A few weeks ago we ran a story about a Baldwin Park tagging crew suspected of involvement in the November slayings of a teen-ager and his father in front of their Downing Avenue home.

Where's the romanticism in these stories?

Long before I worked in the newspaper business, I sold patio covers and awnings for my then father-in-law. He had (and has) an office on Mission Boulevard in Pomona. I can remember getting mad at the taggers who would occasionally graffiti the building. I thought about ways to intervene, but never really did anything -- and never thought of the indecipherable scribbling as art.

That wasn't the case with Robert Whitehead, of Bassett, or Maria Hicks, of Pico Rivera. They intervened and got dead for the trouble. I'm sure there's countless similar stories. I know a guy who paints over graffiti for a living and he's told me that he's been intimidated by taggers --and even shot at -- trying to make one San Gabriel Valley neighborhood a little better.

In Whitehead's case, he was killed March 6, 2006 trying to stop two gang members from tagging up a neighbor's wall. During the investigation into the slaying, detectives with the Los Angeles County sheriff's homicide bureau uncovered a suspected connection between the Mexican Mafia prison gang, La Eme, and Whitehead's alleged killers.

As for Hicks, a 58-year-old grandmother, she was shot to death on a warm Friday night last August after confronting a group of taggers in the neighborhood where she lived her entire life.

That was going through my mind as I flipped through pages deciphering the clever, angular strokes of some guy named "Sneaky" or "Sapo" or "Spooky" or "Snoopy" or "Lil Shooter." It occurred to me that this might as well be some ivory tower sociologist's look at a foreign country or the take of a preening self-important East Coast artiste.

Then I got it.

They don't live here.