Growing up behind bars

"It could have been anyone in this courtroom. Your mother. Your lawyer. It could have been me." The judge drilled down on the random murder of a woman for her car. Edel Gonzalez, a diminutive 38-year-old man, sat shackled in a prison jumpsuit before the bench and nodded in agreement. "It was brutal," the judge repeated with force.

This was not your typical sentencing hearing. It was a historic moment. As the judge talked to the defendant, whispering in the courtroom stopped. The attorneys didn't move, and the guard faded back against the wall. This was a conversation between two people: a judge and a man convicted of murder.

West Virginians to be without water for days because of chemical spill

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — For the third straight day, with more ahead, about 300,000 residents of West Virginia were unable to use their tap water because a chemical solvent leaked into the area’s water supply Thursday.

As authorities on Saturday worked to flush pipes that supply water to Charleston and nine counties in the state, officials said it will take several days to properly test the water to ensure it is safe to drink.

The switch to self-employment has mortgage implications

I am an unintended consequence.

I have loads of money. I own four properties free and clear. I have no debt. My credit file is impeccable. I have a credit score of 760.

DeSean Jackson robbed of $325,000 in cash and jewelry, police say

Philadelphia police are investigating a home burglary in which Eagles receiver DeSean Jackson was robbed of a reported $325,000 in cash and jewelry as well as a handgun.

The former Long Beach Poly High and California standout was not at home in Philadelphia when the robbery took place last week sometime between Monday and Friday. Jackson's mother reported the burglary Saturday morning after she arrived at the home Friday night and eventually discovered her son's bedroom had been ransacked.

No time like the present to fix the Sheriff's Dept.

The 10-month gap between Sheriff Lee Baca's departure at the end of this month and the swearing-in of his elected successor in December should be a time of decisive action, not a ponderous waiting period or quiet intermission. Problems in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department are deep and require immediate attention. Baca's unexpected but welcome resignation creates an unusual opportunity, before the arrival of an elected sheriff, to lock in badly needed reforms.

Even as candidates campaign for the job and deputies wonder who their next leader will be, there is an existing diagnosis of the department's problems and an agenda for fixing them. Both are set out, in part, in the September 2012 report of the Citizens' Commission on Jail Violence.

Letters: A bridge disaster in New Jersey

Re "Christie tries to stem traffic scandal fallout," Jan. 10

One can imagine a movie in which several fraternity brothers drink and decide to close all but one lane leading to the nation's busiest bridge, which they do by simply putting up traffic cones. We would all laugh as the camera shows schoolchildren on buses having to go to the bathroom, a baby being born in a car or a jobless man going crazy because he misses an interview.

After monthlong search, Silicon Valley exec's plane found in Idaho

More than a month after a plane carrying a Silicon Valley executive and his family in central Idaho went missing, police officials said it has been found with no survivors.

The single-engine plane was registered to Dale Smith, a 51-year-old pilot and software executive from San Jose. Smith was traveling with his son, Daniel, and Daniel's wife, Sheree Smith; and daughter Amber Smith with her fiance, Jonathan Norton, according to the Associated Press. 

The meaning of life -- in a class on death

The day before a 16-year-old friend of mine was murdered, she kissed the window of her white sedan, a birthday gift, leaving cranberry-colored stains on the glass. Then she gave me a hug goodbye. Her name was Sangeeta Lal, and the next morning, her ex-boyfriend shot her.

It was April 19, 1995, the same day as the Oklahoma City bombings, and while the world media tuned in to the images of bloody babies and building carcasses left behind by the attack in Oklahoma, I found myself, 16 and a high school newspaper reporter, reporting on my community's own domestic terror.

Suicide bomber hits police bus in Kabul, kills 2 officers

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide attacker on a bicycle detonated a large bomb near an Afghan police precinct in the capital Sunday, killing two police officers and wounding 21 police and civilians, including three children. The attack occurred about 3:30 p.m., targeting a bus carrying police from a training center on Kabul's busy Pul-e-Charki road, said Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai. 

The force of the blast was so great the bus was blown off the ground and crashed 10 yards away, witnesses said.  Pieces of twisted wreckage littered the road. 

Crime alerts for Atwater Village, Montecito Heights and eight other L.A. neighborhoods

Crime reports are up significantly in 10 L.A. neighborhoods, according to an analysis of the latest week of LAPD data by the Los Angeles Times’ Crime L.A. database.

Nine neighborhoods reported a significant increase in violent crime. Atwater Village (A) was the most unusual, recording three reports compared with a weekly average of 0.3 over the last three months.

Montecito Heights (J) was the lone neighborhood with a property-crime alert. It recorded eight property crimes compared with its weekly average of 3.7 over the last three months.

Alerts are based on an analysis of crime reports for Dec. 31–Jan. 6, the most recent seven days for which data are available.

Violent crime up significantly

Neighborhood	Average	Reports
Atwater Village	0.3	3
Exposition Park	5.0	14
Arleta	1.4	9
Broadway-Manchester	5.7	14
Echo Park	1.8	5
Vermont Knolls	6.0	12
Vermont-Slauson	6.2	12
Westlake	13.3	17
Wilmington	3.2	6

Property crime up significantly

Neighborhood	Average	Reports
Montecito Heights	3.7	8

'70s heartthrob David Cassidy arrested on suspicion of DUI near LAX

Former pop singing star David Cassidy was arrested near LAX on Friday night on suspicion of drunk driving, the California Highway Patrol said Saturday.

Cassidy, now 63 and a resident of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was driving a rental car shortly after 9 p.m.  when he left the southbound 405 Freeway at La Tijera Boulevard and made an illegal right turn against a red light, the CHP said.

Transgender students 'just looking for their place in the world'

Transgender activist Eli Erlick, 18, was on the phone from her home in the small Mendocino County town of Willits and I could not resist asking her to respond to something uttered recently on the radio by James Dobson, founder of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family.

"God made us male and female," said Dobson, expressing distaste for California's groundbreaking new law that requires schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms and play on the sports teams of the gender they identify with. "You just don't choose gender."

Two men shot, woman detained in Hollywood shooting

Police detained a woman for questioning Friday evening after two men were shot and wounded in a Hollywood apartment building.

Shortly before 5 p.m., police were called to the building in the 1600 block of North Fuller Avenue just south of Hollywood Boulevard.

Bridge emails show Chris Christie aides ignored public safety

Port Authority officials appointed by Gov. Chris Christie knew that the closures they engineered on lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge in September were causing serious delays for emergency responders but still ordered the closures to continue, documents released Friday show.

The documents, more than a thousand pages of emails and texts between Port Authority officials and staff, curious reporters and Christie staffers, did not clarify what the New Jersey governor knew about the lane closures, which he said were engineered by his staff without his knowledge, apparently as retribution to the Fort Lee mayor, who had failed to endorse his reelection campaign. But they did suggest that Port Authority officials blatantly ignored protests from staffers and constituents.

Ukraine opposition leader injured in clash with police

MOSCOW -- Ukraine opposition leader Yuri Lutsenko was seriously injured when protesters clashed with riot police in downtown Kiev early Saturday, his spokeswoman said.Shortly after midnight, Lutsenko tried to intervene in a confrontation between several hundred riot police and about a thousand protesters in downtown Kiev when police suddenly used tear gas and clubs against the crowd, Larisa Sargan, Lutsenko's press secretary, told the Los Angeles Times.

“Yuri was hit several times over the head with a club before he fell,” Sargan said in a phone interview. “His eyeglasses were broken, his head was badly bleeding when he was taken to a hospital. He passed out at least three times along the way.”