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	<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line ]]></title>
	<copyright>Copyright 2012 Copyright © 2011  Los Angeles Wave.  All rights reserved. </copyright>
	<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line</link>
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	<pubDate>Thu, 9 Feb 2012 01:23:25 PST</pubDate>
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: South L.A. council boundary changes spark major uproar]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-South-LA-council-boundary-changes-spark-major-uproar-138541379.html</link>
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			<pubDate>Wed, 1 Feb 2012 21:13:17 PST</pubDate>
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																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[The Los Angeles Redistricting Committee released the first drafts of its newly drawn boundaries for the city's 15 council districts last week and nobody seems to be happy — not even those who didn't like the districts they were in to begin with.

The 21-member 'citizens' committee performed major surgery on the city and carved out changes in South Los Angeles that have community politicians going at each others' throats: calling each other 'sell outs' to other ethnic groups, being power hungry land and/or 'asset' grabbers and worse. They are said to be whipping developers, preachers and state and national elected officials into a frenzy to help fight the proposed boundary changes. In fact, some of these council members appear to be more animated and energized over this then they've been over anything since they took office.

While discontent is fomenting throughout the city, what's the specific problem ailing South Los Angeles? This: The committee has proposed that Leimert Park and Baldwin Village be removed from District 8, currently represented by Councilman Bernard Parks, and added to a reconfigured District 10, represented by Council President Herb Wesson. Parks is livid. Wesson is not and the residents are both — for different reasons.

Parks won re-election last year by 277 votes, but precinct statistics show he was soundly defeated by voters in Leimert Park and Baldwin Village. Residents there told me this week that while they do not like their councilman, they do like each other. 'It's not about the politician — he'll be gone — it's about us, our community; we'll be here leaning on and taking care of each other, like we always do, long after he's gone, and we want to stay together,' a Leimert Park resident said.

Irma Muñoz, a Baldwin Village resident who, with her neighbors, was at odds with Parks over environmental issues for years, also favors the retention of her neighborhood in District 8. 'I don't want the power, the strength and influence of these combined neighborhoods to be diluted,' Muñoz said. 'We have many similar issues and concerns that have brought us together and we need to stay together.'

On the other hand, the USC area of the 8th District is another bastion of anti-Parksism and the people there expressed anger over the fact that the committee has not proposed that they be removed from District 8! 'We want out,' declared a leader of one of the area's neighborhood groups. 'Why are they moving them and leaving us?'

Expressing his take on the situation, Leimert Park über-activist Damien Goodmon said: 'The Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw-Leimert Park community is one community. We have one neighborhood council and we should all be in one district. Unfortunately the current council district political lines divide us. Leimert Park is split in two; the famous Crenshaw/King intersection is a dividing line, as north of King on one side of Crenshaw is in CD 8 while the other side of the boulevard is in CD 10. Residents in Crenshaw Manor and Baldwin Village look out their windows every day at blighted Marlton Square but they don't have the ability to vote for the council member who is responsible for it. This is not fair. It makes no sense. It needs to change.'

Parks decried the commission's proposed changes for his district and said the commission is treating the 8th District 'as a junkyard — taking parts they want and dumping parts they don't.'

Another point of contention is the redistricting committee's proposed removal of the downtown portion of District 9, represented by Councilwoman Jan Perry, and giving it to Councilman Jose Huizar's 14th District. The draft boundary has the 9th District beginning at Olympic Boulevard and extending south to the Glenn Anderson (105) Freeway, thus taking away all the money, power and influence in which Perry and her predecessors have basked by representing the number-one economic center in the city. Perry has complained that taking downtown from her 9th District leaves her with nothing but the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. She was quoted somewhere as calling her predicament 'a form of economic apartheid.'

(Well, that may be true, but ever since the years when the late Councilman Gilbert Lindsay represented 'The Great 9th District' its southern end has been perceived as an economic South Africa. Lindsay notoriously ignored the economic and development needs of his constituents south of Olympic and kowtowed to the movers and shakers downtown. Many editorials were written about it in the Black press, as that area was predominantly Black at the time. I know because I wrote some.)

A lot of whooping and hollering is expected to ensue as morning and evening public meetings of the commission are scheduled through Feb. 11 at which the commission will set about revising and fine-tuning its boundary changes.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: South L.A. stands to lose with end of redevelopment]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-South-LA-stands-to-lose-with-end-of-redevelopment-137640143.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">137640143</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:17:20 PST</pubDate>
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																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

In one of its last acts in 2011, the California Supreme Court upheld the state&rsquo;s right to abolish 400 redevelopment agencies, thus dooming to the recycle bins almost $50 million worth of redevelopment agency investments in long-awaited projects in South Los Angeles.

And in one of its first acts in 2012, the Los Angeles City Council voted 9-3 last week not to take on the burden of the Community Redevelopment Agency and carry out its mandate of combatting blight and maintaining a certain level of liveability in the city.

The court&rsquo;s Dec. 29 ruling was its response to lawsuits filed by the redevelopment agencies after the state Legislature enacted two laws to kill off the agencies and recoup the billions of tax dollars at their command to enable the state to close its budget gap.

The laws, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed in late June, were enacted so the state can provide education, health and the other social services that are seriously jeopardized because of California&rsquo;s dwindling resources, the legislators said. At the signing, Brown said the new laws would generate $1.7 billion to the state in this fiscal year alone, and net $400 million each year thereafter.

The redevelopment agencies, which have existed in California since 1945, sued the state to overturn the two laws &mdash; one of which dismantled redevelopment agencies entirely, while the second one, was a compromise measure that would have permitted some agencies to operate as long as they shared about a third of their tax resources with other such entities &mdash; such as Los Angeles County, for example &mdash; for the operation of schools, the court system, health clinics and such.

The redevelopment agencies viewed the laws as extortion and vowed to sue. The agencies took the offensive on the issue, and took a beating in the fight. The court ruled the state has the right to abolish whatever it creates. 

&ldquo;The Legislature has the power to establish or dissolve local agencies and subdivisions as it sees fit,&rdquo; Justice Kathryn Werdegar wrote in the court&rsquo;s opinion. &ldquo;But once it authorizes an agency, it may not thereafter require that such allocated tax increment be remitted for the benefit of schools or other local agencies,&rdquo; the justice continued.

So, what does that mean? That means the Community Redevelopment Agency of the city of Los Angeles will cease to be on Feb. 1 and the Los Angeles City Council had to decide whether it would become the successor entity to CRA and carry out the CRA&rsquo;s function. The council voted not to do that. 

&ldquo;From a financial standpoint, it did not make sense for the city to become the successor to CRA,&rdquo; Council President Herb Wesson said after the vote. &ldquo;Because any action we would take would be directed by an oversight panel, put together by the legislators and dominated by the county. 

&ldquo;So, in effect, they would be making the city sell off its own assets for 25 cents on the dollar, with the remaining 75 cents going to them,&rdquo; Wesson said.

Since its inception &mdash; and until its demise &mdash; the CRA has prepared redevelopment plans to provide for the construction and installation of necessary public infrastructure and facilities and to facilitate the repair, restoration, and/or replacement of existing public facilities. The agency also performed specific actions to combat blight by promoting the redevelopment and economic revitalization of the city&rsquo;s 31 redevelopment project areas. The agency also worked to increase, improve and preserve the areas&rsquo; supply of low and moderate income housing. The CRA had the power of eminent domain, the partnership of private developers, and the use of tax increment revenue and debt financing structures to achieve its goals.

According to its January 2011 report, CRA had plans for redevelopment projects and programs throughout the city in various stages of readiness to the tune of $1.074 billion in investments, of which $42.94 million were earmarked for 48 projects or activities in South Los Angeles.

In addition to investing $1.977 million to eradicate that 22-acre blight in the heart of the Black community called Marlton Square, the CRA had scheduled improvements and renovations to community facilities, such as the Vision Theater in the Crenshaw project area, the development of an adult art center for developmentally challenged individuals in Engine House 18 in the Normandie 5 area, the creation of Casa de Rosas, a transitional shelter, in the Exposition/University Park area and the establishment of the 30,400-square-foot Sheenway Heritage Charter High School &mdash; with 61 surface parking spaces &mdash; in the Broadway/Manchester area. Oh, this time last year, the CRA had really big plans for Broadway/Manchester: a mixed-use development of townhouses and 2,800 square feet of commercial space, as well as another mixed-use complex with rental units, detached for-sale town houses, stores, supermarkets and such on the corners of 94th and Broadway. Not only that, the CRA had budgeted $840,500 to provide business improvements to the ratty Broadway/Manchester industrial corridor.

The CRA&rsquo;s goals included the expansion of affordable housing throughout the whole of South L.A., the spending of $1,541,000 to build a 100,000-square-foot Martin Luther King Jr. Shopping Center in Watts, and $1,760.00 to repair the sidewalks, curbs and gutters and prune and/or remove the dead, dying and overgrown trees throughout the Normandie 5 project area.

Many wonderful things were on the drawing board for implementation by CRA a year ago and David Bloom, CRA spokesman, is assisting this reporter in determining which of the 48 projects and activities may see the light of day.

&ldquo;It all depends,&rdquo; Bloom said. &ldquo;Any projects that were finalized and approved by the City Council and contracts signed before June 29, 2011 (when the two bills were signed into law), may survive. If not, they are in grave danger.&rdquo;

Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose 2nd District includes all of the South L.A. area projects, said: &ldquo;Wiping out redevelopment is nothing short of a death blow to underdeveloped and developing communities. I know firsthand how tough it is to get good projects built. Now it will be 10 times harder. For example, Marlton Square, the most long-awaited redevelopment project in South L.A., is completely dependent on redevelopment dollars. Those who myopically oppose redevelopment fail to appreciate how critical it really is to the quality of life for people all over Los Angeles.&rdquo;

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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Restoring the natural glory of Baldwin Hills]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Restoring-the-natural-glory-of-Baldwin-Hills-136044233.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">136044233</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:47:15 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



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																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[More than 16 years of fighting and suing oil companies and other special interests that blighted, befouled and disrespected Baldwin Hills — one of the most scenic swathes of territory in the city — has ended and a glorious new vista is in the offing for the area.

Three new projects are on the drawing board to take back, reclaim and conserve the Baldwin Hills and for the first time the residents, citizenry and public officials are all on the same page. And also for once, the residents are being urged to join the architects and planners in the development and implementation of these projects.

The biggest project is called 'Park to Playa,' funded by the Baldwin Hills Regional Conservation Authority, and it entails creating a trail that connects 13 miles from Baldwin Hills along Ballona Creek to the Ballona Wetlands. Parts of the trail system, starting from the Stocker Corridor, will connect the Ruben Ingold and Norman O. Houston parks, the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area and the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook to create the largest urban park in the country, officials said.

Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and the Mountains Recreation & Conservation Authority held their third public workshop on the proposed Park to Playa last month to dissect its feasibility study and its 'Wayfinding Plan' and to consider the next steps toward the project's implementation.

In the meantime, the Baldwin Hills Restoration Project got under way in October. The goal of this project is to restore the natural habitat of Baldwin Hills which has been destroyed by decades of commercial exploitation. This project is being funded by Proposition 84, whose 2006 passage by California voters authorizes the expenditure of $5.388 billion in general obligation bonds for 'safe drinking water, water quality, flood control, river and coastal protection...' and is being administered by the Baldwin Hills Conservancy and Generation Water.

These two groups, together with the Council for Watershed Health and Mujeres de la Tierra, plan to spent the next two and a half years identifying and removing the invasive plants that are not native to the Baldwin Hills and replacing them with the area's proper plants, thus supporting a habitat conducive to the development of the native wildlife, insects, birds and other living things that once flourished in those hills before the oil wells killed them off.

The Baldwin Hills Restoration Project, which relies heavily on community volunteers, held its first 'volunteer day' earlier this month at which neighbors near the oil fields joined project director Rebecca Shields Moose and set about identifying that which doesn't belong there. The most abundant and insidious interloper found was Pampas Grass, a large perennial native to South America which grows in clumps anywhere between 8 and 10 feet with plumes shooting up to 12 feet high. Pampas Grass is an ornamental plant that threatens the habitat because it grows in a monoculture and shades out the native plants. It produces thousands of seeds from each plant which spread quickly in the wind. These plants catch fire very quickly and have no business on a hillside — or in people's gardens.

The third project for the betterment of neglected Baldwin Hills began within the past couple of weeks by the Northeast Trees Project, which has resolved to plant 1,500 trees in those hills. The group has already begun cleaning up the hillside — removing trash and dead brush and preparing the land for trees. The results of their clean up work so far can easily be seen from the west side of La Brea from Veronica to Stocker.

Irma Munoz has lived in Baldwin Vista for 14 years and she is an avid participant in projects to improve Baldwin Hills. 'You have no idea how great it feels to finally stop fighting and work together with my neighbors on something healthy ad positive for our community,' Munoz said. 'Yes, for more than five years, I fought the oil fields. It was a matter of survival. It was either them or us. Now, it's all about us and what we need to enhance our quality of life.'

Anyone wishing to participate in the Baldwin Hills Restoration Project can make one's interest known through an email to rebecca@generationwater.org.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Criminal case tears open a rift between L.A. civil rights activists]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Criminal-case-tears-open-a-rift-between-LA-civil-rights-activists-135221648.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">135221648</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 7 Dec 2011 20:18:11 PST</pubDate>
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																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[Everybody suffers trials and tribulations at various times during one's lifetime, but occasionally Fate uses a stacked deck and deals a crooked hand that creates such mayhem in a person's life that he can't overcome it by himself. Often, under those dire circumstances, he hires a lawyer because they're trained and paid good money to get people out of trouble. If the lawyer cannot or will not work his legal magic to solve the problem, then what?

We African-Americans take it to the streets. We take our problem to one of several civil rights activist groups in the community which claim they exist to combat all vestiges of discrimination, fight for justice and wrestle to the ground every civil rights violation that rears its ugly head.

Well, that's what a South L.A. mother and daughter did last month, the results of which have given this reporter significant pause.

Temeka Jordan was arrested and charged with fraud. The 34-year-old Temeka is a church-going woman, active in the community, had never been arrested and had never been in any trouble before. According to her mother, Renee Jordan, Temeka got caught up in something she didn't know was illegal involving a man she was dating and his friends, and she ended up being charged with fraud — the only one charged — because they used her name in the commission of the alleged crime.

Renee bailed her terrified daughter out of jail and, acting upon the recommendation of a friend, she retained a lawyer, Frank Peters, to represent Temeka and mitigate the legal challenges she faced (and still faces). She paid Peters a retainer of $7,000 for his legal services.

'I was very unhappy with Peters,' Jordan said. 'I wanted him to help me save my daughter and he did nothing. Her civil rights were being violated by the justice system and all he did was insult us and talk to us like idiots. He was very disrespectful. I didn't like him at all. I had serious problems with him.'

Dismayed by her legal representation, Jordan went to the street. She was familiar with Eddie Jones, president of the Los Angeles Civil Rights Organization, so she took her problem to him.

'After hearing the full story of what had happened to Temeka, Eddie Jones was sympathetic to our situation and agreed to help us,' Jordan said. 'He said he would come to court with us and write down everything he saw so he could shed some light on my lawyer, and he said he would get that information out to the media and get the media involved in Temeka's case.

'Then he asked me for $500,' Jordan said. 'After paying $7,000 to Peters, I only had $440 left, so Eddie Jones accepted that, with my promise to pay the remaining $60 later,' Jordan said.

Well, Jordan said Jones went with her to court one time and had nothing with which to write down anything. 

'All he did was introduce himself and pass out his business card to my lawyer and to the prosecutor and shake their hands. And that's all,' Jordan said. 

And when Temeka's court appearance ended, Jordan said Jones 'acted different.' She said his cockiness was gone. 

'He told me he couldn't say anything because they might put him out of the court or might even try to arrest him,' Jordan said. 'We had another court appearance, but Eddie Jones did not attend because he said he was sick.'

Talk about a really bad handful of cards! Okay. So what happens after you've been to a lawyer, been to the street, spent $7,440 and you've got nothing to show for it? You take off your clothes and roll around in the street, getting everybody's attention. 

Desperately seeking help for her daughter's case, Jordan called another civil rights group, the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network in New York, for help. She was referred to the Rev. K.W. Tulloss, president of the NAN California, headquartered here in the neighborhood. Tulloss was appalled by Jordan's tale of woe, especially the part about Jones charging her $500 for his assistance, even if he had actually done something.

But to add insult to injury, Jordan said Jones has been harassing her for the $60 she still owes and Tulloss said Jones called Jordan on her cell phone while they were discussing the matter and demanded payment of the remaining $60.

'It made me mad, so I grabbed the phone and told him that he was wrong to charge this lady for his services,' Tulloss said. 'I told him he was taking advantage of this family and that civil rights groups don't charge people who come to them for help. Our job is to assist those in need, not to rob them. It's immoral.'

Tulloss, who is pastor of Weller Street Baptist Church, said not only are NAN lawyers consulting on Temeka's case, he is demanding that Jones return the $440 he took from Jordan. 

I called Jones Tuesday to discuss this situation. He immediately became defensive and ended up telling me: 'no comment.' However, after sleeping on it, Jones busted my deadline Wednesday morning and decided he wanted to comment.

He said that, contrary to the assumption the general public has held all along, his Los Angeles Civil Rights Association is a duly registered 'for profit' agency, not a 'nonprofit' entity and he is, therefore, allowed to charge for his services. Jones said the $500 he charged Jordan was for 'consulting services' on legal matters pertaining to Temeka after she had already been convicted.

'Temeka was convicted for insurance fraud — a felony — and her mother hired me to see if I could get her sentence reduced to maybe house arrest or probation because she was a first-time offender. I tried but I could not overturn the conviction or stop the prison sentencing,' Jones said.

'I went to court more than once and I did get Temeka more time with her family and I consulted with her, her family and her lawyer several times about the case, which was already lost when they came to me,' Jones continued.

As to Jordan's beef with attorney Peters, Jones said: 'Her lawyer was right and I was right.'

The moral of this story? Know who and what you're dealing with — from the start to the finish.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Inside the ‘Jungle,’ tenants are lining up to fight online demand]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Inside-the-Jungle-tenants-are-lining-up-to-fight-online-demand-134801223.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">134801223</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:40:48 PST</pubDate>
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																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[There's a rumble in the Jungle and it could spread throughout the city.
Hundreds of tenants in apartment complexes in the Crenshaw-area neighborhood we refer to as 'The Jungle' are up in arms and are fighting off a unilateral and illegal change in their rental agreements and Los Angeles' biggest tenants rights group has joined the battle.

This war started when Peggy Jones and her Woodland Hills-based Jones & Jones Management Group Inc. sent letters to tenants in her almost 300-unit Woodlake Manor Apartments at 4551 W. Martin Luther King Blvd. informing them that effective Dec. 1, they will be required to pay their rent online.

Mind you, Jones was not offering her tenants alternate way of paying their rent, but was informing them that online was the only way she would accept it. 

Bobby Vercher, an upset 40-year resident of Woodlake Manor, denounced the change, pointing out that many of the residents of the rent-controlled apartment complex are elderly and know nothing about computers. He said most of them do not have computers and none of them want to do this thing. 

'They want to continue paying rent the way they have all their lives — with checks and money orders,' Vercher said.

The letter Jones sent to each tenant was dated Sept. 1 and states: 'This letter is intended as a [90]-day notice for the purpose of modifying the terms of your tenancy. Effective December 1, 2011, you will be required to pay your rent ON-LINE.'

'We just ignored the letter,' Vercher said, 'until Stephanie Blair, the leasing agent, informed us in November that she had been told not to accept anyone's rent for December. We tenants held a couple of meetings to discuss what we should do about this new rule and then we learned that identical letters had been sent to the Gloria Homes Apartments across the street, informing them that they had to pay their rent online too,' Vercher said. 

As it turns out, Jones owns the Gloria Homes Apartments, as well as several other apartments in The Jungle, and is believed to have made her 'pay rent online only' demand of the tenants in all of them.

As Dec. 1 neared, I contacted Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, the biggest, baddest tenants rights advocacy organization in the Southland, and he lost his mind when I apprised him of this egregious act by a landlord and he jumped all over it, much to the relief of Vercher and his fellow tenants.

'The landlord states in her letter that she's doing this online rent thing because she's 'going green' to help the planet and saving trees by eliminating paper checks and envelopes,' Gross said, 'but the only green she's going for is green bills, which she plans to rake in after she's evicted these people for not paying rent online and replacing them with new tenants paying higher rents.

'And this is not an option being offered,' Gross added. 'Besides the issue of not being computer savvy, many residents in rent-control housing do not have checking accounts and pay their bills with money orders or cash,' Gross said.

After researching Peggy Jones and her Jones & Jones Management Group Inc., Gross discovered that she owns 34 apartment buildings in the city of Los Angeles and potentially thousands of tenants are at the mercy of her serendipitous 'going green' scheme, not just Woodlake Manor and the Gloria Homes. 

Officials at the Los Angeles City Housing Department have stated repeatedly and emphatically all week that Jones' requirement of online rent payment is totally illegal and the CES attorney went through the city's regulations with a fine-toothed comb looking for whatever loophole Jones thinks she has to bend her tenants to her will. He found none.

'Many tenants don't know their rights, so we'll have to hurry and distribute leaflets at the Jones-owned apartments telling residents what to do about this illegal online thing,' Gross said. (Others affected by the Jones online decree can contact Gross and the CES at (213) 252-4411.)

In the meantime, Gross and his CES volunteers will join Woodlake Manor residents Thursday when they go as one big group to pay their rent to the leasing agent, who has already been told not to accept it. The tenants will throw down, with the Housing Department waiting in the wings.

Oh, neither Jones nor her administrative assistant, Trisha Chambray, returned my calls for comment.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Financial injustice strikes South L.A. homeowner]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Financial-injustice-strikes-South-LA-homeowner-133587378.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">133587378</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 9 Nov 2011 20:41:17 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[This is the second in a series of occasional reports on some extreme examples of how the big banks operating in South Los Angeles are treating their African-American customers.

First, there was Roy Perry, the 90-year-old childless widower whose Van Ness Avenue home had become a piggy bank for an assortment of big banks and financial institutions which bought and sold loans on Perry's house among themselves, without the man's knowledge, and without him receiving the proceeds from the loans. And now it seems some financial group is claiming Perry owes $469,000 to somebody for something.

Comes now Timothy Robbins, a 55-year-old investor and family man who has operated the Drug Crime Free Youth Foundation in the community for more than 20 years. He has a horror story that tops Perry's. Check it out:

As an investment, Robbins bought a house on Angelus Vista in 2003 with a $390,000 loan from Countrywide. He began rehabbing it in 2004 so he could sell it and make a nice profit. You know how investors do. As he was finishing the work, he put the property on the market as a 'sale by owner' item and almost immediately attracted a potential buyer.

Exercising due diligence, the potential buyer researched the property and discovered through a title search that Robbins did not own the house. The chagrined would-be buyer confronted Robbins about the true ownership of the property and stomped off, muttering about Robbins trying to pull a fast one on him.

Confused by the buyer's accusation, Robbins did his own search and learned that the man was right; he did not own the property because he had apparently sold it — in his sleep, perhaps. Robbins knew he'd been paying the note and had not sold the house, so he called the LAPD's Real Estate Fraud Unit. Officers came and filled out a police report and launched an investigation into Robbins' complaint.

The LAPD soon realized that Robbins was the victim of identity theft, fraud, forgery and a bunch of other things. Within a year of their investigation, the LAPD cops from the Bunco-Forgery Division arrested a cabal of six people — five Blacks and one White man — who committed from six to 29 counts of villainy against Robbins. In a long series of court proceedings, the District Attorney's Office prosecuted the six on all counts and convicted all of them on all of them: Nicole Yvonne Butler, Danny White, Kenneth James Smith, Mona Lisa Miguel, Michael Stephon Wynn and Michael Melton, the lone White member of the gang, who was an attorney and was reportedly the only one who made any significant money from the fraud. Robbins said Melton was the leader of the group and he reaped $400,000 from the misadventure.

Upon being convicted, some of the six went to prison, some were put on probation and ordered to perform community service (depending on their role in the scheme), and they all were required to make restitution to Robbins.

It took a while to prosecute all these people, but the marathon criminal proceedings appear to have been wrapped up in June. Case closed? The bad guys and gals have been punished and all is well with the world? Robbins has been made whole? Forget about it!

The loan Robbins made on his house was with Countrywide. The $890,000 loan the crooks made on Robbins' house was with Fremont Investment.

'Since Fremont was duly informed that the loan it made on my property was fraudulent, I thought I would get my property back,' Robbins said. 'But no. Fremont told me, 'We know the loan was a fraud, but do you expect us to take the loss?' So they kept my property and I had to sue them,' Robbins said. 'We went to court for 'slander of title,' except it was not a 'slander of title' case, but a fraud case, which Fremont recognized and argued.'

In the meantime, Fremont sold its fraudulent Robbins loan to Bear Sterns, which then sold it to EMC Mortgage Servicing Corp. which sold it to Bank of America which sold it to Chase Bank, all of them knowing full well the thing was the product of a criminal enterprise.

Robbins said that in an attempt to identify who actually owns his property, (which he learned is the criminal Nicole Yvonne Butler) he made so many calls to Chase that they told him: 'We're going to take you to court if you don't stop calling us.'

One of the buying bank's officials told Robbins the bank will give Robbins his loan back if he will pay all the penalties and interest from the time of the fraud (April 2005) until now — a sum that would blow his original $390,000 Countrywide loan to more than $1 million. 

Michael Chin of the downtown law firm of Morrison Foerster is the designated Chase contact for the Robbins matter. Robbins said Chin told his attorney that Chase is willing to make that same offer and that he will prepare a written agreement to that effect. I called Chin to question him about Robbins' property and the agreement he's preparing delineating the conditions under which Chase will return it. Chin told me: 'I cannot discuss it at this time.'

Robbins and his attorney have directed this banking travesty to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is a federal agency established by the National Currency Act of 1863 and serves to charter, regulate and supervise all national banks and the federal branches and agencies of foreign banks in the United States.

Robbins wants to say something: 'Just on another sad note, my foundation is in a part of town where children are being arrested and convicted everyday for selling weed, a couple of pieces of rock cocaine and petty thief and are given unbelievable amounts of jail and prison time for those crimes. Yet, the banks and financial institutions are not even investigated for a crime, and are less known to go to jail or prison. These are the children at the bottom of the 99 percent. What an injustice!'

Occupy South L.A., anyone?
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: At Ujima Village, county tries to put limitations on toxic history]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-At-Ujima-Village-county-tries-to-put-limitations-on-toxic-history-134371838.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">134371838</guid>		
			<pubDate>Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:04:34 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[Ujima is the third day of the weeklong Kwanzaa observance created by our own Maulana Karenga in 1966 as a means of celebrating our African-American family, community and culture.

Ujima is a Swahili-based word that expresses the concepts of collective work and responsibility, revered principles that hearken back to traditional African tribes. For this reason, Ujima was the name chosen for a 300-unit public housing complex built in 1972 in the African-
American rich Willowbrook community where low-income families strove to achieve the good life envisioned in the American dream.

But during the ensuing years, Ujima Village, the federal Housing and Urban Development Department-funded and Los Angeles County-owned and operated subsidized paradise for the poor, turned into an unimaginable American nightmare whose ramifications rival those of the notorious Love Canal toxic waste disaster in New York state that epitomized environmental horror in the late 1970s.

Ujima Village was constructed on land previously owned by Exxon Mobil which was found in the mid 1990s to be contaminated with underground toxins. HUD acquired the land from Exxon Mobil, which, in turn, sold it for $1 to the Community Development Commissioners (namely the five then-sitting Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors) and the Housing Authority of Los Angeles County. 

The county acknowledged the village could have environmental issues when it bought it because Carlos Jackson, head of the county Housing Authority, wrote a three-page letter to a HUD official seeking specific 'indemnification language' in the contract delineating the county's obligation for 'maintenance and normal environmental risk mitigations' at Ujima Village.

In 1995, Ujima residents began noticing strange things: they began smelling odd odors, especially chemical odors in the water flowing from the taps in their units. They said the water not only smelled bad, it was brown. It was the water they drank, cooked with, made formula for their babies, coffee for themselves and bathed in. The people were getting sick. Their hair began falling out, they developed breathing problems, skin rashes and constant headaches. Those that could, started moving out. 

Then, in May 2007, Jackson sent the residents a letter advising them that while the county found Ujima Village did have some environmental challenges, it was 'not that bad' and will be corrected by the Housing Authority. Jackson told the residents to stay put and just keep paying their rent and everything will be all right. In the meantime, Ujima Village residents began suffering a myriad of serious health problems, including cancers, respiratory illnesses, skin diseases, miscarriages, birth defects and death.

Then, in 2008, underground soil and water samples were tested and found to contain heavy concentrations of dangerous toxic substances, such as benzene, a carcinogen; hexane, a neurotoxin; and methane gas, which is flammable and toxic, and all of which were the remnants of a petroleum storage tank that was formerly located on the property.

In July 2008, the county acknowledged that Ujima Village was sitting on a toxic cesspool and began removing residents and working with HUD to secure vouchers to help the low-income families relocate. Reps. Maxine Waters and Laura Richardson held a series of community meetings to help Ujima residents weather the toxic storm and find other places to live. By the end of 2008, the county Housing Authority had ordered Ujima Village vacated, closed down and fenced off.

On April 9, 2010, about 1,000 former Ujima Village residents, widows and widowers of dead residents, parents and guardians of children damaged by village residence and neighbors in property abutting the village, filed a lawsuit in Superior Court against Exxon Mobil Oil Corp., the county of Los Angeles, the Community Development Commission of the county of Los Angeles, (the Board of Supervisors), Carlos Jackson, Bobette Glover, Jackson's assistant; and nine specific other entities, plus 'Does 1 through 10,000.'

The lawsuit is 104 pages long and the first 19 and a quarter pages of it contain nothing but the names of the plaintiffs. The suit makes 389 allegations within 18 causes of action, for which the plaintiffs are seeking general, economic, emotional and punitive damages and other costs and fees from the defendants.

The county, which has hired the downtown Parker Milliken Law Firm to fight the suit — for a reported $200,000 a month — went to court Friday and tried to get the suit dismissed. The county argued Friday that the statute of limitations ran out on the Ujima Village plaintiffs because of Jackson's May 2007 letter. You know, the one in which he advised residents that the county found the soil beneath their homes was contaminated, but assured them that no one's health was endangered and no one needed to move etc.? Well, the county's obscenely expensive attorney argued that that letter constituted official notice that the residents should begin their own investigation of the matter, and that the residents had six months from their receipt of that letter to file a lawsuit and since they didn't, the statute of limitations has expired and they, consequently, have no case.

So, if your landlord tells you you're not in any danger by a particular situation on your rented property and he tells you to stay there and keep paying him rent, are you legally obligated to say to yourself: 'He's lying. I'm going to hire a lawyer and conduct my own investigation?'

Furthermore, the county, through its mouthpiece, for which we taxpayers are paying a fortune ($3 million on the Ujima case so far, according to a public records request), argued those plaintiffs who lived nearby Ujima but were not actual residents of the complex, should have their cases dismissed because the statute of limitation has expired for them, too. The county asserted that the neighbors were officially notified of a problem in the village by a newspaper article published in the Times in May 2009. The county claims they had 60 days from the date of that newspaper to file suit. They didn't, so they don't get redress either.

The judge has granted the county a hearing on these two silly arguments. When we get the date, let's all go!
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Injustice keeps them occupied]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Injustice-keeps-them-occupied-132666658.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">132666658</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:20:12 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/Occupy+LA.jpg" length="26405" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[This is the 27th day of the Occupy Movement that struck New York City's Wall Street and spread across the country, churning up heretofore secure and complacent habitats of fully employed and well-fed White folks and hurling them into the streets to do battle against the establishment.

On Oct. 1, White people looked around and realized that they had no jobs, no homes, no health insurance, no unemployment benefits, no future and blamed their loss of the American Dream on the money changers on Wall Street. They targeted the country's financial hub and launched the Occupy Wall Street Movement, thus providing our country with the most exciting catalyst for social and economic change since the glorious 1960s.

Almost simultaneously with the occupation of New York City's Wall Street came the Occupy Los Angeles protesters who have pretty much laid waste to the City Hall lawns this month as they, too, have been compelled to fight the forces that have eroded their lifestyle. Daily local occupier, activist Big Money Griff, explained — as many of them do — that the Occupy Movement was sparked by unemployed heretofore middle class Caucasians and young White people who had graduated from college but couldn't get jobs and were, nonetheless, saddled with massive student loan debt the banks would not forgive. The anti-financial establishmentarian movement, then, was started by the unemployed and White kids angry because they had bought into the American Dream and came to believe they had been scammed by having done so.

And what of Black people? African-Americans wholeheartedly approve of the movement, and intone: 'Welcome to my world,' as the Whites complain about being subjected to the same economic and social deprivation Blacks have experienced for decades. The Occupy Movement was started by Whites, and they are estimated to total 70 percent of the occupiers in Los Angeles, with the remaining 30 percent consisting of African-Americans and Latinos.

'You know something is really wrong when white people go out and protest,' said Dedon Kamathi, a City Hall occupier, who produces the Pan-African program, 'Freedom Now' on Radio KPFK. Kamathi, who is working with Occupy L.A.s media and outreach committees, said, 'I think it's good that young White people are attacking the White ruling class, especially the 'banksters,' who are the source of all our problems.

'The banks on Wall Street have been exploiting Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean for decades and now they've come home to the U.S.,' Kamathi continued. 'And they've devoted the past 20 years to sucking the life out of everyday U.S. citizens. That's why there are occupy movements all over America today.'

'What we have is White folks fighting White folks and I'm loving it,' said Najee Ali, director of Project Islamic HOPE, who has been active in the local occupation since it began.

'The L.A. movement has been primarily led by White people and we don't mind that. They started this and they should lead it. It's OK,' Ali said. 'Black activists have continued to show solidarity by offering them support, and in the meantime, we have to continue to organize in our own community against Wall Street and the corporations.'

L.A. occupier Jacki Grimes has been a community activist since 1964 when she first met the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in her hometown of Chicago, where she worked with Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH. Activism is in Grimes' blood, because, in addition to occupying Los Angeles and protesting in front of the banks on Crenshaw Boulevard, she also feeds the homeless downtown every Wednesday with a group called 'My Friend's House.'

Grimes is delighted with the stance White people are taking to deal with the country's eroding economy. 

'See what has happened to the middle class?' Grimes said. 'They are now with the lower class. Now we as poor Black people have someone on our side. The White people have lost their jobs and houses — they're in the same boat that we've been in for years and they don't like it. Now they are down at the bottom with us and they are going to step up to the plate with us and help get this right — something we've been trying to do alone for years,' Grimes said.

Paulette Gipson, president of the Compton NAACP, also welcomes the White leadership of the Occupy Movement, but she believes people of color must stay strongly involved 'so our issues don't get swallowed up in the message,' she said.

Gipson, who was elected last weekend the third vice president of the California State NAACP, has been an L.A. occupier since the beginning and — like the others interviewed for this article — has been involved in Occupy South L.A. protests at banks along Crenshaw.

'While we support the White occupiers, we people of color have issues in our own community resulting from practices and experiences that are unique to our residents,' she said. 'Therefore, we must make sure that our issues are not skirted over by the other protests and that they don't get ignored when resolutions are reached — and they will be ignored unless we stand up and say 'we're here.''

As a means of 'standing up,' some Black occupiers have taken the occupation to South L.A. with a series of protests in front of big banks located therein. 

'The big banks in the Black community have been racist in their lending policies and discriminatory in their business practices,' Ali said. 'They have taken Black folks' homes through fraud and scams and they raise their bank fees every time we walk in the door. At the end of the day, Black America needs to continue to support what is now a global protest movement to achieve social and economic justice, and they should become engaged in it and participate in it by removing their money from these banks and putting it in credit unions.'

'Nov. 1 is a day of action when we encourage South L.A. residents to open accounts where they feel comfortable,' Ali continued. 'The big banks and corporations will only start taking us seriously when they start losing money; when customers start leaving them and start putting their money elsewhere.'
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Sudden tragedy, mom in need]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Sudden-tragedy-mom-in-need-131682613.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">131682613</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 12 Oct 2011 18:12:40 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/BOTTOM+LINE+cheerleader.jpg" length="15588" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[A little girl with a big personality and a bright, well-planned future will be laid to rest Saturday with the community's help for the simple reason that we parents don't buy life insurance for our kids. We're preoccupied maintaining health insurance to cover their many illnesses and accidents and never envision the prospect of ever having to bury our babies. We expect, in the natural progression of time, they will bury us.

But Lily Evans of West 97th Street is facing the unbearable: She must bury the youngest and most dynamic of her four children — Angela Lache Gettis, the 16-year-old Washington Prep High School cheerleader who broke our collective hearts when she inexplicably collapsed from apparent cardiac arrest following a cheerleading routine during the fourth quarter of her school's football game on Sept. 30. The game was stopped as Angela was attended to by coaches and trainers who administered CPR until paramedics arrived and took her from the football field to Centinela Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. 

Even though she was 16, I described her as a 'little' girl because she was, indeed, quite small. Angela wore a size 2, and you don't get much littler than that. In fact, her mother said she was little — 5 pounds, 7 ounces — when she was born in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center but was just as jolly as the average roly-poly baby. 'She was always happy and hardly ever cried,' Evans recalled with a smile.

Despite her diminutive size, Angela gave no quarter to her older sister and two older brothers. Evans chuckled as she described Angela as an unstoppable tomboy. 'She liked to skate, play ball and climb things — fences and trees and such. I would put her out in nice pink and white outfit and ribbons and berets in her curls, and she'd come in and her clothes would be all black and brown and her hair would be all over her head,' Evans said.

It got worse as she got older because as a teenager, Angela took a liking to baseball, football and riding motorbikes and insisted on playing with the neighborhood boys. 'The boys didn't want to play with her, but she kept bothering them so badly that they had to let her. To be a girl, she was good at it,' Evans said.

When she got to high school, Angela could no longer play football with the boys, so she became a cheerleader, an activity perfectly suited for her petite and energetic body. She was on the pep squad for one year and was a Washington Prep cheerleader for two years. And she absolutely loved it, so much so that she set a goal for herself: To become a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.

And that goal meshed perfectly with her other goal: To attend a Texas college and study to become a forensic scientist. You see, she loved the various CSI television shows and she told her mother, 'I want to be the one to get in there and find out what's going on.'

Oh, and did I mention, Angela was in the ROTC at Washington Prep and she is said to have looked 'really cute' in her military uniform — like a little ROTC Black Barbie doll.

Evans said Angela was diagnosed with an enlarged heart when she was 8 years old, but had been treated for the condition and had suffered no ill effects for years. Her sudden and very public death poleaxed the student body and her many friends, who had the services of grief counselors on campus, and school officials, including Superintendent John Deasy and school board member Marguerite LaMotte gave solace to her family.

Now it's our turn to help Evans deal with this unfathomable tragedy. Najee Ali and his Project Islamic HOPE have been asked to help raise funds to pay Angela's burial expenses. Toward that end, Buffalo Wild Wings, at 3939 Crenshaw Blvd., has readily agreed to help. The owners, Karim Webb, Edward Barnett and Trevor Ariza, are donating a portion of all food and drink proceeds from their restaurant Thursday to the Evans family. Members of the community can drop off donations to the family at the restaurant from 11 a.m. to midnight on Oct. 13 and donations can also be mailed to or dropped off at Washington Prep in the care of the principal, Todd Ullah. 'The family is grateful for everyone's financial contributions and support in their time of suffering and need,' Ali said.

Funeral services for Angela will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at First New Christian Fellowship Baptist Church, where the Rev. Norman Johnson is pastor.

And how is Angela's family holding up? 'We're leaning on each other and living the same nightmare over and over again,' her mother said. Lord have mercy.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: In his story, an illustration of victimized Black homeowners]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-In-his-story-an-illustration-of-victimized-Black-homeowners-131195428.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">131195428</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 5 Oct 2011 20:04:26 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/Roy+Perry.jpg" length="26045" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[This is a story that will make you want to hurt somebody.

This a story about an elderly African-American man who could be my father or your father or your grandfather who worked hard, saved his money and bought and paid $12,950 for a house on Van Ness Avenue in 1958. Several years later, he borrowed some money on that house which had appreciated in value somewhat, and he was paying it off, too. Yet today, lending institutions have filed documents stating he owes $469,000 on that house, which they claim he borrowed and which he claims he never got.

This is a story about Roy A. Perry, a 90-year-old widower who is mentally and physically as sharp as an aging baby boomer. His wife, Beatrice, died 10 years ago; he has no children; his only relative is his niece, Sheila, who lives in Las Vegas; he lives alone and he is perceived to be one of the thousands of African-Americans in the country who were preyed upon by an assortment of heretofore upstanding financial institutions operating mortgage scams that steered Black homeowners into high-cost subprime loans.

Perry's story is the worst I've ever heard about. It all began in 2001 after his wife got sick and died. At that time, he had a very manageable loan balance of $56,000 on his property. Perry said he was sitting in his house minding his own business when a man named David Huntley knocked on his door and represented himself as an employee of a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Newport Beach. 

'Huntley asked me if I wanted to lower my mortgage payments, and I expressed an interest in obtaining a conventional loan,' Perry said. 'The guy brought up the idea of a reverse mortgage, and I told him I didn't want that; the only thing I was interested in was a conventional loan — like the one I had.

'I didn't want to fool with anything different,' Perry added. 

At that time, the economy was changing and the interest rates and mortgage products were very attractive, but Perry said, 'All I wanted was to make the monthly payments on my house more affordable and manageable for the remaining years I desired to live in this property.' 

The term 'reverse mortgage' never came up again as Huntley began processing the paperwork for the conventional refinancing Perry requested.

In the following days, loan documents began arriving for Perry's signature, a notary was arranged and a new loan was established through OCWEN Federal Bank. 

Then Perry said he received two cashier's checks from Wells Fargo for just a few hundred dollars and from this point until today, things went haywire: Huntley disappeared, Wells Fargo stopped talking, cops were called, the district attorney was sought, and Perry's problem was directed to the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, which was already probing the business practices of Wells Fargo Bank, viz-a-viz Black people.

Also Barry Jackson, a local real estate investor, businessman and advocate for seniors and the underserved who had known Perry for eight years, became concerned about Perry's situation and began working with him to deal with his loan issues. 

'A review of the available documents showed that Mr. Perry had a reserve mortgage and that shortly after he got those two $400 and $300 checks from Wells Fargo, the loan was sold for a second time to a different division of Wells Fargo,' Jackson said. 'The documents show that Perry's loan was transferred or sold to yet another financial institution — C&L Service Corp. in Oklahoma and that third bank is now stating, among other demands, that Mr. Perry owes them for the money that was disbursed to him in the cashier's checks,' Jackson said.

'His niece and I are still trying to gather all the documents pertaining to Perry's transaction, but those that we have found shows a tangled web of conflicting information as related to the disbursements, payoffs, appraised value and new balance amount,' Jackson said.

Jackson said Perry was tricked by Huntley into signing for a reserve mortgage he specifically did not want, and that he didn't even get the benefits from having such a mortgage. 

Jackson explained that whenever a homeowner applies for a reserve mortgage, he is supposed to be interviewed by the proper housing agencies to insure that this is the proper option and solution for the homeowner. With a reserve mortgage, the homeowner gets the money and the note is paid in full.

'None of this happened in Mr. Perry's case,' Jackson and Perry said. In fact, Perry said the only outside government contact he had with anybody concerning his loan was a call he received from someone at HUD asking who and where was David Huntley.

I personally have 110 pages of documents relating to Perry's loan and among them are three reconveyences, indicating that Perry's unwanted reverse mortgage was paid off three times! And this fourth party — the Oklahoma company — is holding the paper for a 40-year $469,342.50 loan on his property that was appraised in 2005 at $337,000. According to the 'comparable sales' report of houses in Perry's neighborhood, all of them were built in the 1920s and 1930s and the newest one was built in 1947, with most of them selling for less than $200,000.

'They have been using Mr. Perry's house as a piggy bank,' Jackson said. 'Mr. Perry was an ideal target for them to fund their own lifestyle. He was isolated — elderly, living alone, no family — he was perfect for the picking.

'I'm trying desperately to find out who took the money from all these loans — Mr. Perry didn't get it — yet his house appears to be pumping out a million dollars to somebody and he's getting foreclosure notices to boot!,' Jackson said.

When Perry first realized he was a victim of a crime, he called the police. The first thing out of the cop's mouth when he visited Perry was: 'Are you demented?' An enraged Perry said: 'I wanted to ask him, 'Is yo mama demented?' but I have better manners than that. So I let the insult go.' 

Then he went to District Attorney Steve Cooley's office and filed Case No. 2011-c-1297 about the crime committed against him and was told to take it to the Justice Department. So he did. He directed the matter to California Attorney General Kamala Harris' Mortgage Fraud Strike Force and to the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which, according to published reports, is investigating Wells Fargo's lending practices, which are alleged to be discriminatory.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department said it had no comment. 

In July, the Federal Reserve and the city of Baltimore filed suit against Wells Fargo, claiming that more than 10,000 borrowers were inappropriately steered into subprime mortgage loans or had their loan documents falsified by bank personnel. The Feds said Wells Fargo agreed to pay $85 million to settle the civil charges against the bank, but admitted no wrongdoing.

But the Baltimore case is ongoing, as that city accuses the bank of using the same tactics against Black borrowers in majority-Black neighborhoods there in a practice known as 'reverse redlining.' 

Baltimore's suit alleges that Wells Fargo deliberately targeted Black borrowers, knowing they would ultimately default on their loans, but didn't care about the cost because the bank sold those loans to investors. Wells Fargo denied Baltimore's allegations in a published statement.

Numerous attempts by Messieurs Perry and Jackson and his niece to discuss the issues with Wells Fargo have been unsuccessful. I talked to Lana Harp of C&L Service Corp. in Tulsa, Okla. and she said, yeah, they are the fourth entity to buy Perry's loan and they bought it from Wells Fargo and, yeah, Perry signed a note and obtained a reverse mortgage and she doesn't see anything wrong with that.

David Huntley's phone is disconnected. But through a real estate search, we got his address in Irvine where he and his wife, Wendy, live. We're going to go stake out his house.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Seeking to be D.A., Meyers’ highest-profile case is far from her biggest achievement]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Seeking-to-be-DA-Meyers-highest-profile-case-is-far-from-her-biggest-achievement-127982128.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">127982128</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:41:21 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/Danette+Meyers.jpg" length="12774" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[I now present to the court of public opinion, the third of the three African-Americans seeking to become the next Los Angeles County district attorney: Deputy D.A. Danette Meyers, whose career in the D.A.'s office is the stuff theatrical dramas are made of. I can envision a TV series entitled, 'The Adventures of Danette Meyers, D.A.,' or 'Meyers for the Prosecution,' or her character featured in a heinous murder movie called, 'Gotcha!'

Meyers is probably the most visible and well-known of all the candidates running for D.A. because she is the deputy who prosecuted (or is prosecuting) actress Lindsay Lohan, and every time Lohan makes one of her numerous court appearances, Meyers is there to deal with it and is, therefore, hounded by paparazzi and reporters clamoring for photos and statements about the current issue with the Lohan woman.

Meyers has moxie. Of all the candidates — Black, White, Latino or whatever — she is the only one who was prepared to beard the lion in his den: She was the only one who announced her candidacy for the office when D.A. Steve Cooley was ruminating over whether he would seek another term. She didn't care whether he ran or not, as she was prepared to stand toe-to-toe with Cooley and take him on in 2012, come what may. All the other candidates threw their hats into the ring after Cooley announced he would not seek another term. Fascinating.

Meyers was born in Los Angeles, raised in Compton and has lived her entire life in South Los Angeles, except for the period when she was earning her bachelor's degree at UC San Diego and her law degree at Howard University's School of Law, the historic moxie Black lawyer factory.

During her 25 years of service as a deputy district attorney, Meyers has prosecuted nearly 200 jury trials, including 41 murder trials, winning six death penalty cases while working in the Inglewood, Beverly Hills, Torrance branch and downtown trial offices. Meyers became a member of the special trials division of the Van Nuys Branch where she convicted area socialite Susan Rhea of second degree murder for killing a motorist while driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs. 

While there, she also prosecuted and obtained a death verdict against Robert Carrasco for killing two people. At that trial, Meyers obtained one of the first convictions of a serial rapist using DNA evidence.

In 1997, Meyers joined the elite Crimes Against Peace Officers Unit, where she successfully prosecuted the most serious crimes against sheriff's deputies and other peace officers. Then-D.A. Gil Garcetti appointed Meyers deputy-in-charge of the Bellflower office in 1999 where, in addition to her supervisory duties, she prosecuted and obtained a death verdict against Bernard Nelson for his killing, shooting and robbing spree that was plastered on the pages of the mainstream media and which became the subject of several TV crime documentaries. Nelson is currently on death row soliciting Facebook friends.

Meyers' job became political in 2000 when she backed D.A. Garcetti's re-election bid over Cooley's attempt to succeed him. Cooley won the election and demoted Meyers from her post as head of the Bellflower office and sent her to the Florence/Firestone Area Office, where upon she proceeded to retaliate against the new D.A. by sending the killer of law enforcement officer Brian Brown and 17-year-old Gerardo Sernas to death row. She followed that slap in Cooley's face with a number of homicide convictions out of the Compton and Airport Branch offices, including one for the murder of LAUSD teacher Kathryn Dawson, which, as with many of Meyers' cases, made the news. 

The most recent of Meyers' headline-grabber is the first degree murder conviction she won last month against Tyquan Knox, 23, the former Crenshaw High School football star found guilty of killing the mother of a girl set to testify against him in a robbery case.

Knox was a standout wide receiver at Crenshaw who was attracting a lot of attention from college recruiters, when one morning in 2007 he walked up to Pamela Lark in a parking lot, put a gun to her face and fired five times. The killing was reported in a two-part series in the L.A. Times. Meyers tried Knox for murdering Lark twice and got a hung jury both times. On July 20, after her third trial, the jury agreed with Meyers that he had, indeed, killed Lark in an effort to stop her daughter from testifying against him in a robbery case.

'It's been 4-1/2 years of working to bring this guy to justice,' Meyers is quoted in the newspaper. 'He destroyed this family and he attacked our system of justice by trying to scare the hell out of this witness by killing her mother,' Meyers said. Knox is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 7.

Now, for some biographical fact-gathering: Meyers has been named Prosecutor of the Year twice by both the L.A. County Bar Association and the Century City Bar Association, and the Daily Journal, the state's most respected legal journal, named her among California's top 100 lawyers. 

Meyers has received several awards for her prosecutorial prowess and her passion and commitment to diversity in the legal profession from her fellows, and she has been recognized for her contributions to the citizens of Los Angeles by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the California state Senate.

After carrying out the responsibilities of 10 various leadership roles within the state and county bar associations throughout her career, as well as serving on the board of directors of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys — plus her involvement with the Black Prosecutors Association and the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles — Meyers was elected the L.A. County Bar Association's first female African-American president in 2008.

I am no fan of the District Attorney's Office, in general, and of Cooley, in particular and I have virtually foamed at the mouth in print about my perception that our current D.A. plays favorites with the law, engages in vengeful 'payback' prosecutions and that, basically, he is a beast. I asked Meyers to address my overt contempt for her office, and she did not flinch.

Meyers has obviously given the perception some thought, as she has developed a program for operating the District Attorney's Office, if she is elected. She calls her program 'Smart Justice,' and its first three principles are: 'Equal access to justice for all citizens; fairness in the application of the laws of the state of California and uniformity in the application of laws throughout Los Angeles County.' That reads like a no-brainer, but I vividly recall Cooley saying pretty much the same thing when he appeared before the Black Journalists Association seeking our support for his election in 2000. After he won, he operated contrary to these three principles. Based on the credentials of people who have endorsed her and who work with her on justice issues outside the courtroom, she could very well mean it.

Other points in her Smart Justice program include reforming the juvenile justice system by reducing the number of juveniles prosecuted as adults, and working with school administrators, parents and members of the criminal justice system to actively engage students in the learning process and thus, increase the number of high school and college graduates. She also wants to create a committee to work on ways to reform the current death penalty statute and the way in which the District Attorney's Office prosecutes death penalty cases, and she wants to 'vigorously investigate and prosecute those who pollute our communities, especially low income and minority areas,' she said.
Meyers' Smart Justice program would find the county office saving money by using rehabilitation as a means of punishing nonviolent offenders and spending resources prosecuting those who commit serious and violent crimes while demanding longer prison terms for individuals who hurt and kill members of the community.

Smart Justice for Meyers would also include increasing diversity within the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and developing and increasing training of law enforcement officers on courtroom procedures, charging policies and the application and implementation of laws.

The following is something that haunts Meyers and is troubling to me. I think you should share our discomfort. Read this:
Meyers is annoyed by the frenzied media attention the various and sundry legal matters of Lindsay Lohan attracts and she related her disdain about the situation to me in a manner that suggested she was blaming me! If not me, personally, then certainly the lust for trivial celebrity happenings by people in my profession gets her goat. She said the day Lohan was sentenced for one of her offenses, she was besieged at the Beverly Hills Courthouse by about 100 reporters and photographers and the like, all clamoring to know what was going to happen to Lindsay Lohan.

Meyers said she became angry and told the mob of journalists that later that day she would be in court for the sentencing of a man who brutally murdered an 11-year-old Black girl in her own bedroom. She told them that that case was the worst one she had ever prosecuted and she challenged the media mob around her to meet her at the courthouse and provide coverage of that sentencing.

It was the case of the People vs. James Heard and it involved Katrina Brown, a smart and energetic 11-year-old who lived with her mother, Marilyn, and her boyfriend, James Heard, in an unincorporated section of Los Angeles, near Compton and Lynwood. Marilyn worked the graveyard shift at Cal State Northridge. Unfortunately, she began dating Heard, an unemployed felon, six months before Katrina's death.

On Dec. 18, 1990, Brown left for work at approximately 11 p.m. Prior to leaving for work, she checked her daughter and found she was sleeping in her bed with her Cabbage Patch dolls next to her. It was her routine to leave for work around 10:45 p.m. and check on her daughter around 6 a.m. to confirm that she was awake and preparing for school. 
On Dec. 19, 1990, she never received a call from Katrina.

Around 9 p.m. on Dec. 18, 1990, Katrina kissed her mother and told her she loved her. She went to sleep and around 2 a.m. was awakened by Heard, who had been drinking and snorting cocaine most of the evening. In fact, earlier that evening, Heard attempted to assault and rape a prostitute. However, several men prevented the attack and he returned to the home he shared with Marilyn and Katrina.

At 2 a.m., Heard entered Katrina's room and brutally raped her. Katrina fought back by biting off a portion of his tongue. Heard responded by biting Katrina's breast and inserting one baseball bat into her vagina and a second baseball bat into her anus. The bats were inserted so far into her that they broke the lining that separates the two areas of the body. It took three men to remove the bats. Heard also took one of the bats and hit Katrina in the head, causing her forehead to split open and inflicting major trauma to her brain. Then, he poured rubbing alcohol in her mouth and stomped on her chest in an effort to get her to throw up his tongue. Heard's shoe prints were found on Katrina's chest. The attack on Katrina took more than two hours, and finally, Heard strangled Katrina to death.

The case was originally tried in 1993 by another prosecutor and Heard received the death penalty. However, the California Supreme Court reversed the penalty phase and Meyers was called upon to retry the penalty phase of the case, which required her to retry the entire case before a new jury. Katrina's injuries were so severe that the medical examiner testified for more then 2-1/2 hours, and he told the jury it was the most brutal crime he had ever seen and one of the longest autopsies he had ever performed. The first retrial hung 11-1 for guilty based on jury misconduct. The second retrial, which Meyers completed in 2010, ended with a death verdict.

Meyers challenged the horde of reporters to go with her to Heard's ultimate sentencing later that afternoon when they finished with their Lohan gawking. 

'You know how many showed up?' Meyers growled. 'One,' she said, while giving me dirty looks. A Times writer went and his July 23, 2010, reportage quotes Meyers as calling the case 'the most brutal crime I have seen perpetrated in my lifetime. This is one guy I hope to see executed in my lifetime. I hope they expedite this.' 

After telling me this, Meyers sat giving me the evil eye and all I could do was apologize profusely on behalf of my profession and keep relating that I knew nothing about it. 

'Yeah, but you knew about Lindsay Lohan, didn't you?' she snapped. Yes, I did. God help me. God help us all.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Looking to succeed her boss, Lacey gives an opening statement on her campaign for D.A.]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Looking-to-succeed-her-boss-Lacey-gives-an-opening-statement-on-her-campaign-for-DA-127498843.html</link>
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			<pubDate>Wed, 10 Aug 2011 19:06:14 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



				
	
	
	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/Jacqueline+Lacey.jpg" length="15607" type="image/jpeg" />
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																		                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

Now I&rsquo;d like to call to the stand Jackie Lacey, District Attorney Steve Cooley&rsquo;s right-hand woman and his favored candidate to replace him, so she can testify as to why we, the voters, should give any credence to Cooley&rsquo;s personal preference and elect her the next district attorney for the county of Los Angeles.

In what was the longest interview I&rsquo;ve ever had with a political candidate, I sat down with Lacey and asked her 10 questions which had been rolling around in my brain for some time. Her answer to this opening question pretty much colored everything else she had to say:

Betty Pleasant: &ldquo;You and Steve Cooley seem to have a mutual admiration thing going on. He pulled you out of obscurity and made you his &lsquo;director of central operations&rsquo; after you supported him for DA in 2000, and you supported him over Kamala Harris for attorney general last year. You are videotaped introducing Cooley at his premature &lsquo;victory&rsquo; party following that election at which you said: &lsquo;Working for this man every day makes my heart glow. You want to please him.&rsquo; What is that statement all about? Are you in love with Cooley?&rdquo;

Jackie Lacey: &ldquo;I am not in love with him, but I have great admiration for him because he gave me a chance. You&rsquo;re right &mdash; he did pull me out of obscurity and I had no managerial experience until Cooley promoted me. He believes everybody deserves a chance and when he became head deputy, he gave me the opportunity to prove myself, and my career took off because of it. I am grateful to Cooley.&rdquo;

Given that working for Cooley everyday makes Lacey&rsquo;s heart glow, I inquired as to whether she has any criticisms about the way Cooley operates and what she would do differently if she is elected to succeed him.

She has no criticisms of Cooley and for the most part, she plans to expand on what is already being implemented. Lacey is an avid proponent of the county&rsquo;s Alternative Sentencing Courts, which mete out special kinds of justice to mental health, drugs, veterans and women&rsquo;s re-entry law-breakers in an attempt to address the underlying causes of their criminality.

&ldquo;We only have one judge in the whole county handling the alternative sentencing cases and I want to expand that,&rdquo; Lacey said.

She also wants to expand the D.A. office&rsquo;s prosecution of identity theft crimes, which she sees as a significant and growing problem in the county. Lacey said she has been a victim of identity theft three times, her mother was victimized once, as has several others with whom she is acquainted.

&ldquo;All the deputies know how to handle identity theft cases, but I believe they should be pushed a lot more,&rdquo; she said.

BP: &ldquo;You lived in Simi Valley until you decided to run for D.A. and then you moved into Los Angeles County in December to do so. Isn&rsquo;t that the same kind of move you D.A. people prosecute other politicians for making? How is your move different from that of Sen. Rod Wright and Councilman Richard Alarcon, whom you indicted, while ignoring identical moves by Councilman Bernard Parks and City Attorney Carmen Trutanich? And what about the fact that Inglewood&rsquo;s Judy Dunlap and Arnold Butler and former Supervisor Yvonne Burke [allegedly] never did live in the district they represented? Everybody knew it and you people did nothing about it.&rdquo;

JL: &ldquo;Every day and every night, I am sleeping in Los Angeles County.&rdquo;

Lacey&rsquo;s biography lists as her organizational leadership accomplishments during Cooley&rsquo;s reign her &ldquo;role in helping to establish the Alternative Sentencing Courts, heading various committees to enhance the enforcement of laws against graffiti, working with Central Operations to streamline the prosecution of all gang cases in Central Los Angeles, partnering with the Los Angeles Rape Treatment Center to mandate assault training for juvenile court prosecutors and playing a role in establishing the first Animal Cruelty Prosecution Program in the D.A.&rsquo;s office.&rdquo;

Her bio also states that, as a member of Cooley&rsquo;s executive management team, &ldquo;her responsibilities include regularly weighing-in on everything from high profile matters to whether the office will seek the death penalty in a particular murder case.&rdquo;

BP: &ldquo;That being so, how did you weigh in on cases that jolted the Black community, such as the railroading of Mayor Roosevelt Dorn? The persecution of 17-year-old Jeremy Marks? The indictment of Sen. Wright? The trial and acquittal of Inglewood school board member Trina Williams? The attempted murder charge and subsequent trial of Jasmin Askew and the overreaching imprisonment of her father, Najee Ali?&rdquo;

Lacey said the case against Dorn, an award-winning and highly respected former judge whom Cooley ultimately removed from his Inglewood mayorship, &ldquo;did not come to a major case briefing involving me,&rdquo; and she exhibited very little knowledge of what the Dorn matter was all about. She said she knew nothing about the heavy-handed prosecution (and ultimate acquittal) of Askew or how or why Ali &mdash; the Black community&rsquo;s most widely known and omnipresent social activist &mdash; came to spend two years in prison.

The Marks case, however, is a different story because that one was a cause c&eacute;l&egrave;bre and ignited international outrage. &ldquo;We reviewed, reviewed and reviewed the Marks case,&rdquo; Lacey said. &ldquo;We listened and the good part of that story is that we listened very carefully. That&rsquo;s how we reached a fair disposition on that case.&rdquo;

BP: &ldquo;How did you weigh in on the war Cooley waged &mdash; and is still waging &mdash; against the union in your office? What about that injunction Judge Otis Wright slapped on Cooley to stop him from terrorizing union members, and what about that lawsuit the union has filed against Cooley and you?&rdquo;

Lacey prefers to characterize the brutal battle over unionization between Cooley and his deputy D.A.s as &ldquo;growing pains,&rdquo; stemming from Cooley&rsquo;s disagreements with the head of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys and the contentious nature of lawyers. &ldquo;Our relations with the union are the best they&rsquo;ve ever been now that the union is affiliated with AFSCME,&rdquo; Lacey said. &ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s a whole lot better now.&rdquo;

Nevertheless, the union is suing Lacey for anti-union activities, and pending the outcome of a complicated motion, she may be removed from the suit as a defendant because she is &ldquo;the county of Los Angeles,&rdquo; or she may be required to testify as a witness to it and explain why her testimony changed from one hearing on the matter to the next.

And finally, on a personal note, Lacey has been a prosecutor for 26 years, including two years in the Santa Monica City Attorney&rsquo;s Office. She tried more than 60 felony cases, the last being in the year 2000. She is married and has two children. She got her law degree from USC after earning her bachelor&rsquo;s at UC Irvine. Lacey graduated from Dorsey High School in 1975, grew up in the Crenshaw District and volunteers one day each week talking to fifth graders about truancy, gangs, drugs, and the consequences of violating the law at Lorena Street School in Boyle Heights.

I rest my case.]]></description>
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: After Cooley, this candidate for district attorney could be saving Grace]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-After-Cooley-this-candidate-for-district-attorney-could-be-saving-Grace-126743373.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">126743373</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 3 Aug 2011 19:28:48 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/Bobby+Grace.jpg" length="165955" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[Comes now Bobby Grace — a deputy district attorney who has devoted most of his working life to serving just desserts to local criminals, while fighting against institutionalized oppression in his own department — seeking to become the next district attorney for Los Angeles County.

Grace, who is a deputy D.A. in the Major Crimes Division, spent 23 years prosecuting cases in that division, as well as the Family Violence, Hardcore Gang, Central Trials and Juvenile units, has seen it all in the courtroom, and in his own office, to boot. He was active in the movement among fellow deputy D.A.s that led to the hard-fought unionization of those county employees and their membership in and representation by the Association of Deputy District Attorneys. 

Grace is a board member of the ADDA, which first obtained a preliminary injunction against his boss, D.A. Steve Cooley, to make him stop abusing ADDA-affiliated deputy D.A.s, then filed suit against him for damages for the evil treatment Cooley inflicted upon his deputies. 

When not fighting Cooley over deputies' right to bargain collectively, Grace was trying more than 70 homicide cases in court, with two of his many winning cases earning him special commendations. He was presented the ADDA's Pursuit of Justice Award for obtaining the 2002 murder conviction of Henry Haynes, a Los Angeles minister who murdered his wife and daughter in cold blood. Before that, Grace earned the Board of Supervisors' Outstanding Community Service Award for convicting Randal Amado and two other gang members for the slaying of high school student Corie Williams, who was killed while riding an MTA bus home from school in 1999.

Some people might recall that Grace convicted Chester Turner in 2007 for murdering 11 women in South Los Angeles during the 1980s and the early 1990s. Turner, who holds the dubious distinction of being the most prolific serial killer in Los Angeles history, got the death penalty. 

Grace didn't get anything for convicting Turner — just immense satisfaction. (He was, however, recognized by the Los Angeles County Bar Association Criminal Justice System as the Prosecutor of the Year in 2008.)

Grace is an only child who was born and raised in San Bernardino. He is a graduate of UCLA and now sits on the board of that institution's Black Alumni Association, and is a graduate of Loyola Law School and sits on its Board of Governors.

While Grace's professional activities have centered on combating the most violent and heinous of criminal offenses, his extracurricular community interests lean toward helping at-risk youth — anti-gang lecturer, football coach, scholarships procurer with various organizations and such. He has, therefore, developed a series of key issues, in addition to violent crime, which he would address if elected district attorney.

To summarize his position paper, Grace wants to reform the juvenile justice system so children don't become trapped in it permanently and/or grow into the adult system. He wants to reduce truancy and crack down on child-abusing parents, especially those who seem so frequently to escape the attention of the county's duly authorized child welfare authorities.

Grace wants to beef up local corruption investigations to ensure that city officials, consultants and lobbyists stop using city treasuries as their personal bank accounts, a la the city of Bell, and vigorously enforce the Brown Act, to make certain residents know what is going on in their city council meetings. He says he will combat auto and insurance fraud that continues to plague Los Angeles County residents because insurance companies pass the cost of fraud to their policyholders. He said he will continue the fight against fraud in public benefit agencies (read: welfare fraud) and in the insurance industry.

Now for the Bottom Line: What will Bobby Grace do to remove the bad taste in the mouths of minority communities about the district attorney? 

What will he do to disabuse us of our perception that the district attorney is a political fellow out to score points for his own advancement? That he targets some elected officials and community activists for trumped-up prosecutions and ignores seemingly identical offenses committed by some others? That he railroads young Black people into prisons and out of their futures? That the district attorney is a mean, vindictive ogre who uses his office to settle old scores against people? Huh? What will Bobby Grace do about that? 

Bobby Grace said: 'There will be transparency in the district attorney's office. People will see us doing the right thing. While we must work with law enforcement, we in the D.A.'s office will maintain a healthy independence from them.'
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: They come not with swords, these Knights to L.A.]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-They-come-not-with-swords-these-Knights-to-LA-126296023.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">126296023</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 27 Jul 2011 18:15:15 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[Just as delegates to the convention of the nation's premier civil rights organization are leaving town, delegates are arriving in Los Angeles for the convention of the country's only organization of African-American Catholics.

The 102nd NAACP Convention ends Thursday night with its Freedom Fund and Spingarn Award Banquet, just as more than 2,000 Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver move into the Bonaventure Hotel Friday for the official opening of that 101-year-old organization's national convention.

Under the leadership of 33-year-old DeKarlos Black, the youngest supreme knight in the history of the Knights of Peter Claver, the delegates will begin their seven-day stay in Los Angeles by spending Thursday working with Habitat for Humanity in rebuilding a house for a needy family in Long Beach, in keeping with the organization's deep commitment to serve mankind. 

The KPC will formally kick off its convention Friday with a 'gospel extravaganza' at the Bonaventure, which is billed as featuring gospel choirs from throughout the Los Angeles community. On Saturday, the organization will implement its Emerging Leaders Project, in which young adult knights and ladies will collect and distribute canned goods to local food banks. This will be followed by the Fourth Degree KPC award banquet at the hotel.

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez will be joined by some 20 bishops from across the country when he celebrates Mass and delivers the homily for the special KPC convention mass Sunday at 3:30 p.m. at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The young adult knights and ladies will hold their United Negro College Fund dance Sunday night. 

Following several daytime business sessions, the KPC will hold a banquet and a ball Monday and Tuesday, respectively.

For the many Baptists and AMEs among us, here's a little history lesson about Peter Claver and knights and ladies who honor him: The Knights of Peter Claver is the nation's only African-American Catholic fraternal organization and the world's largest historically Black Catholic lay group. It was founded on Nov. 7, 1909 in Mobile, Ala., for Black men who were barred from other organizations in the Catholic church — like the Knights of Columbus. The organization's membership now encompasses the Catholic Church at large, including clerics and prelates and women and youth. Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony is an active fourth degree knight of Peter Claver.

The KPC is a faith-based fraternal order with units in more than 400 Catholic parishes in the United States and South America. The order engages in several national service projects and is a major supporter of the United Negro College Fund. The order commissioned its Environmental Health and Justice Literacy Project to educate residents of underserved communities about environmental health hazards, and is currently developing a national project to combat childhood obesity.

The order is named for St. Peter Claver, a Jesuit priest from Spain who ministered to African slaves in Cartagena, Colombia, which was a chief center of the slave trade in the Americas during the 1600s. He devoted his 40-year ministry to attending to the temporal and spiritual needs of the inhumanely treated slaves who were shipped to Cartagena, and he is said to have converted more than 300,000 slaves to Catholicism. He died in 1654 and was canonized in 1888. St. Peter Claver (or San Pedro Claver Corberó) is the patron saint of slaves, Colombia, race relations and African-Americans.

The Knights of Peter Claver is based in New Orleans, and is a member of the worldwide International Alliance of Catholic Knights — right along with the Knights of Columbus.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Not so easy: fresh front opens  in war over a South L.A. market]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Not-so-easy-fresh-front-opens--in-war-over-a-South-LA-market-125928534.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">125928534</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:40:27 PST</pubDate>
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																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[The first Councilman Bernard Parks vs. His Constituents event was held in the 8th District Tuesday when the South Los Angeles Planning Commission convened a hearing into the community's objections to the issuance of a liquor license to the future Fresh & Easy Market, set to open on the corner of 52nd Street and Crenshaw Boulevard.

Parks and the people he represents went at each other last year over Fresh & Easy owners' desire to construct their new market in a manner that violated the community-developed and approved Crenshaw Specific Plan. The community lost that fight, so it is now suing people.

This year's fight is an old one in a new arena: It's over the stereotypically high number of liquor-selling outlets in the African-American community and the adverse effects all that alcohol has on the residents' quality of life. Virtually from the moment he was first sworn into office, residents have waged bitter battles with Parks over his inclination to support the issuance of a liquor license — or a conditional use permit allowing one — to what seems like anybody who wants one.

Now, Fresh & Easy wants one. And Parks wants Fresh & Easy to have one. People showed up in droves at the Ridley-Thomas Constituent Center Tuesday to weigh in on the issue. A bunch of people appeared to have been 'bused in' who supported the market, but who knew nothing about the liquor issue. The market's supporters submitted a batch of petitions to the commission signed by people who want the market, but the petitions did not contain a word about liquor sales.

It should be noted that Parks' current 8th District newsletter does relate the liquor issue and urges residents to attend the hearing. The newsletter states: 'Regardless of how you feel about alcohol, our community needs more fresh, healthy food, and revoking the permit could doom the entire project!'

That is not true. The Fresh & Easy in the Valley does not sell liquor of any kind because the Valley community opposed the sales, citing the already oversaturation of liquor outlets in the neighborhood, the high levels of crime occurring there and the several sensitive uses of the immediate area, such as a school and senior center — much like the corner of 52nd and Crenshaw as a reason to keep liquor out of the market.

Councilman Tony Cardenas listened to his constituents and led them in opposing the CUP for Fresh & Easy's sale of liquor in his 6th District. 

The market's owners withdrew their permit request, opened their store without liquor, and it is said to be one of the most profitable Fresh & Easys in the Southland. Obviously, not having a permit to sell liquor is not a deal-breaker for operating a Fresh & Easy, as many of the proposed Crenshaw market supporters were led to believe.

Linda Ricks, chair of the Crenshaw-Slauson CRA Community Advisory Council, took extreme umbrage at the market's response to South L.A. residents opposed to residents in the Valley. 'Just because we're Black doesn't mean we have to accept anything a big corporation and council member throws at us, like hungry beggars,' Ricks told the commissioners. 'Just because we're Black doesn't mean we are not entitled to have standards about pedestrian-oriented design, delivery hours and liquor sales. Our standards should be respected by Fresh & Easy and every other mega-corporation just as they would on the other side of the 10 Freeway. I am shocked that anyone would disagree.'

Stuart Huggins, president of the Windsor Hills Village Block Club, expressed his opposition to another issue that was before the commission: Fresh & Easy is seeking permission to ignore the citywide regulation that bans deliveries to businesses before 7 a.m. Fresh & Easy wants deliveries to start at the future Crenshaw store at 6 a.m.

'It is not clear why Fresh & Easy is requesting 6 a.m., other than because they can,' Huggins said. 'Any deviation from this citywide standard will disrupt the quiet enjoyment of the abutting residential community by large delivery trucks entering, turning and backing into the delivery docks with their backup horns.'

'This is especially problematic because the loading dock is to the rear of the property, just 10 feet away from the property line of homes,' Huggins added. 'Waking up to the sound of backup horns at 6 a.m. every morning. That doesn't sound too neighborly to me.'

Huggins took a parting shot with this: 'Fresh & Easy sought this site knowing that the earliest delivery hour permissible was 7 a.m. Why do they expect us to lower our standard in South L.A.?'

In the final analysis, the commission voted to give Fresh & Easy everything it wanted. Those who voted 'yes,' in favor of the market, were Faith Mitchell, committee president; and commissioners Victoria M. Franklin and James Silcott. Commissioner Rochelle Mills, voted 'no,' in favor of the people.

Winnifred Jackson, president of the Hyde Park Organizational Partnership for Empowerment (HOPE), was nonplussed about the outcome. 

'We have a lawyer … and we're just going to go to court. It's quite disappointing to think that we might have to go to Superior Court for justice instead of our very own South L.A. Planning Commission and our councilman, but so it is,' Jackson said.

The matter now goes to the City Council's Planning and Land Use Committee and then to the full City Council for the final decision.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Lurid details emerge in sexual harassment  lawsuit lost by an L.A. civil rights insider]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Lurid-details-emerge-in-sexual-harassment--lawsuit-lost-by-an-LA-civil-rights-insider-125539913.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">125539913</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 13 Jul 2011 18:54:51 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[An entrepreneur and civil rights activist with close ties to the Rev. Al Sharpton, to Rep. Maxine Waters and to just about every political and religious figure in the Southland, has lost a sexual harassment and 'intentional tort' battery lawsuit and is scheduled to begin a new trial continuation hearing Monday to determine the total amount of damages he must pay.

Tony Wafford, the West Coast coordinator of Sharpton's National Action Network, who also heads Wafford Consulting and the Palms Residential Care Center, was sued last fall by one of his employees, Sharon Song Byrd, for sexual harassment and battery. At the conclusion of a nine-day trial in Superior Court, the jury found in Byrd's favor.

Byrd held the program administrator position at the Palms Residential Care Center, from whose La Brea Avenue location Wafford ran Los Angeles County-funded AIDS/HIV programs.    

After listening to a seemingly endless litany of egregious acts by Wafford to get Byrd to have sex with him — including testimony that he took his penis out of his pants in his office and told her to 'come and sit on it' — the jury awarded her all the money she sought. 

Byrd told the jury that in an angry rage at her continuous rebuff of his nasty advances, Wafford struck her on the hand and the huge diamond ring he wears caused inoperable nerve damage to her appendage. Her physicians provided court declarations as to the severity of the injuries to her hand. Then the jury found that, yes, Byrd had been severely and continuously sexually harassed by Wafford; yes, he had committed a battery when he hit her and yes, he will pay all her medical bills and for the services of a psychologist to restore her emotional health.

Wafford, who is said to have fired the attorney who lost his case, is expected to defend himself Monday at 10 a.m. in Dept. 39 in the downtown courthouse in another trial set to assess the non-economic damages he will pay Byrd — such as for pain and suffering, emotional distress and the like.

I asked Jeffrey Cowan, Byrd's Santa Monica-based attorney, why Wafford, who was accused of battery, is not in jail. Cowan explained that while paramedics were summoned to the scene following Wafford's attack on Byrd, and a lengthy LAPD police report was taken of the incident, she was informed that a report needed to be made to the Sheriff's Department. 

Cowan said that report was made, but it ended up missing. 'We held a mini-trial about that missing report,' Cowan said. 'Criminal proceedings were never implemented against Wafford because the Sheriff's Department never issued a formal report.' 

Oh, and by the way, Wafford is married to a captain in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Attempts to reach Wafford for comment were unsuccessful, as the telephone number on his Wafford Consulting letterhead is no longer in service. 

I did manage to reach several people who know Wafford, chief among whom is activist Najee Ali, who was once also closely aligned with Sharpton. Ali said he broke ranks with Sharpton because of Wafford, and as to this case, Ali said, among other things, 'I am not surprised by the verdict.'
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Turmoil rocks South L.A. school named for Obama]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Turmoil-rocks-South-LA-school-named-for-Obama-125117229.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">125117229</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 6 Jul 2011 17:59:40 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/Obama+prep.jpg" length="14921" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[There was a time when teachers and the public school system were next to God and the church in the population's admiration and enjoyed the unwavering support of parents and the childless alike. But not anymore. And certainly not in South Los Angeles where the public school system is coming under fire like it's public enemy number one.

Cases in point: The Los Angeles Unified School District Board's high-handed turn-over of the public Henry Clay Middle School to the Green Dot education company last Friday, coupled with what the community views as another atrocity — the removal Tuesday of the principal of the brand new, 10-month-old and highly ballyhooed Barack Obama Global Preparation Academy.

What the school board did to Clay had already aroused so much antipathy among South L.A. residents that they organized to fight the school board, but the inner-city's response to the school district's action in regard to the Obama Academy has, as they say, gone viral.

It seems that the Southland's educational power brokers — John Deasy, the new LAUSD superintendent, and George McKenna, the Local District 7 superintendent — decided last week to, first, fire Veronique Wills as principal of Obama, but later chose to transfer her to the continuation school at Fremont High School, to which she reported Tuesday. Wills' removal, for reasons the district would only tell me is 'a personnel matter,' has enraged the school's parents, teachers and community volunteers who have worked closely with Wills since the school opened in September, and they've been meeting and planning protests since the Fourth of July.

A middle school, the Obama Academy, located on the corner of 46th Street and Western Avenue, was hailed as a wonderful thing when it opened last Sept. 13 with 1,300 students. It was billed as a site that would relieve the overcrowding at Foshay, Mann and Muir middle schools and provide a new age student-centered, college preparatory and career readiness curriculum emphasizing math, science, technology, world languages, diplomacy and the social and economic systems of other nations. Oh, everybody just loved it: the educators, the politicians, the parents. So, what went wrong during the academy's 10-month existence?

According to the teachers and the parents — everything, from day one.
'The Obama Academy was under-resourced all year long,' declared Kokayi Kwa Jitahidi of the MA'AT Institute for Community Change, a group which has worked closely with the school. 'All this school ever got from the school district were a lot of fancy words and ideas and nothing to bring them about. They were operating on a shoe-string budget and had to cut staff to get the place open.

'We volunteered to help keep the school clean because they didn't even have enough janitors. Ms. Wills worked very hard to bring the basic resources to the school which the district did not provide. And even if she did have the resources, she would have needed more than 10 months to make a school work,' Jitahidi said.

One of the leaders of the protesting Obama teachers said: 'The school opened in September and we didn't even get textbooks in the classrooms until November. And when the district finally gave us some, they came without codes and we — the teachers, staff and volunteers — had to code every single textbook by hand before the students could use them.' 

Another teacher complained that while the school opened in September, it received no Title I money until January or February; that despite its 1,300 student enrollment, it was given no campus aides, had only two office technicians and a plant management staff of five people, including only two custodians. 

'If we wanted a clean classroom, we had to clean it ourselves — and we did,' the teacher said. 'We had parents and community people who would help us sometimes, but it was a hard year and we had a difficult time getting our school going because we never received what we needed to operate.

'But Ms. Wills was our leader and she worked tirelessly against formidable challenges. In fact, Ms. Wills, acknowledging the importance of constant parental interaction, often stayed at the school late — until 6 and 7 p.m. — to accommodate working parents who wanted to confer about their children,' the teacher said.

Another Obama teacher is quite depressed over the turn of events. 'We worked hard developing the plan for this school and the district didn't support us in carrying it. I don't think I want to be a teacher anymore,' she said.

Many of the teachers speak of a meeting McKenna had with the Obama faculty two weeks ago at which Julie Elliot, an LAUSD associate superintendent, apologized to the faculty for the problems the staff had during its first year and pointedly apologized for the district's failure to provide the necessary resources when the school opened. 

She said the district will make sure nothing like that ever happens to a new school again. Elliot is also reported to have told the 30 or so teachers present at the meeting that she found no fault with the academy and that no 'corrections' would be dispensed.

'Imagine our shock to learn after Elliot's speech that Ms. Wills — our principal, our leader — was being fired,' another teacher said. 'They just keep playing us and blaming us. What do they want us to do? I believe we were set up to fail,' she added.

McKenna did not return my calls for an interview; Deasy was out of town, and LAUSD board member Marguerite LaMotte said: 'While I've heard a great deal about this matter this week, I do not know the facts surrounding it. I have to investigate and ask questions of both sides to determine what has been done and why and whether it was fair to the people involved and in the best interest of the school.'

As far as Jitahidi is concerned, everything about this stinks. 'Nobody knows anything, yet inner-city schools and their personnel are under assault. We're all scratching our heads about this. Decisions are being made by unknown people for hidden reasons without input from the people. Coupled with Clay, this business at Obama is part of a continuing pattern of disrespect by the school district that targets and adversely impacts Black schools,' Jitahidi concluded.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Trial approaches in D.A. union-busting scheme]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Trial-approaches-in-DA-union-busting-scheme-124751529.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">124751529</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:26:14 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/Jackie+Lacey.jpg" length="10037" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[Deputies to Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley are preparing for a Sept. 20 trial date for their lawsuit against him, his chief deputy, Jacquelyn Lacey; the deputy in charge of the Bellflower office, Mario Trujillo; six other high-ranking D.A. officials; and the county of Los Angeles for compensatory and punitive damages they suffered as the result of a retaliatory, union-busting campaign Cooley is said to have directed when his subordinates began organizing a bargaining unit of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys.

The lawsuit, filed April 5, 2010 by four individual deputy D.A.s and the association as a whole, comes on the heels of a preliminary injunction granted against Cooley et al. by U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II, who used strong words to render his decision that Cooley and the gang had, indeed, implemented a retaliatory, discriminatory, intimidating and slanderous campaign to stop L.A. County's deputy D.A.s from unionizing. The injunction ordered Cooley and his agents to cease such actions.

In the order granting the injunction, the judge found that Cooley violated Los Angeles County's Employee Relations Ordinance, which establishes procedures for the formation of a labor union, violated the defendants' First Amendment rights of free speech and association and subjected them to a policy of discrimination and intimidation for their union interest, membership and involvement.

The judge also noted that, among other things, Cooley 'punitively transferred several deputy district attorneys associated with ADDA, demoted them, awarded them undeserved, mediocre performance reviews and otherwise discriminated against them.'

Among other things, Judge Wright related in his injunction-granting document the following: 'On Oct. 17, 2008, [Cooley] met with Robert Dver, a prosecutor with 24 years experience in the D.A.'s office … Cooley told Dver that ADDA President Steve Ipsen was a 'crook,' and that the prosecutors who signed union cards leading to ADDA's certification were 'contaminated.'

'Plaintiffs also allege, and defendants do not dispute that Cooley instructed Dver to 'undermine' the ADDA. After Dver refused to follow Cooley's directions, Cooley transferred Dver and stripped him of his supervisory tasks.'

Judge Wright also wrote that Lacey, Cooley's right-hand woman and his endorsed candidate to replace him as district attorney, corroborated Dver's testimony and she admitted warning Dver not to join ADDA's contract negotiating team and not to even discuss ADDA with Cooley, as it would negatively impact his career. 'Lacey also provided in court that being associated with ADDA would 'definitely' hurt Dver's career,' the document states.

According to Judge Wright's order, Lacey, the D.A. wannabe, was deeply involved in Cooley's union-busting reign of terror, starting with her early refusal of a union request that she issue a memorandum to all prosecutors stating the D.A.'s office would be neutral regarding union organization and would refrain from retaliating against any prosecutor for exercising his or her right to join ADDA. Then, she admitted in the injunction hearing how veteran unionized prosecutors were demoted to entry-level positions and how heretofore consistent 'outstanding' prosecutors were suddenly issued 'needs improvement' ratings.

Testimony was also given as to how union supporters were given assignments as far away from their residences as possible in what Cooley and the gang called 'freeway therapy;' how ADDA members were singled out for higher health insurance premiums, were put on unpaid suspensions and threatened with termination. Notice was also made of how Cooley's D.A. investigators (law enforcement officers working directly for Cooley) harassed and intimidated the union's most active members and how, on at least one occasion, they tried to manufacture evidence that a heterosexual union board member engaged in homosexual conduct, a tactic plaintiffs alleged had been employed against targets in other cases.

(Deputy D.A.s are tough cookies. Despite such workplace hell, enough prosecutors returned union cards to the Los Angeles County Employee Relations Commission to certify ADDA as a county employees union on March 24, 2008. ADDA is now the representative of Bargaining Unit 801, which consists of about 1,000 deputy district attorneys in Grades I through IV.)

In the end, Judge Wright had seen and heard enough. 'While the foregoing sufficiently establishes plaintiffs' entitlement to a preliminary injunction, defendants' abuses far exceed the specific examples illustrated above,' the judge wrote as he concluded his order. He further noted that the plaintiffs' allegations were mostly undisputed by the defendants, and that moreover, the defendants offered no persuasive reason why the deputies' arguments should not be sustained. 

He wrote: 'The plaintiffs have established a course of explicit retaliation by defendants that is both striking and rampant.' Apart from flagrantly violating the deputies' First Amendment rights, the judge noted that Cooley's acts flew in the face of five U.S. Supreme Court decisions, three 9th Circuit Court decisions, one 7th Circuit Court decision, two California Supreme Court decisions and Section 3504.5(c) of the California Government Code.

In conclusion, Judge Wright wrote: 'Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims as they will likely suffer irreparable harm absent injunctive relief, as the balance of equities tips sharply in plaintiffs' favor. Plaintiffs seek merely to exercise their First Amendment rights and perform their duties without harm or consternation. On the other side of the balance, defendants cannot seriously suffer any harm if they are preliminarily enjoined from engaging in their questionable conduct; they need merely obey the law.

'An injunction in this case also serves the public interest by protecting the constitutional principles underlying this very society,' the judge continued. 'This is especially true where, as here, those officials entrusted with upholding those values could likely be found to have abrogated their duty. The public surely has a vested interest not only in abrogating such violations but also in ensuring that those responsible cease their abuse.'

The plaintiffs' suit, then, is to have Judge Wright's preliminary injunction declared permanent and to obtain whatever compensatory and punitive damages a jury would find are appropriate to ease their pain.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Famed Inglewood doctor indicted by federal grand jury]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Famed-Inglewood-doctor--indicted-by-federal-grand-jury-124393974.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">124393974</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 22 Jun 2011 17:55:42 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



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																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[Dr. Bill James Releford Jr., the pillar of Inglewood whose successful national health program was so impressive to President Obama that he was invited to the White House to watch the Super Bowl earlier this year, was indicted by a federal grand jury for an identity theft scheme that defrauded banks out of more than $3 million, it was learned this week.

Releford, 51, an internationally renowned podiatrist who practices in Inglewood, is one of six people for whom a federal grand jury returned a 29-count indictment May 4, charging them with a laundry list of illegal actions which, if convicted, carry maximum statutory sentences ranging from 750 years to 870 years, according to the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office spokespersons.

In addition to Releford, five others were indicted for their alleged roles in the scheme and taken into federal custody. They are: Andrea Lorraine Avery 44, of Los Angeles; Kirkland Charles, 46, of Beverly Hills; Annita Hawes, 46, of Los Angeles; James Arthur Booker, 37, of Carson, and William Earl Gordon, 59, of Little Rock, Ark. All six defendants were released on bail and will stand trial early next year, said U.S. Attorney spokesman Tom Mrozek.

In a nutshell, Releford and the other five defendants stand accused of operating a bank fraud scheme in which stolen identities were used to establish lines-of-credit at Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank. 

According to the indictment, the six defendants used stolen identities of people with good credit scores to establish business lines-of-credit and then used the money for their own personal expenses.

The indictment accuses Releford, et al. of having obtained stolen personal identifying information, including dates of birth, Social Security numbers, credit profiles, FICO scores and driver's license numbers, to complete fraudulent applications for business lines-of-credit at the banks. 

The indictment further asserts the defendants used the stolen identities to create bogus officers of shell corporations that did not exist. 

According to the IRS, which joined the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Justice Department's Criminal Investigation Division in investigating this case, the defendants allegedly concocted phony profits for their phony businesses and filed fake tax returns to make the bogus businesses appear operational. 

The indictment also accuses them of actually having rented office space, installed rented equipment and recruited co-conspirators to pose as 'employees' in their phony offices to convince bank officials inspectors that the shell businesses were legitimate, functioning 
enterprises. One such business named in the indictment is 'California Podiatry of Diabetes Foot,' for which line-of-credit checks were made payable to 'Bill J. Releford.'

The multi-agency investigation found that once the line-of-credit applications were approved by the banks, the funds were deposited into the corporate bank accounts linked to the credit lines, usually in the amount of $100,000 each.

'Within a few days, the defendants liquidated the credit lines by issuing checks payable to themselves for their personal use,' said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller. 'The defendants are charged with having opened and drained more than 70 credit lines through this scheme,' Eimiller added.

Neither Releford, nor his attorney returned two days' worth of telephone calls for comments.

Releford is regarded as an expert in the field of podiatry and has been hailed for his treatment of diabetic patients in the United States and in Ghana, West Africa. He is reputed to have saved the limbs of hundreds of diabetes-ravaged patients — from the very poor to the very rich.

In 2001, Releford created the Diabetes Amputation Prevention Foundation to research methods and protocols to decrease the amputation rates in high risk populations not just among African-Americans and Africans, but such populations in Fiji, Tahiti, Costa Rica and Brazil.

Releford garnered even greater acclaim — and the admiration of President Obama — when his foundation established the innovative Black Barbershop Health Outreach program in 2008 to address the health needs of uninsured African-American men. Releford started his outreach program in the Inglewood's Finest barbershop in Inglewood and by the time he and Obama watched the Packers beat the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV in February, there were more than 700 barbershops nationwide providing health outreach services, including diabetes and high blood pressure screenings, as well as educational information about prostate cancer and other ailments which tend to disproportionately afflict black males.

But it seems that, for Super Bowl XLVI, Releford may very well be in federal court.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Quest for fatherly love carried on in his name]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Quest-for-fatherly-love-carried-on-in-his-name-123960859.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">123960859</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:27:36 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/Hershel+Swinger.jpg" length="16135" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[Just as the Children's Institute Inc., one of the Southland's oldest and largest child services organizations, was wrapping up the details of its fourth annual Fatherhood Solution Conference, scheduled for Friday, Hershel K. Swinger — CII's executive vice president, founder, director and guiding light of its innovative 'Project Fatherhood' program — died.

Swinger, a 72-year-old resident of Baldwin Hills, died May 23 of congestive heart failure after devoting his life to the health and welfare of children, with an emphasis on children's fathers, for which he gained a national reputation, numerous accolades and awards, two federal grants and recognition as a model program from the Obama administration.

Swinger was a clinical psychologist with a Ph.D from USC who, after spending many years helping children traumatized by family and community violence, abuse and neglect, finally arrived at the nexus of the problem he was facing everyday and of its solution — the role of the father in a child's life. So, 15 years ago, Swinger created Project Fatherhood at CII through which he and his staff devoted themselves to helping low-income, urban fathers become engaged, effective and loving parents.

'During his many years of working with the courts and child protective service agencies, Dr. Swinger saw that social workers would not seek out fathers of color to involve them in their children's problems, and that made him very sad,' said Ron Banks, clinical director and now interim director of Project Fatherhood. 'He recognized the longing that children have for a nurturing and supportive father and the instinctive desire that almost all fathers have to love and protect their children.

'And Dr. Swinger saw that there were four reasons why the connection between fathers and their children was broken,' Banks continued: 'Stress, social and psychological isolation, low self-esteem and intergenerational issues, such as substance abuse, domestic violence and incarceration were the reasons. Dr. Swinger saw that, despite these four reasons, absent fathers do love their children and he set out to change the way fathers were being treated.

'He began developing strategies, protocols and treatments to infuse fathers and their children into each others' lives,' said Banks, who also has a Ph.D in clinical psychology, was mentored by Swinger and who worked closely with Swinger in the creation and implementation of Project Fatherhood.

At the Children's Institute, a 105-year-old agency, Swinger spent more than 10 years developing several fatherhood demonstration programs and innovative treatment models, which ultimately meshed into Project Fatherhood in 1996. Since then, the project has served more than 7,000 absent urban fathers who were either referred to it or chose to seek assistance on their own.

In 2006, the project received two grants totaling $7.6 million from the U.S. Office of Family Assistance pursuant to the federal Fatherhood Initiative to expand the program, and now Project Fatherhood is being implemented in more than 50 agencies throughout Los Angeles County — from Lancaster to Long Beach. Locally, a Project Fatherhood program is operated in Watts, in the mid-Wilshire area, in Long Beach, and in two Torrance sites. The newest one, which opened a couple of months ago, is at 2121 W. Temple St. near downtown Los Angeles.

According to CII, 95 percent of the fathers participating in Project Fatherhood maintain regular contact with their children and only two percent of the children of participating fathers re-enter the child protective services system.

Anyone wanting information on Project Fatherhood or any of its program can call (213) 260-7600, exts. 8121, 8150 or 8130.
Banks said Swinger was planning to retire at the end of this month and Friday's Fatherhood Solution Conference — scheduled from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the downtown Wilshire Grand Hotel — was set to honor him as the retiring father of Project Fatherhood. 

But now that he's dead, Banks said the first 1-1/2 hours of Friday's conference will be devoted to a memorial tribute to Swinger, with the rest of the schedule proceeding with the business of tackling the critical issues facing high-risk urban fathers and their children, such as: 'Trauma, Fathers and Immigration,' 'Incarcerated Adult and Teen Fathers,' 'Women's Role in the Fatherhood Movement,' and 'Perceptions of Fatherhood in the Media.' 

Six national and two local experts on fatherhood are expected to participate in the conference.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Fifty years after the Freedom Rides, L.A. delegation reflects on civil rights history]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Fifty-years-after-the-Freedom-Rides-LA-delegation-reflects-on-civil-rights-history-122993468.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">122993468</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 1 Jun 2011 18:31:29 PST</pubDate>
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															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/FREEDOM+RIDERS+JUMP.jpg" length="20514" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[It was the summer of our discontent 50 years ago, when Freedom Riders threw down direct, in-your-face challenges to institutionalized racism, thus forming the backbone of the civil rights movement which ultimately overturned laws that had cast Blacks as inferior beings unfit to be in the same room as Whites ever since the country's founding.

It was 436 Freedom Riders — equal numbers of fed-up Black students and young progressive White people — who grabbed Jim Crow by the throat and beat him to death with nonviolence. Some 87 of the total riders were from California and eight were from South Los Angeles.

The Freedom Rides, conducted from May to August of 1961, commenced in various western, eastern and northern cities and culminated in the segregated southern states of Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Virginia and the Carolinas where the real action — and the real danger — was centered.

The purpose of the Freedom Riders was to test the U.S. Supreme Court's 1960 decision in Boynton v. Virginia that outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in transportation terminals that served buses that crossed state lines. But before that, in 1955, the Interstate Commerce Commission had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Co. that explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of 'separate but equal' in interstate bus travel, but the ICC had failed to enforce its own ruling, thus allowing Jim Crow travel laws to remain on the books and in force throughout the South.

So, the Freedom Riders — organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference — set out to force the issue and prick that pimple once and for all. They did it by riding together into and through the South in trains, planes and buses and entering 'Whites only' waiting rooms, restrooms, restaurants, hotels and such. These innocuous nonviolent acts by Freedom Riders provoked the most violent of reactions from Southerners of all kind: elected officials, law enforcement, judges and magistrates, the Ku Klux Klan, God-fearing Christians, just about every southern white person.

They gathered en masse and beat the Freedom Riders with anything they could get their hands on whenever they saw them. They blew up their buses and set some on fire with the Riders locked inside. They arrested them and put them in prison and abused them therein, yet the Freedom Riders kept on coming.

Among them was Robert Farrell, who was the Los Angeles city councilman for the 8th District from 1974 to 1991. Bob was a 24-year-old graduate of UCLA during that summer when he became a Freedom Rider. I remember it vividly. He was working as a reporter for the Los Angeles Sentinel and I was the youth editor of the Sentinel and I wanted desperately to go with him on the Freedom Ride. He refused, claiming I was too young. Bob was active with UCLA's NAACP and CORE chapters and deeply involved in the Freedom Ride campaign and he was adamant about not letting me go. I kept nagging him and he kept saying 'no.'

I was mad at Bob for years and when he told me Tuesday that the youngest person on a Freedom Ride was only 13 years old (!), I got mad all over again — 50 years later.

Without me, Bob left Los Angeles by train for New Orleans and went on to the Houston Union Station where he joined with Riders from Texas Southern University. The entire interracial group decided to integrate the station's restaurant. They were promptly arrested, going first to the Houston City Jail, then to the Harris County lockup. The four White males with Bob's group were severely beaten and after that, Bob said some lawyers got them all released. He stayed in the South for a month and returned to the Sentinel, to UCLA's graduate school and became a member of then-Councilman Billy Mills' staff.

'The real action for me was in the community, and my Freedom Ride experience gave me access to it,' Bob said. 'I was able to sit at the table simply because I had been part of the Rides, and they gave me legitimacy. A lot of people took me under their wings.'

Bob is married to singer Windy Barnes Farrell, has five children and two grandchildren and lives in San Pedro. He is currently working with professor David Horne's Council of Black Political Organizations on redistricting issues.

Edward Johnson was a 19-year-old Los Angeles City College student when he flew to New Orleans to join the Freedom Ride to Jackson, Miss. He was arrested on July 9 in a 'Whites only' waiting room in the interstate terminal for 'a breach of the peace.' He was sentenced to six months in jail. He served six weeks — four of them in Parchment Farm Prison — before he was let out on appeal. 

Johnson grew up Houston and had only been in Los Angeles for a year before going Freedom Riding.

'I knew the culture of segregation well and I knew it had to be defeated,' Johnson said. 'I heard about the violent treatment people were getting while fighting this, and I just knew I had to go and help.'

Johnson did not tell his brother, with whom he was living here in Los Angeles, that he was going to Freedom Ride, nor did he tell his parents. He said they learned about it when they saw him being arrested on the news.

Johnson came back to Los Angeles in 1962 and earned a degree in mathematics from Pepperdine University. He retired four years ago from his position as project manager for military systems at Northrop. He has one daughter, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild and he lives in Inglewood.

The parents of Mike Grubbs didn't know he was a Freedom Rider until that information was published in the newspaper and their friends and relatives called their Wichita, Kan., home to tell them about it. For all Mr. and Mrs. Grubbs knew, their 24-year-old son was attending UCLA and majoring in psychology. 

'I had been tracking Julian Bond and John Lewis and I saw that people were getting beaten up too much on these rides and I had to go and help,' Grubbs said. He was arrested on a train in Jackson, Miss., and sent to Parchman Farm Prison.  

Grubbs is a 'small businessman' who retired from the oil industry. He is a widower, has one son, lots of nieces and nephews and resides in Baldwin Hills.

Richard Steward was already in New Orleans when the Los Angeles folks rode into town. 

'I was put with them,' Steward said. He was a 21-year-old Dillard University student who joined the Riders because 'I was raised in the South and was very uncomfortable with the whole thing. I saw more Whites riding than Blacks and I believed more Black people should be involved in this, so I joined the campaign.

'I told my mother I was going to do it, but I didn't want to tell my dad,' Steward continued. 'I finally told him the night before I left, and he went through the ceiling, just as I expected him to.'

Steward was arrested in Jackson, Miss., sent to Hinds County Jail and then to Parchman Farm Prison. 'I hoped and prayed I wouldn't get beaten up because I was not committed to that non-violence thing,' Steward said.

Steward was a Parchman cellmate of Grubbs, who influenced him to move to Los Angeles in 1962. He was a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher at Fremont High, at several middle schools and in some off-campus instructional programs until he retired in 1995. He is married, has five children, eight grandchildren and resides in the Athens area.

Other local Freedom Riders who I was unable to contact include Robert and Helen Singleton of Inglewood, who, as a UCLA-enrolled married couple, rode together for the cause 50 years ago; Claude Liggins of Baldwin Hills, who was a Los Angeles City College student back then and Larry Bell.

It should be noted that the summer of our discontent ended on Sept. 1, 1961 when the ICC issued the necessary orders and new rules making Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company viable, and one month later, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they pleased on interstate buses and trains, 'White' and 'colored' signs were removed from the terminals, separate drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were consolidated and lunch counters began serving people regardless of their race.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Uncommon unity, as political will grows for Crenshaw subway]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Uncommon-unity-as-political-will-grows-for-Crenshaw-subway-122202824.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">122202824</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 18 May 2011 17:57:35 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



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																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[

All roads are leading to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where the agency&rsquo;s board of directors will decide on the future of the county&rsquo;s largest African-American community next week, and huge numbers of South L.A. residents, together with virtually all of their elected representatives, are traveling those roads together to make sure that decision is a good one.

This movement of the masses from as far south as the city of Inglewood, north through the neighborhoods abutting Crenshaw Boulevard, to the downtown Metro Board Room is set to roll early on May 26 for the 9 a.m. meeting at which the board will make its final decisions on the last two, but significant, elements of the Crenshaw Subway.

The notion of an 8.5-mile, $1.7 billion Crenshaw/LAX Light Rail Transit line (Crenshaw Subway, for short) appears to have been rattling around in the recesses of transit officials&rsquo; mind, while for years, modern rail systems have popped up all over the Southland in other areas &mdash; from the Eastside to the San Fernando Valley. The Crenshaw Subway is the first super-modern transit system to cut right through the heart of the Black community and everybody is ecstatic about it, except for two things: 

The subway as planned does not include a Leimert Park/Vernon Avenue Station in what is the residential, commercial and recreational hub of the Crenshaw community, and it ceases to run underground as it traverses the Park Mesa Heights neighborhood, thus guaranteeing the traffic flow at 48th and 54th streets and Slauson Avenue will be adversely impacted for all time.

Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, a member of the MTA Board, has introduced a motion addressing the final two subway issues, as it calls for the creation of the Leimert Park/Vernon Station and the underground transit of subway cars through their final mile beneath Park Mesa Heights. Ridley-Thomas&rsquo; motion calls for transit officials to investigate several different sources for funds to finance these two elements of the subway.

The MTA Board, meeting at One Gateway Plaza, will vote on Ridley-Thomas&rsquo; motion May 26 and the Black community is galvanized to support that motion to a degree not seen since Tom Bradley announced his candidacy for mayor. In fact, Ridley-Thomas said as much.

&ldquo;This is the first example of a unified presence for the Black community in who knows how long,&rdquo; he said, adding that &ldquo;the Crenshaw Line is the legacy of Tom Bradley, and is the most important issue to affect the African-American community for the next 25 years.&rdquo;

Bishop Charles Blake, a very important Crenshaw stakeholder, expects the subway to be the harbinger of great things. &ldquo;The subway will bring new life and vitality to our community and make it easier for residents to travel into other parts of the region. It is such an important thing that we become fully integrated in the transportation web of Los Angeles County and not shortchange ourselves while other communities have access to the best amenities available,&rdquo; the bishop said. &ldquo;Leimert Park will be enhanced by a station there, and to bypass it would be a significant mistake &mdash; maybe even a travesty.&rdquo;

Damien Goodmon and his hyperactive &ldquo;Fix the Expo Line&rdquo; group have been fighting MTA for years on two fronts: against the Expo Line and for the Crenshaw Subway. During the past three months, the group has been implementing a petitioning drive and a letter-writing campaign among Crenshaw area residents in support of the Ridley-Thomas motion. &ldquo;Everybody has a role to play,&rdquo; Goodmon said. &ldquo;If we want this important issue to pass, everybody has to show up, link up, speak up and sign up.&rdquo;

The Ma&rsquo;at Institute for Community Change has engaged buses to take groups of Inglewood residents to the MTA meeting to support the Ridley-Thomas motion. Kokayi Kwa Jitahidi, organizer, said the buses will depart at 7 a.m. on May 26 from Inglewood&rsquo;s Center of Hope, 333 N. Prairie Ave.

The Rev. William Smart, an Inglewood pastor, said: &ldquo;Inglewood is located at the heart of the Crenshaw Line. Therefore residents of the city have a tremendous interest and stake in how it&rsquo;s designed in Los Angeles, Inglewood and the airport area.&rdquo; In addition, the Inglewood City Council is scheduled to vote on a resolution next week in support of the Ridley-Thomas motion.

The elected officials who have weighed in on the Ridley-Thomas motion include Los Angeles City Councilman Herb Wesson, who said: &ldquo;I support the supervisor 200 percent. I think we should get out in front of this issue or we will lose.&rdquo;

Councilman Bernard Parks said he has been working on the Crenshaw Subway project since 2008 and that his number one priority has been the establishment of a stop at Leimert Park. &ldquo;We will be there before the MTA to express that view &mdash; the same view that has been given in four correspondences we have sent them.&rdquo;

Sen. Curren Price, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, who represents virtually everything around the Crenshaw Line, said: &ldquo;I have been supportive of MRT&rsquo;s efforts and proposals on the Crenshaw-LAX Light Rail at all stages. I have written letters and had staff testify in support of it. I also support the project&rsquo;s labor agreement which calls for local hire and MTA&rsquo;s small business contract efforts. This is economic justice. This will be a good regional economic booster providing jobs and it is a long overdue investment in transportation.&rdquo;

Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell, who likens Crenshaw Boulevard to Wall Street &mdash; comparing the latter as the financial center of America, to the former as the financial center of South Los Angeles &mdash; is particularly disturbed by problems the proposed street-level mile of the subway would cause in the community. &ldquo;Railroad tracks divide communities, &ldquo;Mitchell said. &ldquo;South Los Angeles needs a united Crenshaw &mdash; one without a &lsquo;moving wall&rsquo; that turns into an obstacle course for traffic and pedestrians.&rdquo;

While Assemblyman Mike Davis strongly supports the Ridley-Thomas motion, he revealed his own plans to put some muscle behind his support. &ldquo;As the chairman of the Assembly Rail Transportation Committee, I will be forwarding a strong recommendation to the MTA that equal opportunities for transportation funding be provided throughout our county,&rdquo; Davis said. &ldquo;Furthermore, I have some upcoming hearings scheduled in which I plan to look at the diversity of spending in projects, such as the Crenshaw Subway.&rdquo;

Rep. Maxine Waters has had nothing but high praise and excitement about the Crenshaw/LAX Transit Corridor and its projected completion date by 2016, a full two years earlier than originally scheduled. &ldquo;The corridor [the subway and Green Line extension] will provide my constituents easier access to work, school, shopping, entertainment and everything else Los Angeles has to offer,&rdquo; she said.

Staff writer Leiloni De Gruy contributed to this report.

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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: In a tough neighborhood, officer leads others to make a difference]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-In-a-tough-neighborhood-officer-leads-others-to-make-a-difference-121680499.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">121680499</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 11 May 2011 19:47:37 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



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																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[Usually, the general public is unaware of the achievements, contributions and overall awesomeness of an African-American LAPD cop until he dies. But comes now one that is still alive and making a difference in the streets and whom you simply must meet: Senior Lead Officer Deon Joseph, the top cop of Skid Row.

Joseph delivers law and order and social services within the rehabilitative portion of Skid Row and by all accounts — residents', business owners' and fellow officers' — he is The Man. A native of Los Angeles who grew up in Harbor City, Joseph has been an LAPD officer for 15 years, has spent 13 of those years working on Skid Row and the last six years serving as lead officer there. Joseph, 38, and his wife, Santosha, have three sons: Deon Jr., Xavier and Jordan. And Joseph has an identical twin brother, named Cleon, who is also an LAPD officer. Fellow members of the force remark that the two are sometimes seen 'walking around together, looking like each other and freaking people out.'

Deon Joseph is so good at what he does that in 2007, Parade magazine and the International Association of Chiefs of Police declared him to be one of the top 10 police officers in the nation. This illustrious lawman came to my attention the other day when the Central Cities Association honored him at its 17th annual Treasures of Los Angeles Awards Luncheon for making 'contributions to the community in a variety of fields.'

The Central Cities Association is a right-leaning group of business people who are anathema to my progressive agenda and I usually dislike the people they support. However, this time they got it right. This time they convened at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and honored a man who was born and raised to lead the life he does: Keeping the peace and helping people — the lowliest and most abject of our people: the victims of life, the homeless, the derelict, the physically and mentally ill, the substance abusers, the 'copeless' and hopeless and absolute 'have-nots' among us.

Wendell Blassingame said he's been on Skid Row for almost 12 years and that Joseph has made a tremendous difference in his neighborhood.

Blassingame, who is an executive board member of the Downtown Neighborhood Council, said that in the 6-1/2 years he's known Joseph, 'Skid Row is becoming a community; a place where, regardless of your circumstances, you know you have the right to live with dignity. We respect Joseph. When he first came, we respected him as an officer, but now we respect him as a human being because he respects us as human beings.

'I've seen a great change in this area,' Blassingame continued. 'Before Joseph, there was no interaction between the police and us. Their hands were tied. After all, two out of every three residents here are either on probation or on parole, so I suppose that statistic required a certain kind of policing whenever an officer saw more than six Black men standing around. But Joseph took a different approach: He got out of his car and started walking down the street, not to make arrests necessarily, but to find out what you're doing, what's going on and why you're laying on the ground.

'Joseph doesn't like to see people lying on the ground,' Blassingame added. 'His attitude is that if you're lying on the ground, you must be sick and he will do one of two things: make you get up and get moving or get you medical attention. But make no mistake, Joseph will arrest you if you do something wrong. He will either help you with your immediate problem or send you to jail, whichever you need. Joseph has zero tolerance for drugs and law-breaking,' Blassingame continued. 'A couple of years ago, he single-handedly took on and removed the three main drug dealers from our community — like he was the Lone Ranger,' Blassingame said.

Joseph regularly drives through Skid Row in what residents call 'Big Blue,' a huge mobile home from which he dispenses social service referrals of all kind. He has developed several programs for the youth living on Skid Row, including one called 'Just Like U,' which is designed to keep youth out of gangs and away from the temptations of the street by bringing them in contact with successful adults.

He has also implemented the 'Ladies Night' program to help women who live on the streets. 'Ladies Night' activities include self-esteem-building, domestic violence seminars on the process and importance of reporting crimes committed against them and the techniques of self defense. 

'It is a blessing to know an officer like that,' Blassingame said.

In addition to having been designated a 'Los Angeles Treasure' last month, Joseph was recently given the 'Hero for Hope' Award for outstanding community service by the Los Angeles Rescue Mission.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, who participated in the Central Cities ceremony, said in an interview: 'Deon worked for me when I was the captain at Central Station. He was one of my best senior lead officers and is an outstanding individual. He really cares about the people of Skid Row and tries to help them.'

But Joseph, the son of Milton and the late Margie Joseph, doesn't know how to do anything else. During their lifetime, his parents raised 41 foster children and he was in the house with 17 of them. 

'I grew up helping, and I had to share my parents' love with a lot of people,' Joseph said. 'I grew up dealing with human needs and the problems that result when they are unmet and I learned from my parents how best to mitigate those problems and fulfill some needs.

'I didn't set out to become a police officer; I sort of backed into it. I appreciate the honors bestowed upon me, but even without them, I must confess that what I do for a living is the most fulfilling thing I've ever done and I can't imagine doing anything else.'
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Dropping felony charges against Black teen, D.A. buckles to outrage]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Dropping-felony-charges-against-Black-teen-DA-buckles-to-outrage-121295899.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">121295899</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 4 May 2011 19:19:37 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[Buckling to local and national pressure exerted by outraged Americans, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley dropped his over-reaching felony charges of attempted lynching against Jeremy Marks and was forced to make him a plea deal that resulted in no jail time.

Mark Ravis, the youth's attorney, explained that under the plea deal, which the court accepted last week, the 18-year-old Marks pleaded guilty to one count of 'interfering with an executive officer' — a Penal Code 69 felony violation — for which he will be on probation for three years, during which he is required to stay away from gang members and complete his high school education. Ravis said that at the end of his probation, the PC 69 charge will be dropped to a misdemeanor and expunged from Marks' record.

After wrangling with the prosecutor, Ravis said the plea deal 'worked out well because Jeremy will serve no jail time, and no jail time was exactly what his mother demanded. She did not want him making any plea or facing any charge that would put him at risk of going back to prison.'

Marks was 17 last May when he was arrested, charged and imprisoned in the adult Pitchess Detention Center for seven months on attempted lynching charges on the say-so of one person — Erin Robles, a Los Angeles Unified School District cop whom he videotaped beating up a 15-year-old boy because she caught him smoking at a bus stop.

Two widely viewed YouTube videos of the incident clearly show Robles beating and macing the 15 year old beside a bus, with her back to a dozen excited teenagers yelling taunts at her. Marks appears in the background quietly and calmly videotaping Robles' attack on the teen. Robles singled out Marks and accused him of yelling 'kick her a--' during her struggle with the young smoker.

All of the witnesses denied that Marks had said anything. Nevertheless, Robles' word prevailed among her fellow law enforcement personnel and he was arrested, Cooley charged him with attempted lynching and had him thrown into prison with grown folks for seven months until an outraged resident in the Bay Area posted his $50,000 bail and freed him in time to observe Christmas with his family.

The ANSWER Coalition joined with CORE California and other civil rights activists and created the Jeremy Marks Defense Committee and launched a national movement to free Marks from prison and from the clutches of the criminal justice system.

'In a matter of months, thousands of people in all 50 states and more than 26 countries signed petitions to have all charges dropped against Jeremy,' said Ian Thompson, the Los Angeles coordinator of ANSWER. 'In addition to petitioning, we held protests, meetings, media conferences, sold T-shirts, mobilized for every court hearing and sponsored a major statewide speaking tour for Rochelle Pittman, Jeremy's heroic mother.'

'Inside sources told us that the D.A.'s office 'wanted the case to go away' because it was getting too much media attention,' Thompson said. 

'Originally, D.A. Cooley wanted Jeremy to serve seven years in prison, but after the movement took action, Cooley wanted Jeremy to accept a plea deal of three years,' Thompson continued. 'Inside the courtroom, the D.A. and the judge put up one legal roadblock after another. It was a lopsided legal battle where important evidence in the D.A.'s possession was not shared with the defense team. The prosecution presented lie after lie about the existence of an additional video recording of the incident that would have strengthened Jeremy's case.'

'The Jeremy Marks case is part of an ugly, growing pattern in Los Angeles County because the same thing happened two years ago in Palmdale in which a girl was beaten up by a school cop on a high school campus because she refused to pick up a piece of cake that had fallen to the ground and a student witness was criminalized for photographing the beating,' said Adrian Dove, CORE California's chairman. 'We need to defend the rights of children who use their cameras to record police brutality because it's one way of augmenting and authenticating the truth.

'This is not unlike the police beatings that occurred in Alabama before Martin Luther King Jr. led the media cameras into the state to expose it,' Dove added.

'The conclusion of Jeremy's case is not full justice,' Thompson said. 'We all know that Jeremy is innocent of all charges. He is not guilty of 'interfering with an executive officer,' 'resisting arrest' or anything else. Full justice would have required all charges be dropped with no further legal obligations for Jeremy and his family. But given the extremely hostile attitude of the police and D.A. Cooley — who wanted to send another 18-year-old Black youth to jail for almost a decade for nothing — the outcome should be celebrated as a victory.'
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Sense of relief, justice in death sentence for convicted hate killer]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Sense-of-relief-justice-in-death-sentence-for-convicted-hate-killer-120834374.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">120834374</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:34:18 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



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																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[A Latino gang member was sentenced to death twice, plus 358 years in prison for committing a hate crime that shook the city's African-American population to its very foundation and jolted residents and religious and political leaders into the streets to demand an end to such gratuitous violence.

It was a Jim Crow-like killing. It was a crime that smacked of the dark days in America's history when white people killed black people simply because they were black. The victims hadn't done anything wrong and were usually unknown to their killers, but they were simply Black and, therefore, perfect fodder for shooting, lynching, beating, drowning, dragging, or whatever would provide the greatest rush to their killers. 

That was the Jim Crow era.

This is not. Nevertheless, a shackled Latino, Jonathan Fajardo, 23, stood stoically in the downtown courtroom on Good Friday when Judge David Wesley sentenced him for 'the cold and vicious murder' of 14-year-old African-American Cheryl Green as she stood on her skates in a driveway chatting with her friends near her Harbor Gateway home in December 2006.

A jury had already convicted Fajardo in September for the first-degree murders of Green and Christopher Ash, 25, a fellow gang member who witnessed the Green killing and whom Fajardo feared would rat him out. The jury also recommended that Fajardo receive the death penalty. 

During the trial, Fajardo's defense attorney argued that Green's killing was an accident. The judge said, in effect, 'I don't think so,' and on Friday, Judge Wesley said he found Fajardo's crimes to be 'premeditated, willful and committed with malice aforethought,' and he threw every book at him he could find: He gave Fajardo one death sentence for each of the two lives he took and tacked on 358 years in prison for a number of attempted murder and other counts. Fajardo was convicted of the special circumstances that made him eligible for the death penalty in the first place, to wit: having committed multiple murders, having committed a hate crime based on race, having committed the crimes for a gang and having murdered of a witness.

The prosecutor, Gretchen Ford, argued, and the judge and jury agreed, that at the time of the murder, Fajardo was an 18-year-old member of the 204th Street Latino gang which preyed upon and terrorized African-Americans who lived in or visited the Harbor Gateway area. Ford presented this scenario: Smarting from an earlier run-in the gang had with an unknown Black man, Fajardo and his pals roamed the neighborhood looking for somebody black to shoot — anybody, just as long as he or she was Black. They came upon Green, an eighth grader at Steven White Middle School, and her friends hanging out in a residential driveway and Fajardo opened fire on them, killing Green. 

The court found that two weeks after he killed Green and the LAPD had launched a full-court press to solve the crime, Fajardo feared fellow gangster Ash would tell the cops what he witnessed, so he stabbed Ash 62 times.

In an interview Tuesday, Ford agreed with observing legal experts' assessment that Wesley's 'two death plus 358 years' sentence was the judge's way of ensuring that, whichever way future winds blow on the issue of the death penalty in California, Fajardo will never leave prison alive.

In fact, Green's killing was so heinous that it galvanized the community into unprecedented action. Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who represents Harbor Gateway, which is located in the southernmost tip of the city of Los Angeles, immediately took the lead in dealing with the matter. 'This was the most emotional time for me during my tenure as councilwoman,' Hahn said. She formed a task force and led weekend marches through the neighborhood calling attention to the killing. She walked door-to-door with Green's mother, Charlene Lovett, to implore parents to make their kids stop the violence, and in 2009 she created the Cheryl Green Community Center on donated land in Harbor Gateway as a memorial to the slain teenager and a place of peace for the local youngsters.

'The kids told me there was no place safe for them to go,' Hahn said. 'There was one Boys and Girls Club, but it was in an area where these kids felt unsafe, so I established the new center closer to Cheryl's home, which is being operated by the Boys and Girls Club of Harbor Gateway with which more than 90 young people are involved everyday,' Hahn said. 'The sentencing of Cheryl Green's killer will hopefully provide some closure to a community torn apart by gang violence,' the councilwoman continued. 'The youth of Harbor Gateway now have other options to joining gang life. My hope is that the center will prevent them from getting involved in gangs in the first place,' Hahn said.

Cheryl's mother, Lovett, is proud of the youth center that bears her daughter's name. She is now relieved that Fajardo has been sentenced and 'glad that it's over and I don't have to sit in the same room with her killer everyday,' Lovett said. 'The trial lasted more than two months and I didn't miss a single day,' the mother continued. 'It was really hard hearing all the details about things I didn't know. Her killer just sat there through the whole time and didn't react to anything,' Lovett said. 'He acted as if whatever was going on in the courtroom did not involve him.

'I feel relieved,' Lovett continued. 'It's a part of me that I can now put behind me. I have four beautiful grandchildren and two of them remind me of Cheryl. They all surround me with love.'

Lovett lives in Lakewood now and she is writing a book she hopes to have published in December to mark the fifth anniversary of Cheryl's death. 'It is entitled 'Invisible Division' and it is a story of my loss and my faith,' Lovett said.

Cheryl was the baby of Lovett's four children and no one affected by her murder expressed any qualms about Fajardo's death sentences, especially not Najee Ali, the community activist who worked closest with Lovett and Hahn in dealing with the aftermath of the crime. 'That racist, cold-blooded killer got what he deserved,' Ali said. 'Cheryl's murder was the most emotional and important campaign I have ever been involved in. I hope Charlene and her family can have closure and continue to heal,' Ali said.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line Secure in her role as a history-maker, Kight takes high road following ouster]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Secure-in-her-role-as-a-history-maker-Kight-takes-high-road-following-ouster-119816729.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">119816729</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 13 Apr 2011 19:34:22 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/MARY+KIGHT.jpg" length="25179" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[Despite the protestations of the California Legislative Black Caucus and several national, statewide and Los Angeles County women's political groups, Gov. Jerry Brown fired Brig. Gen. Mary J. Kight as the first African-American and first woman to head the California National Guard and replaced her with a White man last Saturday.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made the historic appointment of Kight as adjutant general of the National Guard 14 months ago, and during her tenure — which officially ended a week ago — she was targeted for ouster by what state Sen. Curren Price, chairman of the CLBC, described as 'the old boys network' of the overwhelmingly White and male senior officers in the National Guard who did not appreciate being subordinate to a Black female.

Kight had been accused of being the source and/or blame for a number of financial scandals in the National Guard under her leadership, but in its letter to the governor last month strongly supporting Kight's reappointment to her post, the CLBC stressed the point that it was she who ferreted out the scandalous activities and hailed her for 'taking immediate action to address the alleged corruption within the California National Guard, and for having sought to remedy any waste and abuse of federal or general fund dollars.'

Kight discussed those scandals during an interview Tuesday. 

'Those issues had been in existence long before I came,' she said. 'But when I assumed command, I owned them. They belonged to me. I had to deal with them. I had to take it as it was. I had to take those issues, put them on the right track and call in the FBI, the IRS and others to get them resolved. That's what I was handed, and I was doing my job. I did not shy away from my duties as the commander.' 

Alice Huffman, president of the California State NAACP, looked into the matter of Kight's firing and came away seeing nothing wrong with it. Huffman said Brown declined to reappoint Kight 'because of the scandals reported in the newspaper about her and he didn't want that in his administration. He is working on an exit plan so she can leave with dignity.' 

The state NAACP president went on to say: 'We have decided that we will not advocate for African-Americans who have made no commitment to the community.'

I asked Huffman if she really wanted to say that, and she continued with: 'We are tired of people getting appointments and working for themselves. The community is in bad shape. Besides, I don't even know that woman; I've never even met her.'

Percy Pinkney, senior state field representative for U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, was with Huffman during my interview and he chimed in about the routineness of Kight's dismissal. 

'Governors normally bring in their own people when they're elected,' Pinkney said. 'Brown has appointed African-Americans to some positions and new governors routinely replace appointees with people who supported their run for office and who worked in their campaigns.' 

But Gen. David Baldwin, the man Brown swore-in Saturday to replace Kight, is a Republican. It is unlikely that he worked in the Democrat Brown's campaign. 

Apart from the resolution of those long-standing scandals in the National Guard, Kight was praised for her attempts to diversify the leadership ranks of the guard and clamp down on the reported incidents of outrageous racism in the California Military Department, of which the National Guard head is the director.

According to National Guard insiders, Kight's firing leaves as senior minority officers one Black Army colonel, one Black Air Guard colonel and one Latina colonel. They said Kight has caused the consideration for promotion of one Black, one Latino and one Asian-American lieutenant colonel.

Insiders said that since Kight has been in command, she has had to deal with incidents in which non-commissioned officers called other NCOs the N-word in front of a dozen witnesses; of someone spitting on the picture of President Obama hanging in the Joint Forces Headquarters; of the submission of a U.S. dollar bill with the word n---er written boldly across it, and of minorities being denied promotion opportunities while similar promotions for Whites were moved forward. 

Baldwin's appointment as Kight's replacement must be confirmed by the Senate within a year of his swearing-in, and community groups are said to be gearing up to deal with the guard's lack of diversity, heinous racism and closure of armories and readiness centers in minority communities during Baldwin's confirmation process.

'Gov. Brown's decision to replace Gen. Kight will be a disaster for minorities in the California National Guard because there will be no one willing to listen to our concerns,' a National Guard person said.

And Gov. Brown's decision is something Kight says she respects. 'I serve at the pleasure of the governor. I understand and respect that. He can make the choice at any time and that's his right,' she said. 

Kight, who has been in the military for more than 35 years, added: 'I am still a member of the military; I still belong to the National Guard. I may be held here for a short period of time, but I wouldn't want to hold up a position that someone else could occupy,' Kight said. 

'When you're no longer adjutant general, there's not much more you can do. This happened so quickly that right now I don't know what to do next, but I will know when it's time to move on. I must say, however, that I thoroughly enjoy serving the citizens of this nation, but I must now find another way to do it.'
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: ‘Old boys network’ targets National Guard’s Kight ]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Old-boys-network-targets-National-Guards-Kight--119375404.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">119375404</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 6 Apr 2011 19:57:00 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[The Legislative Black Caucus and the California State NAACP began gearing up this week to battle the forces of male chauvinism and anti-Black racism to retain Maj. Gen. Mary J. Kight as the adjutant general of the California National Guard.

Kight became the first African-American woman to head a state militia when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her on Feb. 2, 2010, as California's 45th National Guard adjutant general, through which she serves as the director of the state's Military Department and leads the largest and most tasked National Guard force in the United States, with an authorized strength of 18,000 Army National Guard and 4,900 National Guard members.

Sacramento observers claim that during the 14 months Kight has held the post, she has been subjected to a relentless campaign for her removal orchestrated by her White male subordinates and implemented through a series of attack articles published by the Sacramento Bee.

Kight, who has had a full range of military experience since her Air Force commissioning in 1974 — including having served as the first commander for the 144th Fighter Wing — must be reappointed to her National Guard post by current Gov. Jerry Brown, and word has it that he will not reappoint her. Word also has it that Brown plans to replace her with Col. David Baldwin, a man whom National Guardsmen told me is the primary subordinate working to undermine Kight and affect her removal.

My calls to the governor on this issue have were not returned, but his staff said Brown's decision on Kight's reappointment is 'being made completely by himself. He is not conferring with or discussing the matter with his staff.' 

State Sen. Curren Price, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, said that while he does not know when Brown will make the appointment, he is looking for a meeting on the matter with the governor this week.

'We are urging the governor to reappoint Gen. Kight because she has been an exemplary leader and a real pioneer in California for women and for African-Americans. She has restored order to the National Guard; she has gotten rid of some 'bad apples' in the organization and is trying to make people accountable,' Price said. 'She is shaking up the 'old boys' network.''

Sources in the National Guard say the dismantling of the 'old boys' network' is the thing that is fueling efforts to discredit and remove her — the 'old boys,' it seems, are fighting back. National Guard sources, who have asked to remain nameless, say her detractors have fed biased stories to the Bee which included one in which she was held responsible for a 'double-dipping' fraud scandal in the guard which predated her leadership and which, in fact, she uncovered and began investigating until the federal government stepped in and took her investigation over.

Internal sources also said the Bee, which published an editorial on March 13, headlined: 'New leadership urgently needed for California's National Guard,' published a subsequent story on March 26 — 'California Guard's largest training facility, Camp Roberts, steadily deteriorates' — and pointed to Kight as the cause of this. However, a large group which included California's U.S. senators, California members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the California Legislature and National Guard generals met last week to study the alleged 'steady deterioration' of Camp Roberts and preliminarily found that the newspaper's description of conditions at Camp Roberts was exaggerated. 

'The group rendered no findings on any of the issues reported by the Bee,' said a National Guard official close to the group, who added: 'Gen. Kight is one of the best officers I've seen in the National Guard.'

Alice Huffman, president of the California State NAACP, was scheduled to meet with Gov. Brown about Kight's reappointment, and Assemblyman Mike Davis, vice chair of the Legislative Black Caucus, is working closely with Price on the issue.

'Diversity is one of the core values of the LBC,' Davis said. 'We believe that it's our responsibility to see that government organizations reflect the people that they serve, not only in membership, but especially in leadership, too. We look forward to working with the governor to make this a reality.'
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Troubling police raid, then signals are crossed]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Troubling-police-raid-then-signals-are-crossed-118959754.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">118959754</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:27:23 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	







																														                                                                        <description><![CDATA[One aspect of the county's 'attempted lynching' case against the teenager who videotaped a school district cop beating up a 15-year-old boy will be dealt with in court on April 8. But the issue of the guilt or innocence of 18-year-old Jeremy Marks will not be considered then, but rather the horrendous raids law enforcement officials are said to have conducted at his home and the home of one of his defense witnesses.

Mark Ravis, Marks' attorney, said the coming court appearance will deal with various motions relating to those raids, which he described as having been 'executed in a way that was terrifying to Jeremy's family and neighbors, as well as to an important and totally innocent defense witness.'

Having read and heard troubling accounts of those raids, the Los Angeles Police Department said it is anxious to investigate the police action that occurred on the morning of Jan. 26 in Marks' Lakeview Terrace home, where he lives with his siblings and his mother, Rochelle Pittman. But the LAPD has been unable to do so for the simple reason that Pittman has not filed an official complaint and has not provided details as to what the problem was.

'Mrs. Pittman came into the [Foothill Division] station on Jan. 26 upset and complaining about a police raid at her house. She said she wanted to make a complaint, that she wanted to make a statement, but she didn't give us any details,' said Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese, commanding officer of Operations of the Valley Bureau. 'She said she was 'too tired' and left without telling us what she wants us to look at. We need to know what she wants us to do so we can investigate it,' Albanese said.

Pittman and her neighbors, Jason Glothon and Jesse Cruz, told the media that at least 10 police cars and a SWAT van clogged the street near the Pittman house, which they trashed, and that officers stormed it and the Cruz home with drawn guns aimed at them and their children and carried a battering ram and that they woke up Cruz's son by putting a gun to his head and they manhandled a physically disabled father and exacerbated his injuries and that they searched little kids' backpacks and frisked babies in cribs and so on and so forth — all this in search of evidence so District Attorney Steve Cooley can prove his 'attempted lynching' charges against Marks.

Albanese said the LAPD is anxious to investigate this matter because it may not be an LAPD problem, but rather a district attorney problem. Albanese said, yes, there were a lot of cops on the scene, but they were not LAPD cops. 'This action was a warrant served by the district attorney and we only had three LAPD personnel there: one supervisor and two officers and all three were in full LAPD uniforms,' the deputy chief said. 'All those others were district attorney investigators (DA cops) and they wear jackets, carry guns and have police powers. We don't know who did what that morning and we need details so we can investigate and find out,' Albanese said.

Toward that end, Albanese said Foothill officers went to Pittman's home in February to get details about the raid, but she was not home. Then on March 16, the cops tried to call her but her voicemail was full, so a supervisor went to her house and left his card and a note asking her to contact him about her incomplete complaint. Then they called her again on March 18 and were able to leave a message, which she did not return. Albanese called me on March 28 and apprised me of the situation and asked for my help. I called attorney Ravis, who was surprised to learn of the merry-go-round Pittman and the LAPD were on, and he said he would handle it.

Albanese said he and his officers would be happy to meet with Pittman and Ravis together, if they liked, either at the station, in her home or in Ravis' office to get details of what happened that day. 'This has to be investigated,' the deputy chief said. 'There were only three of us there and we need know what was done and by whom and under whose authority because right is right,' he said.
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Broken ranks, frayed relations may doom return  of Compton Police]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Broken-ranks-frayed-relations-may-doom-return-of-Compton-Police-118550869.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">118550869</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:00:09 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/Eric+J+Perodin.jpg" length="33881" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[A member of the ruling Compton City Council troika that has kept that city mired in assorted controversies for years has defected to the other side and created a new council majority, which has rendered Mayor Eric Perrodin's dream of re-establishing the Compton Police Department dead in the water.

First District Councilwoman Barbara Calhoun, who had, heretofore, been a sure vote for whatever Perrodin wanted in Compton, broke ranks with the mayor during the March 8 council meeting by declaring her opposition to ending the law enforcement services of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in the city and reviving the Compton Police Department, which was disbanded in 2000 amid charges of ineffectiveness and corruption.

Until March 8, District 2 Councilwoman Lillie Dobson, Perrodin and Calhoun formed the majority bloc that was the wind beneath Perrodin's wings as he set about trying to ram a new Compton Police force down the city's throat, despite the fact that Comptonites overwhelmingly rejected the idea each of the several times the matter was put to a vote of the people.

Yvonne Arceneaux of District 3 and Willie O. Jones of District 4 were the minority council members who fought Perrodin on the police issue and on other matters, as well. Now, Calhoun has joined them and after announcing her new position in the council meeting, Perrodin, who was visibly upset, stated that because Calhoun has decided to support the retention of the Sheriff's Department, he 'would not go forward' with his obsession to bring the Compton cops back. Then he added, rather petulantly, 'I don't know why anybody wouldn't want to have their own.'
In an interview, Calhoun said she changed her position on the city's law enforcement issue because she had been lied to in the past, but she has now seen the truth. 'Our former City Manager, Charles Evans, kept telling us we had the money to operate our own police force. He kept saying, 'We have the money; we have the money,' and I believed him,' Calhoun said. 'But after Evans was gone and City Controller Willie Norfleet took over his job, he studied the books and crunched the numbers and told us there was no way we can afford to operate a police department. He showed me the paperwork and it was clear that we couldn't afford that. After all, we already have a deficit and trying to run a police department on top of that was totally out of the question,' Calhoun said. 'Evans was lying,' the councilwoman added. 'And when you find out about a lie and get to see the proof for yourself that it's a lie, you have to change your position, because if you don't, then you're as bad as the liar,' Calhoun said. 'Whenever I make a mistake, I correct it on the dais,' the councilwoman said, adding, 'and I did just that — publicly corrected my mistake.'

Evans had been city manager of Compton for three years, until the council fired him on Sept. 9, 2010, without discussing or disclosing a reason to the citizenry.

The new Arceneaux-Jones-Calhoun majority handed Perrodin another upsetting defeat at last week's council meeting. According to Arceneaux, the mayor wanted to enact another — the third — amendment to his 'citizens'-behavior-in-council-meetings' ordinance.

'The mayor had already passed two amendments concerning the public's behavior at the meetings, but last week he wanted to add another one,' Arceneaux said. 'He wanted to ban speakers from City Council meetings for 30 days after they had received three reprimands from the council. There was no support for that and the vote went against him,' Arceneaux said. Then Perrodin became peevish and personal. 'We had a turbulent few minutes there during which the mayor became emotional and singled out two people whom he said he had supported who have now 'disappointed' him, and he decried the votes against his amendment as being votes against him personally. But I spoke up and said the votes were not against him, as a person, but were against the issues and stances he had proposed,' Arceneaux said. 'He was upset,' she added.  

Calhoun is seeking her third term on the council during the city's April 19 election. 'And yes, I know people are saying I've changed my position just to be re-elected, but that's not true,' Calhoun said. 'I've been shown our dire financial situation and as much as I'd love to have our own police force, we cannot afford it; therefore, I can no longer support bringing back the Compton P.D. I'd be a fool if I did.'
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			<title><![CDATA[Bottom Line: Who is really being lynched here? ]]></title>
															<link>http://www.wavenewspapers.com/opinion/bottom-line/Bottom-Line-Who-is-really-being-lynched-here--118137989.html</link>
				<guid isPermaLink="false">118137989</guid>		
			<pubDate>Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:42:49 PST</pubDate>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>																	



	


		

																		



															<enclosure url="http://media.wavenewspapers.com/images/Jeremy+Marks.jpg" length="48722" type="image/jpeg" />
																																											                                                                        <description><![CDATA[A mass demonstration will be held at noon Saturday at Hollywood and Vine to protest wars in general and Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley's charge of 'felony lynching' against a Black high school student who videotaped a female LAUSD police officer as she allegedly beat another student for smoking, in particular.

Jeremy Marks, 18, was arrested on May 10, 2010 at the MTA bus stop near his Verdugo Hills High School after he videotaped Officer Erin Robles allegedly beating a 15-year-old student whom she caught smoking. According to ANSWER L.A., the social justice organization which formed the Jeremy Marks Defense Committee, Robles beat the 15-year-old boy with her baton, then pepper sprayed him and then smashed his head through a bus window, while Marks sat on a low concrete wall nearby and captured the action with his cell phone camera.

A couple of dozen students waiting at the bus stop watched the scuffle between Robles and the boy, whom the kids identify as 'Jerry.' Some of them jeered Robles and cheered Jerry while others did the same as Marks — they documented the incident with their cell phones and produced two widely viewed YouTube videos of same. Kids in the crowd reportedly yelled obscene taunts at Robles while she was attacking the little smoker. The cops fingered Marks — and only Marks — for having videotaped the beating. They arrested him and D.A. Cooley's office claimed Marks' alleged yell during the fray amounted to his trying to 'incite a riot during an attempt to free a suspect from police custody.'

Cooley charged Marks with several felonies, including 'attempted lynching,' which carries up to seven years in prison. Marks, who was a minor at the time of his arrest, was sent to Pitchess Detention Center for adults, where, at the request of Cooley's prosecutors who accused Marks of being a Pacoima gang member, a Superior Court judge raised his bail to $155,000.

Rochelle Pittman, Marks' mother, is a city swimming pool attendant, and was unable to pay his bail. The youth remained in Pitchess for seven months until a Bay Area humanitarian, Google engineer Neil Fraser, read of Marks' and his mother's plight in the L.A. Weekly and provided $50,000 for the youth's bail, freeing him just days before Christmas.

Pittman has officially requested an Internal Affairs investigation by the LAPD into the gestapo-style raid the cops conducted at her Lakeview Terrace home on the morning of Jan. 26. The multi-racial victims of the raid described the police action in terms I've not had to report since the 'bad old days' of the LAPD in the eras that preceded the arrival here of former LAPD Chief Bill Bratton.

According to Pittman and her neighbors, Jason Glothon and Jesse Cruz, a multitude of Foothill Division cops stormed her house looking for something to bolster the district attorney's case against Marks. The victims described a terrifying scene as the cops arrived with drawn guns and threatened neighbors and their children at gunpoint. They say the cops searched through the kids' backpacks, conducted body searches, felt-up the baby in the crib and trashed the Pittman home.

Pittman told the L.A. Weekly that when her neighbor Glothon saw what was happening, he went to her house to get his kids, ages 11 and 13, who were there waiting for a ride to school, 'and the police pointed their guns at him and told him to leave. He wouldn't go without his kids and told them so. We were scared to death,' Pittman said.

Glothon told the publication: 'There were about 10 cars and a SWAT van and it was hard to keep up with the volume of cars at the Pittman house. All the officers had guns drawn. Those were my kids at Rochelle's door. SWAT got out with their guns drawn and went toward my children.'

According to the search warrant, DA senior investigator Cynthia Palm was looking through Pittman's home for Marks' phone camera images and any other 'photographs, images, audio and/or video recordings of the incident ... and the attempted lynching ... by fellow Pacoima Piru Blood gang members.'

According to published reports, Janet Moore, director of the D.A.'s Bureau of Branch and Area Operations, said: 'There were no guns drawn. That's not the way we do things unless some sort of threat was presented, and I have not been told that that happened.' 

But, Capt. Jesse Prieto, the D.A.'s investigator who led the search, said the LAPD cops did draw their guns, but didn't point them at residents. Uh huh.

In an apparent coordinated raid, eight D.A.'s investigators and two LAPD cops searched the Sunland-Tujunga home of student Jesse Cruz, a high school acquaintance of Marks'. Cruz's father told the L.A. Weekly that the search of his home was harrowing, and he was not presented a search warrant for nearly an hour. 

'When they pulled my son, Jesse Jr., out of his bed, they had the gun up to his head. My whole family was put against the fence outside while they searched inside.' The elder Cruz, who is disabled as the result of a series of surgeries he underwent following an accident, said his already damaged shoulder was injured by the cops, who invaded his home dressed in riot gear, with drawn guns and carrying a battering ram.

Mark Ravis, Jeremy Marks' attorney, denounced the searches as having been 'executed in a way that was terrifying to Jeremy's family and neighbors, as well as to an important and totally innocent defense witness, Jesse Cruz.'

I requested a report from Chief Charlie Beck's office on the status of Pittman's request for an Internal Affairs investigation of the raids but I had not received one as of press time.

'This whole case makes zero sense,' attorney Ravis told me. 'Cooley is trying to color Jeremy as a gangbanger, when he is not. He is a real nice kid and it makes no sense for tax dollars to be used to pursue this kind of prosecution. I think something is wrong with that police officer [who beat the little smoking kid] and rather than focus on that, the police and Cooley are doing everything they can to get this one young man for something he didn't do.'

Ravis pointed out that there are numerous named eyewitnesses (reportedly a total of 17) to the bus stop incident and they all say Marks did nothing but take pictures and said nothing. 'Nobody is saying Jeremy said anything during the attack except this one officer,' Ravis said.

Pittman also vehemently denies Marks' involvement with gangs. 'He may know a gang member — all the kids do — and he may have talked to one, but he is not now and has never been involved in gang activities,' Pittman said. The mother is actively engaged with the Jeremy Marks Defense Committee in collecting petitions to get the charges against Marks dropped. She has spoken of the case before what has been described as 'an uncomfortable' LAUSD Board of Education and before other organizations, colleges, universities and at community meetings. 

She has attended a series of fundraisers the committee has been holding in Marks' behalf and will, along with Jeremy and other family members, participate in the anti-police brutality contingent of Saturday's Hollywood and Vine protest.

Jessica Bardales, an ANSWER LA organizer, called Cooley's case against Marks, an outrage. 

'Jeremy did nothing wrong; he is guilty of nothing. Jeremy's case is evidence of the institutional racism that infects the U.S. criminal 'justice' system. It is trying to claim another young African-American victim. We cannot let this happen. Black and Latino youth are faced daily with police harassment, racial profiling and criminalization.'

Information: Call ANSWER L.A./Jeremy Marks Defense Committee at (213) 251-1025.
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