After the LA Weekly printed their in-depth investigation of the Grim Sleeper, a serial killer named by the paper because he stopped killing for 13 years (but now is back), the LA City Council voted today to award $200,000 (KCAL says $500K) to anyone who supplies information leading to his arrest and conviction. "In a packed press conference not far from City Council chambers this morning, Councilman Bernard Parks called for the huge reward. He......

At yesterday's LA Police Commission meeting, Chief William Bratton reported the crime stats for the summer. Statistically speaking, it was a good summer. From the LA Times: "From the beginning of June through the end of August, there were 84 homicides in Los Angeles -- a level of relative calm not seen since the summer of 1967, when the city had 79 killings over the same period. By comparison, summer bloodshed in the city peaked......

Despite a 40% spike in homicides earlier this year, a slow down in the crime has evened out the numbers. As of Monday night, there were 204 killings overall, compared to 208 this time last year, according to the LA Times who also reports that "overall, violent crime this year was down 7% as of July 12, according to the LAPD. The number of shots fired was down 28%, as was the number of victims......

Photo from the Getty by Rick O! via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Students, faculty, staff, and parents associated with Lincoln Elementary school in Santa Monica are trying to come to grips today with the weekend arrest of Thomas Beltran, who taught ESL at the school. Beltran, 60, has been charged with molesting four young girls who were his students. An auto fire turned into a brush fire late this afternoon near......

An on-duty Orange County sheriff's investigator was found dead in the driver's seat of an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria in Aliso Viejo on Wednesday. The veteran investigator's body was found about 2:30 p.m. in an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria parked in the parking lot of a shopping center in the 26700 block of Aliso Creek Road near Enterprise. Blood covered the front seat. -- OC RegisterEarly news reports described a "body ... discovered ... in......

View Larger Map Last night at 10:35 p.m., a shooting was reported to have occurred on the 1900 block of South Garth Street, which is north of the 10 freeway near La Cienega and 18th Street. The man is reported to be in his 30s and his name is being withheld pending family notification. No arrests have been made and police are urging anyone with information to call them. Yesterday, the city council passed a......

Photo by discarted via Flickr If you take the above headline literally, then apparently murder is allowed all other times except for 40 hours this weekend if a Los Angeles city council motion is passed today. And some might say murder feels legal these days with the rise in violence in 2008. Four people were shot dead within minutes and miles of each other in East LA yesterday, police in two separate incidents shot......

View Larger Map Reports are coming in that two separate shootings that occurred both within 20 minutes and a mile and a half of each other in unincorporated East LA have left two dead at each scene. Los Angeles Sheriff's cannot confirm that they are related yet, but all victims are Latino men. The first shooting was reported at 1:20 p.m. on the 5100 block of East Olympic Blvd., followed by another report 17-minutes later......

More details have come out today regarding the alleged Sunday morning Freeway shooting in Sherman Oaks near Van Nuys Blvd on the 101. A car with a young man, now identified as 20-year-old Marlon Gordillo-Sical, was found shot in his car after it crashed on the freeway. He was taken UCLA Medical where he was pronounced dead. Police were cautious in assuming details yesterday as KNBC reported (emphasis added): The Honda sedan could have been......

*UPDATE: 4:30 p.m. After six hours the 101 eastbound at the 405 was reopened. No witnesses have come forward with information about the incident, which is believed to be a car-to-car shooting that took place following a dispute. Police are asking for any witnesses to come forward to help the investigation. This is the second post-argument car-to-car shooting on the 101 in the Valley this year. *UPDATE 10:40 a.m.:The eastbound 101 at the 405 has......

Early this morning, Exposition Park saw two murders when two men, reported to be in their 20s, were shot dead on an apartment building sidewalk on South Figueroa near West 43rd St. Police have not determined a motive for the 1:50 a.m. shooting, but are looking into the possibility of it being gang or drug related. The LA Times reports that the two men "had just been dropped off by a friend" before being shot.......

For the second time this week, another person has been found dead inside their Santa Monica apartment and police suspect homicide. Last night at 8:05 p.m., the body of a man in his 30s was found at 520 Montana Ave. Described as a "suspicious death," the apartment building was temporarily evacuated at the time. As to how police knew to check the apartment, police will not say at the moment. However, they do say that......

*Update, 3/20/08: There has been another apparent apartment murder in Santa Monica, this time a man in his 30s. However, police say there is no connection to Redding's assault. More info here. Also, police are still waiting for Redding's autopsy results, but when finished, they will not be released to the public for another 30 to 60 days in lieu of a "security hold."A mother's premonition can be strong and when Santa Monica resident Juliana......

Photo by highervision via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr This evening a public viewing will be held for slain LA High football star Jamiel Shaw, with funeral services to follow tomorrow. Shaw's tragic murder has prompted many LA residents to refocus on the senselessness of gang-related violence. Go, stop, go, stop: Commuters northbound on the 57 and the 605 transitioning to the 210 westbound this morning were greeted by the new traffic......

Jamiel Shaw, a star athlete at Los Angeles High School, was gunned down near his West Adams home on Sunday on the 2100 block of S. 5th Street. While on the phone with his girlfriend, Shaw, 17, was allegedly approached by two Latino men and asked what gang he was affiliated with. When he didn't say anything, they shot him. After being shot, Shaw was discovered by his father, Jamiel Shaw Sr. who had heard......

Photo by tanakawho via Flickr There have been 59 homicides in Los Angeles County so far this 2008. 2007 saw 845 (though, that can change). Of those 845 homicides, LA Times reporter Jill Leovy wrote about every one of them "in a straightforward, comprehensive way" in The Homicide Report, a genius creation that will go down in bloging history. Leovy is pretty much done with the blog while Ruben Vives begins to take over......

Last week, four men targeted a house on Avenue 54 in in Highland Park near the Gold Line. It was early evening - 8, 8:30 - and the team of robbers broke into the house, only to find its resident inside. The home's occupant was pissed. And had a gun. One of the four -- a 21-year-old -- was shot multiple times. By the time his buddies got him to Glendale Memorial Hospital, he......

Joseph Cosina was shot in the heart after bar-close early Friday morning at Crash Mansion nightclub on Grand Ave. (it was an 18-and-over event). The 19-year-old Downey High School graduate was pronounced dead at the hospital and two others were wounded. The gunman remains at large.About closing time, a fight broke out inside the club, police said. Cosina and his friends had no connection to the fight, said his father, Hector. Security guards asked them......

There are two media stories in January's Los Angeles Magazine that everyone should read. One is about the Santa Barbara News-Press debacle. The other is a little closer to home -- a profile on Jill Leovy of the LA Times' The Homicide Report (subsequently, NPR interviewed Leovy on The Bryant Park Project). The blog, which set out to cover every homicide in Los Angeles County, is one of the most genius blogs out there,......

As 2007 winds down to its close, local law enforcement agencies anticipate the year's homicide numbers to be lower than the low set in 1970. The Daily News is reporting that "As of Dec. 15, 379 people had been killed in Los Angeles this year, with about 200 of those incidents gang-related. The overall homicide rate is down 17 percent from last year." In 1970, 394 people were killed in Los Angeles. More cops in......

Angelenos should be empathizing today with their Coloradian brothers and sisters today, who were shocked by the tragic shooting deaths of two staff members at a missionary center in Colorado Springs. There were two mysterious shootings last night in very different parts of the city: The first occurred around 7:40pm in Tujunga, where an unidentified man was gunned down by an assailant in a moving car. The man was found dead of two shotgun......

The first time I was in Compton, I didn't even know it until later when I was at a restaurant looking at the menu and noticed the address. It appeared the world's stereotype was wrong, maybe gone or I just happened to be in the "right" part of town. "Compton is beautiful, there are horse ranches there," a co-worker who grew up there told me at a previous job a few years before my......

Volume at the Los Angeles port, the biggest in the U.S., is expected to drop for the first time in four years. Experts attributed the decline to the slumping housing market and continued loss of confidence in imported goods. I don't pretend to be an expert, but we'll cheer up when they stop putting plastic in their toys. A woman was arrested and charged with murder, stemming from an incident in which she allegedly......

Recent major events for the LAFD include last night's apartment fires in North Hollywood and Westchester. Busy day on LAPD's blog: a drive-by shooting yesterday, a labor day homicide, Congressman Xavier Becerra's office burglarized, two fatal Skid Row stabbings, a Carl's Jr. robbery and a fatal shooting this morning in South LA. Sparked by the recent heat-reated power outages, Matt Littman at the Huffington Post asks if Los Angeles is in permanent decay: "It......

Weekends are a killer in Los Angeles County. LAist closely examined the Los Angeles Times’ Homicide Report and its companion interactive Google map this weekend. Despite the fact the last post told readers that the blog was on vacation until Sept. 1, we still found some interesting items to ponder. And while the whole notion of keeping tabs on county killings may seem a bit macabre, the blog does a good job at bringing......

For all of us who have been huge WWE fans or were forced to sit through a pay-per-view because our friends were rabid about it, it's a sad day. Chris Benoit, the Rabid Wolverine, and his wife and son were found dead in his home in Atlanta this afternoon. No details have been disclosed, but the police are treating this as a homicide. When I was a real wrestling nut earlier this decade, I......

Saturday’s “New Media: Blogging and Beyond” panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books found bloggers Hugh Hewitt (pictured), Kevin Roderick and Jill Leovy deliberating over the merits of print vs. e-media. The panel was moderated by RJ Smith, a senior editor at Los Angeles magazine. “I got into it because I hate editors,” said Hewitt, blogger at HughHewitt.com and author of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That is Changing Your World. “Blogging......

Grand Theft Auto, Doom, and Counterstrike are the reasons why young people kill, homicide "expert" Jack Thompson continues to preach. Crying when he recalls the prayer that he claims to say whenever he drops his teenage son off at school. Forgetting, somehow, that the first recorded murder ever was between two brothers. A murder that any so-called expert, and anyone who regularly prays, should know about: Cain murdering Abel. The first two kids ever......

It seems like, all across the network, folks were up to no good. Maybe it was all the green beer from last weekend... Gothamist spent the week writing about New Yorkers behaving badly: at the post office, at the Garden, and at the fertility clinic. Calvin Klein may not be misbehaving, but he's just a little dirty, and in a completely different way than some NYC kitchens. SFist had its share of misbehave-rs, too,......

At the LA Times building this morning, we were invited to speak to a group of arts organizations on Web 2.0, which, of course, includes blogging (this was not a Times sponsored event, rather they gave the use of their community room). It was fun and dandy and lots of people were still getting accustomed to the world of blogging. However, we found it funny and odd that internet access in the building was hard......