Chinatown landmark named for pioneering jurist

He was the first Chinese American graduate of Stanford Law School and the first Chinese American judge to be appointed to the bench in the continental United States.

On Friday, he became the first Chinese American to have a Los Angeles landmark named after him: Judge Delbert E. Wong Square, which encompasses the intersection of Hill and Ord streets at the western edge of Chinatown.

Councilman Ed Reyes hopes that someday the stretch of Hill Street that runs in front of the Chinatown public library will be named after Wong, who died in 2006 at age 85. Wong and his wife, Dolores, were instrumental in getting the library built, so the location would be fitting.

"The square is a starting point," said Reyes, who presided over the dedication.

A street in Little Tokyo bears the name of Judge John Aiso, the nation's first Japanese American judge.

Wong was born in the Central Valley town of Hanford in 1920, the son of a grocer from China's Guangdong province. The family later moved to Bakersfield, where Chinese and other minorities were restricted to the balconies of movie theaters and could only use the public swimming pool on Fridays, according to an oral history by Wong's son, Marshall Wong.

Wong graduated from UC Berkeley and enlisted in the Army Air Forces during World War II. As a navigator on a B-17 Flying Fortress, he completed 30 bombing missions in Europe, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross and four Air Medals.

When he returned home, Wong decided to attend law school. His parents disapproved, fearing that racial prejudice would prevent him from finding work.

After graduating from Stanford, Wong found that his job options were indeed limited. The few Chinese American attorneys in California practiced immigration law. Wong gravitated to the public sector, working as a deputy legislative counsel and then as a deputy state attorney general.

In 1959, Wong became the first Chinese American judge in the continental United States when then-Gov. Pat Brown appointed him to the Los Angeles County Municipal Court. He later joined the Superior Court, serving for more than two decades. He continued to make headlines in retirement, leading a probe into racial discrimination at the Los Angeles Airport Police Bureau and working as a special master in the O.J. Simpson case.

Wong and his wife were among the founding benefactors of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and the Chinatown Service Center. They were also pioneers in another arena: housing. After a real estate agent told them that Chinese could not buy in Silver Lake, they sought out the property's owner, who was happy to sell to them.

Wong's widow and three of his four children attended Friday's dedication.

California now has more than 90 Asian American trial judges. Four of seven state Supreme Court justices are Asian American, including Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. But young people passing through Judge Delbert E. Wong Square should remember those who paved the way, perhaps even drawing inspiration from them, Marshall Wong said.

"The children who grow up in this neighborhood will pass by and wonder, 'Who was Judge Wong?' Hopefully, they'll learn something about his story and his work and think, 'Maybe I should go to law school and be a judge someday.'"

cindy.chang@latimes.com

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Las Vegas Strip shooting suspect is arrested in L.A.

A man suspected in a deadly car-to-car shooting in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip was arrested Thursday at a Studio City apartment complex, bringing an end to a weeklong manhunt.

Los Angeles police and FBI agents surrounded the suburban apartment complex in the 4100 block of Arch Drive about noon and ordered Ammar Harris to surrender. Officers said there was a woman inside the apartment where he was holed up; she was not arrested.

Harris, 26, is being held on suspicion of murder and is expected to be extradited back to Nevada.

"This arrest is much more than just taking Ammar Harris," said Las Vegas Sheriff Doug Gillespie, speaking at police headquarters near the Strip. "The citizens of our community as well as tourists who visit and work in the Las Vegas Valley are entitled to a safe community."

Harris — described by law enforcement officials as a man with an "extensive and violent criminal history" — is accused of being the gunman in the Feb. 21 shooting that killed three people, including Kenneth Cherry Jr., an Oakland native and rapper known as Kenny Clutch.

Las Vegas police said Harris opened fire from his Ranger Rover on Cherry's Maserati on Las Vegas Boulevard after an altercation at a valet stand at the Aria hotel resort.

The Maserati then sped into the intersection at Flamingo Road, where it rammed a Yellow Cab, which erupted in flames near the mega-wattage casinos of the Bellagio, the Flamingo and Ceasars Palace. The explosion killed the taxi driver and passenger inside.

Cherry and a passenger in his Maserati were taken to a hospital, where Cherry was pronounced dead. Four other vehicles were involved in the fiery crash, which left three other people with injuries.

"What I can tell you is that Mr. Harris' behavior was unlike any other I've seen, and I've been in this community in law enforcement for 32 years," Clark County Dist. Atty. Steve Wolfson said.

"I cannot imagine anything more serious than firing a weapon from a moving vehicle into another moving vehicle on a corner such as Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo."

Even in a city accustomed to spectacle, the shooting and collision were shocking.

On the night of the shooting, Harris was accompanied by three people in his Range Rover, none considered suspects, said Lt. Ray Steiber of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. On Saturday, Las Vegas police found Harris' black Range Rover at an apartment complex in the city. The district attorney charged Harris with murder even though he could not be located, and a federal magistrate signed off on a charge of fleeing the jurisdiction.

Federal court documents show Las Vegas homicide detectives suspected that Harris may have fled to California because his phone showed he made calls in the state.

According to law enforcement sources, Harris operated as a pimp in Las Vegas. In a video released by Las Vegas police, Harris flashed a fistful of $100 bills as he bragged about the money. He boasted about money, guns, expensive cars and run-ins with the law on social media accounts, authorities said.

On one social media site, using the name Jai'duh, someone authorities believe was Harris posted pictures of stacks of $100 bills and a Carbon 15 pistol.

Harris' record includes a 2010 arrest in Las Vegas on suspicion of pimping-related offenses of pandering with force and sexual assault. He has previously been arrested on suspicion of a variety of crimes in South Carolina and Georgia, authorities said.

Harris is slated to appear in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Monday for an extradition proceeding.

richard.winton@latimes.com

john.glionna@latimes.com

kate.mather@latimes.com

Glionna reported from Las Vegas. Times staff writer Andrew Blankstein contributed to this report.

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Eric Garcetti showed political savvy during busy student years

Fourth in a series of articles focusing on key periods in the lives of the mayoral hopefuls.

Ben Jealous still recalls walking into a Columbia University meeting of a new group called Black Men for Anita Hill and seeing a half-Jewish, half-Mexican kid from Los Angeles leading the discussion.

"What's he doing here?" he asked the professor who organized the meeting.

"Honestly brother," the teacher replied, "he's the only one here I'm certain will really work hard."

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It was Jealous' first exposure to Eric Garcetti, a committed young progressive known on campus for gliding between different worlds and liberal causes. As a political science major at Columbia, Garcetti patched plaster and painted walls in low-income apartments in Harlem while also serving as the president of an exclusive literary society known for its wealthy membership. He led a men's discussion group on gender and sexuality, ran successfully for student government, and wrote and performed in musicals.

His busy student years offered hints of the future political persona that would later help him win a Los Angeles City Council seat and emerge as a leading candidate for mayor. As he pursued countless progressive causes — improved race relations in New York City, democracy in Burma and human rights in Ethiopia — Garcetti also exhibited a careful stewardship of his image and a desire to get along with everyone.

Some of his critics complain that he is confrontation averse, and say his chameleon-like abilities are political. Others complain that he has lost touch with his activist roots, citing his recent advocacy for a plan to allow taller and bigger buildings in Hollywood despite strong opposition from some community members.

But Jealous, who went on to study with Garcetti at Oxford, where they were both Rhodes scholars, remembers his classmate as "authentically committed" to social justice and naturally at ease in different settings. That was a valuable trait in early 1990s New York City, when tensions between whites and blacks were high, said Jealous, who is now the president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. Against a backdrop of racial violence, including the stabbing of the Rev. Al Sharpton in Brooklyn in 1991, "there was an urgent need to build bridges," he said.

On Columbia's campus, Garcetti pushed to involve more men in Take Back the Night protests against sexual violence and tracked hate crimes as president of the National Student Coalition Against Harassment. He also worked against homelessness and founded the Columbia Urban Experience, a program that exposes incoming freshmen to city life through volunteerism.

Judith Russell, a Columbia professor who taught Garcetti in a yearlong urban politics course, remembers him as a skilled organizer. "Eric was one of the best people I've ever met at getting people to agree," she said.

He was also ambitious. Russell says she wrote countless recommendation letters for Garcetti, who was always applying for some new opportunity. "For most people I have a file or two. For Eric I have a folder," she said.

Even as a student, Garcetti went to great lengths to guard his image and public reputation. In a 1991 letter to a campus newspaper, a 20-year-old Garcetti sought a retraction of a quote that he acknowledged was accurate. A reporter wrote that Garcetti called owners of a store that declined to participate in a Columbia-sponsored can recycling program "assholes." Garcetti said the comment was off the record.

"I would ask, then, if you would retract the quote, not because of the morality of my position, rather the ethics of the quoting," he wrote.

That self-awareness came partly from being raised in a politically active family. Back in Los Angeles, his father was mounting a successful campaign for county district attorney. His mother, the daughter of a wealthy clothier, ran a community foundation. Her father, who had been President Lyndon B. Johnson's tailor, made headlines in the 1960s when he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling on Johnson to exit the Vietnam War.

Garcetti's family wealth allowed him to carry on the legacy of political activism. While attending L.A.'s exclusive Harvard School for Boys, he traveled to Ethiopia to deliver medical supplies. In college, while other students worked at summer jobs, he traveled twice to Burma to teach democracy to leaders of the resistance movement.

In 1993, after receiving a master's degree from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, Garcetti departed for Oxford. There he met Cory Booker, a fellow Rhodes scholar who is now the mayor of Newark, N.J., and a likely candidate for the U.S. Senate. Garcetti, Booker said, "was one of those guys who would be in the pub at midnight talking passionately about making a better world."

In England, Garcetti worked with Amnesty International and also met his future wife, Amy Wakeland, another Rhodes scholar with activist leanings. Garcetti remembers being impressed when Wakeland missed President Clinton's visit to the Rhodes House at Oxford because she was on the streets protesting tuition hikes. Her worldview aligned with his, he told friends.

In his second year at Oxford, Garcetti persuaded student leaders to join him in a hunger strike after the passage of Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot measure that denied immigrants access to state healthcare and schools.

Looking back, he sees the hunger strike as a bit of youthful folly. "We were young," Garcetti said. "Was a fast an ocean away going to overturn 187? No. But in my book, whether it's me in Los Angeles seeing an injustice across an ocean or vice versa, you have to stand up and be heard."

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Cost of San Onofre nuclear plant outage exceeds $400 million

The parent company of Southern California Edison, operator of the troubled San Onofre nuclear plant, reported that the costs of the yearlong outage at the plant had ballooned to more than $400 million by the end of 2012.

The hefty price tag for the darkened plant includes inspections, repairs and purchasing replacement power.

Edison International officials fielded questions Tuesday from analysts about the plant's extended shutdown and the possibility that federal regulators will require the plant to go through a lengthy license amendment process before returning to service.

The utility also indicated Tuesday that the company has looked into what repairs could be done to restore both units to full power, and was told by the steam generator manufacturer, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, that the job of replacing "significant portions" of the system could take more than five years to complete.

The seaside facility, one of only two nuclear power plants in California, has been shut down for just over a year because of unusual wear on steam generator tubes that carry radioactive water. One tube leaked in January 2012, releasing a small amount of radioactive steam.

Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — which has a 20% stake in the plant — spent more than $780 million replacing the steam generators, which ratepayers are now repaying.

Edison officials also took a shot Tuesday at elected officials who have accused the company of knowingly installing defective equipment.

Edison has proposed restarting the less-damaged of the plant's two units and operating it at 70% power, which the company argued would alleviate the conditions that led to the wear. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing the proposal.

The plant powered about 1.4 million households in Southern California before the outage.

The report also heralded a potentially protracted dispute between Edison and Mitsubishi over the warranty on the equipment that limited payouts to $138 million, of which the company has paid out $45 million to date. Edison contends that the warranty cap should not apply because of unusual circumstances at San Onofre — Mitsubishi disagrees.

Edison Chief Executive Ted Craver said the company "bristles" at allegations made publicly by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) that the company was aware of design flaws in the steam generators before installation and did not make fixes to avoid triggering a time-consuming license amendment.

"This is just not accurate, and it injects politics into a process that should be free from it," Craver said during Tuesday's earnings call.

The lawmakers cited a leaked confidential report written by Mitsubishi when they made their claims. The NRC has said it will make a redacted version of the report public, but has not yet done so.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth contends that Edison should be required to go through a license amendment process, including public hearings, before the plant can restart.

The NRC has yet to decide on that question, but agency staff asked Edison to demonstrate that the unit proposed for restart can operate safely at its full licensed power, raising the possibility that the commission would require a license amendment for it to operate at 70% power.

In a response submitted Monday, Edison argued that 70% power is, in fact "normal steady state full power," drawing indignation from activists who are pushing for a license amendment.

The company said that the "clear purpose" of the technical specification governing tube integrity is "to ensure that the … tubes will retain their integrity over the range of operating conditions to which they will be subjected. In this case, that range is limited to 70% power."

But the response also promised to provide an analysis by March 15 showing that the unit could operate at 100% power without danger of a tube rupture.

Edison officials were scheduled to meet with NRC staff Wednesday.

abby.sewell@latimes.com

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Former Cudahy councilman gets 3 years in extortion case

A former Cudahy councilman was sentenced Monday to three years in federal prison for his role in an extortion and bribery case that authorities say exposed widespread corruption in the southeast Los Angeles County city.

Osvaldo Conde is the last of three officials to be sentenced in the federal case. U.S. Atty. Joseph Akrotirianakis recommended that Conde receive seven years in prison.

"We sought a higher sentence for him because he was the leader of the criminal activity in which all defendants were involved," Akrotirianakis said.

But as in the cases of two other Cudahy officials, U.S. District Judge Manuel Real ignored the federal prosecutor's sentencing recommendations.

Last month, former Mayor David Silva, 62, was sentenced to one year in prison, far less than the 41-month term federal prosecutors recommended. Angel Perales, Cudahy's former head of code enforcement and acting city manager, was sentenced to five years' probation. Akrotirianakis had recommended that Perales serve two years in prison.

"I would have liked Mr. Conde to get less time, but I'm relieved that the court didn't follow the government's sentencing," said Conde's attorney, George Bird. "It's neither a celebration nor the end of the world."

Like Silva and Perales, Conde is also required to pay restitution for his part in taking $17,000 in bribes from a man who wanted to open a medical marijuana dispensary in the city.

According to federal documents, all three were caught agreeing to take the money from an FBI informant claiming to want to open a medical marijuana dispensary. The FBI recorded telephone calls and face-to-face conversations with the former city officials.

In their plea agreements, the three portrayed Cudahy as a town where corruption was rampant among those wanting to do business with the city, where elections were rigged and where drugs were used at City Hall.

Court documents lay out a long list of people, usually identified only by their initials, involved in questionable acts. Akrotirianakis said the investigation is ongoing.

ruben.vives@latimes.com

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Mahony answers questions under oath about clergy sex abuse cases

A "relatively unflappable" Cardinal Roger Mahony answered questions under oath for more than 3 1/2 hours Saturday about his handling of clergy sex abuse cases, according to the lawyer who questioned the former archbishop.

"He remained calm and seemingly collected at all times," said attorney Anthony De Marco, who represents a man suing the Los Angeles Archdiocese over abuse he alleges he suffered at the hands of a priest who visited his parish in 1987.

Mahony has been deposed many times in the past, but Saturday's session was the first time he had been asked about recently released internal church records that show he shielded abusers from law enforcement.

De Marco declined to detail the questions he asked or the answers the cardinal provided, citing a judge's protective order.

The deposition occurred just before Mahony was to board a plane for Italy to vote in the conclave that will elect the next pope. In a Twitter post Friday, Mahony wrote that it was "just a few short hours before my departure for Rome."

Church officials did not return requests for comment.

The case, set for trial in April, concerns a Mexican priest, Nicholas Aguilar Rivera. Authorities believe he molested at least 26 children during a nine-month stay in Los Angeles.

Recently released church files show Aguilar Rivera fled to Mexico after a top Mahony aide, Thomas Curry, warned him that parents were likely to go the police and that he was in "a good deal of danger." Aguilar Rivera remains a fugitive in Mexico.

The archdiocese had agreed that Mahony could be questioned for four hours about the Aguilar Rivera case and 25 other priests accused in the same period. De Marco said he did not get to ask everything he wanted and would seek additional time after the cardinal returned from the Vatican.

Past depositions of Mahony have eventually become public, and De Marco said he would follow court procedures to seek the release of a transcript of Saturday's deposition.

Meanwhile, a Catholic organization Saturday delivered a petition with thousands of signatures asking that Mahony recuse himself from the conclave in Rome.

The group, Catholics United, collected nearly 10,000 signatures making "a simple request" that the former archbishop of Los Angeles not participate in the process because of the priest abuse scandals that happened under his watch, said Chris Pumpelly, communications director for Catholics United.

The petition was delivered Saturday to St. Charles Borromeo in North Hollywood, where the cardinal resides. It was accepted by a church staff member.

After delivering the petition, organizers attended Mass at the parish to pray for healing and for the future of the church.

harriet.ryan@latimes.com

Times staff writer Rick Rojas contributed to this report.

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Paroled sex offenders disarming tracking devices

SACRAMENTO — Thousands of paroled child molesters, rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in California are removing or disarming their court-ordered GPS tracking devices — and some have been charged with new crimes including sexual battery, kidnapping and attempted manslaughter.

The offenders have discovered that they can disable the monitors, often with little risk of serving time for it, a Times investigation has found. The jails are too full to hold them.

"It's a huge problem," said Fresno parole agent Matt Hill. "If the public knew, they'd be shocked."

More than 3,400 arrest warrants for GPS tamperers have been issued since October 2011, when the state began referring parole violators to county jails instead of returning them to its packed prisons. Warrants increased 28% in 2012 compared to the 12 months before the change in custody began. Nearly all of the warrants were for sex offenders, who are the vast majority of convicts with monitors, and many were for repeat violations.

The custody shift is part of Gov. Jerry Brown and the legislature's "realignment" program, to comply with court orders to reduce overcrowding in state prisons. But many counties have been under their own court orders to ease crowding in their jails.

Some have freed parole violators within days, or even hours, of arrest rather than keep them in custody. Some have refused to accept them at all.

Before prison realignment took effect, sex offenders who breached parole remained behind bars, awaiting hearings that could send them back to prison for up to a year. Now, the maximum penalty is 180 days in jail, but many never serve that time.

With so little deterrent, parolees "certainly are feeling more bold," said Jack Wallace, an executive at the California Sex Offender Management Board.

Rithy Mam, a convicted child stalker, was arrested three times in two months after skipping parole and was freed almost immediately each time. After his third release, his GPS alarm went off and he vanished, law enforcement records show.

The next day, he turned up in a Stockton living room where a 15-year-old girl was asleep on the couch, police said. The girl told police she awoke to find the stranger staring at her and that he asked "Wanna date?" before leaving the home.

Police say Mam went back twice more that week and menaced the girl and her 13-year-old sister, getting in by giving candy to a toddler, before authorities recaptured him in a local park. He is in custody on new charges of child molestation.

Californians voted in 2006 to require that high-risk sex offenders be tracked for life with GPS monitors strapped to their bodies.

The devices are programmed to record offenders' movements and are intended, at least in part, to deter them from committing crimes. The devices, attached to rubber ankle straps embedded with fiber-optic cable, transmit signals monitored by a private contractor.

They are easy to cut off, but an alarm is triggered when that happens, as it is when they are interfered with in other ways or go dead, or when an offender enters a forbidden area such as a school zone or playground. The monitoring company alerts parole agents by text message or email.

Arrest warrants for GPS tamperers are automatically published online. The Times reviewed that data as well as thousands of jail logs, court documents and criminal histories provided by confidential sources. The records show that the way authorities handle violators can vary significantly by county.

San Bernardino County releases more inmates early from its cramped jails than any other county in California, according to state reports. But sex offenders who violate parole there generally serve their terms. A spokeswoman said the county closely reviews criminal histories, and those with past sex offenses are ineligible for early release.

By contrast, parole violators in San Joaquin County are often set free within a day of arrest.

A review of the county's jail logs shows that nine of the 15 sex offenders arrested for violating parole in December and January were let out within 24 hours, including seven who immediately tampered with their trackers and disappeared. One of the nine, a convicted rapist named Robert Stone, was arrested two weeks later on kidnapping charges and returned to jail, where he remains.

Raoul Leyva, a sex offender with a history of beating women, was arrested in April for fleeing parole and ordered to remain jailed for 100 days. He was out in 16 days and soon bolted again, after allowing the battery on his device to go dead, according to the documents reviewed by The Times.

Less than two weeks later, a drug dealer led police to a Stockton apartment where Leyva's girlfriend, 20-year-old Brandy Arreola, had lain for days on the floor, severely beaten and in a coma. Now brain damaged and confined to a wheelchair, Arreola spends her time watching cartoons.

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New toll lanes open on 10 Freeway

Los Angeles County's venture into toll roads advanced early Saturday with the opening of 14 miles of express lanes on the San Bernardino Freeway — the second project of its type to begin operation in the region since November.

At 12:01 a.m., the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority allowed drivers to travel the 10 Freeway's new high occupancy toll lanes — so-called HOT lanes — between Interstate 605 in El Monte and Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles.

"This shows we are willing to address traffic, gridlock and congestion in the region," said Los Angeles Mayor and MTA board member Antonio Villaraigosa at a dedication ceremony in El Monte on Friday. "Other cities are going to do this across the county. We are going to see smarter use of highways."

The two westbound and two eastbound "Metro ExpressLanes" will be open to solo motorists who pay a toll, but they will be free for cars carrying at least two passengers.

During peak travel times, however, only carpools of three or more people will be able to use the lanes without paying. Van pools and motorcyclists also can enter the lanes toll free.

Using congestion pricing, motorists will pay anywhere from $0.25 a mile during off-peak periods to $1.40 a mile during the height of rush hour. MTA officials estimate that the average one-way cost should range between $4 and $7.

Setting tolls based on the volume of traffic is designed to maintain speeds of no less than 45 mph in the lanes. If the speed falls below that level, solo motorists will be prohibited from entering the lanes until the minimum speed resumes.

Motorists interested in the express lanes must open a FasTrak account with the MTA and make a $40 deposit to obtain a transponder, an electronic device that automatically bills their accounts whenever the lanes are used. Drivers can adjust the transponder to show how many people are in the vehicle, so the charges can be adjusted. Information is available online at metroexpresslanes.net.

The county marked its entry into the use of tollways on Nov. 10, when the MTA opened its first express lanes along 11 miles of the Harbor Freeway between Adams Boulevard in Los Angeles and the Harbor Gateway Transit Center in the South Bay.

The lanes on both freeways are part of a $210-million demonstration project funded largely by the federal government. It includes upgrading transit and rail stations, 59 new clean-fuel buses, the $60-million El Monte Bus Station, highway ramp improvements and 100 new vanpools.

MTA officials said the express lanes on the 10 and 110 will cost $7 million to $10 million a year to operate, but should generate $18 million to $20 million in revenue, money that can be reinvested in both freeway corridors. So far, more than 100,000 people have obtained transponders for the lanes, officials said.

During the next year, the express-lane projects will be evaluated to determine whether the program should be continued and expanded to other freeways in the county.

"We expect it will be totally successful," said Victor Mendez, head of the Federal Highway Administration. "The project offers commuters a variety of choices, not just the highway."

dan.weikel@latimes.com

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Eric Garcetti's role in L.A. budget fixes is in dispute

Pressed in the race for mayor of Los Angeles to say how he would fix a persistent budget gap that has led to the gutting of many city services, Eric Garcetti urges voters to look at what he has done in the past.

The onetime City Council president claims credit for reforms that he said cut the City Hall shortfall to just over $200 million from more than $1 billion. He sees "tremendous progress," principally in reducing pension and healthcare costs, and asserts: "I delivered that."

But the truth is in dispute. Although there is not a singular view about any aspect of the city's troubled finances, most of those in the thick of recent budget fights depict Garcetti not as a fiscal hard-liner but as a conciliator who used his leadership position to chart a middle ground on the most significant changes.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, city administrative officer Miguel Santana and one of Garcetti's rivals in the mayoral race, Councilwoman Jan Perry, were among those who pushed for bigger workforce reductions and larger employee contributions toward pensions and healthcare. Labor leaders and their champions on the City Council, including Paul Koretz and Richard Alarcon, sought to cushion the blow for workers.

Garcetti and his supporters say he moderated between those extremes. His critics said he worried too much about process and airing every viewpoint rather than focusing relentlessly on shoring up the city's bottom line.

"It was through the mayor's persistence and steadfast position that we got ongoing concessions," said Santana, the chief budget official for Los Angeles. "It was in collaboration with the council leadership that we finally reached agreements with labor."

The $1-billion-plus deficit Garcetti speaks of shrinking refers not to a single year but to the total of budget gaps that confronted Los Angeles over four years if no corrective action had been taken. The city's fiscal crisis worsened during that time because Garcetti and his fellow council members — including Perry and mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel — approved a city employee pay raise of 25% over five years just before the country stumbled into the recession. (Greuel left the council in 2009 when she was elected city controller.)

Although Garcetti focuses on his role, a portion of the financial improvements were outside his control. The state's elimination of redevelopment agencies in 2012 returned millions to L.A.'s general fund. Tax revenue also ticked upward with the economic recovery.

Garcetti's position as council president from 2006 through 2011 did put him at the center of debate about annual shortfalls that ranged to more than $400 million.

In 2009, he supported an early retirement plan that knocked 2,400 workers off the payroll. "I really pushed that through," the councilman said in an interview. Two participants in confidential contract talks at the heart of the deal had diametrically opposed views. "He made it happen, period," one said; the other offered: "I wouldn't say he was a major mover."

The plan saves the city a maximum of $230 million a year in salary and pension reductions in the short run. But Los Angeles borrowed to spread the costs of the program over 15 years, with current employees and retirees expected to shoulder the cost of the early exits.

The early retirements are expected to do nothing to resolve the long-term "structural deficit" — the $200 million to $400 million a year that Los Angeles spends above what it takes in. And early retirements could even be a net negative in the long run if, as city revenue recovers, new employees are put in those 2,400 empty positions too quickly.

In 2010 the city completed a budget fix that did attack the structural imbalance.

Garcetti's initial proposal called for upping the retirement age for new city employees to 60 from 55 and requiring workers to contribute a minimum of 2% of salary toward their retiree health care.

Budget chief Santana offered a markedly tougher plan. It required a 4% retiree health contribution, halved the health subsidy for retirees and capped pension benefits at 75% of salary instead of 100%. Santana's plan, also for new employees, became the basis of the reform.

Some who served with Garcetti on the council committee that leads employee negotiations pushed for even greater sacrifices. But Garcetti fought against ratcheting up demands on workers, saying it would be useless to approve a plan that would not survive subsequent union votes.

The councilman's greatest contribution may have come after city leaders set their position on pensions. Garcetti took the unusual step of visiting groups of workers. Some employees booed. Some asked him why city lawmakers, among the highest paid in the nation at $178,000 a year, didn't cut their own salaries.

"There was a lot of anger," said a labor leader who spoke on condition of anonymity because that union has not endorsed in the race. "But Eric talked to people as if they were adults and stayed until he answered all their questions. People appreciated him ... taking that kind of heat."

Matt Szabo, a former deputy mayor who helped negotiate with labor, said Garcetti deserved "every bit of credit" he has claimed for deficit reduction. "He knew he was running for mayor, and he was doing the right thing, but it was something that was going to cost him later" in terms of union support, said Szabo, who is running to replace Garcetti on the council.

Most of the employee groups that have endorsed thus far in the mayor's race have come out for Greuel. One political advantage for the controller: She left the council in 2009, before the city began making its toughest demands on workers.

Garcetti found himself stuck the middle again with another 2010 vote, this one over the elimination of 232 jobs — most of them in libraries and day care operations at city parks. Garcetti voted for the layoffs. Later he voted to reconsider, though he said recently that he intended only to re-air the issue, not to keep the workers on the job.

Labor leaders faulted Garcetti for giving the appearance he might be ready to save the jobs when he really wasn't. The reductions remain a sore point, because a "poison pill" in the contract required that any layoffs be accompanied by immediate pay raises for remaining city employees. Fierce disagreement remains over whether the layoffs saved the city any money.

"That became part of the negative picture" of Garcetti, said one labor leader, who asked not to be named out of concern about alienating a possible future mayor. The candidate said in an interview that he frequently found himself hewing a middle ground between some colleagues "who simply hope more revenue would come in" and others who wanted to use an "ax," making indiscriminate cuts. He added: "To me, both views were equally unacceptable."

Critics find Garcetti too malleable, ready to shift to the last argument he has heard. But others appreciate his quest for the middle, saying the fact he sometimes irritated both budget hard-liners and unions showed he had taken a reasoned approach.

"The criticism of Eric is also sort of the good news," said one of the union reps. "He has this very process-y, kumbaya, can't-we-all-get-along style. It drove us all crazy. But now I really miss it because it seems to be all politics over policy."

james.rainey@latimes.com

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Bulgari shows off Liz Taylor's gems

It isn't easy sometimes to be an ordinary person in Los Angeles, so near to and yet so far from the city's glamorous events.

You hear about the grand Oscar parties, but you will never be invited. The award ceremony may be taking place minutes from where you live, but you watch it at home, on TV, in your sweat pants — and you might as well be in Dubuque.

Rodeo Drive too can make you feel like a scrap on the cutting room floor. As you stroll the wide and immaculate sidewalks of Beverly Hills' iconic shopping street, you pass by boutiques you'd feel self-conscious walking into. In the windows are baubles and trinkets you could never in three lifetimes afford.

Which is why it is rather nice to be invited to make a private appointment at the house of Bulgari, the fine Italian jeweler that opened its doors in 1884.

Elizabeth Taylor loved Bulgari jewels. Richard Burton, whose torrid affair with her began during the filming of "Cleopatra" in Rome, accompanied her often to the flagship shop on the Via Condotti. He liked to joke that the name Bulgari was all the Italian she knew.

So it is fitting that starting Oscar week, the jeweler is celebrating the Oscar-winning star with an exhibit of eight of her most treasured Bulgari pieces.

They are heavy on diamonds and emeralds — of rare size, gleam and value.

And Bulgari knows their value well.

After Taylor's death, it reacquired some of the gems at a Christie's auction. One piece, an emerald-and-diamond brooch that also can be worn as a pendant, sold for $6,578,500 — breaking records both for sales price of an emerald and for emerald price per carat ($280,000).

That brooch, whose centerpiece is an octagonal step-cut emerald weighing 23.44 carats, was Burton's engagement present to Taylor. He followed it upon their marriage (his second, her fifth) with a matching necklace whose 16 Colombian emeralds weigh in at 60.5 carats. Bulgari bought the necklace back too, for $6,130,500.

They are in the exhibit, along with Burton's engagement ring to Taylor and a delicate brooch — given to her by husband No. 4, Eddie Fisher — whose emerald and diamond flowers were set en tremblant so that they gently fluttered as Taylor moved.

The jewels are not for sale.

On Tuesday night, actress Julianne Moore wore the Burton necklace, with pendant attached, at a gala for Bulgari's top clients. At the dinner hour, guests were escorted along a lavender-colored carpet to a nearby rooftop that had been transformed into a Roman terrace.

Those honored guests, of course, got private viewings of Taylor's jewels.

But so did Amanda Perry, a healer from West Hollywood who arrived the next morning for one of the first appointments available to the public.

Someone had emailed news of the collection to the 35-year-old Taylor fan. She walked in off the street Tuesday, when the exhibit was open only to press — and Sabina Pelli, Bulgari's glamorous executive vice president, fresh from Rome, was taking sips of San Pellegrino brought to her on a silver tray between back-to-back interviews that started at 5 a.m.

The camera crews were long gone when Perry came back Wednesday. She had the exhibit, and handsome sales associate Timothy Morzenti of Milan, entirely to herself.

In a black suit, still wearing on his left hand the black glove he dons to handle fine jewels, Morzenti whisked Perry off via a private elevator to the exhibit on the second floor. The jewels stood in vitrines mounted high off the ground. Behind them were photos and a slide show of Taylor, bejeweled.

"Which piece would you like to see first?" Morzenti asked her as a security guard stood by. "I personally love the emerald ring."

Then he proceeded at leisure to explain Bulgari-signature sugar-loaf cuts and trombino ring settings, while tossing in occasional Taylor stories.

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L.A. Regional Food Bank is thriving at 40

David Navarro drove south from the Los Angeles Boys & Girls Club in Lincoln Heights on a recent sun-drenched day, headed to his weekly destination in a dust-gray Ford pickup.

As usual, he couldn't simply cruise into the crowded parking lot of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank on 41st Street near Alameda. He was stopped by an employee who works miracles in the lot, arranging rigs in jigsaw patterns as drivers wait their turn to make food pickups.

The Salvation Army was already there, along with the Good News Central Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. Hollywood West Tenant Action Council was pulling in behind Navarro.

"I'll go in now and see what they have today," said Navarro, who told me that back at the Boys & Girls Club, people would be lining up for whatever he brought back.

Once inside the sprawling warehouse, Navarro moved as if he was in a race, trying to get his hands on as many perishables as he could before other drivers claimed them.

"They like any nice vegetables like this," he said, hoisting several crates of firm, stout zucchini onto his pushcart.

Over the course of an hour, Navarro worked up a sweat gathering boxes of bread and mounds of bananas, apples, lettuce and tomatoes. All of this tipped the scales at 556 pounds, and Navarro pushed the teetering cargo outside and loaded it onto his truck.

I thought he was done, but no.

"Now I go back," he said, "and fill the cart again."

In a region of staggering abundance, there is still desperate need. In a culture that wastes tons of food, there is still considerable hunger. And no charitable organization does more to balance the scales than the food bank, which began exactly 40 years ago, on Feb. 20, 1973.

It all began with a Pasadena cook named Tony Collier, who hated seeing perfectly good food getting thrown out at the recovery center where he worked. He began redistributing it to those in need, and the operation just kept growing. Today, it distributes some 200,000 pounds of food daily. A staff of 106 is backed up by 32,000 volunteers who pitch in at least one day a year, sorting food that includes non-perishables such as canned corn, as well as foods such as navel oranges and frozen chicken that have to be turned around quickly, before they go bad.

Each morning, a convoy of food bank trucks retrieves surplus food from farms, supermarket chains and other donors and brings it back to the warehouse, where it is picked up by about 650 agencies. Another 600 groups are on a waiting list to be included in the daily giveaway.

"Four hundred thousand of the 1 million people we serve each year are kids," said Michael Flood, president and chief executive of the food bank.

The challenge of the food bank has been to hook up with farmers whose harvest is sometimes bigger than the demand, or with supermarkets that have stocked more perishable food than they can sell. Ralphs and Vons are among the biggest donors to the food bank.

Still, billions of dollars worth of food ends up in dumpsters every year in the U.S., Flood said. He encourages citizens to be more conscious of waste and get involved in food donations or volunteering at a local pantry or the food bank (for more information, http://www.lafoodbank.org).

If you do happen to wander into the food bank, watch your step or you could get run over by a forklift. They zip around like bumper cars, honking horns as they wheel hulking loads toward the exits. And one of the employees who supervises the flow from delivery trucks to conveyor belts to palates is Valerie Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, like the food she processes, didn't get where she was supposed to go on the first try. The food bank is her second chance. As a teen growing up in South El Monte, she got it all wrong, becoming a drug addict, getting married way too young, losing kids she couldn't care for, and ending up in rehab at several skid row agencies, including the L.A. Mission and Union Rescue Mission.

But then she began straightening herself out, and as part of a welfare-to-work program, Rodriguez was assigned to volunteer at the food bank, not knowing anything about it. That's when she saw the trucks roll in from the missions and made the connection:

The food she'd eaten at the missions came from the food bank. She'd gone from recipient to supplier. And the food bank liked her so much that she was offered a temp job.

"It was after about a year of volunteering here," Rodriguez said.

Later, she was promoted to full time, and she's since remarried and regained custody of her children.

"It's still a struggle," she said. "But my hope and dream and desire is to save and buy a home. I want to have a home for my kids to grow up in."

While Rodriguez supervised volunteers, David Navarro finished loading his pickup and drove north from the food bank with more than 1,000 pounds of food. That evening, volunteers bagged the goods as men and women inched closer to the door of the Boys & Girls Club, eagerly awaiting their care packages.

Jo Ellen Kitchen, a volunteer at the club since the 1980s, told me she'd heard that the country has started to see an economic recovery.

"But it never really seems to get here."

It was Valentine's Day, and 20 people were in line. As dusk drew in around them, Alvina Rodriguez and Teresa Olmeda talked about the challenges of temporary work, low pay and hungry children. On this night, they and the others would go home with dinner because a simple act of compassion 40 years ago keeps rippling across the city.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

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UC Irvine professor stops teaching online course in dispute

A UC Irvine professor has stopped teaching midway through a massive online course in microeconomics offered through the Coursera organization, saying he had disagreements on how to conduct the free class for thousands of students around the world.

The action by Richard A. McKenzie, an emeritus professor in the UC Irvine business school, highlights the uncertainties faculty face in adapting traditional face-to-face classes to the emerging universe of massive open online courses, known as MOOCs.

In his statements posted to the class website over the weekend, McKenzie appeared to be frustrated over his attempts to get the students to obtain and read as much of the textbook as possible.

"I will not cave on my standards. If I did, any statement of accomplishment will not be worth the digits they are printed on," he wrote.

The course, midway through its 10-week schedule, will continue since its lectures are already videotaped. But in chat room postings, students said they were confused over whether to stick with the non-credit Microeconomics for Managers course, one of six the UC Irvine online extension has in operation through the Coursera group.

McKenzie responded to an email inquiry Monday that the matter has been "a drain" on him and involves serious issues. In his message to the class, he wrote: "Because of disagreements over how best to conduct this course, I've agreed to disengage from it, with regret."

Gary Matkin, UC Irvine's dean of Continuing Education, Distance Learning and Summer Session, said in a statement that McKenzie is "not accustomed [as few are] in teaching university-level material to an open, large and quite diverse audience, including those who were not seriously committed to achieving the learning objectives of the course or who decided not to or could not gain access to supplemental learning materials."

Future lessons and assignments, as developed by McKenzie, will continue to be presented, Matkin said.

McKenzie, who retired from his regular faculty position in 2011, said that students "will not be left hanging" and that all assignments and discussion problems are ready to be posted as scheduled.

Under the Coursera model, much of the grading is automatic or performed by fellow students. Professors videotape lectures in advance and often comment in general on message boards without answering questions. Although enrollment is free, Coursera charges students $30 to $99 for a completion certificate.

larry.gordon@latimes.com

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Major donor to GOP helping L.A. mayoral candidate Kevin James

Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Kevin James crossed paths just once.

It was an intimate cocktail fundraiser for James in the tony Montecito enclave near Santa Barbara, where Simmons owns a weekend retreat and counts Oprah Winfrey among his neighbors. Simmons, one of the top donors to Republican "super PACs" in 2012, turned to the candidate and asked, "What on Earth can you do to save L.A.?"

James, recounting the exchange, said he launched into his political pitch, railing against the city's flirtation with bankruptcy and the power of its labor unions. "I remember him telling me he was impressed," James said.

Later, when James made formal remarks to the group, which included a few of Simmons' fellow Texans, the industrial magnate stood up and announced that he would give. By mid-January, Simmons had given $600,000 to an independent group backing James, making him the largest single contributor to any political committee affiliated with the L.A. mayor's race — a sphere most often dominated by labor unions.

His contributions made it possible for a super PAC known as Better Way LA, created by GOP ad man Fred Davis, to buy half a million dollars of TV ad time last week promoting James, the only Republican in the race.

But that political help could come at a price in a city as liberal and Democratic as Los Angeles, where James needs to win over moderates, as well as conservatives, to reach a two-way runoff in May. In recent years, Simmons has funded some of the most controversial conservative groups in presidential politics, and last year he called President Obama "the most dangerous American alive."

Simmons' interest in city politics and a long shot like James remains something of a mystery. A corporate investor whose net worth was valued at $7.1 billion by Forbes last September, Simmons declined to be interviewed. He votes in Texas and has not contributed to any other Los Angeles city candidates in recent years, according to election records.

By the standards of his past political giving, Simmons' support for the pro-James super PAC has been small.

In last year's presidential race, Simmons, his wife, his companies and their employees gave $31 million to a network of super PACs that proliferated after the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling, which loosened the reins on political spending by corporations and labor unions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

"This is one of a handful of mega-donors in U.S. politics who has given extraordinary sums of money over many, many years," said Sheila Krumholz, the center's executive director who has monitored Simmons' political giving for two decades. "He's a savvy donor, somebody who is very familiar with how this game is played at the highest levels and on down."

James, an openly gay Republican, said he knew of no specific business that Simmons has before the city. And Simmons did not mention any particular Los Angeles issue, he said.

James suggested that Simmons, 81, may be interested in elevating a moderate Republican voice statewide. Simmons has contributed to another California moderate, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and told the Wall Street Journal last year that he was "probably pro-choice."

"For donors who are looking for the Republican Party to be able to plant a flag again in California," James said, "I'm the kind of Republican that's a bigger-tent Republican."

In that rare interview he granted the Wall Street Journal last year, Simmons said he wanted to make the U.S. tax and regulatory structure more friendly to business by electing Republicans at all levels of government. He said he hoped like-minded individuals would make political donations to help counter spending by labor unions.

In 2004, Simmons donated $3 million to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that ran ads accusing then-Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry of exaggerating his record in the Vietnam War. And during President Obama's first run, Simmons was the sole funder of the American Issues Project, which ran TV ads tying Obama to a founder of the Weather Underground, which planned a series of bombings to protest the Vietnam War.

In his interview with the Journal, Simmons described Obama as "a socialist" who "would eliminate free enterprise in this country."

At times, Simmons' political contributions have tracked closely with his business interests — a network of companies that include hazardous waste disposal and metal component manufacturers.

He was a generous backer of Texas Gov. Rick Perry at a time when one of those companies, Waste Control Specialists, needed the governor's backing to build a low-level radioactive waste disposal site, the nation's first such new facility in three decades.

After a fierce lobbying campaign, Perry signed a law opening the way for the proposal. Perry appointees later approved the license for the $500-million site in West Texas despite concerns of some state environmental experts about potential harm to aquifers near the site. Simmons' spokesman has said that Simmons' connections to Perry did not work to his company's advantage and in fact increased the state's scrutiny of the deal.

Krumholz said Simmons' companies span so many fields that it has been difficult to trace possible ties between his business interests and his giving even at the federal level.

"He's kind of like the AT&T of individual donors," said Krumholz, noting that the telecommunications giant has interests in defense contracting and other industries. "He might have reason to be involved at various levels of government and in specific races because his investments are so diverse."

maeve.reston@latimes.com

Molly Hennessy-Fiske contributed to this report.

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San Bernardino County sheriff details final shootout with Dorner

Fugitive Christopher Dorner spent his final hours barricaded inside a mountain cabin armed with a high-powered sniper rifle, smoke bombs and a cache of ammo, shooting to kill and ignoring commands to surrender until a single gunshot ended his life, authorities said Friday.

The evidence indicates that Dorner, a fired Los Angeles police officer suspected of killing four people and wounding three others, held a gun to his head and fired while the Big Bear area cabin he was holed up in caught fire, ignited by police tear gas.

San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon, during a news conference Friday, offered the most detailed account yet of the manhunt and final shootout, which left one of his deputies dead and another seriously wounded. McMahon steadfastly defended the tactics used by his agency, dismissing assertions that deputies may have botched the hunt for Dorner or deliberately set the cabin on fire.

"We stand confident in our actions on that fateful day," he said. "The bottom line is the deputy sheriffs of this department, and the law enforcement officers from the surrounding area, did an outstanding job. They ran into the line of fire. They were being shot at, and didn't turn around in retreat."

During Tuesday's shootout, a television news crew recorded law enforcement officials shouting to burn the cabin down. McMahon acknowledged the comments were made, but said they did not come from the department's tactical team or commanders on the scene.

"They had just been involved in probably one most of the most fierce firefights," he said of the people heard on the recording. "And sometimes, because we're humans, we say things that may or may not be appropriate. We will look into this and we will deal it appropriately."

The blaze started shortly after police fired "pyrotechnic" tear gas into the cabin; the canisters are known as "burners" because the intense heat they emit often causes a fire.

Sheriff's Capt. Gregg Herbert, who led the assault on the cabin, said the canisters were used only as a last resort after Dorner continued firing at deputies, ignored commands to surrender and did not respond when "cold," less intense tear gas was shot into the wood-framed dwelling.

Herbert said that a tractor was deployed to tear down walls of the cabin to expose Dorner's whereabouts inside, but that Dorner set off smoke bombs to hide himself. Storming the cabin was considered too dangerous because of the belief that Dorner "was lying in wait for us," he said.

"This was our only option," Herbert said of the pyrotechnic tear gas, adding that the potential for igniting a fire was taken into account.

After about a quarter of the cabin was engulfed in flames, Herbert said, "we heard a distinct single gunshot" come from inside. The shot sounded different from those Dorner had fired at deputies, indicating a different type of weapon was used, he said.

Dental records were used to confirm that the remains found in the cabin were indeed those of Dorner, 33.

The Riverside County coroner's office conducted an autopsy on Dorner, and determined that his death was caused by a single gunshot to the head. The coroner has not positively determined that Dorner shot himself, but the evidence "seems to indicate that the wound … was self inflicted," said Capt. Kevin Lacy of the San Bernardino County coroner's division.

From the cabin and vehicles Dorner used in the San Bernardino Mountains, investigators recovered a cache of weapons and ammunition. Among them: numerous assault weapons — including a bolt-action .308 caliber sniper's rifle — silencers, handguns, high-capacity magazines, smoke bombs, tear gas and a military-style Kevlar helmet.

McMahon said it was unclear how Dorner was able to carry all those weapons while on foot and on the run in Big Bear. But he said there's no evidence Dorner had an accomplice or received aid from anyone.

During Friday's news conference, McMahon also was pressed to address the anger and frustration of Big Bear residents who questioned how Dorner was able to hide out undetected for five days. In fact, Dorner was hiding in a vacation rental condominium less than 200 yards from law enforcement's command center during the manhunt.

The sheriff said the condo had been checked early in the search. The door was locked and no one answered when deputies knocked. Since there was no sign of forced entry on the door or windows, the deputies moved on.

McMahon said the decision was made not to kick open doors of unoccupied homes because they had no search warrants, and doing so would have included "hundreds" of homes — since many of the cabins and homes are unoccupied vacation homes.

Investigators later learned that the owners of the condo, Jim and Karen Reynolds, had left the unit unlocked to allow workers inside. When the Reynoldses entered the condo Tuesday morning, Dorner tied them up and stole their car. One of them was able to break free and call 911, leading to the deadly standoff at the mountain cabin in Angelus Oaks.

"I don't believe we made any mistakes," McMahon said.

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U.S. can proceed with plans to close Oakland pot shop, court says

SAN FRANCISCO — A U.S. magistrate judge on Thursday sided with federal prosecutors in dismissing a lawsuit by the city of Oakland that challenged as illegal federal attempts to shutter the nation's largest medical marijuana dispensary.

In filing the suit last October, Oakland became the first city to take on federal enforcement actions that have led to the closure of hundreds of dispensaries in recent years.

Attorney Cedric Chao, representing Oakland, had argued that the city has broad interests in ensuring Harborside Health Center remains open, as its closure would compel many of the dispensary's 108,000 patients to turn to the illegal market, triggering a public health and safety crisis.

But U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James ruled in San Francisco that there was no appropriate legal avenue for Oakland's intervention.

Federal attorneys had moved to dismiss the suit against U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder and Melinda Haag, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, on the grounds that any party seeking to weigh in on an asset forfeiture must do so within a specified period of time, which had elapsed.

Chao had countered that since Oakland has no direct interest in the Harborside property, the city instead sought to litigate its concerns under the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs the way federal agencies propose and establish regulations.

But James concluded that Oakland had not met the required legal hurdles to sue under that act. 

Oakland City Atty. Barbara Parker said officials were going to consider all of their options, including an appeal, which would require City Council approval

"We're disappointed," she said Thursday, "but we have strong convictions about the harm Oakland will suffer and is already beginning to suffer as a result of the forfeiture actions."

Those actions, which target Harborside's landlords in Oakland and San Jose, are proceeding. Harborside has weighed in and will make the same argument that Oakland asserted in its suit — that federal prosecutors knew of cannabis sales at the dispensaries for years and missed the statute of limitations to seek forfeiture.

Steve DeAngelo, executive director of Harborside, said in a statement that he was disappointed in Thursday's ruling, but "the message of Oakland's lawsuit remains powerful and relevant: The city council and mayor have determined that if Harborside Health Center is closed, the entire city will be harmed."

Federal prosecutors declined to comment on James' ruling.

Meanwhile Thursday, more than a dozen members of Congress co-introduced legislation pertaining to medical marijuana.  U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) wrote the "States' Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act," which, in addition to allowing marijuana for medical use, would allow states to establish production and distribution laws without interference from the federal government, and would also remove current obstacles to research.

U.S. Rep. Sam Farr (D-Carmel), wrote the "Truth in Trials Act," a separate bill that would overturn the prohibition on medical marijuana evidence in federal court, allowing defendants who were complying with state and local laws to introduce such evidence in their own defense.

The bills come in advance of a national medical marijuana conference organized by Americans for Safe Access to be held next week in Washington, D.C.

lee.romney@latimes.com

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Couple recounts harrowing Dorner ordeal

Fugitive former police officer Christopher Jordan Dorner was apparently holed up inside a Big Bear area condo for as many as five days before the husband and wife who own the property surprised him and then were tied up and gagged, the couple said Wednesday night.

Dorner bound the husband's and wife's hands with plastic zip ties, stuffed small towels in their mouths so they couldn't scream and covered their heads with pillowcases that he tied with electrical cords, they said.

"I really thought it could be the end," Karen Reynolds, 56, told reporters gathered outside her condominium.

She and husband Jim Reynolds, 66, provided new details on some of Dorner's movements in the apparent final hours of his life. He is believed to have died Tuesday in a cabin fire after a mountainside gun battle with officers.

Law enforcement authorities previously said Dorner had held two cleaning women hostage. The Reynoldses spoke to reporters to end the confusion.

The couple said Dorner had been at the condo in the 1200 block of Club View Drive since as early as Friday, when they arrived to do maintenance in the yard. He told them he watched them — and even said they were "hardworking, good people." The couple slept at another property nearby.

When they entered the condo about noon Tuesday, the couple said, they were surprised to find the fired Los Angeles police officer inside the home, which is near the command post where authorities provided media briefings. They said they were held captive for about 15 minutes by Dorner, whom they recognized immediately.

The Reynoldses stumbled on the suspected killer when they went upstairs. Once they saw him, they said, he brandished a "big gun" and yelled, "Stay calm!"

Karen Reynolds said she tried to run down the stairs, but Dorner chased after her and caught her. He then took the couple to a bedroom, where he tied them up.

Dorner was a menacing presence but at other times tried to reassure the couple that he did not want to harm them, they said.

"He tried to calm us down, saying very frequently, he would not kill us," said Jim Reynolds, who has owned the condo with his wife for 12 years. "He huddled down beside me and said, 'You're going to be quiet right? Not make a fuss and let me get away?' "

Dorner identified himself as the man wanted by law enforcement authorities. "I know you know who I am, I know you've been seeing the news," Karen Reynolds recalled him saying.

Karen Reynolds said Dorner left the condo and stole their purple Nissan. About two minutes after they heard the car leave, Karen Reynolds propped herself up and shuffled to her cellphone. She grabbed it with her bound hands and called 911, using the speaker function.

"Dorner tied us up and he's in Big Bear," she recalled telling the dispatcher.

The couple, who have been married for 36 years, said they were "happy to be alive." They said they had mixed feelings about Dorner, whom they described as calm, alert and methodical. Karen Reynolds said she wasn't expecting to see any of the $1-million-plus reward money offered in the Dorner case. "We heard nobody was getting that because he needed to be captured and convicted," she said.

They said they found evidence that someone had been staying in the cabin, including a gallon of milk in the fridge, but that they didn't know if a previous tenant had left it behind. The last guests were there on Jan. 29.

All of the units are equipped with cable television and Internet. There was no sign of a forced entry.

It was Karen Reynolds' 12:20 p.m. 911 call that set in motion the chain of events that led to a shootout between Dorner and a state Fish and Wildlife warden, then to the standoff at another cabin where he is believed to have exchanged hundreds of rounds in the gun battle with officers before dying.

As the couple described their harrowing ordeal, they recalled that Dorner was insistent about what he wanted to do.

"I don't have a problem with you," he told them. "I just want to clear my name."

adolfo.flores@latimes.com

robert.lopez@latimes.com

Flores reported from Big Bear, Lopez from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein and Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.

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Dorner manhunt leads to deadly standoff

When authorities hemmed in the man they suspected of killing three people in a campaign of revenge that has gripped Southern California, he responded as they had feared: with smoke bombs and a barrage of gunfire.

The suspect, who police believe is fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner, shot to death one San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy and injured another Tuesday. He then barricaded himself in a wood cabin outside Big Bear in the snow-blanketed San Bernardino Mountains, police said.

Just before 5 p.m., authorities smashed the cabin's windows, pumped in tear gas and called for the suspect to surrender. They got no response. Then, using a demolition vehicle, they tore down the cabin's walls one by one. When they reached the last wall, they heard a gunshot.

Then the cabin burst into flames. By late Tuesday evening, the smoldering ruins remained too hot for police to enter, but authorities said they believed Dorner's body was inside.

The standoff appeared to end a weeklong hunt for the former L.A. police officer and Navy reserve lieutenant, who is also suspected of killing an Irvine couple and a Riverside police officer. But Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said he would not consider the manhunt over until a body was recovered and identified as Dorner.

"It is a bittersweet night," said Beck as he drove to the hospital where the injured deputy was undergoing surgery. "This could have ended much better, it could have ended worse. I feel for the family of the deputy who lost his life."

According to a manifesto Dorner allegedly posted on Facebook, he felt the LAPD unjustly fired him in 2009, when a disciplinary panel determined that he lied in accusing his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an arrest. Beck has promised to review the case.

Dorner, 33, vowed to wage "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against law enforcement officers and their families, the manifesto said. "Self-preservation is no longer important to me. do not fear death as I died long ago."

Last week, authorities had tracked Dorner to a wooded area near Big Bear Lake. They found his torched gray Nissan Titan with several weapons inside. The only trace of Dorner was a short trail of footprints in newly fallen snow.

On Tuesday morning two maids entered a cabin in the 1200 block of Club View Drive and ran into a man who they said resembled the fugitive, a law enforcement official said. The cabin was not far from where Dorner's singed truck had been found and where police had been holding press conferences about the manhunt.

The man tied up the maids, and he took off in a purple Nissan parked near the cabin. About 12:20 p.m., one of the maids broke free and called police.

Nearly half an hour later, officers with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife spotted the stolen vehicle and called for backup. The suspect turned down a side road in an attempt to elude the officers but crashed the vehicle, police said.

A short time later, authorities said the suspect carjacked a light-colored pickup truck. Allan Laframboise said the truck belonged to his friend Rick Heltebrake, who works at a nearby Boy Scout camp.

Heltebrake was driving on Glass Road with his Dalmatian, Suni, when a hulking African American man stepped into the road, Laframboise said. Heltebrake stopped. The man told him to get out of the truck.

"Can I take my dog?" Heltebrake asked, according to his friend.

"You can leave and you can take your dog," the man said. He then sped off in the Dodge extended-cab pickup — and quickly encountered two Department of Fish and Wildlife trucks.

As the suspect zoomed past the officers, he rolled down his window and fired about 15 to 20 rounds. One of the officers jumped out and shot a high-powered rifle at the fleeing pickup. The suspect abandoned the vehicle and took off on foot.

Police said he ended up at the Seven Oaks Mountain Cabins, a cluster of wood-frame buildings about halfway between Big Bear Lake and Yucaipa. The suspect exchanged gunfire with San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies as he fled into a cabin that locals described as a single-story, multi-room structure.

The suspect fired from the cabin, striking one deputy, law enforcement sources said. Then he ducked out the back of the cabin, deployed a smoke bomb and opened fire again, hitting a second deputy. Neither deputy was identified by authorities. The suspect retreated back into the cabin.

The gun battle was captured on TV by KCAL 9 reporter Carter Evans, who said he was about 200 feet from the cabin. As Evans described on air how deputies were approaching the structure, he was interrupted by 10 seconds of gunfire.

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Metrolink executive quits after report cites accounting problems

A high-ranking Metrolink executive resigned over the weekend following a scathing report that revealed accounting irregularities, poor management and record-keeping that made it difficult for board members to understand the railroad's financial situation.

Metrolink officials said Monday that Nancy Weiford, the regional commuter line's chief financial officer, stepped down after a special committee assigned to look into the railroad's business practices revealed its findings at Friday's board meeting. They declined to comment further on Weiford's departure, saying that personnel matters are confidential.

In a statement, railroad officials said: "Metrolink takes very seriously the recent findings of Metrolink's Ad Hoc Finance Committee regarding the agency's financial management. As one of the nation's largest commuter rail systems, Metrolink has been, and continues to be, committed to sound financial practices."

Reached by The Times, Weiford declined to comment.

Describing the accounting system as a "morass," the internal report found that Metrolink has inadequate cash reserves to meet its current obligations and that another cash account was underfunded by an estimated $66 million. Certain funds were improperly commingled and poor record-keeping made it hard to track the railroad's cash flows, according to the committee findings.

Because of a lack of sound business practices, the report stated that board members were unable to make informed decisions or accurately understand the financial situation of Metrolink, which serves more than 40,000 riders a day from six Southern California counties.

"These are very significant issues. The committee shows deficiencies in the fundamental operating systems for our financial management," said Mike Hennessey, vice chairman of the Metrolink board and a board member for the Orange County Transportation Authority, one of Metrolink's member agencies.

Metrolink formed the finance committee in early 2012 at the request of Richard Katz, who serves on the boards of Metrolink and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Some of the accounting problems, Katz said, date back to the tenure of former Metrolink Chief Executive David Solow, who resigned after the deadly 2008 Metrolink crash in Chatsworth. Solow's replacement, John Fenton, identified some of the problems before he stepped down in May.

"The past couple of years, we've been focused on developing our safety culture," Katz said. "But we also have to be careful stewards of the taxpayers' and our customers' money. What has been going on has been unacceptable and it will be fixed."

The report recommended a variety of solutions: adopting basic accounting practices, maintaining adequate cash reserves, improvements in record-keeping, hiring financial consultants and working with the five county transportation agencies that help fund Metrolink.

Committee members concluded that if their findings and recommendations are not addressed, they could not recommend that Metrolink's member agencies provide the railroad additional funding.

Their report requested that Metrolink's new chief executive, Michael DePallo, who started in October, provide the board accurate financial statements going back two years, an assessment of the railroad's financial condition and a response to the committee findings within 30 days.

"A lot of work has to be done at Metrolink," said Carolyn Cavecche, a Metrolink board member from Orange County who served on the committee. "Changes need to be made on how we do business internally."

dan.weikel@latimes.com

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Dorner's LAPD firing case hinged on credibility

For a Los Angeles Police Department disciplinary panel, the evidence was persuasive: Rookie officer Christopher Jordan Dorner lied when he accused his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an arrest.

But when a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge examined the case a year later in 2010 as part of an appeal filed by Dorner, he seemed less convinced.

Judge David P. Yaffe said he was "uncertain whether the training officer kicked the suspect or not" but nevertheless upheld the department's decision to fire Dorner, according to court records reviewed by The Times.

As the manhunt for the ex-cop wanted in the slayings of three people enters its sixth day, Dorner's firing has been the subject of debate both within and outside the LAPD. An online manifesto that police attributed to Dorner claims he was railroaded by the LAPD and unjustly fired. His allegations have resonated among the public and some LAPD employees who have criticized the department's disciplinary system, calling it capricious and retaliatory toward those who try to expose misconduct.

Seeking to address those concerns, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck announced this weekend that he was reopening the investigation into Dorner's disciplinary case. "It is important to me that we have a department that is seen as valuing fairness," Beck said.

LAPD records show that Dorner's disciplinary panel heard from several witnesses who testified that they did not see the training officer kick the man. The panel found that the man did not have injuries consistent with having been kicked, nor was there evidence of having been kicked on his clothes. A key witness in Dorner's defense was the man's father, who testified that his son told him he had been kicked by police. The panel concluded that the father's testimony "lacked credibility," finding that his son was too mentally ill to give a reliable account.

The online manifesto rails against the LAPD officials who took part in the review hearing and vows revenge. Police allege Dorner killed his own attorney's daughter and her fiance last weekend in Irvine.

"Your lack of ethics and conspiring to wrong a just individual are over. Suppressing the truth will [lead] to deadly consequences for you and your family," the manifesto says.

Dorner's case revolved around a July 28, 2007, call about a man causing a disturbance at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Pedro. When Dorner and his training officer showed up, they found Christopher Gettler. He was uncooperative and threw a punch at one of the officers, prompting Dorner's training officer, Teresa Evans, to use an electric Taser weapon on him.

Nearly two weeks later, Dorner walked into Sgt. Donald Deming's office at the Harbor Division police station. There were tears in Dorner's eyes, the sergeant later testified.

Deming gave the following account of what happened next:

"I have something bad to talk to you about, something really bad," Dorner told him.

Evans, Dorner explained, had kicked Gettler once in the face and twice in the left shoulder or nearby chest area. Afterward, Dorner said, Evans told him not to include the kicks on the arrest report.

"Promise me you won't do anything," Dorner asked Deming.

"No, Chris. I have to do something," Deming responded.

An internal affairs investigation into the allegation concluded the kicks never occurred. Investigators subsequently decided that Dorner had fabricated his account. He was charged with making false accusations.

At the December 2008 Board of Rights hearing, Dorner's attorney, Randal Quan, conceded that his client should have reported the kicks sooner but told the board that Dorner ultimately did the right thing. He called the case against Dorner "very, very ugly."

"This officer wasn't given a fair shake," Quan said, according to transcripts of the board hearing. "In fact, what's happening here is this officer is being made a scapegoat."

At the hearing, Dorner stuck to his story. Evans, he said, kicked Gettler once in the left side of his collarbone lightly with her right boot as they struggled to handcuff him. She kicked him once more forcefully in the same area, Dorner testified, and then much harder in the face, snapping Gettler's head back. Dorner said he noticed fresh blood on Gettler's face.

Dorner did not immediately report the kicks to a sergeant, he said, because he was asked only what force he had used, not what his partner had done. And as a rookie who had already filed complaints against fellow officers, he feared retaliation from within the department, Dorner testified.

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State fires contractor on tech project

SACRAMENTO – The state has fired the contractor on one of its biggest and most troubled technology projects after deep problems with the system were revealed.

The decision to terminate the contract Friday stalls the costly effort to overhaul an outdated and unstable computer network that issues paychecks and handles medical benefits for 240,000 state employees. The $371-million upgrade, known as the 21st Century Project, has fallen years behind schedule and tripled in cost.

The state has already spent at least $254 million on the project, paying more than $50 million of that to the contractor, SAP Public Services. The company was hired three years ago after the job sputtered in the hands of a previous contractor, BearingPoint.

But when SAP's program was tested last summer, it made errors at more than 100 times the rate of the aging system the state has been struggling to replace, according to state officials.

"It would be totally irresponsible to move forward," said Jacob Roper, a spokesman for the California controller.

The Times highlighted problems with the state's 21st Century Project in December, soon after officials sent a letter to SAP saying the overhaul was "in danger of collapsing."

During a trial run involving 1,300 employees, Roper said, some paychecks went to the wrong person for the wrong amount. The system canceled some medical coverage and sent child-support payments to the wrong beneficiaries.

Roper said the state also had to pay $50,000 in penalties because money was sent to retirement accounts incorrectly.

"State employees and their families were in harm's way," he said. "Taxpayers were in harm's way."

The controller's office, which oversees the upgrade, will try to recoup the money paid to SAP, Roper said. Meanwhile, officials will conduct an autopsy on the system to determine what can be salvaged.

And Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) called for a hearing to examine how so much money could be spent on the project with "apparently little to show for it."

A spokesman for SAP, Andy Kendzie, said the company was "extremely disappointed" that the controller terminated the contract.

"SAP stands behind our software and actions," Kendzie said in a statement. "SAP also believes we have satisfied all contractual obligations in this project."

Kendzie did not directly address the controller's concerns about errors during testing, nor did he say whether the company would fight any state effort to recover the $50 million.

Other California entities have struggled with SAP's work.

A $95-million plan to upgrade the Los Angeles Unified School District's payroll system with SAP software became a disaster in 2007, when some teachers were paid too much and others weren't paid at all.

More recently, Marin County officials decided to scrap their SAP-developed computer system, saying it never worked right and cost too much to maintain.

Both of those projects were managed by Deloitte Consulting.

chris.megerian@latimes.com

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