A woman died after a theft suspect crashed into her car while fleeing police in La Palma on Wednesday afternoon, authorities said.
The victim, identified only as a woman in her 60s driving a blue BMW, was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Fullerton Police Department.
The driver of the other vehicle — whom authorities identified as Anthony Hanzel, 40, of Anaheim — was taken to a hospital and treated for injuries, police said.
Hanzel will be booked at Fullerton City Jail for charges including hit-and-run, petty theft and felony evading, authorities said. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department will investigate the fatal crash.
Surveillance camera video shared by OnScene.TV shows a white Nissan Rogue running a red light and slamming into a blue BMW, sending it across the intersection of La Palma Avenue and Moody Street. Both vehicles can then be seen colliding with three cars sitting at the light.
“I was at the intersection at a red light, and I saw a police chase happening and the cars came straight at me going the other way,” Lauren Lau, whose car sustained minor damage, told OnScene.TV. “There was a complete T-bone and then those two cars hit me and then swerved off to the side.”
The pursuit began after a Fullerton police detective saw a theft suspect driving away from the area of North Gilbert Street and West Malvern Avenue at 12:38 p.m., police said.
Officers attempted to stop the suspect, who fled. During the chase, the suspect was involved in a nonfatal hit-and-run collision near Brookhurst Road and Orangethorpe Avenue, police said.
The driver then sped onto the westbound 91 Freeway and exited at Knott Avenue, where officers lost track of the car, police said.
Officers from the Buena Park Police Department briefly spotted the suspect’s vehicle, but also lost track of it. La Palma Police Department officers then spotted the car by La Palma Avenue and Walker Street and took over the pursuit. The suspect crashed a short time later.
California’s free earthquake early warning app is now available for Mac computers and Chromebooks — a major expansion of access for the warning system, which has been available for years on cellphones.
The MyShake app, developed by UC Berkeley, is one of the most popular ways to receive earthquake early warnings generated by the U.S. Geological Survey’s ShakeAlert system, which provides alerts in California, Oregon and Washington. The app has been downloaded nearly 4 million times since it launched in late 2019.
MyShake was already available on iPhones, iPads and Android phones. UC Berkeley is also working to make MyShake available for the Windows operating system, said Richard Allen, director of the Berkeley Seismology Laboratory.
More than half a million people in California got early warnings through MyShake on Dec. 5 for a magnitude 7 earthquake that struck in the Pacific Ocean 30 miles off the Humboldt County coast and Dec. 9 for a magnitude 5.7 earthquake centered about 50 miles southeast of Reno, which was widely felt across Central California.
Some users got up to 15 seconds of warning before they felt shaking from the earthquake off Humboldt County, officials said. And some people got more than 10 seconds of warning about the Nevada earthquake.
On Aug. 6, more than 517,000 early warning alerts went out to MyShake users for a magnitude 5.2 quake that struck Kern County, near the Grapevine section of Interstate 5. People throughout Southern California said they got a few seconds of warning before they felt shaking.
Earthquake early warning systems operate on the scientific principle that shaking waves moving through rock travel slower than today’s telecommunications systems — similar to how you might see a bolt of lightning seconds before hearing thunder.
For example, it would take more than a minute for a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that starts at the Salton Sea along San Andreas fault to be felt 150 miles away in Los Angeles.
The farther you are from the epicenter, the likelier it is that you could get more warning. But if you’re very close to the epicenter, the warning might arrive after you’ve already started to feel shaking.
The USGS ShakeAlert system relies on a vast array of seismic sensors in the ground to detect shaking as soon as it happens. That information is then sent to computers to determine whether and where to send an alert.
Officials advise people to drop, cover and hold on when they hear an alert of incoming shaking.
Gov. Gavin Newsom hailed the expansion of the MyShake app, which is provided in partnership with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, to more devices.
“I encourage Californians to download the MyShake app on their phones, laptops or tablets to receive these important alerts, and make sure emergency notifications on mobile devices are turned on,” Newsom said in a statement.
The MyShake app is set to trigger alerts if a quake is estimated at magnitude 4.5 or higher and the intensity of shaking at the phone’s location is expected to be at least “weak” — defined as Level 3 on the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale. That intensity of shaking is defined as one that’s noticeable to people indoors, especially on the upper floors of a building, and may cause cars to rock slightly. Some people indoors might liken the feeling to vibrations from a passing truck.
There is a setting you can change on your iPhone to improve the speed, accuracy and reliability of emergency alerts, Apple says. To do that, you can turn on “local awareness” by going to settings, then notifications; scrolling down to “Government Alerts,” then tapping “Emergency Alerts” and navigating to the option.
On its website, MyShake suggests opening the app every month or so to keep it “fresh and ready to receive alerts. Not using the app for a prolonged period might cause the app to be put into deep sleep.”
One easy way to do this, MyShake suggests, is to click on the app when it notifies you — without any urgent, alarming warning sounds — of a significant earthquake somewhere around the world, which typically happens every two weeks. “By tapping on this notification, and opening the MyShake app, you can keep the app fresh, and not have to rely on your own reminders.”
MyShake is also now available in six languages: English, Spanish, Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese — the last voiced in Mandarin, and using traditional characters. MyShake will use the first language that it supports from your device’s language and region settings, but on an iPhone you can change the language by going to settings, then apps, and selecting MyShake before choosing a preferred language.
People who don’t have computers or smartphones can still get quake alerts on their cellphones — but only for those in which a higher magnitude or higher level of shaking is projected at their location. Those alerts are sent through the Wireless Emergency Alerts system, similar to Amber Alerts.
Nearly two years after he was caught on camera beating a transgender man in a 7-Eleven parking lot, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy has agreed to plead guilty in federal court to a civil rights violation for using excessive force, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Joseph Benza III, 36, was charged late Tuesday with one count of deprivation of rights under color of law for assaulting a then-23-year-old teacher, previously identified as Emmett Brock.
In a plea agreement filed the same day, Benza said he would admit to a single felony charge, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison.
“When an officer violates someone’s civil rights, it corrodes trust in law enforcement and undermines the effectiveness of other officers who sacrifice to protect the public,” U.S. Atty. Martin Estrada said in a news release. “This senseless assault and subsequent attempted cover-up are an affront to our system of justice.”
Previously, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s internal use-of-force investigation cleared the deputy of wrongdoing.
Sheriff Robert Luna said Wednesday that Benza has been relieved of duty. In a news release, Luna called the deupty’s actions “deeply troubling,” saying they “undermine the integrity of our Department, the trust of our community, and the safety of those we are sworn to protect.”
In addition to the felony plea, Benza also admitted to repeatedly lying to the FBI and falsifying his incident report. Prosecutors said several other sergeants and deputies — who were not identified in court records — colluded with Benza to protect him.
Tom Yu, the attorney representing Benza, said he supported his client’s decision to take accountability.
“Although the use-of-force, standing alone is completely reasonable and justified, the before and after use-of-force conduct impacted the calculus of the evaluation of the takedown and the eventual arrest,” Yu said in an emailed statement. “We will be asking the court for probation on behalf of Deputy Benza.”
Previously Yu said the force his client used was justified because it initially appeared that Brock was beginning to walk away as Benza approached him.
To Brock, news of the developments came as long-awaited vindication.
“I’m in a state of shock,” he told The Times on Wednesday. “And I want to acknowledge that there are a lot of survivors of police misconduct that don’t see justice, so I feel incredibly lucky that I did.”
His attorney, Thomas Beck, was also pleasantly surprised by the outcome.
“First, the cop is actually being prosecuted, which I didn’t think was going to happen,” he said. “And second, there’s significant evidence that the FBI got that I hadn’t been able to get.”
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On the morning of Feb. 10, 2022, Brock had left his high school teaching job early and was driving to a therapy appointment when he spotted a deputy who appeared to be having a heated conversation with a woman on the side of the road.
As he drove by, Brock previously told The Times, he casually threw up his middle finger, thinking the deputy would not see it.
A few seconds later, he said, he spotted a patrol cruiser following close behind him without its lights or sirens on, mirroring his every turn.
For months, Benza’s lawyer said the person Brock passed on the side of the road was not his client but another officer, probably from another agency. He said Benza never saw Brock flip him off — and Benza’s own incident report made no mention of it.
The stop and the violence that followed “was not a retaliation for being flipped off,” Yu told The Times. “It was a pretext stop, and police do that all the time.”
Emmett Brock, 23, a trans man who was driving home from his job as a teacher when he was beaten by an LASD deputy outside of a 7/11.
Federal court filings made public this week tell a different story. According to prosecutors, just after noon Benza had received a call for a potential domestic disturbance, but he abandoned it when he saw Brock flip him off. Then he followed Brock’s car for 1.8 miles, at some point reaching speeds over 50 mph without ever attempting to initiate a traffic stop, according to the plea agreement.
At one point, prosecutors said, Benza called another deputy and told him he planned to stop someone who’d flipped him off. Benza said on the call he intended to use force against the person and asked the other deputy to start driving to his location.
Meanwhile, Brock — unnerved and fearing he was being followed by someone impersonating a police officer — called 911 and asked what to do.
The dispatcher told him he didn’t need to pull over unless signaled to do so, but Brock eventually parked in a 7-Eleven parking lot on Mills Avenue in Whittier and stepped out of his car. Video of the incident shows that the deputy approached him and said, “I just stopped you,” offering no explanation as to why.
“No, you didn’t,” Brock replied, according to an audio recording captured by the deputy’s body camera. Federal prosecutors said Benza then “violently body slammed” Brock into the ground.
For the next three minutes, Brock struggled and screamed as the deputy held him down and punched him in the head.
“You’re going to kill me,” he shouted. “You’re going to f—ing kill me. Help! Help! Help! I’m not resisting!”
After Brock was in handcuffs, the deputy put him into the back seat of his cruiser and eventually took him to a station for booking.
When Benza later put together the incident report, he asked several sergeants whether he should mention the real reason he started following Brock and was told to omit it, according to his plea agreement.
In his report, Benza said it appeared Brock was “about to throw a punch,” so he grabbed his arm and struck first, hitting him repeatedly. During the struggle, the deputy’s report claimed, Brock “attempted to rip my skin from my hand” by repeatedly biting him.
But a paramedic’s report from the scene did not mention any bite marks. And when Benza went to a hospital later, a physician assistant wrote that there were “no bite marks at this time.”
Still, Brock was taken to the Norwalk sheriff’s station and booked on three felonies and one misdemeanor. He suffered a concussion, along with scrapes and bruises.
Brock’s family bailed him out that evening. He lost his job four days later after state authorities notified the school of his pending charges, which were dropped several weeks after The Times first published video of the incident.
Emmett Brock, shown in 2023, is suing the Sheriff’s Department after he was beaten by a deputy.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
According to federal prosecutors, in the days after The Times and other news outlets reported on the case, Benza sent a group text to two other deputies about the media coverage, and the three of them discussed the need to delete text messages on their personal cellphones in light of the anticipated federal investigation.
Three days after the initial group text, one of the other deputies — identified only as Deputy C in court papers — texted the group to relay a sergeant’s instruction for Benza to “toss the phone,” which federal prosecutors said was a directive to delete data from the device.
Before Deputy C was interviewed by federal investigators in September of this year, prosecutors said, he and Benza discussed lying to authorities to explain their messages about the sergeant’s order to “dump” the phone. The two decided to claim the order to dump the device was a directive to transfer the data to the cloud.
When federal investigators interviewed Benza, he claimed he had not seen anyone flip him off, alleged again that Brock had bitten him, and said he had not substantively discussed the contents of his incident report with anyone else while he drafted it.
In his plea agreement, Benza admitted to lying. He discussed the contents of the report, he acknowledged, and that someone else — a sergeant — actually wrote “substantive portions” of it for him.
Following this week’s plea agreement, Benza is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in the coming days.
It’s unclear whether any of the other deputies referenced in court filings have been investigated or disciplined by the Sheriff’s Department.
Since the encounter that upended his life, Brock has formally been found innocent of the charges he faced. This year, he filed a lawsuit in federal court, alleging false imprisonment, civil rights violations and assault and battery. The case is still pending.
Though he never returned to his teaching job, Brock enrolled in graduate school and is expecting to complete his master’s degree in sociology in the spring. He’s working as a youth engagement specialist at a homeless shelter.
“There are no words to describe this feeling,” he told The Times. “I never thought I would see the day that there would be justice for this.”
The Diocese of Orange has agreed to pay $3.5 million to a man who alleges he was sexually abused by a former administrator at Mater Dei High School in the late 1970s.
The settlement concludes a lawsuit filed in 2019 against the diocese and brings the amount the Catholic Church has paid out in civil cases involving Msgr. Michael Harris to at least $10 million. Harris has denied molesting minors and was never criminally charged.
The man, identified in court documents as John Doe, wrote in a statement read by his attorney during a news conference Wednesday that he’s still trying to overcome the pain of the abuse he suffered more than four decades ago.
“Harris, Mater Dei and the Diocese of Orange made promises to me and promises to my parents,” the man said in the statement. “They promised I would be safe at school. They also promised I would be part of a community, a community that would help me grow as a student, as a Catholic and as a human. Instead, they put me in the path of a serial predator … who took all those promises and broke them.”
In a statement this week, the Diocese of Orange said it “vigorously defended” the claim and was prepared to take it to trial but opted instead to settle the case. The diocese’s insurers funded the settlement.
“In all claims alleging child sexual abuse, the Diocese is committed to seeking justice, fostering healing and providing unwavering support to survivors,” the diocese said in a statement. “The Diocese of Orange deeply regrets the harm caused [by] any and all incidents of abuse. The events alleged in this case occurred more than four decades ago; we recognize that such events have lasting impacts, and we are committed to ensuring the Diocese of today is safe for all.”
In his lawsuit, the man alleged he was sexually abused by Harris at Mater Dei in 1978. Harris was the school’s vice principal at the time, according to the diocese.
Harris allegedly summoned the 15-year-old boy to his office under the “guise of discussing his grades,” the lawsuit states.
When Harris told him that his grades were too poor to continue to attend the private school, the teen got upset. He was concerned about how his mother — who had worked hard to get him into the school — would react, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges Harris comforted the boy and during the encounter began forcibly orally copulating the teen.
Harris, a once-popular priest known as “Father Hollywood,” worked at Mater Dei between about 1978 and 1987, according to the lawsuit. Prior to that, Harris was assigned as a priest within the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
The lawsuit alleges that Harris was listed in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ “Report to the People of God” in 2004 as a priest who had sexually abused minors. The archdiocese listed Harris as having 12 accusers spanning 1972 through 1990, according to the lawsuit.
In 1994, when he resigned as principal of Santa Margarita Catholic High School, Harris told supporters in a letter that he was leaving because of stress. Afterward, the Diocese of Orange sent Harris to the St. Luke Institute in Maryland, a treatment center for priests. Doctors at the center concluded Harris was sexually attracted to adolescent boys, according to a report from the center previously reviewed by The Times.
In 2001, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Diocese of Orange agreed to pay $5.2 million to a former student who alleged Harris molested him in 1991 when he was 17. In 2012, the Diocese of Orange settled another case for $2 million in which an Air Force pilot said he was abused by Harris as a teen in late 1986 or early 1987.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved paying $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit on behalf of several girls who were sexually assaulted by a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.
The settlement comes six months after Sean Essex — who worked for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for more than two decades — was sentenced to 40 years in prison for sexually abusing the three young daughters of a woman he was dating, and he allegedly abused another girl he met several years earlier.
The girls were between ages 4 and 13 at the time of the abuse, which spanned from at least 2006 until the time of Essex’s arrest in 2022.
Later that year, attorney Spencer Lucas filed a lawsuit on behalf of the three sisters, who were listed as Jane Does in court filings. Lucas did not immediately offer comment on the board’s approval of the settlement.
In an emailed statement, the Sheriff’s Department said this week that it immediately opened a criminal investigation upon learning of the allegations two years ago.
“This individual’s egregious actions do not align with the values upheld by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department or the dedicated law enforcement professionals who serve our communities with pride every day,” the statement said. “Department members who engage in any misconduct, particularly criminal behavior targeting vulnerable populations, will be thoroughly investigated, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
An attorney for Essex did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Before the abuse came to light, the girls’ mother had dated Essex for roughly five years, according to the Sheriff’s Department’s summary of the case. After the relationship ended in 2018, the girls’ mother still let them go on outings with him.
Then on April 4, 2022, one of the girls told her mother that Essex had sexually abused her, the Sheriff’s Department wrote in its summary of the case, which was included in the board agenda. Another of the girls called Essex a pervert, which prompted their mother to ask more questions.
The girls said Essex sexually assaulted them between 2014 and 2022. According to the department’s summary, he frequently stopped by the family’s home in uniform and took the girls out to get food in his patrol car.
As the family’s attorney previously told The Times, that was where some of the abuse happened.
“He would pick up the girls individually in his L.A. County sheriff’s patrol vehicle, and he would take the girls and he would abuse them in the patrol car,” Lucas said in 2022, adding that some of the abuse occurred in a Sheriff’s Department parking lot.
The 33-count indictment filed against Essex in August 2022 alleged that he abused the sisters at various points from 2013 until five days before his arrest. One of the girls was younger than 10 at the time of the sex acts, prosecutors said, and the other two were younger than 14.
The indictment also included charges stemming from the alleged abuse of another girl in 2006, which the district attorney’s office declined to prosecute at the time and who is not included in the settlement.
“It’s absolutely shocking to us that the county didn’t do more to investigate and bring this terrible perpetrator to justice in 2006,” Lucas told The Times in 2022. “This whole terrible abuse that these poor little girls went through should have been stopped.”
Previously, the Sheriff’s Department said it had tried to fire Essex following an internal affairs investigation in 2018, but the county’s Civil Service Commission overturned his termination and ordered the department to reinstate him.
He ended up separating from the department in late 2022, several months after his arrest.
This year, L.A. Superior Court records show, he pleaded no contest to four felony charges and was sentenced to prison. In October, the state deemed him no longer eligible for certification as a peace officer in California in light of his criminal convictions.
In its summary of the case, the department also laid out corrective actions and missteps in the handling of the matter. One “root cause” was “the Department’s failure to thoroughly investigate previous sexual misconduct allegations,” the document said.
Another was “a Commander’s failure to thoroughly investigate/read all pertinent documentation” related to Essex’s previous misconduct.
Four years ago, six people were shot and killed at a large-scale marijuana operation in the small community of Aguanga in Riverside County, with a seventh victim dying in a local hospital later. Police called it one of the county’s worst mass killings.
At the time, Riverside County sheriff investigators had little information about the shooting, let alone any information about the identity of the potential shooters. It would also take weeks before coroners would release the identify the victims.
A bin of marijuana stems at the property where seven people were shot to death over Labor Day weekend 2020 at an illegal marijuana grow house in the unincorporated area of Aguanga in Riverside County.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
But now, investigators said in a written statement released Thursday, the motive behind the killings appeared to be a home invasion robbery of a massive marijuana grow operation carried out by San Diego-based gang members of Laotian descent.
Investigators said they have also identified a vehicle — a mid-size dark colored SUV — that was used during the crime.
The newly released details underscores the Sheriff’s Department’s persistence to solve the brazen mass killing.
The Sept. 7, 2020, shooting occurred on a remote property nestled on the edge of the Cleveland National Forest. It included a house, a trailer and other makeshift dwellings. At least 20 people lived on the property, according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
Investigators said evidence at the scene indicated the property was being used to manufacture and harvest illicit marijuana. More than 1,000 pounds of marijuana and several hundred marijuana plants, valued between $1 million and $5 million, were located at the scene. The shooting appeared to also occur during peak harvest time.
A reporter views the the property where seven people were shot to death over Labor Day weekend at an illegal marijuana grow house in the unincorporated area of Aguanga in Riverside County in 2020.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
The dead — five women and two men — were identified by the sheriff’s office as Samantha Sourignasak, 44 and Khamphour Nanthavongdovane, 53, both of Las Vegas; Phone Chankhamany, 54, of Murrieta, Thongpath Luangkoth, 47 and Souphanh Pienthiene, 48. Also killed were Anaheim residents Vikham Silimanotham, 64, and Khamtoune Silimanotham, 59.
In an interview with The Times, Phone Chankhamany’s son said the victims were mostly recent immigrants from Laos with little paper trail.
Chankhamany’s son, whom The Times is not naming for his safety, said his mother had overseen the grow. She was born in Laos and came to the United States about 16 years ago, he said in an interview at his uncle’s home.
Several of his mother’s friends worked at the grow, he said, alongside a revolving cast of recent immigrants from Laos, who, unable to speak English and struggling to find employment, would work and live on the site until they made enough cash to move on.
“Usually, when they come to the U.S., it’s the first thing they do to make money,” he said.
The mass shooting underscored California’s pervasive black market that has continued despite the state legalizing recreational marijuana in 2016. The black market’s growth is driven in part by cannabis operators who seek to evade expensive licensing fees and other regulatory costs, allowing them to undercut competitors.
But the illegal operations, especially in more remote areas of the state, has led to violence that includes shootings and dismemberments.
So far this year, an estimated $353 million worth of illicit plants have been seized through a California Department of Justice program, while a task force with the governor’s office has seized an estimated $191 million.
Riverside sheriff detectives said the investigation into the Aguanga mass killings is ongoing. They’re asking anyone with information into the killings to call (951) 955-2777 or used the online tip line, which can be accessed on the sheriff’s website.
Times Staff Writers Matt Ormseth and Clara Harter contributed to this report.
Experts believe three more cats in Los Angeles County have been infected with H5N1 bird flu. Two others succumbed to the disease earlier this month after drinking recalled raw milk from Fresno-based Raw Farm LLC dairies.
Of the three new sick cats, two died and one tested positive for influenza A, an unusual finding in domestic cats that haven’t been exposed to infected birds or contaminated dairy products. The two that died couldn’t be tested while they were alive, but experts believe it is likely their deaths were due to the H5N1 virus.
The three cats all lived in the same household.
Influenza A viruses include most seasonal human flu viruses, as well as H5N1. Health officials are not yet sure where the cats acquired H5N1 — although they noted in a statement they are investigating raw meat as a source and were awaiting test results.
“The risk of H5 bird flu remains low in Los Angeles County, but these confirmed cases of the virus in pet cats are a reminder that consuming raw dairy and meat products can lead to severe illness in cats,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, in a statement.
She urged county residents “to avoid raw dairy and undercooked meat products, limit contact with sick or dead animals, report sick or dead birds and keep pets or poultry away from wild animals and birds.”
The three latest cats all exhibited respiratory illness, and have no known exposure to raw milk; investigators are looking into whether the animals ate raw meat.
The cats lived exclusively indoors, according to health officials.
People who had direct contact with the cats are being monitored for symptoms and have been offered antiviral medications. There have been cases of cat-to-human transmission of bird flu, according to researchers.
It is unclear how many cats have died since H5N1 began circulating in dairy cows earlier this year. They are extremely susceptible to the virus, however, and dead barn cats are considered an early biological warning that a dairy has been affected by the virus.
At one Texas dairy farm this spring, 12 barn cats died after drinking infected raw milk. Sykes also noted a 2023 outbreak in South Korea, in which shelter cats ate pet food made with H5N1-infected raw duck. In one shelter, 38 of 40 cats died after eating the contaminated food.
Last year, the World Health Organization reported sporadic deaths of cats throughout areas where H5N1 bird flu was circulating, including at one location in Poland, where a cluster of 46 died; 29 of those animals were found to be positive for the bird flu virus.
Larger cats, including captive lions, tigers and panthers, have also died as a result of eating meat contaminated with bird flu. So, too, have wild California bobcats and mountain lions.
Symptoms of H5N1 infection in cats include labored breathing, bloody diarrhea and neurological abnormalities — loss of motor control, seizures, depressed mental state, stiff body movements, blindness, circling, copious eye and nose discharge and coma — with rapid deterioration and death in some cases.
The response was much like that of a father when handed the bill for his daughter’s wedding reception. Joy trumps outrage every time.
So, when the city of Los Angeles informed the Dodgers that its police and fire department services for the Nov. 1 parade to celebrate the World Series championship totaled $2,028,805.19, the team was only too happy to cut the check.
The parade began at City Hall, meandered to the Walt Disney Concert Hall and ended at Fifth and Flower streets, wheeling through downtown on open-top double-decker buses with an estimated 250,000 fans lining the streets. Then came a boisterous rally in front of 42,000 fans at Dodger Stadium.
It was the parade the Dodgers couldn’t stage after winning the 2020 World Series during the COVID shutdown. It was their first parade, in fact, since winning the World Series in 1988.
“I’m telling you, the game is about the players and the fans,” manager Dave Roberts told The Times. “And in 2020 we just didn’t have that opportunity. … The city needed this parade.”
State law requires applicants — in this case, the Dodgers — requesting a permit to conduct a “special event” to pay “the city’s actual cost of providing the required number of police and other city employees necessary to ensure the safety of both the participants and the community.”
Therefore, it was the Dodgers — and not taxpayers — who will pay the Los Angeles Police Department $1,738,621.19 and the L.A. Fire Department $290,184 for making sure the celebration was conducted in a safe, orderly manner.
Good thing, given the dire financial straits the city of L.A. finds itself in. City departments went at least $215 million over budget from the beginning of the fiscal year July 1 through Oct. 31, according to an analysis. Expensive legal settlements and court judgments resulting from lawsuits against the city have been especially costly.
“We have been working closely with the city for some time and will be finalizing the total reimbursement soon,” the Dodgers said in a statement to The Times. “It was a great event for the city, Dodger fans and our team, and we’re grateful for the joint support of the Dodgers provided by the city as a whole, especially the Mayor, the City Council, the LAPD, the LAFD and the [Department of Transportation].”
According to a city expenditure report, nearly all the money spent by the LAPD on the parade went to pay officers by the hour, from a communications intern to numerous officers to a deputy chief, although $415,464 was charged for “fringe benefits” listed under “indirect costs.” Maybe the blue Dodgers caps several of the officers wore fell into that category.
The LAPD bill broke down the total number of man and woman hours: 8,823.
A few days earlier when the Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees in Game 5 to take the World Series title, unruly fans set fire to an L.A. Metro bus and commandeered street intersections for burnouts and street racing. More than 70 people were arrested for vandalism, assault on a police officer and failure to disperse.
No such behavior marred the parade. The only arrest reported was of a man who threw a bottle at officers. A group of rowdy fans hanging around afterward were ushered from the parade route by officers in tactical gear marching in formation. Otherwise, it was a cheerful outpouring of appreciation for the Dodgers.
An Alameda County family is suing Amazon One Medical, alleging a 45-year-old father of two collapsed and died shortly after he had a video consultation with the telehealth clinic.
Philip Tong had a history of diabetes and, according to the lawsuit, was having trouble breathing and was coughing up blood. The suit also mentioned his feet had turned blue. During a video appointment with Amazon’s medical service providers on Dec. 18, 2023, he was told to buy an inhaler.
Tong later collapsed in an emergency room in Oakland and died, according to a lawsuit filed in October.
“To a reasonable degree of medical certainty, if Plaintiff’s Decedent, Philip Tong, would have received proper care, treatment and follow up from defendant on December 18, 2023, he would have survived,” the lawsuit alleges.
Representatives for Amazon One Medical did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the suit.
Tong’s wife and two daughters filed the suit in Alameda County Superior Court.
The lawsuit also names Alta Bates Summit Medical Care Center in Oakland as a defendant in the suit. According to the suit, Tong collapsed inside the hospital’s emergency room. He had contacted the hospital the day before and informed them of his symptoms.
The suit was first reported by the Washington Post.
The suit, filed Oct. 1, alleges Tong contacted Amazon One Medical on Dec. 18, 2023, when he was suffering from a severe bacterial and viral illness, while also managing his diabetes and chronic kidney disease.
The online medical provider, the suit alleges, provided care “in a careless and negligent manner.”
Despite the severe symptoms, the lawsuit alleges Tong was instructed to use an inhaler.
Hours later, Tong went to an emergency room instead, but collapsed and died as he waited to be seen.
One Medical, the suit alleges, “negligently, recklessly and carelessly,” failed to care for Tong, resulting in his death.
Attorneys representing Tong’s family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Amazon purchased One Medical in February 2023 for $3.9 billion, the Washington Post reported. Jeff Bezos owns both Amazon and the Washington Post.
At the time of the purchase, executives at both Amazon and One Medical lauded the deal for the telehealth provider as a way to better reach patients. The company offers 24-7 care for an annual fee of $69 a year, or $9 a month for Amazon Prime members. One-time video visits are offered for $49.
“Customers want and deserve better, and that’s what One Medical has been working and innovating on for more than a decade,” Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy said in a statement announcing the purchase.
According to the suit, Tong’s family is seeking unspecified damages to be determined at trial.
The day Joe Biden faced reality, stepped aside and cleared the way for Kamala Harris to replace him atop the Democratic ticket, Teja Smith felt a mix of exhilaration and dread.
Smith, who runs a social media firm in Los Angeles, had been working particularly hard of late, so she treated herself to a daylong stay-cation with family at a Beverly Hills hotel. Word of Biden’s announcement came as they were hanging out by the pool.
The historic nature of that thunderclap moment wasn’t lost on the 34-year-old entrepreneur. But there was another, less-uplifting sensation as well.
“Get ready,” Smith posted on Instagram, “because we’re about to see how much America hates Black women.”
The election result on Nov. 5 — just about 100 days after Harris’ overnight transformation — left Smith feeling sadly, grimly vindicated. The only surprise, she said, was how badly Harris lost.
Her defeat, Donald Trump’s triumph in each and every battleground state and — especially — his winning the popular vote were more than a slap in the face of Black women, long among the most loyal and dedicated of Democrats. It was a fist landed square in the gut.
Raw. Visceral. Shattering.
Views of the 47th president, from the ground up
The feeling has left many like Smith and other Black women she knows ready to pull back from national politics, focusing more on their inner needs and applying their outward energy to local issues and community concerns — places where their investment of heart and soul will be reciprocated in a way that seems beyond much of America.
“It’s draining,” Smith said of seeing the vice president — a former United States senator, California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney — turned aside so emphatically. It also shows, she said, that “no matter how high the ladder” a Black woman manages to climb, “people are still going to doubt you.”
Political activism came naturally to Smith. Her grandmother, who helped raise her, opened the Oakland chapter of the Urban League. Smith’s godmother was chief executive of Planned Parenthood’s Bay Area chapter. Her folks were the kind who took their child with them to their polling place, and they steeped her in the lore of the revolutionary Black Panther Party, which had its roots in Oakland and neighboring Berkeley.
After high school, Smith moved to Southern California. The attraction wasn’t politics but the dreamscape Smith grew up watching on TV. She graduated from Cal State Northridge and used her degree in journalism and communications to open a firm, Get Social, that connects political advocacy and social justice with entertainment and pop culture.
It was through her work, Smith said, that she knew Trump would win the White House in 2016, even as the supposed political experts and many in the news media wrote him off. She could sense Trump’s popularity outside California and other left-leaning climes, as well as the apathy of those who couldn’t imagine the deeply flawed candidate and reality TV star being elevated to the nation’s highest office.
Trump’s administration turned out to be every bit as bad, Smith said, as she had imagined — a mashup of scandals, impeachments, anti-immigrant policies and a botched response to a global pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans; a disproportionate number of them were nonwhite. “That was really a cherry on top with the presidency being bad,” she said.
Smith began working ahead of the 2018 midterm election to educate and register Black and brown voters, contracting with Rock The Vote, among others. Her efforts, both paid and voluntary, continued through the 2020 campaign. She wasn’t exactly wild about Biden — Bernie Sanders was more to Smith’s taste — but her goal was simple: “To make sure Donald Trump never comes near the White House again.”
I recently visited with Smith in the dining room of her South Los Angeles home, a charming 1922 Craftsman that she shares with her husband and their 2½-year-old son. A portion of her bedroom doubles as Smith’s office. A deluxe espresso machine in the kitchen feeds her caffeine habit without busting the family budget.
When Trump became the GOP nominee a third time — “I don’t even understand how he was able to run again,” Smith marveled — she redoubled her political efforts. In September alone, she traveled to six states to gin up enthusiasm for the election, helping register voters and explaining the ins and outs of early balloting and vote by mail. In all, Smith visited more than a dozen states and spent 2½ months on the road.
There were no grandparents or other relatives to help with child care. Just her husband, a mortgage loan officer, holding down hearth and home while running his side business, Hellastalgia, a hip-hop music page.
After all that time and sacrifice, Trump’s victory left Smith depleted and more than a little discouraged. “I was already annoyed going into the election, the fact that it would even be close,” she said over a homemade lavender macchiato. “And to see it play out the way it did. I just. I can’t even…”
Words fail.
A second Trump administration, Smith fears, will be much worse than the first. But there is none of the urgency to rush the barricades or join the political resistance that followed the 2016 election.
“We started nonprofits. … We started all of this stuff to make sure it didn’t happen again,” Smith said. “And now that it’s happened again, it’s one of those things like, well, maybe this is what you guys want.”
Like many of the Black women she’s spoken with, Smith plans to turn her attention away from Trump and national politics and, in her case, work on issues such as Los Angeles’ chronic homelessness problem. “We’re going to need people advocating and talking about things that are impacting their direct communities,” Smith said of her intended focus. “Obviously working at that big level is not working … well for us.”
While she’s no spokesperson for Black women, Smith said, she and others she knows feel overworked, undervalued and taken for granted for too long. There’s no desire, she said, to keep “stepping up for people that haven’t stepped up for us.”
The feeling is: You made your bed, America. Now you lie in it.
