Bay Area man accused of threatening to kill state senator

SACRAMENTO — A Bay Area man who authorities say was building homemade bombs was arrested this week for threatening to kill a state lawmaker.

Everett Basham, 45, was booked on multiple charges, including possession of a manufactured explosive and illegal possession of chemicals used to make explosives.

Police served an arrest warrant for the man after being alerted by state Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), whose office said the lawmaker had been threatened with death for pushing legislation to restrict assault weapons.

The California Highway Patrol arrested Basham at a relative's home in Sunnyvale on Tuesday. Officers found a loaded handgun in his car, said Officer Sean Kennedy, a CHP spokesman.

Two hours later, a SWAT team searched his residence in Santa Clara, where members observed what authorities described as "pre-cursors to homemade explosives." Police ordered Basham's immediate neighbors to evacuate their homes as officers from CHP's bomb squad and the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office searched the residence and removed the chemicals.

Authorities detonated "a small amount of substances" that they were unable to identify after digging sandbagged trenches in the frontyard, Kennedy said.

Kennedy said the house was so cluttered that police were unable to finish their search and returned Wednesday, when they found "destructive devices." He said bomb squad officers were set to return with a bomb trailer Thursday to dispose of the devices. He declined to elaborate on what those devices were.

Basham is being held without bail.

A LinkedIn page that appears to be Basham's identifies him as a Silicon Valley engineer who once worked with Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday, Wozniak expressed shock at Basham's arrest

"He's not the sort of person who is a criminal or a terrorist," Wozniak said. "He's just very brilliant."

The LinkedIn profile says Basham is a graduate of UC Davis and specializes in the "development of complex test systems." It says he is experienced in making presentations to venture capitalists looking to fund new technologies.

According to the profile, he owns a company that provides engineering expertise to governments.

A neighbor who answered the phone at a nearby house, but who declined to give her name, said Basham was a polite but quiet neighbor. "He don't talk to nobody," she said.

In his mug shot, Basham is seen wearing camouflage fatigues. The neighbor said he had mentioned being in the military.

Adam Keigwin, Yee's chief of staff, said the senator received a threat in his government email account about four weeks ago. Both Keigwin and the CHP declined to say why the suspect wasn't arrested until this week.

"The senator has faced threats before. No matter how small they are, we immediately hand it over to law enforcement," Keigwin said. "But this one was different than the rest. This one was much more graphic and explicit."

Yee, a former school psychologist, has been an outspoken advocate for gun control. This year, he is proposing more background checks and registration requirements and a ban on devices on semiautomatic weapons that allow them to be easily reloaded.

michael.mishak@latimes.com

chris.megerian@latimes.com

Times staff writer Evan Halper contributed to this report.

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Wildlife officials play surprise role in tracking down Dorner

While law enforcement officials scoured the hillsides above Big Bear on Tuesday for murder suspect Christopher Dorner, wardens from California's Department of Fish and Wildlife were called in to patrol the rugged terrain of Highway 38.

It was on that highway that the officers first encountered Dorner, engaging the former cop in a white-knuckle chase involving two commandeered vehicles. The pursuit culminated in what officials described as a wild shootout between Dorner and a state game warden.

The actions by alert wildlife officers may have set in motion Dorner's last stand — in a snowbound cabin, surrounded by police. The cabin burned to the ground and there were conflicting reports over whether a body had been found inside.

Details of the chase over icy rural roads emerged late Tuesday as authorities pieced together what appeared to be the fugitive's last, desperate movements.

The encounter began about 12:45 p.m. as Dorner was driving a purple Nissan on Highway 38 when he passed a Fish and Wildlife vehicle.

Dorner's car was tucked behind buses when officers saw him and swung their cars around in pursuit. The murder suspect, authorities said, attempted to evade them by turning off onto Glass Road. At some point, they said, Dorner crashed and abandoned the small car.

With officers still in pursuit, Dorner then stopped a truck driven by local resident Rick Heltebrake, ordering him out. Heltebrake, a ranger at a nearby Boy Scout camp, didn't want to leave his dog behind.

Dorner allowed Heltebrake and his Dalmatian, Suni, to get out and then took off, according to an account from a friend of Heltebrake.

Behind the wheel of the stolen truck, Dorner was once again careening down Glass Road and passed another Fish and Wildlife vehicle coming from the opposite direction, officials said. Again an officer recognized Dorner.

That officer radioed his colleagues traveling behind him that Dorner was heading their way in a silver pickup truck.

When Dorner saw a third Fish and Wildlife truck approaching, he rolled down his window and allegedly took aim. Dorner opened fire as the vehicle passed, strafing the truck with a handgun, officials said.

The badly damaged state truck skidded to a halt. A game warden exited the vehicle and fired a high-powered rifle several times as Dorner sped away, according to authorities.

Dorner subsequently crashed that truck, authorities said, and ran into the cabin.

For days, multiple law enforcement agencies from across Southern California had been searching for Dorner. But Fish and Wildlife, whose wardens are involved in about one shooting a year, encountered him first.

Tuesday's gun battle was the second incident in seven weeks involving game wardens being fired upon.

And while the five wardens were "certainly rattled," said Lt. Patrick Foy, Fish and Wildlife spokesman, they were all highly trained and had just received the rifles.

As for their part in the day's drama, given the casualties suffered by law enforcement, "nobody's really celebrating," Foy said.

julie.cart@latimes.com

matt.stevens@latimes.com

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Dorner may have fled to Mexico, court records say

A fugitive former Los Angeles police officer wanted in connection with a deadly shooting rampage may have fled to Mexico as a massive manhunt was gearing up to capture him, according to federal court records obtained Monday by The Times.

The records state how authorities developed "probable cause" that Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, was possibly trying to escape to Mexico and provide new details on his actions since he allegedly killed three people, including a police officer, in a shooting rampage that police say began Feb. 3 in Irvine.

Dorner may have been helped by an associate identified only as "JY" in the criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles late last week after the former police officer was suspected of fleeing from authorities.

As the manhunt continued Monday, the Riverside County district attorney's office filed murder and attempted murder charges against Dorner, who is accused of killing one police officer and wounding two others in that county before his burning pickup was found near Big Bear.

Dorner allegedly attempted to steal a boat in San Diego and, after subduing the captain, said he was taking the vessel to Mexico, according to an affidavit filed with the federal complaint. Dorner is accused of telling the captain that he could recover his boat in Mexico.

"The attempt failed when the bow line of the boat became caught in the boat's propeller, and the suspect fled," according to the affidavit by Inspector U.S. Marshal Craig McClusky.

After authorities interviewed the boat captain early Thursday, they found Dorner's wallet and identification cards "at the San Ysidro Point of Entry" near the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the court records. That same day, a guard at the Point Loma Naval Base told authorities he had spotted a man matching Dorner's description trying to sneak onto the base, according to the filing.

Federal authorities told The Times on Monday night that the court papers, filed late last week, reflected their thinking at the time, but they stressed that Dorner could be anywhere.

The possibility that Dorner received help from the associate was raised in McClusky's affidavit. The Marine Corps and San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department investigators were conducting a surveillance operation of an Arrowbear Lake property owned by a family member of the associate Thursday and discovered a burning vehicle nearby that matched the gray Nissan pickup used by Dorner. 

The charges filed Monday in Riverside County on Monday accuse Dorner of opening fire, unprovoked, on Riverside police Officer Michael Crain, 34, a married father of two who served two tours in Kuwait as a rifleman in the U.S. Marines.

Dorner faces three additional counts of attempted murder of a peace officer for allegedly shooting and critically injuring Crain's partner and firing upon two Los Angeles police officers stationed in Corona to protect an LAPD official named in an online manifesto authorities attribute to Dorner. One of the LAPD officers was grazed on the head by a bullet.

Riverside County Dist. Atty. Paul Zellerbach said the murder charge includes two special circumstance allegations that make Dorner eligible for the death penalty — killing a peace officer and discharging a firearm from a vehicle.

Filing criminal charges will ensure that if Dorner is caught, either out of the state or out of the country, the outstanding arrest warrant would clear the way for a rapid extradition.

"I want to cover all my bases. I want to make sure when he is located and arrested, he can be extradited back to California as soon as possible," Zellerbach said after holding a noon news briefing.

The district attorney believes that Dorner, if he is still alive, is not done with his quest for revenge and thirst for the public's attention.

"Even though he may have gone underground now, given the nature of his conduct and his words and his actions, he's going to reappear," Zellerbach said. "I don't think he's done.... He's trying to send a message, and it would be my belief that his message is not completed yet.''

Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz has called Dorner's attack on his two officers early Thursday a "cowardly ambush." Dorner allegedly opened fire as the officers sat in a patrol car, stopped at a red light.

The surviving officer, 27, who was being trained by Crain, continues to recover from surgery. He has been with the department less than a year.

"He's in a lot of pain. He's going to be facing a lot of surgeries in the coming weeks and months," Diaz said. "We don't know if he'll be able to return to active duty. We certainly hope so."

Dorner's alleged rampage began with the Feb. 3 shooting deaths of Monica Quan, a Cal State Fullerton assistant basketball coach, and her fiance, Keith Lawrence, a USC public safety officer.

Quan was the daughter of a retired LAPD captain whom Dorner apparently accused online of not representing him fairly at a hearing that led to his firing. In what police said was his posting on a Facebook page, Dorner allegedly threatened the retired captain and others he blamed for his firing.

More than 50 LAPD families remained under police guard Monday.

A scaled-down search for Dorner continued Monday in woods west of Big Bear Lake, where his burning truck was found on a forest road Thursday. About 30 officers are searching vacation homes and cabins in "an even more remote area," and the search will resume Tuesday with the same number of law enforcement personnel, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

On Sunday, Los Angeles officials announced a $1-million reward for information leading to the capture and arrest of Dorner. The reward — raised from local governments, police departments, civic organizations, businesses and individuals — is thought to be the largest ever offered locally.

kate.mather@latimes.com

phil.willon@latimes.com

Times staff writer Robert J. Lopez contributed to this report.

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Cardinal Mahony used cemetery money to pay sex abuse settlement

Pressed to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to settle clergy sex abuse lawsuits, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony turned to one group of Catholics whose faith could not be shaken: the dead.

Under his leadership in 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles quietly appropriated $115 million from a cemetery maintenance fund and used it to help pay a landmark settlement with molestation victims.

The church did not inform relatives of the deceased that it had taken the money, which amounted to 88% of the fund. Families of those buried in church-owned cemeteries and interred in its mausoleums have contributed to a dedicated account for the perpetual care of graves, crypts and grounds since the 1890s.

Mahony and other church officials also did not mention the cemetery fund in numerous public statements about how the archdiocese planned to cover the $660-million abuse settlement. In detailed presentations to parish groups, the cardinal and his aides said they had cashed in substantial investments to pay the settlement, but they did not disclose that the main asset liquidated was cemetery money.

In response to questions from The Times, the archdiocese acknowledged using the maintenance account to help settle abuse claims. It said in a statement that the appropriation had "no effect" on cemetery upkeep and enabled the archdiocese "to protect the assets of our parishes, schools and essential ministries."

Under cemetery contracts, 15% of burial bills are paid into an account the archdiocese is required to maintain for what church financial records describe as "the general care and maintenance of cemetery properties in perpetuity."

Day-to-day upkeep at the archdiocese's 11 cemeteries and its cathedral mausoleum is financed by cemetery sales revenue separate from the 15% deposited into the fund, spokeswoman Carolina Guevara said. Based on actuarial predictions, it would be at least 187 years before cemeteries are fully occupied and the church started to draw on the maintenance account, she said.

"We estimate that Perpetual Care funds will not be needed until after the year 2200," Guevara wrote in an email.

The church's use of fund money appears to be legal. State law prohibits private cemeteries from touching the principal of their perpetual care funds and bars them from using the interest on those funds for anything other than maintenance. Those laws, however, do not apply to cemeteries run by religious organizations.

Mary Dispenza, who received a 2006 settlement from the archdiocese over claims of molestation by her parish priest in the 1940s, said her great-uncle and great-aunt are buried in Calvary Cemetery in East L.A.

"I think it's very deceptive," she said of the way the appropriation was handled. "And I think in a way they took it from people who had no voice: the dead. They can't react, they can't respond."

The fund dates to the tenure of Bishop Francis Mora, who opened Calvary in 1896. An official archdiocese history published in 2006 recounts how the faithful of Mora's era were assured their money was "in the custody of an organization of unquestionable integrity and endurance" — the Catholic Church.

Over the next century, the archdiocese built more cemeteries, and each person laid to rest meant a new deposit into the maintenance account. By the time of the sex abuse settlement, there were cemeteries from Pomona to Santa Barbara and $130 million in the fund. Church officials removed $114.9 million in October 2007.

"Management plans to repay these appropriated funds from future cemetery sales ... after all liabilities associated with the lawsuits ... are paid off," a December 2012 church financial report stated.

It's unclear when that will happen. The archdiocese is still repaying a $175-million loan it took to help cover the settlement. Archbishop Jose Gomez, who took over from Mahony two years ago, is mulling over a $200-million fundraising campaign. Cemeteries have been a reliable source of income for the church, and the use of the upkeep-fund money is one of several ways the archdiocese is depending on them to erase its abuse debts.

When Mahony agreed to the settlement six years ago, he did so knowing his archdiocese couldn't afford it. But he had little choice. If cases brought by more than 500 victims went to trial, the archdiocese feared it could be facing jury awards and legal bills in excess of $1 billion.

The deal reached after lengthy negotiations paid an average of $1.3 million per victim. Even with contributions from its insurance companies, religious orders and others, the archdiocese was on the hook for more than $300 million, vastly more cash than it had on hand.

Bishops in other cities had closed parishes and schools or filed for bankruptcy, moves that angered the faithful and that Mahony wanted to avoid. He went to Rome at least twice to consult with Vatican officials, who must approve the transfer of archdiocese property worth more than $10 million. He later told the National Catholic Reporter he got permission to "alienate" — the Vatican's term for sale or transfer — $200 million in church assets. Asked whether the Vatican had signed off on the use of cemetery funds, archdiocese Chief Financial Officer Randolph E. Steiner said in a statement, "All approvals under the Church's Code of Canon Law were obtained."

After the settlement, Mahony and others from the archdiocese said publicly that the money would come from administrative cuts, liquidation of investments, a bank loan and sales of real estate not directly related to their religious mission. Such real estate included the archdiocese's Wilshire Boulevard headquarters, which eventually sold for $31 million.

Three months later, with no announcement, the archdiocese reached into the cemetery account. Steiner said that during an internal review of church assets, the money "was determined to be excess funding and was made available to the 2007 settlement."

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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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East L.A. murals come to life in school plays

In East Los Angeles, murals are as common and overlooked as clouds in the sky, but both take shape and significance when looked at through a different lens.

A group of students from Monterey Continuation High School learned this lesson recently by writing and performing one-act plays about the wall art in their neighborhood and the muralists who put them there.

About…Productions oversees the Young Theaterworks program at the school and encourages students to communicate through the arts.

"We're realizing there's a living history that the students don't know about," said Rose Portillo, associate director of About…Productions. She and artistic director Theresa Chavez arranged for the students to meet with muralists Barbara Carrasco and Yreina Cervantez, and with Wayne Healy and David Botello, founders of the East Los Streetscapers, a public art studio.

Students gathered information during a brief but intense interview with the muralists and, with the help of mentors, wrote the plays based on each of the artists and their work.

"These Walls Tell Stories" focuses on a group of artists who rose through the Chicano civil rights movement of the late 1960s and documented the history of their city, the barrio and its people by putting paintbrush to stucco. The murals brought to life in the plays are mainly in East L.A. but the artists' work has been featured across the country. Carrasco's rendition of union organizer Dolores Huerta is used on a Girl Scout badge.

Students gave life and personalities to the characters in Healy's mural "Ghosts of the Barrio." In the painting, men sit on the stoop of a house in East L.A. and, in the play, they are discussing the current gang culture.

"It's very humbling because we're still working with the community and the youth," Cervantez said. The professor of Chicana/Chicano art at Cal State Northridge said she liked the artistic license the students took with pieces of her story.

A prominent figure in her work — the jaguar — was used in the students' narrative as a type of fairy godmother, transporting the actress playing Cervantez through time to show the events that shaped her art and explain some of its mythology.

"I appreciate that they did this because some of my own students don't know their history," Cervantez said.

Those who wrote the plays admitted being unaware of the murals' symbolism.

"Before, I would pass by them without thinking. Now I stop and pay attention to what the murals are trying to say," said Jessica Miranda, 20, who is completing her credits at Monterey, an alternative school on the Garfield High School campus.

The program has opened the students' eyes to opportunities in a creative field, whether in theater or other art forms, Portillo said.

"This shows them that having a creative inclination can lead to a career," she said. "Some of the brightest artists are in continuation high schools because they don't function well in regular settings. Here, we can balance that out."

The exposure to history, art and culture is an invaluable gift to both the students and the muralists, Carrasco said. Her daughter is a playwright and remembers only having Shakespeare classics to perform in high school.

"This is something not everyone has. It's great that our story continues and that this can be shared with others in the future," said Carrasco, whose strong friendships with union organizers Cesar Chavez and Huerta were depicted in one of the student plays. Her battle with lymphoma and her family life were also main story lines, much to Carrasco's pleasant surprise.

"It really took me back," she told one of the students as she wiped a tear from her eye. "I was really fighting for my life for my daughter."

dalina.castellanos@latimes.com

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Chris Brown's attorney calls community service probe 'fraudulent'

Singer Chris Brown's lawyer fired back Wednesday at the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, accusing prosecutors of conducting their own "fraudulent" investigation into allegations that the entertainer had failed to fulfill his community service on a 2009 assault conviction involving Rihanna.

Attorney Mark Geragos said there were countless examples of officials in Virginia witnessing Brown carrying out his court-ordered manual labor, which he said included shredding documents at the Richmond Police Department and cleaning the agency's stables.

He angrily disputed the district attorney's allegation that there were discrepancies between a report prepared by Richmond police about the number of hours Brown had served and the R&B singer's actual schedule. Geragos cited an email Richmond police sent the district attorney's office late Tuesday in which the department's general counsel accused Los Angeles prosecutors of including false statements in a court motion that questioned how much labor Brown completed.

"Exactly what the D.A. claimed is absolutely false — and I don't mean false, I mean fraudulent," Geragos said at a news conference after Brown appeared in court Wednesday in downtown L.A. "This motion, frankly, was a travesty."

District attorney's officials declined to comment.

Brown wore a dark gray jacket and a skinny tie during his brief appearance before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Brandlin. Rihanna accompanied him to court and sat in the second row with other Brown supporters.

The judge ordered Brown to report to his probation officer within 48 hours and provide any documentation related to his community service. He also asked the county's probation department to report back to the court about how much labor Brown had done, and scheduled another hearing for April 5.

Brown is serving five years' probation after pleading guilty to a felony count of assault in connection with a 2009 attack on girlfriend Rihanna. As part of his probation, Brown was required to perform 180 days of community labor in Virginia.

The motion filed Tuesday by Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary A. Murray said an investigation into Brown's community service found "significant discrepancies indicating at best sloppy documentation and at worst fraudulent reporting," and asked a judge to order Brown to carry out his court-ordered labor in Los Angeles County instead of in Virginia, where he lives.

The filing outlined a series of inconsistencies with a report prepared by Richmond police, and alleged Brown was not in the city — or even the country — during times he reportedly was picking up trash. Among the instances cited in the motion was that Brown said he completed four hours of trash pickup between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. on a day when he was actually on a private plane to Cancun, which he boarded at 4 p.m.

Geragos, however, said his client completed the labor by 2 p.m. and was still able to make his flight.

In another incident, the district attorney's office said Brown reported he was picking up trash in a Richmond alley while he was actually hosting a charity event about 100 miles away in Washington, D.C. In his motion filed Wednesday, Geragos contended that the district attorney's office made the accusation without knowing when Brown was in the nation's capital and when he got back to Richmond, though the lawyer did not detail when Brown carried out the labor.

Geragos' motion did not address prosecutors' concerns that they had been unable to find any evidence that Brown completed more than 500 hours of community labor at Tappahannock Children's Center, where his mother had once served as director and where he spent time as a child. The center is an hour's drive from Richmond and rarely visited by police, according to Murray's motion.

Part of the singer's labor reportedly included waxing floors at the center. But a longtime janitor at the facility told investigators that he had maintained all of the floors for eight years and was unaware of anyone else doing so, prosecutors said.

Geragos told reporters he would file additional materials with the court to show that Brown had completed his service, and he accused prosecutors of relying on "supposed statements from somebody who is supposed to be waxing the floor."

"What we have uncovered so far in a very short amount of time should shock the conscience of the court," Geragos wrote in his court filing, which described the district attorney's accusations as a "vicious and unwarranted attack on Mr. Brown" and Virginia authorities.

The legal wrangling comes days before Sunday's Grammy Awards, where Brown's album "Fortune" is nominated, and follows a series of controversial incidents involving the entertainer, including a fight in January with singer Frank Ocean at a West Hollywood recording studio and a February 2012 encounter in Miami, where Brown allegedly drove away with the cellphone of a fan who took a photo of him and his then-girlfriend.

Another incident referenced was in March 2011 at the "Good Morning America" studio in New York City, where Brown became enraged after he was questioned about his assault on Rihanna. Brown threw a chair through a glass window, an act prosecutors said was "another demonstration of the defendant's anger-control issues and violent temper resulting in a violation of the law."

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

jack.leonard@latimes.com

kate.mather@latimes.com

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Giving kids a view to a better future

Bosko Magana, a 10-year-old fifth-grader at Dolores Mission School in Boyle Heights, began noticing about a year ago that her world was getting a little fuzzy around the edges. But eyeglasses didn't fit into the family budget.

Joanna Hernandez, 13, already had glasses, but for the last several months, they weren't strong enough.

"I couldn't see the board very well," she said.

Eugene Flores, 12, began noticing a year ago that when he looked to the right, "My eyes would take time to adjust."

On Monday morning, a mobile eye lab from Vision To Learn, a one-year-old nonprofit, rolled onto the Dolores Mission campus and students were called up, one at a time, to claim their new, free glasses. Bosko, Joanna and Eugene were among 31 students who got specs, and after a ceremony, some of their classmates lined up outside the van for eye tests.

At Catholic and L.A. Unified Schools throughout Los Angeles, kids are seeing better because Austin Beutner, a former investment banker and deputy mayor who lives in Pacific Palisades, was shocked by what he heard from an acquaintance.

"An educator who I know came up to me and said about 15% of the kids in public schools can't see the board," Beutner said. "I asked around and said, well, this seems like a problem we can solve, so I went out, bought this vehicle, hired some doctors, put together a team."

In less than a year, Vision to Learn has tested 5,000 students and distributed almost 4,000 pairs of prescription glasses. Beutner said his research suggests that 30,000 to 40,000 elementary school students in the city need glasses, and that 60% of so-called problem learners are visually impaired.

"They get fidgety. They can't pay attention. Think about the life track that puts them on, versus a simple fix — glasses."

Karina Moreno-Corgan, the Dolores Mission principal, told me that about a third of the school's 240 students were in need of glasses.

"We did screenings, or a teacher was able to tell because of squinting or something else," Moreno-Corgan said.

But in many cases, the parents' health coverage didn't include vision care, or they had no health insurance at all and couldn't afford glasses. Or, she said, the healthcare bureaucracy was impossible to negotiate.

"This is unfortunately a symbol of the problems with the larger healthcare system and the way it segments people out and divides service," said Steven P. Wallace, a professor of public health at UCLA.

Vision care, dentistry and audiology are "the stepchildren of the medical system," Wallace said, and it's particularly difficult for low-income people to get those services, even though they're essential to growth and development. Fall down and break an arm, Wallace said, and the system works. But short of an emergency, good luck.

"Some children don't even realize" they have vision problems, optician Sherry Pastor told me as more students were being tested in the van on Monday. "They lose interest in school, their grades fail, they become outcasts because they're not learning at the same level as the other children. It's amazing to know, once they get glasses, how differently they see the world. They can actually read a book and enjoy it and not get frustrated."

We live in a city that offers unlimited world-class medical resources and easy access for the more fortunate among us. On the elective side of the industry, you can get a colonic in the morning, a facelift in the afternoon and choose from a thousand anxiety specialists if you don't like the results. Across the highway and into the next area code, kids are lined up outside a van because they can't see the blackboard.

"Sometimes I have to be telling the teacher, 'Can I move up?'" said Fernando Variente, 12, who told me he has trouble reading his assignments. He was waiting in line with Leslie Alcon, 12, who said she's been nearsighted for about four years.

On Monday, Father Greg Boyle, who was once assigned to the Dolores Mission Church, encouraged students to think more broadly about the word "vision." To some, it's the ability to read a book, to others, it's the dream of a community in which everyone matters equally, and help is provided to those in need. Vision To Learn has gotten backing from the William Hannon Foundation, former Mayor Richard Riordan, City National Bank, the Adamma Foundation, Sony Pictures Entertainment and the Rotary Club of Westchester, among other groups. If you'd like to volunteer or donate — or to set up a visit at your school — go to http://www.visiontolearn.org.

Emily Plotkin, Jamie Chang and Alex Radan — all of them seniors at the exclusive Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City — were helping out Monday at the eyeglass giveaway. Emily, head of her school's community council, a service organization, said they planned to hold a dance at their school to raise money for Vision to Learn. She said she felt both fortunate to go to Harvard-Westlake and inspired by the students at Dolores.

Inside the van, Beutner told me he met a teacher a couple of weeks ago who told him a story about a bright fifth-grader with an erratic academic record. The girl would test gifted one year, not the next, then gifted again, then not.

"They went back and looked, and it was a single-parent household. The mother was in and out of work, and when she could afford it, the kid had glasses, and when they couldn't afford it, they didn't have glasses," Beutner said. "A $20 pair of glasses can change your life."

steve.lopez@latimes.com

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Tour bus had poor safety record before fatal crash

Federal inspectors over the last year found faulty axles and brakes and other safety violations on the tour bus that careened out of control on a winding mountain road near Yucaipa on Sunday evening, killing seven passengers, records show.

Maintenance citations of the tour buses owned by Scapadas Magicas of National City were numerous and serious enough that the company was placed on a federal watch list that flagged its buses for increased roadside inspections.

Bald tires, defective or missing axle parts, and insufficient brake linings were among 59 maintenance violations inspectors found on the firm's buses in the last two years, U.S. Department of Transportation safety records show.

PHOTOS: Tour bus crash

The tour bus was operating under a contract with InterBus Tours and Charters, based in Tijuana, which closed its office Monday, shortly after sending a busload of day tourists to Knott's Berry Farm. The Scapadas Magicas office in National City, in San Diego County, was not open Monday.

Maria McDade, who said she was Scapadas Magicas' administrator for more than 20 years before retiring last year, said none of the company's buses had ever been in an accident and, aside from a fine of $2,500, the company had complied with all U.S. Department of Transportation regulations.

"I feel really, really sad, but accidents happen," she said by walkie-talkie phone from her home in Tijuana. "I feel so sad for all these people." Current company officials could not be contacted for comment.

A message posted on InterBus' Facebook page expressed regret for the accident and told clients that its contractor was insured.

Sales Manager Jordi Garcia said the agency's insurance would be handling burial expenses for the deceased. He said the agency had been open for one year and offered daily trips to Disneyland, Six Flags Magic Mountain and Universal Studios. The trips attracted people from all walks of life, including students, families and young professionals.

"Big Bear is also very popular this time of year. They want to experience nature," he said. The daylong excursion cost $40, he said.

He said the business contracts with independently owned bus operators and that they are responsible for complying with all U.S. and Mexican regulations.

"We're only interested in their availability and the condition of their buses," he said, adding that the agency has never had a problem with any of the several operators with whom they contract.

The Scapadas bus left Tijuana early Sunday with 38 passengers, including children, and was descending California 38 from the ski resort town of Big Bear Lake when the driver apparently lost control about four miles from Yucaipa.

The bus clipped a small Saturn sedan before it veered into oncoming traffic and began to roll, tossing out passengers who were not wearing seat belts. It crushed an oncoming Ford pickup before coming to rest upright atop a boulder and10-foot elderberry bush on a stretch of highway along Mill Creek. Backpacks, clothing and body parts were strewn across the crash site and, on Monday morning, a body remain draped out one of the bus windows.

"It is a gruesome and horrible scene. It's one of the most horrific scenes I've ever seen in 10 years with the department," said Officer Leon Lopez, spokesman for the California Highway Patrol.

CHP officials were joined Monday by investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board at the scene of the accident, which occurred about 6:30 p.m. Sunday just north of the U.S. Forest Service ranger station in the San Bernardino National Forest. The highway was closed most of Monday.

The bus driver, as well as passengers, reported that the vehicle was experiencing mechanical problems before the accident occurred, authorities said. Investigators believe a problem with the brakes may have led the bus to speed out of control down the highway's sweeping curves.

On Monday, those officials questioned the driver, identified as Norberto B. Perez, 52, of San Ysidro, but did not disclose his account of the crash.

"Everything happened so fast. When the bus spun everything flew, even the people," passenger Gerardo Barrientos, who was sitting on the bus next to his girlfriend, told the Associated Press. "I saw many people dead. There are very, very horrendous images in my head, things I don't want to think about."

Ramon Ramirez, who is listed in documents as the owner of Scapadas Magicas, lives in Tijuana and rents an apartment in Chula Vista. No one answered the door at the Chula Vista residence.

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The very nature of the city

Before I took my father on a hike in Ernest E. Debs Regional Park, the little known wilderness area northeast of downtown Los Angeles, I made sure to warn him.

You're not going to think it's beautiful, I told him. In fact, you might hate it.

My father lives in Portland, Ore., that green land of enlightened planning. More than once during visits here, usually while we are parked in a sea of brake lights and exhaust on the freeway, he turns to me and demands: "Why do you live here?"

I never had a satisfactory answer for him, and I certainly was not expecting a walk in Debs to convince him of my adopted city's charms. The 320 acres of steep trails, oak trees and scraggly grass rising along the 110 Freeway has long been the neglected wild child of the Los Angeles city park system. When my dogs and I first began venturing there a decade ago, I found it not just ugly, but downright frightening, even in the company of a pit bull. The bushes in the lower part were flecked with trash, needles and other, more disgusting, signs of illicit rendezvous. On the upper trails, coyotes sometimes stopped to stare with brazen eyes.

Still, my dogs needed to run, and this park was the nearest to my house. On a recent visit my father came too. He looked skeptical when I led him up a steep, rutted dirt trail and around a locked gate — the way to enter the park on its less-used north side. We headed up. My father didn't comment on the roar of cars echoing up from the freeway or the high weeds; he didn't need to, his face said it all.

But when we reached the top, a remarkable sight met us. The view was particularly glorious on this day: the towers of downtown glimmering against the blue sky and green hills, and past them, the cranes at the Port of Los Angeles like a scattered erector set.

It was the foreground that was so unexpected, though: People, lots of them, walking, hiking, picnicking. There was less trash, fewer weeds, and more native plants, with delicate flowers.

We headed farther into the park, passing families with small children visiting the park's Audubon Center, an urban nature center that opened its doors in 2003. There were signs for fun runs and upcoming cleanups. There was even a very Portland touch: a little blue container that could hold plastic bags, for people to pick up after their dogs.

*

Debs Park was created nearly 50 years ago, largely thanks to the efforts of Los Angeles County Supervisor and Councilman Ernest E. Debs, who had a wily ability to convince developers to set aside open space as a condition for permits to build.

But though it existed on maps, in real life, it didn't look much like a park. By 1994, when it reverted from the county to the city, much of Debs was surrounded by a forbidding chain-link fence, and it was seen as a good place to go if you wanted to get mugged, or worse.

Enter Mike Hernandez, then a Los Angeles city councilman, who grew up in the shadow of the park. He had been to the Santa Monica Mountains as a child, and remembers thinking there was no reason there shouldn't be a park like that closer to home. He helped direct millions in bond money to fix up Debs.

Then, in 2001, Hernandez and his successor, Councilman Ed Reyes, worked with the Audubon Society to bring the nature center to the park. It turned out that in addition to all the people doing drugs and carrying out other illicit activities in the park, there were also more than 140 species of birds living there, or dropping by, including many who stop in the black walnut groves on their migrations.

There was just one problem: Many people were still afraid to come.

Change came bit by bit.

The Audubon Center began hosting field trips and summer camps for children, handing out free binoculars and nature guides for weekend visitors. Volunteer groups and nonprofits, including Tree People and local residents, sponsored park cleanups and fun runs and tree plantings that drew more people into the park.

A few years ago, the center also began sponsoring a women's fitness hike, with free child care. Around that time, Audubon Center Director Jeff Chapman said, observers began reporting more frequent sightings of a once rare species: women walking by themselves.

Hernandez, who left office in 2001 but still works for the city, said he is thrilled at what's happened, but he wants more. He'd like to see Debs Park connected to other open spaces on the Eastside, including Heritage Square and the Southwest Museum, and to turn it into a park almost as grand as Griffith Park, "the big park by the Arroyo," he says he would call it.

*

I knew none of this history that day I stood at the top of the ridge with my father. But as a pair of red-tailed hawks spiraled out of the sky right in front of us, my father nodded at me, as though to signal that he was starting to understand: Making a life in Los Angeles is about learning to look past the relentless, grim cement that at first impression seems to cover every surface. It's about training yourself to find the strange, unexpected beauty amid the ugliness, like the sight of a hawk riding thermals over a vast expanse of freeway, or the call of a black phoebe that you can make out just above the thrum of traffic.

And bit by bit, you start to build your own way of seeing and loving the city. And sometimes, if you're lucky, a place like Debs Park will transform, and the moment you notice it, it will feel, just for a minute, like this great, horrible city is starting to love you back.

jessica.garrison@latimes.com

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Performing well at this decathlon is the smart thing to do

A triumphal march blared and the crowd roared Saturday afternoon as hundreds of competitors filed into the massive gymnasium at the Roybal Learning Center.

The high school students were pumped — some teams danced a little to get warmed up, and at least one team had their school mascot there to root them on — and they were prepared, having spent months training for this moment.

Some of the students carried themselves with the intensity of gladiators stepping into the ring. The challenge before them was a purely intellectual one, but it was still daunting: The last leg of Los Angeles Unified's regional Academic Decathlon was about to begin.

They'd taken tests on mathematics, music, arts and science. They'd been interviewed by judges and had to give a speech. And now it was time for the Super Quiz, a high-pressure, multiple-choice relay that is the 10-subject competition's only public event. (This year's theme: Russia.)

The students — from 58 high schools in the district — faced questions about Peter the Great's influence on art and architecture, the significance of Sputnik and the hurdles Russia faced after the fall of communism. And they had to answer them as family and friends — and their rivals — looked on.

Marshall and Granada Hills Charter high schools, typical powerhouses, were the top performers in the Super Quiz, according to a preliminary tally. The final results for the entire competition will be announced Friday.

"It's daunting," said Evae Silva, an English teacher who coaches Verdugo Hills' decathlon team, "the amount of material they cover and the hours they put in. You have to expect a lot of out of them."

Silva, who previously coached athletics, said putting together a decathlon team — which consists of nine students, with a mix of A, B and C grade-point averages — isn't all that different from recruiting for track and field. Talent and intelligence matter, but what matters more? "Commitment, enthusiasm and the willingness to put in the work," he said.

When he coached cross country and track and field, he said, "I had to coach them to be faster than I am. Now I have to teach them to be smarter than I am. I have to prepare them to perform."

Decathletes are a special breed of high schooler. Not all students want to hand over their free time, especially the seniors, to study things for which they won't get a grade.

Dylan Bladen, a senior at Los Angeles High School, said that when his coach first tried to recruit him, he gave him a few pages of study material for the art portion of the competition. Bladen balked. "Oh, no! I'm not doing this," he recalled thinking.

Months later, it's a different story. "I was complaining about three pages," Bladen said. But the workload had probably gotten up to "thousands of pages and probably thousands of hours too!"

They say they do it because they thrive on having to confront something more difficult than the rest of their schoolwork. "Normal school is mundane and annoying to me, and this provided a challenge," said Maxwell Lederer, 17, a senior at Venice High School. A Soviet flag, with the hammer and sickle, was draped over his shoulders.

Camaraderie is forged among teammates as the season progresses. They have their inside jokes and pick on one another like siblings. But they depend on one another too, especially for motivation. "At one point, I was doing it more for them," Bladen said, pointing to his team.

For some schools, their preparation consisted of hours of late nights after school and weekend practices. It's exhausting, said Oriel Gomez, a South East High School senior. But it pays off come competition time, facing test after test.

"You realize you have the answer," he said, "and you have no doubt about it."

rick.rojas@latimes.com

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AME church denies minister's plea

The judicial body of the African Methodist Episcopal church has denied the petition of the Rev. John J. Hunter, former leader of First AME in Los Angeles, to return to the helm of the storied black church.

Hunter, who was abruptly moved from First AME in October, challenged his reassignment to Bethel AME in San Francisco after that congregation rejected him. He maintains that his rights as a minister were violated, saying Bishop Larry T. Kirkland moved him to a smaller church without the proper 90-day notice and without reason.

The church's governing book states that a "new appointment, when available, shall be comparable to or better than the previous one." First AME has a congregation of 19,000; Bethel AME's members number 650.

The nine-person council — the denomination's equivalent of the Supreme Court — ruled Thursday that Hunter skipped steps in the judicial process by petitioning them first. They denied his appeal based on grounds that Hunter did not follow the proper chain of command.

The ruling left the door open for Hunter to pursue further action in his bid to be reinstated at the church he pastored for eight years.

"The judicial council, further, holds that it lacks jurisdiction, since the matter lacks ripeness for disposition before this body," the ruling stated.

Hunter was advised to file a formal complaint against the bishop and follow the lengthy "judicial machinery," which is similar to the U.S. court system.

Hunter's spokeswoman, Jasmyne Cannick, said he plans to exhaust his options.

"Reverend John Hunter intends to continue to vigorously pursue the matter," Cannick said in a statement.

The church has sued Hunter, his wife, and some church leaders, alleging financial mismanagement. Hunter, meanwhile, has sued Bethel AME, alleging assault and emotional distress after church leaders physically blocked him from taking the pulpit last fall. The judicial body admonished Bethel last month for congregants' actions.

At First AME, some parishioners have expressed relief over the petition denial. Archie Shackles, a church board member, said he hoped the ruling would provide closure. "He had eight years . . . and all his ministry did was brought a lot of controversy to the church."

During his tenure, Hunter faced a federal tax probe and a sexual harassment lawsuit and admitted to questionable use of $122,000 in church credit cards.

angel.jennings@latimes.com

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Oil company begins clearing Whittier nature preserve

The city of Whittier and a Santa Barbara oil company prompted outrage Thursday as they began clearing trees and brush from a nature preserve that was bought with Los Angeles County tax dollars to protect it from development.

Whittier purchased the land and its mineral rights 19 years ago with $9.3 million in county Proposition A funds, which are designated for conservation purposes only. But the city later reversed course, learning that oil deposits could bring the city up to $100 million a year in royalties — nearly double its $55-million budget.

The county and environmental groups contend that extracting oil is a blatant abuse of Proposition A money intended to preserve the land in eastern Los Angeles County's hill country. Conservationists also worry that jurisdictions statewide may attempt to follow Whittier's example, undermining the intent of propositions designed to use tax dollars to preserve open space.

"It's outrageous that public funds meant for park creation were used to purchase some of Los Angeles County's last pristine open space not for environmental preservation but for oil drilling," county Supervisor Gloria Molina said. "That's exactly the opposite of what voters had in mind when they passed Proposition A in 1992."

But officials in the city of 90,000 people believe that they are legally entitled to the oil because the city retained the mineral rights, even if the land was purchased with county bond money. "The bond is totally silent about mineral rights — we own them and the county controls the surface rights," Mayor Pro Tem Bob Henderson said.

When Whittier bought the rare swath of oak forests and coastal scrub from Chevron Oil in 1994, oil was selling for about $12 a barrel. In 2008, when oil prices rose toward $100 a barrel, the City Council had a change of heart and voted unanimously to lease about three-fourths of the 1,600-acre preserve to Matrix Oil Co. of Santa Barbara.

If all goes according to the city's plan, the project will have a footprint of seven acres of that leased parcel, Henderson said.

"We're still protecting the birds and bees out there," he said. "Deer still run around and little kids are out there for science education."

A handful of Molina's staff members went to the preserve Thursday to monitor the operation but were "politely escorted by rangers from the site, and they weren't too happy about that," Henderson said.

Four lawsuits have been filed to stop the plan, including one by the county. But motions for preliminary injunctions were taken off the court calendar recently after the defendants succeeded in disqualifying presiding Judge Richard Fruin Jr.

Lawyers for the county and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority won a temporary restraining order in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday allowing the removal of vegetation but no digging.

The county contends that if the courts allow the oil to be taken, county taxpayers and not the city of Whittier should reap the rewards, with the money going to acquire lands for public use elsewhere in the county, said Scott Kuhn, who represented the Board of Supervisors and the Regional Park and Open Space District.

A hearing in the case has been scheduled for Feb. 21.

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

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Trial begins for Moreno Valley school board member Mike Rios

The young woman on the witness stand said Mike Rios approached her on the street with a school district business card and a job opportunity: He wanted her "to gather girls and sell them," she said.

Identified in court only as Valery, she testified Wednesday that she and others worked as prostitutes for Rios, a member of the Moreno Valley Unified School District Board of Education.

Valery's testimony came on the opening day of Rios' trial in Riverside County Superior Court. He faces 35 felony charges, including rape, pandering and pimping involving six females, two of them underage.

Valery, 21, with long black hair and bangs covering her forehead, bit her lip between questions. In addition to working as a prostitute for Rios, she said, she helped recruit other young women for him.

"He told me we had to get the best-looking girls so we could get more money for them," Valery said.

Prosecutors allege that Rios ran a prostitution ring out of his Moreno Valley home in 2011 and 2012. In opening statements, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Brusselback told the jury: "This is a case about greed. This is a case about money. This is a case about power."

Rios was "constantly trying to recruit new, young talent," Brusselback said.

Rios' attorney, Deputy Public Defender Michael J. Micallef, told jurors that Rios ran a business involving women stripping, dancing and performing for money but that it "had nothing to do with sex."

The women were free to do whatever they wanted and what they did besides stripping and dancing "wasn't necessarily known to Mr. Rios," Micallef said. Networking with women and growing his business was "the capitalist way," Micallef said.

Rios, 42, was arrested in February on attempted murder charges after he allegedly shot at two people near his home. He was released on bail but was arrested again in April on suspicion of rape, pimping and using his position on the school board to recruit would-be prostitutes.

He was released on bail again and has pleaded not guilty to all the charges in both cases.

While searching Rios' home after the alleged shooting, investigators found numerous cellphones and several condoms in the glove box of the Mercedes-Benz in his garage, testified Paul Grotefend, a Riverside County sheriff's deputy.

Prosecutors say Rios recruited women, took provocative photos of them in his home and posted the photos in online advertisements. He allegedly established a cellphone number solely for the prostitution work, drove the women to various locations to have sex and split the money they earned.

It is alleged that three adult women worked for him as prostitutes and that he attempted to recruit another adult woman and two minors.

On Wednesday, prosecutors showed jurors online advertisements with erotic photos of Valery in lingerie that she said were taken in Rios' bedroom.

Some of the ads read: "Sexy hot beautiful Latina babe Here 4 U."

Valery testified that Rios, on numerous occasions, picked her up from her home in downtown Los Angeles and brought her to his house. He bought her condoms before she met clients, she testified.

When Valery stopped communicating with Rios, he sent her text messages telling her how many missed calls there were on the cellphone he set up for prostitution, she said.

"He assumed every call that came in was a guaranteed customer," she said.

Rios is accused of raping two women, one of whom was intoxicated.

After both arrests last year, Rios returned to the five-member school board.

Though the other school board members passed a resolution calling for Rios to resign, he refused, said board Vice President Tracey B. Vackar. The board cannot remove Rios unless he is convicted, Vackar said.

Rios continues to come to board meetings, Vackar said, and even attended a board study session Tuesday night after a court appearance. Though there was disappointment after he did not resign, Rios has been treated with respect at meetings and "has not been disruptive," Vackar said.

The trial is expected to continue Thursday. The case involving the attempted murder charges — which is separate from the current case — is pending trial, with the next court date scheduled for February.

Rios, wearing a blue suit, was quiet in court Wednesday, sitting next to his attorney with his hands folded.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

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California's new prisons chief was once critic of system

SACRAMENTO — Jeffrey Beard's expert testimony was cited 39 times in the federal court order that capped California's prison population in 2009. He said the state's prisons were severely overcrowded, unsafe and unable to deliver adequate care to inmates.

At the time, he was Pennsylvania's prisons chief. Now, he's Gov. Jerry Brown's new corrections secretary, and his first order of business is to persuade the same judges to lift the cap, as well as to end the court's longtime hold on prison mental health care.

"I agree with what I said back then," Beard said Tuesday in one of his first interviews as the new head of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "On the flip side," he said, "things have changed."

California has 35,000 fewer inmates than when Beard testified in U.S. District Court in 2008, though that has not been enough to satisfy the judges, who want the population reduced by thousands more. On Tuesday, they gave the state until the end of this year — an extra six months — to meet their cap.

Beard said inmate medical care is better now, and he has more understanding of California's sprawling prison system. When he testified, he had only been to the historic prison in Folsom. His comments then about overcrowding, unsafe conditions and inadequate care came from the reports of other experts and from his work on a 2006 state task force examining recidivism.

"I've now been in about 20 of the institutions," he said Tuesday.

Beard said his perspective started to change in 2011, when he retired from his Pennsylvania post and began to do consulting work for California. His work included inspecting prisons and meeting with the court's special master for prison mental health care.

He said he no longer finds California prisons too large. He had told federal judges that it is difficult to safely run a prison with more than 3,300 inmates, according to court transcripts. Commenting on a California prison with 7,000 inmates, he had testified, "it is impossible to really do a good job with prisons that large."

"One of the things I didn't know back then," Beard said Tuesday, was how the prisons here were designed and built."

He said California creates prisons within prisons — three or four self-contained institutions within one facility — that allow for larger populations.

In 2008, transcripts show, Beard testified that California guards interfered with delivery of medical care because they were preoccupied with safety.

"You can't change the culture until you reduce the population and can make the institution safe," he said then.

Now, Beard says California is delivering adequate care to prisoners, even if its institutions hold as many as 80% more inmates than they were designed to accommodate. Beard noted that the state has spent "millions and millions and millions" retrofitting its prison medical facilities.

Beard once told federal judges that prison suicide rates — which are now climbing in California — are an important indicator of care quality. The rising rate merits concern, Beard said Tuesday, "but it doesn't mean you're not providing constitutional care."

As the judges weigh the governor's bid to end court oversight of prison healthcare, inmates' lawyers say Beard's move from critic to cheerleader gives them pause.

"He doesn't become appointed and things suddenly change from bad to good," said Donald Specter, lead attorney for the Prison Law Office. His agency's lawsuit against the state over prison healthcare 12 years ago ultimately resulted in the appointment of a federal receiver.

"We're going to point out [that] some of the things he was critical of are still not alleviated," Specter said.

Beard's appointment as corrections secretary requires confirmation by the state Senate.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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Unarmed man killed by deputies was shot in the back, autopsy says

A Culver City man who was fatally shot by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies after a pursuit in November was struck by bullets five times in the back and once each in the right hip and right forearm, also from behind, according to an autopsy report obtained by The Times.

Jose de la Trinidad, a 36-year-old father of two, was killed Nov. 10 by deputies who believed he was reaching for a weapon after a pursuit. But a witness to the shooting said De la Trinidad, who was unarmed, was complying with deputies and had his hands above his head when he was shot.

Multiple law enforcement agencies are investigating the shooting.

De la Trinidad was shot five times in the upper and lower back, according to the Los Angeles County coroner's report dated Nov. 13. The report describes four of those wounds as fatal. He was also shot in the right forearm and right hip, with both shots entering from behind, the report found.

DOCUMENT: Jose de la Trinidad autopsy report

"Here's a man who complied, did what he was supposed to, and was gunned down by trigger-happy deputies," said Arnoldo Casillas, the family's attorney, who provided a copy of the autopsy report to The Times. He said he planned to sue the Sheriff's Department.

A sheriff's official declined to discuss specifics of the autopsy report because of the ongoing investigation. But he emphasized that the report's findings would be included in the department's determination of what happened that night.

"The sheriff and our department extend its condolences to the De la Trinidad" family, said Steve Whitmore, a sheriff's spokesman.

"Deadly force is always a last resort," he said. "The deputies involved were convinced that the public was in danger when they drew their weapons."

On Saturday, relatives of De la Trinidad and about 100 other people marched through the streets of Compton, shouting, "No justice, no peace! No killer police!"

His widow, Rosie de la Trinidad, joined the march with the couple's two young daughters.

"He was doing everything he was supposed to," she said of her husband, fighting back tears. "All we're asking for is justice."

Jose de la Trinidad was shot minutes after leaving his niece's quinceañera with his brother Francisco. He was riding in the passenger seat of his brother's car when deputies tried to pull them over for speeding about 10:20 p.m., authorities said. After a brief car chase, De la Trinidad got out of the car in the 1900 block of East 122nd Street in Compton and was shot by deputies.

The Sheriff's Department maintains that the deputies opened fire only after De la Trinidad appeared to reach for his waist, where he could have been concealing a weapon.

But a woman who witnessed the officer-involved shooting told investigators that De la Trinidad had complied with deputies' orders to stop running and put his hands on his head to surrender when two deputies shot him. The witness said she watched the shooting from her bedroom window across the street.

"I know what I saw," the witness, Estefani — who asked that her last name not be used — said at the time. "His hands were on his head when they started shooting."

According to the deputies' account: De la Trinidad jumped out of the passenger seat. His brother took off again in the car. One of the four deputies on the scene gave chase in his cruiser, leaving De la Trinidad on the sidewalk and three deputies standing in the street with their weapons drawn.

The deputies said De la Trinidad then appeared to reach for his waistband, prompting two of them to fire shots at him. The unarmed man died at the scene.

Unbeknown to the deputies at the time, Estefani watched the scene unfold from her bedroom window. A short while later, she told The Times, two sheriff's deputies canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses came to her door.

The deputies, she said, repeatedly asked her which direction De la Trinidad was facing, which she perceived as an attempt to get her to change her story.

"I told them, 'You're just trying to confuse me,' and then they stopped," she said. Authorities later interviewed Estefani a second time.

Whitmore said the two deputies involved in the shooting were assigned desk duties immediately after the incident but returned to patrol five days later. He said this was standard practice for deputies involved in shootings.

Although such investigations typically take months, Whitmore said the department has given special urgency to this case and hopes to complete its probe in a timely manner.

"We want to have answers about what happened that night soon rather than later," he said. "Even then, we know it doesn't change the grief the family is experiencing."

As with all deputy-involved shootings, De la Trinidad's killing is subject to investigation by the district attorney, the sheriff's homicide and internal affairs bureaus and the Sheriff's Executive Force Review Committee.

wesley.lowery@latimes.com

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Unarmed man killed by deputies was shot in the back, autopsy says

A Culver City man who was fatally shot by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies after a pursuit in November was struck by bullets five times in the back and once each in the right hip and right forearm, also from behind, according to an autopsy report obtained by The Times.

Jose de la Trinidad, a 36-year-old father of two, was killed Nov. 10 by deputies who believed he was reaching for a weapon after a pursuit. But a witness to the shooting said De la Trinidad, who was unarmed, was complying with deputies and had his hands above his head when he was shot.

Multiple law enforcement agencies are investigating the shooting.

De la Trinidad was shot five times in the upper and lower back, according to the Los Angeles County coroner's report dated Nov. 13. The report describes four of those wounds as fatal. He was also shot in the right forearm and right hip, with both shots entering from behind, the report found.

"Here's a man who complied, did what he was supposed to, and was gunned down by trigger-happy deputies," said Arnoldo Casillas, the family's attorney, who provided a copy of the autopsy report to The Times. He said he planned to sue the Sheriff's Department.

A sheriff's official declined to discuss specifics of the autopsy report because of the ongoing investigation. But he emphasized that the report's findings would be included in the department's determination of what happened that night.

"The sheriff and our department extend its condolences to the De la Trinidad" family, said Steve Whitmore, a sheriff's spokesman.

"Deadly force is always a last resort," he said. "The deputies involved were convinced that the public was in danger when they drew their weapons."

On Saturday, relatives of De la Trinidad and about 100 other people marched through the streets of Compton, shouting, "No justice, no peace! No killer police!"

His widow, Rosie de la Trinidad, joined the march with the couple's two young daughters.

"He was doing everything he was supposed to," she said of her husband, fighting back tears. "All we're asking for is justice."

Jose de la Trinidad was shot minutes after leaving his niece's quinceañera with his brother Francisco. He was riding in the passenger seat of his brother's car when deputies tried to pull them over for speeding about 10:20 p.m., authorities said. After a brief car chase, De la Trinidad got out of the car in the 1900 block of East 122nd Street in Compton and was shot by deputies.

The Sheriff's Department maintains that the deputies opened fire only after De la Trinidad appeared to reach for his waist, where he could have been concealing a weapon.

But a woman who witnessed the officer-involved shooting told investigators that De la Trinidad had complied with deputies' orders to stop running and put his hands on his head to surrender when two deputies shot him. The witness said she watched the shooting from her bedroom window across the street.

"I know what I saw," the witness, Estefani — who asked that her last name not be used — said at the time. "His hands were on his head when they started shooting."

According to the deputies' account: De la Trinidad jumped out of the passenger seat. His brother took off again in the car. One of the four deputies on the scene gave chase in his cruiser, leaving De la Trinidad on the sidewalk and three deputies standing in the street with their weapons drawn.

The deputies said De la Trinidad then appeared to reach for his waistband, prompting two of them to fire shots at him. The unarmed man died at the scene.

Unbeknown to the deputies at the time, Estefani watched the scene unfold from her bedroom window. A short while later, she told The Times, two sheriff's deputies canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses came to her door.

The deputies, she said, repeatedly asked her which direction De la Trinidad was facing, which she perceived as an attempt to get her to change her story.

"I told them, 'You're just trying to confuse me,' and then they stopped," she said. Authorities later interviewed Estefani a second time.

Whitmore said the two deputies involved in the shooting were assigned desk duties immediately after the incident but returned to patrol five days later. He said this was standard practice for deputies involved in shootings.

Although such investigations typically take months, Whitmore said the department has given special urgency to this case and hopes to complete its probe in a timely manner.

"We want to have answers about what happened that night soon rather than later," he said. "Even then, we know it doesn't change the grief the family is experiencing."

As with all deputy-involved shootings, De la Trinidad's killing is subject to investigation by the district attorney, the sheriff's homicide and internal affairs bureaus and the Sheriff's Executive Force Review Committee.

wesley.lowery@latimes.com

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Muslim students convicted of disrupting 2010 speech file appeal

Ten of the so-called Irvine 11 Muslim students convicted of two misdemeanor charges to conspire and then disrupt a 2010 speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine have filed an appeal in Orange County Superior Court.

The 10 defendants, Muslim UC Irvine and UC Riverside students, were convicted in 2011 and sentenced to three years of informal probation and 56 hours of community service.

Charges against an 11th student were dropped after he agreed to 40 hours of community service at Someone Cares Soup Kitchen in Costa Mesa.

The case sparked fierce debate over whether the students' or Oren's free speech rights were violated and whether the district attorney's office should have filed criminal charges in the first place.

In an appeal brief filed this week, attorneys alleged that the students were convicted on the basis of an "unconstitutionally vague" state law prohibiting the willful disturbance of meetings.

"The basic premise is that this statute, as applied, makes completely lawful political speech a criminal act, and the 1st Amendment was never intended to allow that," said Dan Stormer, one of several lawyers representing the group.

Though a 1970 California Supreme Court decision "tried to fix the statute" by giving it more specific limits, the jury's instructions on how to apply the statute in question were still fuzzy, said Lisa Jaskol, directing attorney of the Public Counsel Law Center's appellate law program.

But Assistant Dist. Atty. Dan Wagner, a prosecutor working on the case, said that because the California Supreme Court had already ruled on the constitutionality of the statute, he's confident the conviction will be upheld.

"Furthermore, their behavior is not the type of behavior or conduct that is protected by the 1st Amendment," he added. "The evidence showed they were intent on taking away the ambassador's right to free speech."

Prosecutors have at least a month to file a response.

The students have completed their community service, Stormer said, and are "all doing very well."

"These young people are the cream of our academic crop," he said. "The idea that you could stand up in a meeting and make a political statement and that is a crime is absolutely abhorrent to our justice system."

jill.cowan@latimes.com

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Federal panel advises tighter controls on painkiller Vicodin

In a move to stem the epidemic of prescription drug deaths, a federal advisory panel has recommended tighter controls on a narcotic painkiller best known by the brand name Vicodin. It is the nation's most widely prescribed drug.

By a 19-to-10 vote, an advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended Friday that the agency reclassify hydrocodone, the active ingredient in Vicodin, as a Schedule II narcotic, placing it in the same category as other widely abused medications, including OxyContin and fentanyl.

If the FDA approves the change, patients would be able to get fewer hydrocodone pills at one time, and there would be more restrictions on refills. In addition, pharmacies would have to follow stricter procedures for handling and storing the drug.

Schedule II is the government's most restrictive category for pharmaceuticals with accepted medical uses. Hydrocodone is now listed on Schedule III.

The United States consumes 99% of the hydrocodone produced worldwide, and doctors write more prescriptions for it than for the leading antibiotic and hypertension medications.

Prescription drugs — primarily narcotic painkillers such as hydrocodone — cause or contribute to more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined. As a result, drug fatalities have surpassed deaths from motor vehicle crashes, long the leading cause of accidental death in this country.

A Los Angeles Times analysis of 3,733 prescription drug-related fatalities in Southern California from 2006 through 2011 found that hydrocodone was involved in 945 of the deaths, more than any other prescription medication.

Doctors have prescribed hydrocodone with few restrictions since it was introduced four decades ago. Because of the perception that it is less risky than other narcotic painkillers, it is widely prescribed by general practitioners and dentists.

Yet drug enforcement officials have long complained that hydrocodone was highly addictive and widely abused.

For years, the FDA resisted tightening the rules on its use out of concern that doing so would make it more difficult for patients with legitimate pain to obtain the drug. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration asked the agency to reconsider in light of the drug's widespread availability on the black market.

Earlier this week, the American Academy of Pain Medicine sent the FDA advisory panel a letter saying that although it had some concern that tighter rules could curtail legitimate prescribing, it did not oppose moving hydrocodone to Schedule II.

Morgan Liscinsky, a spokeswoman for the FDA, said she could not say when the agency would act on the recommendation.

In seeking to stem the increase in fatal drug overdoses, authorities have focused on how addicts and drug dealers obtain prescription narcotics illegally, such as by stealing from pharmacies or relatives' medicine cabinets. Recent articles in The Times, however, reported that many overdoses stem from drugs prescribed for the deceased by a doctor.

In nearly half of the prescription drug fatalities in four Southern California counties, medications prescribed by physicians caused or contributed to the death, according to a Times analysis of coroners' records.

Seventy-one doctors, a tiny fraction of all practicing physicians in the four counties, were associated with a disproportionate number of deaths.

In response to the articles, the Medical Board of California has appealed to the public to report instances of excessive prescribing, and legislative leaders, including the president of the California Senate, have promised to give the board more investigators and greater authority to stop reckless prescribing.

lisa.girion@latimes.com

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Palmdale woman accused of torturing her children

Neighbors of a Palmdale woman charged with assaulting and torturing two of her children said Thursday that they never even realized she had kids.

The siblings — a boy, 8, and girl, 7 — did not play outside and were rarely seen, said Cynthia Otero, who runs a day care center at a home opposite the house in the 39000 block of Clear View Court where Ingrid Brewer is alleged to have mistreated the youngsters.

Otero said that when she recently spotted the children getting out of a car, she thought Brewer, 50, "might be baby-sitting."

So neighbors in the suburban cul-de-sac were the more shocked when word spread that Brewer was arrested on suspicion of crimes against her children, she said. Brewer is being charged with eight felony counts, including torture, assault with a deadly weapon and cruelty to a child.

According to authorities, Brewer reported the children missing Jan. 15, prompting a search by deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Palmdale Station. The youngsters were found hours later hiding under a blanket near a parked car on a street close to their home. They were without winter clothes in 20-degree weather, authorities said.

Sgt. Brian Hudson, a spokesman for the sheriff's Special Victims Bureau, said the children told investigators they ran away because Brewer deprived them of food, locked them in separate bedrooms when she went to work each day, bound their hands behind their backs with zip ties and beat them with electrical cords and a hammer. The youngsters also said that when they were locked in the bedrooms and needed to use the bathroom, they instead had to use wastebaskets, Hudson said.

They fled because "they were tired of being tied up and beaten," Hudson said.

Hudson said both children had injuries consistent with the alleged abuse, including marks on their wrists indicating they had been restrained and "numerous bruising and abrasions over their bodies." They told investigators the mistreatment had been happening since Halloween.

Neighbors interviewed by authorities said they had never noticed anything suspicious but "hardly ever saw the two children," Hudson said. Otero and another neighbor said Brewer did not make friends on the block.

Otero said Brewer was "unfriendly" and typically ignored verbal greetings and waves.

According to sheriff's officials, Brewer, a certified nursing assistant who works in Los Angeles and has adult children, adopted the young siblings about a year ago from foster care. They were home schooled.

Neil Zanville, a spokesman for the county Department of Children and Family Services, said his agency was legally prohibited from disclosing any case-specific information about past or present clients. But in a written statement, the agency's director, Philip Browning, called the report disturbing.

"While we cannot confirm or deny whether this family is under our supervision, I am personally looking into this situation to determine what role, if any, our department had in these children's lives," Browning said.

Sheriff's officials said Thursday that the children were "doing great" despite their injuries.

Otero lamented that they had been made to suffer.

"It's just so sad," said the neighbor, who has a 5-year-old daughter and 8-year-old twins. "I wish they would have knocked on my door. I would have helped them."

Brewer is in the custody of the Sheriff's Department, with bail set at $2 million. She is scheduled to appear in court Thursday, Hudson said.

ann.simmons@latimes.com

Times staff writer Kate Mather contributed to this report.

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