Washed It!

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca directed detectives to launch a criminal investigation outside his agency’s jurisdiction on behalf of a well-connected supporter who has given the sheriff political contributions and expensive gifts, a Times investigation has found.

The sheriff’s investigation targeted a tenant who was embroiled in a rental dispute with Ezat Delijani, a longtime Baca political donor. The sheriff assigned his detectives to the case after Beverly Hills police had concluded that Delijani’s allegations did not amount to a crime.

In an interview, Baca downplayed his personal involvement in opening the probe last year. He said the Beverly Hills business magnate received no preferential treatment.

Sheriff’s Department records, however, show that Baca sent a handwritten note to his then-chief of detectives requesting the investigation. Additionally, records reveal that detectives referred to the case as a “Sheriff Baca Special Request” and gave it a “rush” status, generally reserved for high-priority or time-sensitive cases, including homicides.

According to records, the Beverly Hills Police Department had determined that Delijani’s dispute was a civil matter and did not merit a criminal investigation. After sheriff’s detectives concluded their four-month investigation, they submitted their findings to prosecutors, who declined to file criminal charges, citing insufficient evidence. Baca said the incursion into the Beverly Hills department’s jurisdiction was necessary because the allegations of lease forgery were “too complicated” for the local police force.

Officials at the Beverly Hills Police Department, which handles hundreds of forgery cases every year, dismissed that explanation.

“I’m trying not to say anything that sounds inflammatory,” said Beverly Hills Police Sgt. Shan Davis when told of Baca’s comment about the case being too difficult for them. “That’s not a fair characterization.”

Law enforcement experts said it is highly unusual for one police agency to launch an investigation in another agency’s jurisdiction without being invited in.

Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of law and police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said the case “smacks of the worst kind of special treatment.”

“It’s incumbent on the sheriff to explain why this case merited this kind of intensive resource allocation,” said O’Donnell, a former New York City police officer. “Not only is it a terrible thing for public perception, it has a very devastating impact internally for the rank and file who swear an oath to protect people equally.”

At the center of the sheriff’s investigation was a 2008 dispute between Delijani and his tenant, a pharmacist named Afshin Nassir. According to records, Nassir requested that Delijani reimburse him for tenant improvements and for rent he had paid while those improvements were being made. Nassir alleged that he was entitled to payment according to his lease; Delijani claimed he wasn’t.

After Delijani refused to reimburse Nassir, lawyers from both sides got involved — and Delijani alleged the lease that Nassir produced had been forged. Both parties sued.

During a deposition, Delijani said he took his complaint to the Sheriff’s Department.

“Do you know the name of the person you spoke to?” asked an attorney for Nassir, according to a transcript.

“Sheriff Lee Baca,” Delijani replied.

Delijani said he told Baca about the lease dispute during a meeting related to an award the businessman was receiving. Baca, he recalled, said “you must report such a crime. You must do it.’”

At some point, the Delijani family went to the Beverly Hills police with the tenant complaint. After officials there determined that the matter did not merit a criminal investigation, Delijani’s son sent an e-mail to Baca’s assistant.

“Hi Susie, Hope you’re well,” Delijani’s son, Shahram, wrote. “Can you please let the Sheriff know that I spoke to … Beverly Hills Police Department and they informed me that they will not investigate the case. Thank you.”

On a printout of that e-mail, a handwritten note from Baca urges action from Chief Willie Miller, who at the time oversaw the Sheriff Department’s detectives division.

Baca ordered criminal probe outside jurisdiction on behalf of political donor

Suicide attackers burst into the main United Nations compound in the western city of Herat on Saturday, setting off a battle with Afghan police and troops. All four assailants were reported killed, but the U.N. said there were no casualties among its staff.

The incident roiled the aid community in Afghanistan at a time when a number of international humanitarian and development groups are considering curtailing or halting projects in response to an upcoming ban by President Hamid Karzai on the use of private security guards. Western diplomats are pressing the Afghan leader to ease the restrictions, which are to take effect at the end of the year.

The attack in Herat, the biggest city in western Afghanistan, began with a detonation at one of the complex’s entry gates, according to provincial officials, and three assailants then managed to push their way inside. One or more of them wore a burqa, or a body-length veil, said Naqib Armin, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

The compound, on the city’s edge near the airport, houses several U.N. agencies which employ both foreign and Afghan staff. There would have been about 40 people inside at the time, said U.N. spokesman Dan McNorton.

One of the attackers was killed at the outset of the strike when he set off explosives inside a car, provincial authorities said. Two others apparently detonated their suicide vests, and the last was shot dead by police.

Herat province is considered a relatively calm part of the country — so much so that it is being considered as one of the first places where the NATO force will attempt to hand over security responsibility to Afghan forces.

With Western military officials claiming major success in driving the Taliban from strongholds in Kandahar province, however, the insurgency has been making a push into parts of the country that were previously considered relatively safe, such as the north.

Attacks inside Kandahar have diminished since the Western military offensive began in earnest about a month ago, but insurgents are still able to move about despite the security cordon around the city. A motorcycle-borne suicide bomber at a main traffic circle in the city killed one passer-by and injured two others on Saturday, provincial authorities said.

Outside Kandahar city, veteran New York Times photographer Joao Silva was seriously injured Saturday when he stepped on a buried bomb, the newspaper reported on its website. Although NATO officials say Taliban fighters have been mainly driven out of the district, Arghandab, the insurgents have seeded the area with IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, which are the principal killer of Western troops.

Most of the 30,000 American troops who arrived this year under President Obama’s “surge” are deployed in the south, mainly in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

NATO troops were not involved in responding to the attack in Herat, said Lt. Col. Regina Winchester, a spokeswoman for the International Security Assistance Force. However, witnesses said Western forces were seen helping cordon off the scene, and a NATO helicopter circled overhead. NATO troops in the west of Afghanistan are under Italian command.

McNorton, the U.N. spokesman, said it was “too early to speculate” about steps the world body might take in response to the attack on its compound. The U.N. sent hundreds of foreign staffers out of the country after a Taliban attack last October on a U.N. guesthouse in the capital, in which five of its foreign staff were killed.

This year has been a perilous one for foreign aid workers in Afghanistan. In August, insurgent gunmen killed a 10-member medical team, including six Americans, in Badakhshan province, in the north. Earlier this month, a Scottish development worker was killed during an attempt by American troops to rescue her after she was abducted by the Taliban.

laura.king@latimes.com
Suicide attackers hit U.N. compound in Afghanistan

The Justice Department on Wednesday asked a federal appeals court in San Francisco to quickly set aside a judge’s order that bars enforcement of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, saying the judge’s “extraordinary decision” went too far, too fast.

The 25-page motion says the appeals court should lift the judge’s order Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips in Southern California, acting on a suit brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, declared the “don’t ask” policy unconstitutional last month. On Oct. 12, she then ordered the Pentagon to stopping enforcing the policy, which it did.

The Justice Department said it has a duty to defend the laws enacted by Congress, even though President Obama is urging Congress to repeal the law and to allow openly gay men and women to serve in the military.

The government said the “sweeping injunction against a duly enacted Act of Congress” was wrong as a matter of law. It is “at odds with basic principles of judicial restraint requiring courts to limit injunctive relief to the parties before the court, and is contrary to decisions of other courts, which have sustained the constitutionality of the statute.”

Moreover, the judge’s order suspending enforcement of the military’s “don’t ask” policy has caused “confusion and uncertainty” at the Pentagon and among gays and lesbians in the ranks, the government said.

If an appeals court reverses the judge and affirms the constitutionality of the law, it “would create tremendous uncertainty about the status of service members who may reveal their sexual orientation in reliance” on the judge’s order suspending the law, the government said.

For all these reasons, it said a three-judge panel should issue an emergency order lifting the injunction.

If the 9th Circuit refuses to lift the judge’s order, the government could then seek an emergency stay from the U.S. Supreme Court.

david.savage@latimes.com
Justice Department asks appeals court to overturn ‘don’t ask’ injunction

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The military is accepting openly gay recruits for the first time in the nation’s history, even as it tries in the courts to slow the movement to abolish its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

At least two service members discharged for being gay began the process to re-enlist after the Pentagon’s Tuesday announcement.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in California who overturned the 17-year policy last week was likely to reject the government’s latest effort to halt her order telling the military to stop enforcing the law.

The Justice Department will likely appeal if she does not suspend her order.

The Defense Department has said it would comply with U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips’ order and had frozen any discharge cases. Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said recruiters had been given top-level guidance to accept applicants who say they are gay.

Recruiters also have been told to inform potential recruits that the moratorium on enforcement of the policy could be reversed at any time, if the ruling is appealed or the court grants a stay, she said.

Gay rights groups were continuing to tell service members to avoid revealing that they are gay, fearing they could find themselves in trouble should the law be reinstated.

“What people aren’t really getting is that the discretion and caution that gay troops are showing now is exactly the same standard of conduct that they will adhere to when the ban is lifted permanently,” said Aaron Belkin, executive director of the Palm Center, a think tank on gays and the military at the University of California Santa Barbara. “Yes, a few will try to become celebrities.”

An Air Force officer and co-founder of a gay service member support group called OutServe said financial considerations are playing a big role in gay service members staying quiet.

“The military has financially trapped us,” he said, noting that he could owe the military about $200,000 if he were to be dismissed.

The officer, who asked not to be identified for fear of being discharged, said he’s hearing increasingly about heterosexual service members approaching gay colleagues and telling them they can come out now.

He also said more gay service members are coming out to their peers who are friends, while keeping their orientation secret from leadership. He said he has come out to two peers in the last few days.

“People are coming out informally in their units,” the officer said. “Discussions are happening right now.”

An opponent of the judge’s ruling said confusion that has come up is exactly what Pentagon officials feared and shows the need for her to immediately freeze her order while the government appeals.

“It’s only logical that a stay should be granted to avoid the confusion that is already occurring with reports that the Pentagon is telling recruiters to begin accepting homosexual applicants,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group based in Washington that supports the policy.

The uncertain status of the law has caused much confusion within an institution that has historically discriminated against gays.

Before the 1993 law, the military banned gays entirely and declared them incompatible with military service. There have been instances in which gays have served, with the knowledge of their colleagues.

Twenty-nine nations, including Israel, Canada, Germany and Sweden, allow openly gay troops, according to the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group and plaintiff in the lawsuit before Phillips.

The Pentagon guidance to recruiters comes after Dan Woods, the group’s attorney, sent a letter last week warning the Justice Department that Army recruiters who turned away Omar Lopez in Austin, Texas may have caused the government to violate Phillips’ injunction. Woods wrote that the government could be subject to a citation for contempt.

Military recruiters told to accept gay applicants, as gov’t appeals court decision

The Supreme Court intervened again Monday in a lawsuit against a former George W. Bush administration official, agreeing to decide whether former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft is entirely shielded from claims that he misused the law to arrest terrorism suspects under false pretenses.

Obama administration lawyers appealed on Ashcroft’s behalf and asserted that it would “severely damage law enforcement” if the nation’s top law enforcement official could be held liable for abusing his authority.

In the last five years, civil libertarians have tried, without much success, to sue former Bush administration officials for overstepping the law. These suits have run into a series of procedural barriers. For example, those who accused the government of wiretapping their phones without a search warrant had their cases thrown out of court on grounds they could not prove they had been wiretapped. Others who said they were wrongly arrested and tortured had their claims dismissed when the government invoked the “state secrets” privilege.

Last year, the Supreme Court shielded Ashcroft from being sued by Muslim immigrants in the New York area who said they were arrested and abused in jail after the 9/11 attacks, even though they had no involvement in a terrorism plot. In a 5-4 decision, the high court ruled that the suit against Ashcroft must be dismissed because the plaintiffs could not prove he ordered them to be abused.

The new case arose when Lavoni Kidd, a former football star at the University of Idaho, was arrested and shackled at Washington’s Dulles International Airport in March 2003. He was not taken into custody because he was suspected of a crime, but because he was a supposed “material witness” in another case.

Federal law permits the government in special situations to hold someone as a “material witness” in a pending case. Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union accused Ashcroft of a “gross abuse” of this authority. They say he misused the law to arrest innocent people, even when the government lacked the required “probable cause.”

After the 9/11 attacks Ashcroft announced he would use all the legal authority at his disposal to capture terrorists. Hundreds of Muslim men were arrested and held on immigration charges. That option was not available in Kidd’s case because he is a U.S. citizen.

He had converted to Islam in college and changed him name to Abdullah Al-Kidd. He had cooperated with the FBI after the 9/11 attacks and answered questions about another Muslim man in Idaho who was under investigation in connection with his website.

Several months had elapsed since Kidd had heard from the FBI, but when he bought a round-trip ticket to travel to Saudi Arabia, where he had a study scholarship, the FBI moved to have him arrested. An FBI agent wrongly told a magistrate that Kidd had bought a one-way first-class ticket. The magistrate ordered Kidd arrested and held as a witness. A few days later, then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III testified in Congress and mentioned Kidd’s “arrest” as one of the bureau’s recent successes.

Kidd was strip-searched repeatedly and shackled for more than two weeks in a high-security cell where the lights were kept on, according to his complaint. He was then released, but his passport was taken. In 2005, Kidd sued Ashcroft and other officials, contending they had violated his constitutional rights by arresting him without probable cause.

Ashcroft moved to dismiss the suit, arguing that as the nation’s chief prosecutor, he was absolutely immune from such claims. But a federal judge in Idaho and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to dismiss the suit. Judge Milan Smith said it was “repugnant to the Constitution” for the government to say it “has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions, not because they have committed a crime, but merely because the government wants to investigate them for possible wrongdoing.”

This ruling, if allowed to stand, would have allowed the case against Ashcroft to proceed toward a trial.

But Acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal appealed to the high court and argued that top prosecutors should be shielded from answering such allegations. “Absolute immunity applies regardless of the prosecutor’s intent,” he said.

The justices announced they will hear the case of Ashcroft vs. Al-Kidd early next year and decide whether the doctrine of prosecutorial immunity requires that the suit be dismissed. New Justice Elena Kagan said she would stay out of the case.

david.savage@latimes.com

Supreme Court to hear civil liberties suit against John Ashcroft

Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman go round and round: quibbling over the slur someone in Brown’s camp used to describe Whitman and how offensive it was (or wasn’t) and whether Brown should (or shouldn’t) be more contrite. This drives Kim DuPont crazy.

DuPont, a political independent and Whitman supporter, said after Brown apologized in their last debate, “She should have just accepted, and they both should have gotten on with it.”

DuPont ticks off her concerns: jobs, the economy, making Sacramento more business-friendly. “Those are the issues affecting the state and our place in the world,” said DuPont, 50, a financial consultant in the agriculture industry. “Those are what matter.”

The race for governor has been long, contentious and, by far, the most expensive in history. To many in this rural stretch of Central California, it has also been a disappointment: feeding their cynicism, taxing their patience — they long ago tuned out the incessant advertising — and instilling little faith that either candidate can deal with the state’s paralyzing dysfunction.

The last several weeks of the campaign, dominated by debate over an inadvertently recorded epithet and Whitman’s illegal immigrant housekeeper, have seemed especially pointless.

“A sideshow,” said Margo Michael, a cook. “Silly,” said Jerry Caperton, a retired firefighter.

For the last 16 years, San Benito County has been California’s political bellwether, a slice of rich farmland just south of the San Francisco Bay Area with an unparalleled record of matching statewide voter sentiment. In 2002, Gray Davis won reelection with 47% of the vote; in San Benito County he received 49%. In 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cruised to victory with 57% support. In San Benito County, he got 56%.

If the pattern holds this November, and if San Benito again speaks for the rest of the state, then neither candidate will run away with the contest.

Democrat Brown and Republican Whitman have their partisans: people who believe political experience (in Brown’s case) or business acumen (cited by Whitman backers) would be just what’s needed to shake up Sacramento (the way politicians always pledge).

But many more voters echoed Chuck Obeso-Bradley, who was not particularly enamored of either candidate and regarded their promises, and their charges and countercharges, with a good dose of skepticism.

A Democrat, he leans toward Brown (“holding my nose a bit”). But he thinks it will be some time before the state cycles from recession to recovery, regardless of the outcome Nov. 2. “I’ll support whoever wins and wish them both Godspeed,” said Obeso-Bradley, 56, the sales manager for a software company. “They’re going to need it.”

With about 55,000 residents, roughly the population of Arcadia or Cerritos, San Benito is more rural and Latino than California as a whole. There are relatively fewer college graduates and a slightly higher proportion of registered Democrats.

But the economic hardship — the bankruptcies, jobs lost, homes foreclosed, businesses hanging by the merest of threads — are familiar to many Californians battered by the Great Recession.

In some ways, San Benito County had it worse. Even before the housing bubble burst, regulators imposed a local building moratorium until a new sewage plant was built. The work was finished just in time for the recession, which devastated the construction industry. Unemployment, always subject to the vagaries of the agricultural season, peaked near 22% in February.

There have been hopeful signs of late. Unemployment was 14.8% in August (compared to 12.4% statewide.) A long-awaited expansion of the Hollister airport may finally go forward, and the county could land a new solar farm, with the promise of as many as 650 jobs.

Still, not one person in more than 40 interviewed felt good about the direction things were headed, a contrast with 2006, when business was robust and state lawmakers passed a budget the day before the July 1 start of the fiscal year — with a surplus.

“Sacramento keeps rolling on, like it always has, but things are out of control,” said William McDonald, 39, a courier for the San Benito County Health Department and an undecided independent. “It’s October, and they’re just now barely passing a budget?”

Even though Schwarzenegger is not on the ballot, the governor loomed large in the minds of many. That has not helped Whitman. She is running on the same outsider message Schwarzenegger used in the 2003 recall election, and several voters suggested his years in office didn’t work out too well.

“He was new. He was fresh. I thought, give it a shot,” said Bob Rowlands, 59, a Democrat who sells evidence-tracking software to police agencies. “Now Whitman is talking about running Sacramento like a business, but running a business and running the government aren’t the same. Brown may not have all the answers, but at least he knows the lay of the land.”

Whitman has spent more than $140 million on the campaign — the vast majority from her own pocketbook — and that alone has put some people off, including Peggy Neubauer, a Republican who may vote Democratic for the first time in her life.

“It’s all about feeding her ego: ‘I’m going to be the governor of the biggest state in the union,’ ” said Neubauer, 55, who owns a struggling real estate and property management firm. “Well, you can’t buy it. And if she gets there, she’s going to have all the problems Arnold had, without his finesse.”

The controversy over Whitman’s illegal immigrant housekeeper — the candidate said she did not know her status until just before the woman was fired — apparently swayed few people. Mary Martinez, 67, a retired bookkeeper and political independent, was ready to back Whitman but will skip voting in the governor’s race. “I don’t like the way she was treated,” said Martinez, referring to the maid’s brusque dismissal after nine years of employment.

But most of those interviewed waved off the matter as a diversion cooked up by Democrats. That included many Brown supporters, like Lauretta Avina, 46, who suggested that candidates “do what it takes to get elected. They play dirty on both sides.”

While Schwarzenegger shadows Whitman’s campaign, Brown has to contend with the record of another California governor: himself.

“I remember him saying they weren’t going to spray for the Medfly, and then all those planes came overhead spraying all over the place,” said Jan Van Erven, referring to Brown’s equivocating stance during the 1980s agricultural infestation. Van Erven also remembered Rose Bird, the state Supreme Court justice who overturned 64 death penalty convictions and became a soft-on-crime symbol to Brown critics.

“Brown had his shot,” said Van Erven, 62, a Republican-leaning independent. “I think Whitman could do a better job dealing with the Legislature, which is nothing but a bunch of hard-core liberal Democrats.”

Unless asked, no one talked about the latest campaign flap involving someone close to Brown using the word “whore” to describe Whitman for allegedly cutting a deal to win an endorsement. The private conversation was picked up on voicemail, after Brown thought he had hung up the phone.

Caperton, 70, the retired firefighter, was typical of the overwhelming majority who rolled their eyes or simply shrugged off the remark. “You have to wonder what she calls him back in her office when no one’s listening,” he said, laughing. Unhappy with the choices, he may not vote for anyone for governor.

mark.barabak@latimes.com
State’s bellwether voters want more attention paid to issues

A federal judge in California issued a permanent ban Tuesday on the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the military, ordering the Defense Department to immediately halt any efforts to remove personnel because of their sexual orientation.

The government has 60 days to appeal the ruling, which gives the administration until after the midterm election next month to make a decision. But it also presents a problem for President Obama as he tries to rally his Democratic base.

As a presidential candidate, Obama said he would work to do away with the policy. But should the Justice Department appeal the ruling, it could anger many of the president’s liberal supporters, something Obama and congressional Democrats can ill afford.

In a separate case that posed a similar problem, the administration decided Tuesday to appeal two court rulings in Massachusetts that found unconstitutional the federal definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.

The administration filed a notice of appeal to protect the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which bars gay marriages, although Obama opposes the law. A Justice Department spokeswoman told the Associated Press that the administration was obligated to defend federal laws when challenged in court.

“As a policy matter, the president has made clear that he believes DOMA is discriminatory and should be repealed,” said Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler. “The Justice Department is defending the statute, as it traditionally does when acts of Congress are challenged.”

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, called on the administration to immediately appeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” decision. Otherwise, he said, it would “only further the desire of voters to change Congress” out of anger at “activist judges and arrogant politicians.”

Justice Department officials said no decision had been made, though the government has known for a month that the ruling might be coming. U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips in Riverside said on Sept. 9 that she considered the policy unconstitutional.

At the Pentagon, spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith said the ruling was under review. Other Pentagon officials said a task force created to examine the issue had not completed its study and that town hall meetings with military families were continuing, as was an online opinion survey. If there is no appeal, they said, the ruling would short-circuit that effort.

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was enacted by Congress in 1993 in an effort to reform the military’s practice of searching out and discharging gay personnel.

Under the policy, gays and lesbians could serve in the military as long as they kept their sexual orientation secret. More than 13,000 service members have been discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

In her three-page order Tuesday, Phillips declared that the policy “infringes on the fundamental rights of United States service members and prospective service members.”

She also said it violated due process and freedom of speech, and did not allow targeted service members “to petition the government for redress of grievances” to fight for their jobs if they were outed as homosexuals.

Phillips ordered the military to immediately stop “enforcing or applying” the policy and implementing the regulations “against any person under their jurisdiction or command.”

She further ordered them “immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge, separation or other proceedings” that were underway.

If the government does not appeal, the question will be whether a district court judge can unilaterally invalidate a longstanding policy of the United States military.

“A federal judge always has the power to declare a law unconstitutional,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law.

“The interesting question concerns a nationwide injunction. On the one hand, I think she is on strong ground in doing so. On the other hand, one district judge doesn’t have the authority to bind judges in other districts or circuits. They can decide for themselves. The key question is whether the Obama administration will appeal.”

There also is an effort underway in Congress to repeal the law. The House this year voted to repeal the act, as did the Senate Armed Services Committee. But Republicans blocked action on the Senate floor.

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D- San Francisco), said the speaker welcomed the judge’s order and “continues to believe, until the Senate can act on the repeal of this policy and send it to the president’s desk, the administration should place a moratorium on all dismissals under this policy.”

The judge was ruling in a case brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s largest gay GOP political organization. In the trial in July, Justice Department lawyer Paul G. Freeborne argued that Congress and not the courts should decide the fate of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Many gay and lesbian groups praised the order, but Aaron Tax, legal director for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, predicted that the government would appeal.

With that in mind, he said, homosexual “service members must proceed safely and should not come out at this time.”

richard.serrano@latimes.com

David Cloud in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.
Judge orders halt to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

U.S. and British officials are investigating whether a British aid worker kidnapped by Taliban militants in Afghanistan may have been inadvertently killed by American troops as they attempted to rescue her last week.

British officials initially announced that Linda Norgrove, 36, had been killed by her Islamist captors Friday during a rescue attempt carried out by U.S. special forces. Norgrove was kidnapped along with three Afghan colleagues two weeks ago in eastern Kunar province while visiting a development project there. Militants had earlier freed Norgrove’s Afghan co-workers.

On Monday, the U.S. military said in a prepared statement that a review of surveillance footage and interviews with members of the rescue team “do not conclusively determine the cause of her death.” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, ordered an investigation into Norgrove’s death, the statement said.

In London, British Prime Minister David Cameron said at a news conference that Petraeus had told him Norgrove may have been killed by a grenade thrown by a member of the U.S. rescue team. Cameron said his foreign secretary, William Hague, had given the go-ahead to launch the rescue effort after deciding that Norgrove was at grave risk. Cameron said Hague’s decision had his support.

“We were clear that Linda’s life was in grave danger and the operation offered the best chance of saving her life,” Cameron told reporters. “I will obviously go over in my mind 100 times whether it was the right decision, but I profoundly believe it was.”

A former United Nations worker, Norgrove was working on a $150-million project for the U.S. aid group Development Alternatives Inc., aimed at strengthening local economies in Afghanistan.

The decision to forge ahead with a rescue mission was made after North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies received a tip about Norgrove’s whereabouts. Six militants holding Norgrove were also killed in the rescue bid.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com

U.S. troops may have killed kidnapped British aid worker during failed rescue attempt

Lorenzo Velez stepped onto the Bell City Council dais Monday night and took his seat as the crowd cheered and applauded the only council member not charged with a crime — and the only one who showed up for the council meeting.

Councilman Luis Artiga had resigned earlier in the day. Councilman George Mirabal remains in jail. And Mayor Oscar Hernandez and Councilwoman Teresa Jacobo — both charged with felonies in the public corruption case that has enveloped the city — didn’t attend the meeting, saying they were ill.

That left Velez, the only council member who never received the inflated salaries paid to other top Bell officials and the only one untainted by the city’s scandals. But while the image of the lone, honest sheriff plays well in movies of the Old West, a single working councilman in a scandal-rocked city can’t do much. And for now, experts say, neither can Bell.

The small, working-class city of roughly 40,000 southeast of downtown Los Angeles has been in governmental chaos ever since July, when The Times disclosed that its city administrator, Robert Rizzo, and other top officials were being paid salaries higher than any other municipal officials in the state. But in recent days, with Rizzo in jail, the municipal credit rating sinking and the City Council unable to meet for lack of a quorum, Bell’s problems have deepened.

In a letter obtained Tuesday by The Times, Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown asked the city to agree to a court-appointed monitor who would have “complete and unfettered access to all matters relating to the City.”

The proposed monitor would have authority to investigate “fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, mismanagement, or any irregularity” in city government and would be able to interview any city official or employee, according to the letter, which Brown e-mailed to city officials Sept. 30. If the city agrees to the monitor, the letter implied, the attorney general’s office would drop its proposal to turn city government over to an appointed receiver.

A monitor could be installed more quickly than a receiver, “and the need to protect the people in Bell was paramount,” said Brown’s spokesman, Jim Finefrock. The attorney general’s office has given the city until Friday to agree to the monitor or else it will continue its push for a receiver.

Pedro Carrillo, Bell’s interim chief administrative officer, said he flew to Sacramento recently and met for several hours with officials from the attorney general’s office. “We will work diligently with all agencies to fix the errors and mistakes of the previous administration,” he said.

But the monitor would not have the authority to run city agencies or set policy. For that, a working City Council is required. And to achieve that goal, legal experts say, Bell has limited options — all of them problematic.

“Running a city without a City Council is virtually impossible,” said Ventura City Manager Rick Cole, a longtime writer on Southern California cities.

Legally, Carrillo, as city administrator, can pay city bills up to $50,000, according to an audit by state Controller John Chiang that was released last month. Amounts greater than $50,000 have to be approved by the council. Also, amendments or approval of resolutions, ordinances and changes to city policies would be put on hold until a quorum is available.

Many Bell residents have called on the remaining three City Council members facing criminal charges — Mirabal, Hernandez and Jacobo — to follow Artiga’s lead and resign. But if that happens, three months probably would be required until a special election could be held to replace them.

Likewise, the effort to recall most council members also could force an election, but again, months off.

“I tell people, when asking for resignations be careful what you wish for because there are no good options,” said Assemblyman Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate), who represents Bell. “In the meantime, the city is almost paralyzed like we saw last night.”

The alternatives to waiting for a new election are largely untested and some may not be legal. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors recently backed the idea of a receiver, who would oversee the city’s affairs, possibly with the power to veto the City Council or make decisions in its place if there is no quorum.

Velez said he is opposed to receivership, but would go along with it if that’s what citizens demand.

“What people don’t understand is that they think we’re still going to participate in the handling of the day-to-day business,” Velez said. “That’s not so. The receiver is going to take over all of the administrative operations and I fear that the city will lose its identity.”

But Patrick Whitnell, general counsel for the League of California Cities, said he has never heard of a city going into receivership, nor could he find any laws that would allow such a step.

The desert mobile home shantytown of Duroville, located on an Indian reservation in Riverside County, was placed into receivership, but Duroville was not an incorporated city with elected council members. Still, Mark Adams, who was the receiver for the shantytown, said the case in Bell seems extreme.

Attorney general pushes for court-appointed monitor in Bell

For months, the budget crisis in Los Angeles has hamstrung and frustrated the city’s homicide detectives. With no money to pay for the long hours of overtime they typically work, LAPD officials saw no choice but to force detectives to take time off from the job. Cases started taking longer to solve or going cold.

The LAPD’s struggles weren’t lost on Robert Clark, an FBI assistant special agent in charge of the bureau’s anti-gang efforts in Los Angeles. Clark’s concern grew as he watched the number of gang-related killings in the city’s violent southern swatch spike in early summer. With agents, cash and equipment to spare, Clark approached LAPD officials with an unusual offer to help.

The results were striking: More than two dozen homicide cases were solved during a first-of-its-kind collaboration of the two agencies.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said veteran LAPD homicide Det. Sal LaBarbera. “We were able to clear cases at a pace that we never would have been able to hit. Twenty-seven homicides in three months? That’s unheard of.”

Though the FBI and LAPD have collaborated before, officials from both agencies said the speed with which the improvised idea came together, the scope of the assistance and its immediate effect were unprecedented.

Named Operation Save Our Streets, the effort began July 1 and teamed six FBI agents with a few dozen LAPD homicide detectives who work in some of the city’s bloodiest, most gang-saturated neighborhoods. With the agents came half a dozen vehicles, badly needed computers and hard drives, and access to the FBI’s forensic laboratory and surveillance equipment. Most importantly, Clark ponied up money to cover the LAPD detectives’ overtime costs, allowing them to forgo the department-wide policy that sends officers home on forced leave when they accrue too many hours of additional work.

The money “kept us working — allowed us to stay at it unrestricted, in the way we need to. Without it, we would have been stuck keeping regular office hours,” LaBarbera said.

The effect of the LAPD’s overtime policy on homicide cases was first reported in The Times in April.

At the start, detectives and agents focused on 13 recent killings in which the detectives believed they had strong leads and a good chance of quick arrests. Within weeks, however, the scope of the project expanded as the agents began joining detectives when they rolled out to fresh crime scenes, as well as helping with cases going back several years. In all, the teams worked on 78 homicides, LaBarbera said.

Often forced to wait for the LAPD’s overworked crime lab to process DNA evidence and conduct other forensic tests, LaBarbera said, detectives got quicker results from the FBI’s lab. Advanced cellphone tracking technology was available, as were surveillance vans outfitted with equipment not owned by the LAPD.

The case of Shavonna Jones, a 30-year-old woman allegedly shot to death by her estranged husband on May 22, underscored the reach of the FBI. LAPD detectives had spent several weeks chasing dead ends throughout the region, but lost the husband’s trail.

On information they gathered from prison inmates who knew the man, FBI agents were able to trace him to an area outside Minneapolis. Calls to the bureau’s Minneapolis field office resulted in his arrest Aug. 12.

“Would we have solved the case? Probably, but it would have taken three or four times as long,” LaBarbera said.

Arrests were also made in Nevada and Arizona. The oldest case solved went back two decades. In all, agents and detectives interviewed more than 250 witnesses and suspects, served more than two dozen search warrants and made 20 arrests, according to LAPD officials. In a few cases, the suspects whom police concluded were responsible for the killings were found to have died.

If there was a downside to the collaboration, LaBarbera said, it was that it was a stark reminder of what LAPD detectives might be able to do with more resources.

“There shouldn’t be a cap or a limit when it comes to somebody’s life,” he said. “If it were my kid, I’d want 1,000 people out there working around the clock.”

joel.rubin@latimes.com
FBI and LAPD join forces to solve more than two dozen homicide cases