WitnessLA.com

• Philadelphia’s Witness Protection Problem

  Threats to witnesses for criminal trials has long been a problem in urban centers, Los Angeles specifically included. But according to a new story in the Philadelphia Inquirer, for the city of brotherly love, the witness problem has become a crisis. Witnesses are winding up dead, and cases are crumbling, [...]
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  Posted: December 16, 2009, 3:04am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Music 4 Babies Behind Bars

  On Sunday, December 20, a very interesting benefit performance is taking place at the Roxy Theater. It starts at 8 p.m. and is titled BABIES BEHIND BARS-–because the $15 a person proceeds will benefit a group of organizations that work to keep kids out of the juvenile justice system: [...]
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  Posted: December 16, 2009, 12:24am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Social Justice Shorts

  Number of comments: 10
  A CALL FOR CONSERVATIVES TO MAKE PRISON REFORM THEIR OWN In an enormously important Op-Ed in Monday’s New York Times, Ross Douthat calls on conservatives to “… take ownership of prison reform, and correct the system they helped build.” The democrats don’t have the credibility to do it he says, and [...]
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  Posted: December 15, 2009, 2:29am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Do Students Have the Right to Be Mean Online?

  Number of comments: 5
  In the aftermath of the 2006 cyber-bullying case that led to 13-year-old Megan Meier’s suicide, there has been a predictable effort to clamp down on any actions by students that seem even vaguely similar to the fatal case. There is also a movement to perhaps criminalize such actions. Now, however, free [...]
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  Posted: December 14, 2009, 11:32am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Posting Late this Morning.

  Number of comments: 3
  Stories soon. Check back. [...]
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  Posted: December 14, 2009, 1:35am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Roses After the Rain

  Number of comments: 10
  (Yes, I’m sure the neighbors did think I was a bit odd trotting around the yard in the early morning barefooted with my iPhone.) [...]
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  Posted: December 13, 2009, 3:47pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• The Invisible New Face of American Prisons

  Number of comments: 10
  In an excellent article in the current issue of The Boston Review, immigration reporter Tom Barry looks at where profit, poverty and immigration policy converge. Barry writes that in depressed communities along the U.S. southwest border, a series of public/private prisons are opening up that are changing the face of [...]
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  Posted: December 11, 2009, 1:00am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Are the LAUSD’s Newest Cuts a Civil Rights Issue?

  Number of comments: 10
  On Monday, California lawmakers saw their pay cut by 18 percent. Instead of earning $116,208 a year, they will drop to $95,291. It was a move that our dear legislators did everything they could to keep from occurring, including pleading with State Attorney General Jerry Brown to declare the cut [...]
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  Posted: December 11, 2009, 12:06am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Jack Weiss, Fred Roggin & Me—on Speed Dial

  Number of comments: 10
  Wednesday night I was on KNBC’s The Filter again, this time with Jack Weiss, the former City Council Member, would-have-liked-to- be-City Attorney. In this segment, we were questioned by Fred Roggin on the following topics: 1. The abortion-related Nelson amendment to the Senate’s version of the health care bill, an amendment [...]
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  Posted: December 10, 2009, 1:37am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Big News! Judge Real Taken off Sanchez Case!……No, Wait…

  Number of comments: 10
  Monday night the news was startling. Alex Sanchez’s attorney Kerry Bensinger learned that US District Court Judge Manuel Real had been taken off the case. Tom Hayden quickly wrote up the news for The Nation. Here is how his report opened: The gang conspiracy case against Alex Sanchez was transferred to [...]
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  Posted: December 09, 2009, 12:23am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• LA Times and Charlie Beck Via Twitter

  Number of comments: 10
  (PHOTO NOTE: A bunch of people posted rainbow-over-Los Angeles photos Monday on Facebook. This one is by my friend, photographer Anne Fishbein. She ran out and snapped it while she had turkey soup cooking in the kitchen.) Monday night, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck sat down at the LA Times for a [...]
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  Posted: December 08, 2009, 12:55am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Tuesday’s Social Justice Shorts

  Number of comments: 10
  WHEN DOES RESTRAINING AND SECLUDING KIDS TURNS ABUSIVE AND DANGEROUS On Wednesday, December 9, Representatives George Miller (D-CA) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) plan to introduce a bill that prevents the misuse of restraint and seclusion on school kids. (Miller is the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. McMorris [...]
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  Posted: December 08, 2009, 12:54am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Arresting Alex Sanchez: Part 7: The 9th Circuit & the Brief

  Number of comments: 10
  In the past few weeks, a new element has been unfolding in the case of Alex Sanchez. (For those unfamiliar with the basics of the case: Alex Sanchez is the El Salvadoran-born, former MS-13 gang member who transformed his life to become a nationally respected gang intervention leader. This past [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 2:29am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Kick-a-Ginger & Better “Demographics”

  Number of comments: 5
  Over the weekend, LA Times’ Sandy Banks wrote a column about the whole, incredibly creepy Kick-a-Ginger day series of incidents that went on at A.E. Wright middle school out in Calabasas. As is usual, Banks has written an insightful column in which she looks at the issue and the ensuing discussion [...]
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  Posted: December 07, 2009, 12:51am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Video Activism…and Pink Gloves

  Well, okay, they don’t have the dance chops of the kids on Glee but this video, produced by Providence St. Vincent Medical Center to promote breast cancer awareness, with 200 of the hospital’s employees participating. has been viewed 3.674,007 times and counting since being posted on Nov. 13. “Our employees put [...]
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  Posted: December 06, 2009, 2:12pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Liam Clancy – 1935-2009: Beat the Drum Slowly

  Number of comments: 4
  Bob Dylan once called him “the best ballad singer I’d ever heard in my life.” Anyone who once hears Liam Clancy sing Waltzing Matilda or The Green Fields of France will have trouble disputing the assessment. Irish folk balladeer Liam Clancy, together with his two brothers, Tom and Paddy, and [...]
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  Posted: December 06, 2009, 12:55am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Battling LA Histories at Father Serra Park: Who Screwed Up?

  Number of comments: 10
  The city of Los Angeles is in the process of building a brand new war memorial named the Eugene A. Obregon Congressional Medal of Honor Memorial, which is to honor all those who have won the medal. Okay, so far so good. As the San Jose Mercury News reports: Crews have nearly [...]
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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 2:59am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Elmore Leonard, an Immigration Raid & Homeless Violinists

  Number of comments: 10
  The PEN USA Annual Literary Awards Dinner was Wednesday night. If one is a writer (or an editor or a writers’ agent) it is fun to hang out for a night with a ballroom full of other writerly types, most of whom look distinctly startled to find themselves dressed up [...]
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  Posted: December 03, 2009, 2:42pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Buried in Work…(Back Soon)

  Number of comments: 10
  Meanwhile, I share my pal Marc (Cooper)’s sentiments about the president’s Afghanistan speech. But in addition to wishing, as Marc does, that Obama had spent some time chatting up Mikhail Gorbachev about his experience in Afghanistan, rather than talking for three months to whoever it was that advised him to [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2009, 3:24am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Huckabee and the Possible Cop Killer

  The LA Times is only one of many papers that is running a story about once and probably future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and Maurice Clemmons, the man suspected of ambushing and killing four Seattle area police officers. It seems that Huckabee granted clemency to Clemmons in 2000. Although, Huckabee [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 3:29am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Illegal and Dreaming

  Number of comments: 10
  The December 1 issue of LA Youth has a very good first-person story by an undocumented So Cal high school girl who wanted desperately to go to college. In other words, what happens when a smart girl and good student has no social security number? Here is how it opens: A [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 1:55am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• More LAPD Command Staff Changes

  Below you’ll find the release that announces the latest round of musical chairs going on at the LAPD, as Chief Charlie Beck continues with his reorganization. Other than the very depressing site of seeing Sharon Papa’s name being snatched away from the role of Assistant Chief to the position of Assistant [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2009, 9:06pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• ED BLUES: An LA Teacher Rejoices In & Grieves for His Students

  Number of comments: 3
  (Posting will be daily, but somewhat light between now and Friday as it is the last week of classes at both USC and UC Irvine, which means I’m reading and making notes on around 5,748,675 pages of rough drafts for students’ final stories. (Yes, that is a slight exaggeration. But [...]
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  Posted: November 30, 2009, 12:03am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• USC 28, UCLA 7: A Few Words About the Squabble

  Number of comments: 10
  Kevin Roderick has the summary. But I have a comment or two. The Trojans dominated in a sloppy game by both sides, but what they’ll be talking about for days (at least) is this: USC throwing a touchdown bomb one play after taking a knee to signify it was playing out [...]
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  Posted: November 29, 2009, 3:03am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Being Thankful….

  Number of comments: 10
  Like most of you, I’m thankful for many, many things. In relation to WitnessLA specifically, I’ll name two: 1. I’m thankful for the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Other than my kid and those whom I love, I can’t think of much I’d die for. But I would die for [...]
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  Posted: November 26, 2009, 12:29am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• LA City Council Says Yes to Medical Marijuana

  Number of comments: 6
  After a meeting that lasted seveTuesday, the LA City Council decided to act sensibly by voting to allow retail dispensaries to continue selling medical marijuana. According to John Hoeffel of the LA Times, the Los Angeles City Council is also strongly considering a draft ordinance that may cap the number [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 12:22am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Charlie Beck: The Shape of the New Command Staff

  Number of comments: 5
  I’ve been madly editing and grading around a zillion pages of student papers (and will be doing so through next Friday), thus I’m a bit slow in posting the list of command staff that new Chief of Police Charlie Beck announced yesterday after noon. The complete text of Beck’s announcement is [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 4:59am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Arresting R*E*V*O*K

  Number of comments: 10
  On Sunday, November 22, a store called 33rd Los Angeles had an event—a group art show— featuring nine nationally famous graffiti artists, one of whom was a 32 year-old star of the medium named Jason Williams, otherwise known as REVOK. The store mainly retails high end graffiti supplies, including Montana [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 4:07am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Sunday, Monday Hits, Picks & Must Reads

  Number of comments: 10
  VANISHING IN A DIGITAL AGE I’m bored out of my mind with the New Conventional Wisdom that persists in opining that the Internets have killed storytelling…..narrative writing….long form journalism…. or what have you, when research and practical observation repeatedly tells us otherwise. We are a storytelling species. I bring this up because [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 12:03am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Charlie Beck’s 1st Staff Meeting: It’s All About the Accessories

  Number of comments: 10
  So ….when you are a brand new chief of police how do you gain the respect and professional devotion of your newly acquired troops? What unmistakable signal can you give that will communicate to your officers that you have their best interests in mind? One method is to give all the [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 12:36am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• UC Regents Hiking, Students Protesting, Cops Dispersing

  Number of comments: 10
  The UC Board of Regents has evidently taken a break in its meeting, which was disrupted by a group of angrily chanting students. At this, the frustrated UCLA police cleared the room of spectators and declared the protest in general unlawful. The UC Board of Regents is set to decide today [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 12:11pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Training the Gang Interventionists – Politics Intervenes

  When all the gang intervention dollars were gathered under the single roof of the mayor’s office two years ago, there were several promises made by then Gang Czar Jeff Carr, to make sure the money was spent wisely. One promise was to train and professionalize the so-called hard core interventionists who [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 1:38am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• The LA Weekly’s Truthiness Problem

  Number of comments: 10
  Yesterday I linked to Kevin Grant’s Neon Tommy story about new LA Weekly editor-in-chief, Drex Heikes and his plans to bring the paper back to strength and relevance. Last night, as I reread Kevin’s piece I got to thinking about what has become so bothersome about the existing LA Weekly [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 11:13pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Can Drex Heikes Rescue the LA Weekly?

  Number of comments: 2
  For many of us, the LA Weekly has been painful to watch in the past couple of years. The economy and the stewardship of a new set of owners—who seemed to care little about the paper’s traditional journalistic strengths—have done discernible damage to what was once the most successful alternative [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 12:21am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Charlie Beck is Confirmed as LA’s 55th LA Police Chief

  Number of comments: 10
  An hour and a half into a meeting that started at 8:30 a.m. or so, and after much self-congratulatory pontificating (on the part of the council members, that is) the Los Angeles City Council has confirmed Charlie Beck as the 55th Chief of the LAPD. Congratulations Chief Charlie. We are utterly [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 10:50am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Social Justice Shorts

  Number of comments: 3
  UPDATE: FROM THE OH, REALLY? SEZ YOU! FILE Once again proving my contention that the world of city politics is just like high school, but with higher stakes, according to the LA Times, District Attorney Steve Cooley said today that he is going to prosecute marijuana dispensaries no matter what the city [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 1:57am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Sunday/Monday Picks & Must Reads

  Number of comments: 10
  THE MATTER OF JUDGE MANUEL L. REAL His reversal rate is estimated to be 10 times the average for sitting federal judges. He has had ten cases outright snatched away from him by appeals courts. In 2006, there was serious talk of impeaching him. The Judicial Council of the U.S. 9th [...]
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  Posted: November 16, 2009, 3:34am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Social Justice Shorts: 2 Cases of Professional Dodging…& More

  Number of comments: 10
  USC’S NEON TOMMY REPORTER CALLIE SCHWEITZER CAUSES LA’S PUBLIC HEALTH GUY TO HIDE OUT Yes I know my pals Marc Cooper and Kevin Roderick already mentioned this, but after reading two inexcusably fact-challenged stories by so-called experienced and professional journalists, this tale of the exploits of Callie Schweitzer and her [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 1:57am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• While Police Were Out Front, Murderer Crept Through a Back Window- UPDATED

  Number of comments: 10
  This report has has been updated, corrected and expanded as I got more information. Sometimes everybody does everything right, and everybody loses anyway. Tragically so. Such was the case with a ghastly stabbing murder and officer involved shooting that took place Wednesday night in a pleasant-looking pink apartment building located at 1344 [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 4:04pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• When a Sex Offender Moves to Your Neighborhood

  Number of comments: 10
  Okay, I believe in second chances, (and third chances, and fourth chances) and I also understand that a lot of people are on the sex offender list who do not really belong there, and are not a danger to anybody. You know the kind I mean: They were nineteen years [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 2:31am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• CA’s Unemployment at 12 percent, But What If You’re a Felon?

  Number of comments: 3
  Unemployment in California is at 12.2 percent and expected to go higher when the new figures come out this month. Newly minted college graduates are having trouble getting jobs. Teachers and other laid off professionals are having trouble. So how bad is the job market for those applicants who, when they [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 2:02am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Happy Veterans Day…With Gratitude

  Number of comments: 10
  With respect and gratitude to those who have served our country.….here is an excerpt from David Finkel’s wonderful new book, The Good Soldiers. The following clip is about soldiers who served in Iraq during the surge. Neither it, nor the book from which it was excerpted, The Good Soldiers, are meant [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 2:01am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Handicapping SCOTUS and Juvenile LWOP

  Monday’s hearings on the two Florida cases, each involving juveniles who received sentences of Life Without the possibility of Parole—LWOP—has had reporters on the Supremes beat scrambling to analyze what exactly the various justices comments and questions portend for the decision. The precedent that both SCOTUS watchers and the justices themselves [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 1:14pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Floating Garbage Nation

  Number of comments: 5
  One should not miss Lindsey Hoshaw’s gruesomely fascinating article in Tuesday’s NY Times, about the vast garbage islands in the Pacific. Most of us had heard about these giant floating garbage collections, but somehow Hoshaw has gone the needed distance to make us feel how impossibly and fantastically awful these [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 1:18am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Jesse Katz and Ressurecting an LA Field of Dreams

  Number of comments: 10
  Saturday night, my pal Jesse Katz had a book reading at Vroman’s in Pasadena, for his newly released memoir, The Opposite Field. Jesse is a former LA Times gang reporter, two-time Pulitzer winner and, up-until-recently, an LA Magazine feature writer. He is also an insightful cultural analyst and a prose [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 12:13am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Suing California’s Prisons Over State-Ordered Solitary

  Number of comments: 10
  Last February I linked to an NPR report by Michael Montgomery about a man named Ernesto Lira, a low-level but chronic petty thief and drug user, who was arrested for 3 grams of meth, and put in solitary confinement in Pelican Bay for nearly eight years. The California Department of Corrections [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 12:10am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Monday Alerts: Charlie Beck & SCOTUS

  CHARLIE BECK & THE COUNCIL Monday, Chief of Police designate Charlie Beck will go before the City Council’s Public Safety committee as the first step of his confirmation process. So far it’s mostly been love and kisses from the council. Greig Smith, the Public Safety committee’s chairman, has said that [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 12:10am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• 11:07 p.m eastern: Health Care Reform Has Passed the House

  Number of comments: 10
  Next step. The Senate. [...]
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  Posted: November 07, 2009, 8:08pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Bratton, Colbert, Beck and….um…McGruff the Crime Dog

  Number of comments: 10
  The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c [...]
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  Posted: November 06, 2009, 10:33am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• 12 Dead at Fort Hood, 31 Wounded

  I’ve put up a live twitter freed about the ongoing Fort Hood story, in the box to the right. Terrible stuff. This morning I was talking to a south LA mother friend about her worry about her son. Earlier in the week, the kid had been stopped and “hit up” by [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 2:52pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon