WitnessLA.com

• 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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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. [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  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 [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 05, 2009, 2:52pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• USC’S Neon Tommy Reporters Tackle the Swine Flu

  Number of comments: 6
  One of the models being talked about for its importance to journalism’s future is the collaboration between journalism schools and public news organizations, particularly non -profits. Today, Thursday, Neon Tommy, one of the student run online publications coming out of the Annenberg School of Journalism demonstrated a case in point with [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 05, 2009, 11:16am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Did Florida’s LWOP 13-year-old Get a Fair Trial?

  Number of comments: 2
  Amy Bach, author of Ordinary Justice: How America Holds Court, has a troubling article in Slate about the question that no one seems to be asking regarding one of the juvenile life cases that will soon be heard by SCOTUS: Namely, did the kid even do the crime that got [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 05, 2009, 2:06am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Meet the New Chief-to-Be

  Number of comments: 1
  Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa invites you personally (plus all your closest friends and associates) to meet Charlie Beck, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Nominee, on Thursday November 5, 2009 at 6:00 p.m. at a Community Town Hall. The Town Hall will take place at the El Sereno Senior Center located at [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 05, 2009, 1:44am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Choosing Charlie Beck: The Spin Factor & the Future

  Number of comments: 3
  Most who closely tracked the selection of, at first, 13-candidates, then three finalists, and finally Deputy Chief Charlie Beck as the yet-to-be confirmed new chief of the LAPD, have likely read the article by Joel Rubin and Phil Willon in Wednesday morning’s paper, an account of the last minute wrestling [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 05, 2009, 1:04am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Back later this morning.

  Number of comments: 10
  Feeling slightly under the weather. But back mid morning with more on the choice of a new chief…..And other news. UPDATE: (Yes, I realize that “mid-morning” has come and gone—as has mid afternoon. I evidently I’m battling the thing that all my students have been getting.) I’m working on a post now, [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 04, 2009, 12:47am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• It’s Charlie!

  Number of comments: 10
  Although many false messages went out last night…… (More about that later or tomorrow.) …The New Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department is Charlie Beck. CONGRATULATIONS TO CHIEF OF POLICE CHARLIE! GREAT choice, Mr. Mayor. (Chosen from a 3-some of strong choices.) The new era begins! P.S. For a glimpse into what [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 03, 2009, 9:01am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Choosing the Chief: THIS IS IT

  Number of comments: 8
  The official announcement is scheduled for Tuesday morning at 11 a.m. at Getty House. The news media will start setting up at 4:30 a.m., and start broadcasting around 8 or 8:30. I was made dizzy contemplating the various rumors that swirled about last night. None were conclusive, but the one thing [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 03, 2009, 1:33am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Choosing the Chief: Rumor Central

  Number of comments: 1
  I am hearing from surprisingly credible sources that everyone’s sure bet of this weekend may not be a sure bet after all. Too early to say what this means. Stay tuned. [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 02, 2009, 8:33pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Choosing the Chief: Tuesday is the New Monday

  Number of comments: 10
  Okay, so we were all geared up, popcorn in hand, waiting for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to announce his selection for Chief of Police on Monday. We were primed. We were deliriously anticipatory. We had paper streamers and noisemakers and were entirely prepared to whoop and holler supportively for whichever of [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 02, 2009, 1:07am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Sunday/Monday Picks

  Number of comments: 2
  BILL BRATTON AS CHIEF – LOOKING BACK Frank Stolz has a very good three-part series that gives a multifaceted perspective on Bill Bratton’s tenure as Chief of the LAPD: 1. What Bratton faced when he arrived—big things, and little things. 2. Bratton’s civil rights legacy —what he did and did not accomplish. 3. Bratton’s [...]
  Share | Rate | Archive

  Posted: November 02, 2009, 1:05am EST
  by Celeste Fremon