Oregon quarterback Dante Moore (5) passes against Indiana during the second half of the Peach Bowl NCAA college football playoff semifinal, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
(AP) – Oregon quarterback Dante Moore has decided to return to the Ducks next season rather than declare for the NFL draft.
Moore, 20, announced his decision on Wednesday on ESPN.
“When it comes to me just making my decision, of course I want to feel most prepared and do what’s best for my situation, especially as a quarterback,” he said. “And with my decision, it’s been very tough. I prayed a lot about it, talked to many people, my mentors, and people I just look up to, and with that being said, of course I’ll be coming back to Oregon for one more year, being able to play for the Oregon Ducks and reach our goal and be national champions.”
This season, Moore completed nearly 72% of his throws for 3, 565 yards, with 30 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Oregon finished 13-2.
Moore had been forecast to be the second quarterback selected in the NFL draft, behind Indiana quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza.
The Ducks were coming off a 56-22 loss to Indiana in a College Football Playoff semifinal Friday night. Moore had three crucial turnovers in the first half, leading to three Indiana touchdowns that gave the Hoosiers a commanding 35-7 lead at halftime.
Moore completed 24 of 39 passes for 285 yards and two touchdowns against the Hoosiers.
Moore began his college career at UCLA but left after one season to sign with Oregon. He backed up Dillon Gabriel last season before moving up to the starting job when Gabriel departed for the NFL.
“I feel like when it comes to me pushing my teammates to make sure that they’re at their best, I can become a better leader,” Moore said about his goals in returning. “And when it comes to my playing style, just dissecting defenses, being able to be comfortable as I see it, if I see a defense that I know I’ve seen this covered before and how to attack it,” he said. “I’m still 20 years old, so I’m still young and I have a lot of memories to make out here in college. I’m excited to be around the guys.”
Oregon coach Dan Lanning said following the Indiana loss that he hoped to have Moore return.
“Dante has been exceptional,” the coach said. “It’s gone right for us 13 times. It didn’t go right tonight. You can’t let that overshadow (the season). Every one of us has unbelievable disappointment. Learn from it.”
Moore’s decision comes after ex-Nebraska quarterback Dylan Raiola announced he’d be transferring to Oregon, and Ducks tight end Kenyon Sadiq and safety Dillon Thieneman declared for the NFL draft.
Sadiq had a team-high 51 receptions for 560 yards and eight touchdowns this past season, his first as a starter. He was expected to be a first-round draft pick.
Thieneman finished the season with 96 tackles, including 3.5 for loss, as well as five pass breakups and two interceptions.
Among the players who have announced they will return to the Ducks include center Iapani Laloulu, a finalists for the Remington Trophy this year, tight end Jamari Johnson and defensive ends Teitum Tuioti and Matayo Uiagalelei.
“At the end of the day, I feel like I can still learn so much more. And of course, as a kid, since I was 4-years old, I’ve dreamed about being in the NFL. But this team, we’ve been through a lot and a lot of people are returning,” Moore said. “And so I feel like we have exciting things coming this year. And I’m excited to keep pushing my team.”
Gov. Wes Moore (D) tapped Sen. Michael A. Jackson (D-Calvert, Charles & Prince George’s) as the next superintendent of the Maryland State Police Friday, replacing Col. Roland L. Butler who is set to retire Nov. 1.
Before he was elected to the legislature, Jackson spent 22 years in the Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Office, the last eight, from 2002-2010, as elected sheriff. He was elected to the House of Delegates in 2014 and appointed to the Senate in 2021, winning reelection to the seat in 2022. He serves on the Budget and Taxation Committee.
“He’s one of our best members,” Senate Majority Leader Nancy King (D-Montgomery) said of Jackson’s work on the commitee “I’m thrilled for him. It’s a good opportunity for him. That makes me sad because he’s a really good friend and he’s really good on Budget and Tax.”
Butler took the helm at the State Police in early 2023, shortly after Moore’s inauguration. He became the first Black superintendent of the State Police in the agency’s history.
In a statement Friday afternoon, Moore applauded Butler for 31 years in law enforcement, calling him a “true public servant.”
“During Colonel Butler’s tenure at the helm of State Police, Maryland has become a national leader in crime reduction and public safety gains. He leaves behind a profound legacy as he enters retirement,” Moore said. “And I also know Senator Michael A. Jackson—an exceptional public servant in his own right—will build on the foundation Colonel Butler laid.”
Butler took the job after a lengthy career in the State Police, including time as chief of the Field Operations Bureau. But he faced a difficult confirmation battle, as a group of Black lawmakers argued that Butler had not done enough to promote diversity and address complaints of racism and discriminatory treatment of Black officers.
At the time, Jackson was one of four senators, all from Prince George’s County, to vote against Butler.
Last year, the State Police agreed to pay $2.75 million to settle a Justice Department investigation that found written and physical hiring tests used by the department discriminated against Black and female applicants.
The investigation in that began in 2022, before Butler’s tenure, and the funds were to be divided between 48 failed applicants. President Donald Trump’s (R) administration has since signaled that it intends to walk away from similar suits around the country.
Butler plans to retire Nov. 1, Moore said, and Jackson will take over Nov. 12. Lt. Col. Daniel C. Pickett will serve as superintendent in the interim.
— Reporter William J. Ford contributed to this report, which may be updated.
Sara Jane Moore, the former psychiatric patient who tried to assassinate President Ford during an era of astonishing violence and upheaval in California, died Wednesday at a nursing home in Franklin, Tenn.
Moore, who retreated to North Carolina after serving 32 years in federal prison but then was jailed again late in life, was 95. News of her death was confirmed by Demetria Kalodimos, executive producer at the Nashville Banner, who developed a relationship with Moore over the last two years. A cause of death was not reported, but Kalodimos said Moore had been bedridden for about 15 months after a fall.
As shocking as Moore’s attempt to kill the president was, it seemed a little less so during the frenetic 1970s.
It was 1975 in San Francisco. Charles Manson was on death row, kidnap victim-turned-accomplice Patty Hearst had just been arrested, and a very young governor named Jerry Brown was in his first year in office.
Moore chose this moment for a shocking crime in an era nearly defined by them — on Sept. 22, 1975, she tried to assassinate Ford in front of the fashionable St. Francis Hotel.
She was the second would-be assassin to confront the 38th president in the space of a month.
Her bullet missed, thanks to the quick reflexes of a former Marine standing next to her.
The attempt came just 17 days after a Manson follower in a nun’s habit, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, pointed a gun at Ford in Sacramento. It was never clear whether she tried to pull the trigger.
News accounts of the time portrayed Moore as an enigma. They emphasized her supposedly conventional past. She was described as an average housewife and mother whose conversion to radical politics seemed an unlikely twist. She herself insisted she had been a relatively normal suburbanite before joining the leftist underground.
It wasn’t true. Moore’s entire adult life had been punctuated by mental health issues, divorces and suicide attempts. Many people who knew her described her as unstable and mercurial.
Born Sara Jane Kahn on Feb. 15, 1930, in Charleston, W. Va., Moore had been an aspiring actress and nurse before finding work as a bookkeeper. She married five times, was estranged from her family, and abandoned three of her children. A fourth remained in her care at the time of the attempted assassination. Her erratic behavior had cost her jobs, and she had been treated for mental illness numerous times.
This history led some, including Ford himself, to conclude that she was “off her mind,” as the former president said in a 2004 CNN interview.
She was in her mid-40s, divorced and living in Danville, outside San Francisco, when she went to work in 1974 as a bookkeeper for People in Need. The organization had been set up to distribute food in response to ransom demands by the Symbionese Liberation Army, the extreme leftist group that had kidnapped Hearst in early 1974 and shortly after engaged in a furious gun battle with Los Angeles police, one of the longest shootouts in U.S. history.
Moore’s ties to other radical organizations were murky. She would later cast herself as a sought-after FBI informant who had come to live in fear of some unspecified threat. Its source was either from the government or her radical brethren, depending on the interview. Authorities downplayed this, saying her occasional calls to agents and local police officers were unsolicited.
Hearst had been arrested a few days before the assassination attempt. The day before, the 45-year-old Moore had been detained by San Francisco police officers who seized a gun from her. She made a vague threat and the Secret Service was alerted, but agents concluded she was not dangerous and released her.
Moore immediately bought a .38 caliber revolver.
Wearing polka-dot slacks, she went to the hotel where Ford was speaking to the World Affairs Council. She waited outside, and raised her arm to fire when the president emerged at 3:30 p.m. Oliver Sipple, a disabled former Marine standing next to her, saw the weapon and deflected her arm just as the gun went off.
The bullet went over the president’s head, ricocheted and injured a taxi driver. The president’s security detail rushed to the airport, and Ford was whisked out of California as fast as possible.
After her arrest, acquaintances said Moore was very concerned that people would assume she was mentally ill. She alluded often to her political motives for trying to kill Ford. Reporters eagerly interviewed her to learn more, but she never seemed able to clearly explain her political agenda.
Her lawyers were preparing a defense related to her mental condition when she abruptly pleaded guilty, against their advice. She was given a life sentence with a possibility of parole. Moore’s attempt prompted Senate scrutiny of presidential security.
“Am I sorry I tried?” Moore said at her sentencing. “Yes and no. Yes, because it accomplished little except to throw away the rest of my life, although I realize there are those who think that’s the one good thing resulting from this. And no, I’m not sorry I tried, because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger.”
Moore made headlines briefly again in 1979 when she escaped fbriefly from the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, W.Va., by climbing a 12-foot fence.
Otherwise, her prison years were uneventful. She was reported to fill her time with needlepoint and bookkeeping duties, and was paroled in 2007 at the age of 77 from a low-security federal facility for women in Dublin, east of San Francisco. Her parole was essentially grandfathered by federal rules that have since been tightened.
“It was a time that people don’t remember,” Moore told NBC’s “Today” show in 2009. “You know we had a war … the Vietnam War, you became, I became, immersed in it. We were saying the country needed to change. The only way it was going to change was a violent revolution. I genuinely thought that [shooting Ford] might trigger that new revolution.”
In 2015, Moore was interviewed remotely by CNN, her location only listed as North Carolina.
Moore was jailed again in early 2019 when she was detained at JFK Airport for traveling outside the country without telling parole officials. Friends said she had become ill in Israel, forcing her to stay longer than she intended. She was released six months later.
Moore maintained that she had not been influenced by Fromme’s assault on Ford. Fromme was paroled in 2009 and moved to upstate New York, largely disappearing. Both women were depicted in the Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins,” which won a Tony Award in 2004.
Sipple, who deflected the shot, was lauded as a hero but later sued several newspapers for invasion of privacy. He said media reports that he was gay had ruined his family relations, but he lost the case. He died in 1989.
Subsequent attacks on public figures would eclipse Moore’s crime. Three years later, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated. John Lennon’s murder came two years after that, and John Hinckley Jr.’s shooting of President Reagan a few months later.
Ford, who died of natural causes at age 93 in 2006, was said to be nonplussed by Moore’s attempt on his life. But other members of his entourage saw it as consistent with the place and time.
Asked by the San Francisco Chronicle to sum up the event, Ford’s press secretary Ron Nessen, who was with him when he was targeted, framed it this way: “It was the ‘70s in San Francisco and California.”
Some National Guard units patrolling the nation’s capital at the direction of President Donald Trump have started carrying firearms, an escalation of his military deployment that makes good on a directive issued late last week by his defense secretary.A Defense Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly said some units on certain missions would be armed — some with handguns and others with rifles. The spokesperson said that all units with firearms have been trained and are operating under strict rules for use of force.Video above: President Trump greets, thanks National Guard and federal agents during trip into D.C.An Associated Press photographer on Sunday saw members of the South Carolina National Guard outside Union Station with holstered handguns.A statement from the joint task force that has taken over policing in the nation’s capital said units began carrying their service weapons on Sunday and that the military’s rules say force should be used “only as a last resort and solely in response to an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm.” It said the force is committed to protecting “the safety and wellbeing” of Washington’s residents.The defense official who spoke to The Associated Press said only troops on certain missions would carry guns, and that would include those patrolling to establish a law enforcement presence throughout the capital. Those working in transportation or administration would likely remain unarmed.The development in Trump’s extraordinary effort to override the law enforcement authority of state and local governments comes as he is considering expanding the deployments to other Democratic-led cities, including Baltimore, Chicago and New York.Earlier Sunday, the president threatened to expand his military deployments to more Democratic-led cities, responding to an offer by Maryland’s governor to join him in a tour of Baltimore by saying he might instead “send in the ‘troops.’” He earlier said he was considering deploying troops to Chicago and New York.Thousands of National Guard and federal law enforcement officers are now patrolling the district’s streets, drawing sporadic protests from local residents.Trump made the threat to Baltimore in a spat with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat who has criticized Trump’s unprecedented flex of federal power aimed at combatting crime and homelessness in Washington. Moore last week invited Trump to visit his state to discuss public safety and walk the streets. In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said Moore asked “in a rather nasty and provocative tone,” and then raised the specter of repeating the National Guard deployment he made in Los Angeles over the objections of California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom. Video below: National Guard deployment increases in Washington, D.C.”Wes Moore’s record on Crime is a very bad one, unless he fudges his figures on crime like many of the other ‘Blue States’ are doing,” Trump wrote, as he cited a pejorative nickname he uses frequently for the California governor. “But if Wes Moore needs help, like Gavin Newscum did in L.A., I will send in the ‘troops,’ which is being done in nearby DC, and quickly clean up the Crime.”Moore said he invited Trump to Maryland “because he seems to enjoy living in this blissful ignorance” about improving crime rates in Baltimore. After a spike during the pandemic that matched nationwide trends, Baltimore’s violent crime rate has fallen. The 200 homicides reported last year were down 24% from the prior year and 42% since 2021, according to city data. Between 2023 and 2024, overall violent crime was down nearly 8% and property crimes down 20%.”The president is spending all of his time talking about me,” Moore said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “I’m spending my time talking about the people I serve.”Trump is “spouting off a bunch of lies about public safety in Maryland,” Moore said in a fundraising email. In Washington, where Trump is surging National Guard troops and federal law enforcement officers, a patchwork of protests popped up throughout the city over the weekend, while some normally bustling corners were noticeably quiet. In some of the most populated areas, residents walked by small groups of national guardsmen, often talking among themselves. Videos of arrests and detainments circulated on social media.Trump has said Chicago and New York are most likely his next targets, eliciting strong pushback from Democratic leaders in both states. The Washington Post reported Saturday that the Pentagon has spent weeks preparing for an operation in Chicago that would include National Guard troops and potentially active-duty forces.Asked about the Post report, the White House pointed to Trump’s earlier comments discussing his desire to expand his use of military forces to target local crime.”I think Chicago will be our next,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday, adding, “And then we’ll help with New York.”Trump has repeatedly described some of the nation’s largest cities — run by Democrats, with Black mayors and majority-minority populations — as dangerous and filthy. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott is Black, as is Moore. The District of Columbia and New York also have Black mayors.The Rev. Al Sharpton, speaking during a religious event Sunday at Howard University in Washington, said the Guard’s presence in the nation’s capital was not about crime: “This is about profiling us.””This is laced with bigotry and racism,” he later elaborated to reporters. “Not one white mayor has been designated. And I think this is a civil rights issue, a race issue, and an issue of D.C. statehood.”Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said there is no emergency warranting the deployment of National Guard troops in Chicago.”Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he’s causing families,” Pritzker wrote on X. “We’ll continue to follow the law, stand up for the sovereignty of our state, and protect Illinoisans.”Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said the city doesn’t need “a military occupation” and would sue to block one. He said there has been no communication from the White House about a possible military deployment.”We’re not going to surrender our humanity to this tyrant,” Johnson said Sunday on MSNBC. “I can tell you this, the city of Chicago has a long history of standing up against tyranny, resisting those who wish to undermine the interests of working people.” Cooper reported from Phoenix.
WASHINGTON —
Some National Guard units patrolling the nation’s capital at the direction of President Donald Trump have started carrying firearms, an escalation of his military deployment that makes good on a directive issued late last week by his defense secretary.
A Defense Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly said some units on certain missions would be armed — some with handguns and others with rifles. The spokesperson said that all units with firearms have been trained and are operating under strict rules for use of force.
Video above: President Trump greets, thanks National Guard and federal agents during trip into D.C.
An Associated Press photographer on Sunday saw members of the South Carolina National Guard outside Union Station with holstered handguns.
A statement from the joint task force that has taken over policing in the nation’s capital said units began carrying their service weapons on Sunday and that the military’s rules say force should be used “only as a last resort and solely in response to an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm.” It said the force is committed to protecting “the safety and wellbeing” of Washington’s residents.
The defense official who spoke to The Associated Press said only troops on certain missions would carry guns, and that would include those patrolling to establish a law enforcement presence throughout the capital. Those working in transportation or administration would likely remain unarmed.
The development in Trump’s extraordinary effort to override the law enforcement authority of state and local governments comes as he is considering expanding the deployments to other Democratic-led cities, including Baltimore, Chicago and New York.
Earlier Sunday, the president threatened to expand his military deployments to more Democratic-led cities, responding to an offer by Maryland’s governor to join him in a tour of Baltimore by saying he might instead “send in the ‘troops.’” He earlier said he was considering deploying troops to Chicago and New York.
Thousands of National Guard and federal law enforcement officers are now patrolling the district’s streets, drawing sporadic protests from local residents.
Trump made the threat to Baltimore in a spat with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat who has criticized Trump’s unprecedented flex of federal power aimed at combatting crime and homelessness in Washington. Moore last week invited Trump to visit his state to discuss public safety and walk the streets.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said Moore asked “in a rather nasty and provocative tone,” and then raised the specter of repeating the National Guard deployment he made in Los Angeles over the objections of California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom.
Video below: National Guard deployment increases in Washington, D.C.
“Wes Moore’s record on Crime is a very bad one, unless he fudges his figures on crime like many of the other ‘Blue States’ are doing,” Trump wrote, as he cited a pejorative nickname he uses frequently for the California governor. “But if Wes Moore needs help, like Gavin Newscum did in L.A., I will send in the ‘troops,’ which is being done in nearby DC, and quickly clean up the Crime.”
Moore said he invited Trump to Maryland “because he seems to enjoy living in this blissful ignorance” about improving crime rates in Baltimore. After a spike during the pandemic that matched nationwide trends, Baltimore’s violent crime rate has fallen. The 200 homicides reported last year were down 24% from the prior year and 42% since 2021, according to city data. Between 2023 and 2024, overall violent crime was down nearly 8% and property crimes down 20%.
“The president is spending all of his time talking about me,” Moore said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “I’m spending my time talking about the people I serve.”
Trump is “spouting off a bunch of lies about public safety in Maryland,” Moore said in a fundraising email.
In Washington, where Trump is surging National Guard troops and federal law enforcement officers, a patchwork of protests popped up throughout the city over the weekend, while some normally bustling corners were noticeably quiet. In some of the most populated areas, residents walked by small groups of national guardsmen, often talking among themselves. Videos of arrests and detainments circulated on social media.
Trump has said Chicago and New York are most likely his next targets, eliciting strong pushback from Democratic leaders in both states. The Washington Post reported Saturday that the Pentagon has spent weeks preparing for an operation in Chicago that would include National Guard troops and potentially active-duty forces.
Asked about the Post report, the White House pointed to Trump’s earlier comments discussing his desire to expand his use of military forces to target local crime.
“I think Chicago will be our next,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday, adding, “And then we’ll help with New York.”
Trump has repeatedly described some of the nation’s largest cities — run by Democrats, with Black mayors and majority-minority populations — as dangerous and filthy. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott is Black, as is Moore. The District of Columbia and New York also have Black mayors.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, speaking during a religious event Sunday at Howard University in Washington, said the Guard’s presence in the nation’s capital was not about crime: “This is about profiling us.”
“This is laced with bigotry and racism,” he later elaborated to reporters. “Not one white mayor has been designated. And I think this is a civil rights issue, a race issue, and an issue of D.C. statehood.”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said there is no emergency warranting the deployment of National Guard troops in Chicago.
“Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he’s causing families,” Pritzker wrote on X. “We’ll continue to follow the law, stand up for the sovereignty of our state, and protect Illinoisans.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said the city doesn’t need “a military occupation” and would sue to block one. He said there has been no communication from the White House about a possible military deployment.
“We’re not going to surrender our humanity to this tyrant,” Johnson said Sunday on MSNBC. “I can tell you this, the city of Chicago has a long history of standing up against tyranny, resisting those who wish to undermine the interests of working people.”
Women make up nearly 20% of the department and are similarly reflected in middle management, working as sergeants and lieutenants. A woman runs the elite Major Crimes Division, and two hold positions of influence in the counterterrorism and transit services bureaus. The Office of Constitutional Policing and Policy is overseen by a civilian who is a woman.
But the unfolding search for Moore’s replacement has exposed a stark reality: There are few women on the force with the rank and experience to compete for the top job.
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore announces his retirement at a news conference at L.A. City Hall on Jan. 12.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Of Moore’s 12 deputy chiefs, two are women. All three of his assistant chiefs are men.
The imbalance has fueled criticism of Moore over what some have seen as slow progress on gender equity under his leadership and an unwillingness to challenge a culture of sexism and harassment that has resulted in numerouslawsuits by LAPD officers in recent years.
The Police Commission, which will pick an interim chief, held an emergency closed-door meeting Jan. 19 to narrow down a list of contenders. According to LAPD sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the confidential search, the list includes two women, former assistant chiefs Sandy Jo MacArthur and Beatrice Girmala, and a number of high-ranking men who are currently serving.
After Chief Charlie Beck retired in 2018, there was speculation around City Hall and police headquarters that the moment could be ripe for the first female chief. But Girmala, an early favorite, did not apply, and MacArthur — who retired in 2015 — did not make the final list of three candidates.
The job eventually went to Moore. Girmala and two high-ranking women of color, Regina Scott and Beverly Lewis, left the LAPD in the intervening years. Their ranks were filled by men.
Before announcing his decision to retire, Moore defended his record in an interview with The Times, saying he has promoted each of the few women eligible to become commander; roughly 1 in 4 LAPD officers holding that rank now are women. Moore also pointed to the number of women working on antigang teams and other specialized units that were once considered off-limits to them.
“Twenty years ago, these units would have none or one,” Moore said. “These positions and experience build proficiency and confidence for officers to go to the next level of leadership.”
The LAPD is facing the same problems recruiting and retaining women as other U.S. police forces, and that has severely shrunk the pool of promotional candidates, Moore said.
MacArthur, who had a 41-year LAPD career, said past chiefs such as William Bratton “really paid a lot of attention in developing the leadership inside the department,” including for several women.
LAPD career development, MacArthur said, typically started at the captain level and continued with mentorship and exposure to a variety of roles. The process paved the way for the next generation of leaders to learn the nuts and bolts of running a multibillion-dollar organization and to prove their readiness for more responsibility.
“You do things to develop a ‘bench,’ so that the next time a chief leaves, you hopefully have multiple somebodies inside an organization who could potentially take over the job,” MacArthur said in an interview last year.
Other women who seemed poised for promotion within the LAPD have languished for years before making captain or commander.
Cmdr. Lillian Carranza, a 33-year LAPD veteran.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Among them was Lillian Carranza, a longtime captain who was one of the three women promoted to commander at the summer ceremony at LAPD headquarters. Her name had been near the top of a list of commander candidates since May 2018. Yet she was passed over for promotion again and again.
Carranza has sued the department several times for sexual harassment. One suit resulted in her being awarded $4 million in damages over leadership’s handing of a situation in which officers circulated a photo of a nude woman that some falsely claimed was her. Since 2018, at least eight men who were ranked below her on the eligibility list have been promoted to deputy chief or assistant chief.
Even with the promotions, women are disproportionately underrepresented among Moore’s innermost circle of decision-makers, his critics say. Some department insiders say a perceived lack of opportunity has led to the departure of several high-ranking female officials in recent years.
The reasons for this are many, the insiders say. One theory is the widespread perception of tokenism — the belief that women have a real shot only at leadership roles that were vacated by other women. Others say the department is not doing enough to provide mentoring and networking opportunities for female employees. Additionally, officers who are mothers sometimes delay seeking advancement until their kids are older or gravitate toward investigative roles with more family-friendly schedules that may not put them on the fast-track for promotion.
The two highest-ranking women in the department are both deputy chiefs. One is Ruby Flores, who had been one of the longest-serving commanders before her promotion in November to replace a retiring male deputy chief, Kris Pitcher.
The other is Emada Tingirides. She was promoted by Moore in 2020 and is considered a rising star who helped shape the LAPD’s community policing approach. In a jump that was nearly unprecedented, Tingirides skipped several ranks when she was elevated from junior captain.
Tingirides led the Community Safety Partnership bureau, which has been credited with reducing violent crime and improving relationships in some of the city’s most troubled housing developments. In 2023, she was placed in charge of the South Bureau, the department’s busiest, a move seen as offering the operational experience she missed because of her rapid ascension.
For months, her name has been bandied around police headquarters and City Hall as a possible chief candidate, along with current Assistant Chief Blake Chow and Art Acevedo, a career lawman who once served as chief of the California Highway Patrol and went on to be the top cop in Houston and Miami, according to sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the hiring search publicly.
The graduating class of police officers and new recruits at the LAPD Police Academy on Dec. 7.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Female officers at the LAPD and elsewhere are said to face a “brass ceiling” that blocks advancement, similar to the invisible blockade that has led to male-dominated executive leadership in the fields of politics, business and tech.
Critics argue that Moore hasn’t done enough to break down the barrier, repeatedly passing up qualified female candidates and promoting men instead. An internal LAPD analysis obtained by The Times shows that Moore elevated 35 men to the rank of commander and above during his first five years as chief, compared with just five women.
Until the 1970s, the few female officers who served were required to wear long skirts and nylons and were barred from riding in patrol cars. Most were entrusted to work only on juvenile cases. They were not allowed to be promoted above the rank of sergeant.
Consent decrees and court orders would force the department to diversify its ranks in the decades that followed.
The mostly white and male LAPD branded in the country’s imagination by TV shows like “Dragnet” is no more. Some of Moore’s backers credit him with recent contributions to the diversity efforts. Moore promoted two Asian American men to assistant chief, and officials of color run three of the four geographical bureaus.
The department is now more than half Latino, much like the racially diverse city it patrols. And the sight of a female supervisor running a crime briefing barely rates a glance anymore from officers filing into a roll call room. Women now make up about 19% of the LAPD, compared with an average of 12% at other departments nationwide.
Moore, second from left, inspects graduates of the LAPD Academy on Oct. 20.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
While hurdles remain, women wearing LAPD blue today are encouraged to pursue career opportunities, said Cmdr. Shannon Paulson, a 33-year department veteran who is second-in-command at the Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau. “In many respects, it’s better than society at large,” she said.
But the LAPD’s ratio of women to men is roughly the same as it was in 1997, the year Betty Kelepecz became the first female commander.
Female police executives are still a rarity, although recent years have seen New York City, Atlanta, Sacramento, San Francisco and Seattle hiring women to run their police departments. Washington has a female police chief, and women hold 10 of the 18 top command positions. Houston and Dallas also have a significantly higher number of female senior staffers than the LAPD.
While there’s no consensus on whether female officers have a different philosophy on policing than their male colleagues, studies have shown them to be less prone to violence and more likely to use problem-solving skills to de-escalate volatile situations.
Women in leadership tend to be more collaborative and are more likely to challenge long-standing ideas about policing, at a time when departments across the country are under pressure to change police behavior, according to Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney who has worked closely with the LAPD on reforms in recent years.
Department officials may have rooted out the outright sexism that prevailed in law enforcement for decades, evidenced by male officers who didn’t want to work with women or refused to back up female colleagues on calls, according to Rice. But the LAPD is still dogged by allegations that a crude, misogynistic culture exists within the ranks, she said, and women in uniform face obstacles to advancement.
“The men get to run the 100-meter dash, and the women get to run the 200-meter hurdles,” said Rice. “When it comes to promotions, the comments are, ‘She’s not tough enough.’ They’ll find every reason in the world not to promote a woman. But they’ll promote their drinking buddies.”
Others disagree, saying that despite the challenges they face, women wearing the LAPD uniform have more opportunities than those in other agencies.
Moore has met regularly with representatives of the Los Angeles Women Police Officers and Associates, which seeks to boost recruitment of female officers. Moore has also internally touted his efforts to improve gender equity, boasting at a meeting of command staff several weeks ago that he has promoted more women than any of his predecessors to ranks of captain or higher.
Some insiders fear that in the LAPD’s relationship-based culture, such efforts are undermined by a perception that officers are more likely to move up the ranks based on who they know, rather than on merit.
Los Angeles Police Protective League director Debbie Thomas wrote last August in her column in the police union’s monthly magazine that hiring and promotional decisions are driven in large part by “identity-based goals,” rather than “merit.”
“As a female officer, I stand to benefit from these quotas if they existed,” Thomas wrote, adding that she is “1,000%” against such a system. “I don’t need the help an identity boost can provide, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to come to work having those I lead snipe at my heels because they are convinced I didn’t earn my way to the position.”
In his interview with The Times, Moore denied that the department promotes people who aren’t qualified, saying he had taken steps to bring greater fairness to a promotional process that for years “people believed was biased and unfair.”
At the same time, he acknowledged the headwinds in trying to attain greater diversity.
“Having a substantial number of women in law enforcement is a new concept that is only now beginning to be seen and not just talked about,” he said. “As with any cultural evolution, it challenges the convictions of some, manifesting into allegations of not being qualified.”
Mayor Karen Bass meets a graduating class of officers.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Mayor Karen Bass has promised a nationwide search for a replacement for Moore. At the end of the process, which will likely take months, the commission will present Bass with its top three candidates, then her pick will be voted on by the City Council. Moore has said he will stay on until that time in a consulting role.
Pundits say picking a chief is one of the most consequential decisions a mayor makes.
Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore announced Friday that he will step down as head of the LAPD at the end of February, after which time the city and department officials will begin the process of finding a new leader to take over one of the most unique and challenging jobs in law enforcement.
At a news conference with Mayor Karen Bass, Moore said he was proud of his career at the department and choked back tears.
“During my tenure, I know I’ve made mistakes and missteps,” Moore said. “But I’m also confident that my work has seen success across a broad spectrum of topics unmatched by any other law enforcement agency in this country.”
Bass praised Moore and thanked him for his work, saying he made the decision to leave recently.
“Chief Moore let me know that his timeline was moving up to spend more time with his family,” Bass said. “This means, of course, that the police commission will have to appoint an interim chief and a nationwide search will be conducted now because his timeline was moved up and that was unexpected.”
Bass said she had asked Moore to “serve in a consulting capacity to assist an interim chief,” and that he had agreed to the offer.
Moore has endured a series of department controversies in recent months, including a string of officer misconduct incidents and a whistleblower complaint that alleged that two detectives were ordered to investigate Bass shortly after her election. Moore vehemently denied the allegations.
Before his reappointment in January 2023 to a second five-year term as the city’s top cop, Moore said he would serve for two or three years before turning the department over to a new chief ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games.
Moore said at the time he wanted more time to finish the job he started when he took over the department in 2018. Moore said he wanted to continue reforms on use of force and diversity and avoid a “haphazard” transition before the Olympics, which are set to start soon after his full second term would have expired. He said he would spend the next few years laying the groundwork for a succession plan.
Bass reappointed Moore to a second five-year term over the concern of critics who argued that the scope of scandals that have plagued the department during his tenure reflected a poor track record for any leader.
Moore’s backers say the department has embraced reforms in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other flash points from 2020, including expanding community outreach efforts and placing new limits on pretextual traffic stops that Moore said “undermined public trust and confidence but also added little merit from a law enforcement standpoint.”
The LAPD has gotten more diverse under his watch, Moore said. He has also defended his record of promoting female officers, pointing out a series of recent appointments of female officials, including one to deputy chief.
The latest LAPD data indicate that crime is trending downward, and Moore had enjoyed the public support of Bass and the Police Commission. In recent months, though, the department has been roiled by allegations that one of Moore’s assistant chiefs surreptitiously tracked an officer with whom he’d been romantically involved, and a scandal involving gang unit officers suspected of thefts and illegal stops.
The episodes renewed questions about management and oversight of the nation’s third-largest police department.
Then last month, two detectives in the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division filed complaints alleging they were ordered to investigate Bass, possibly at Moore’s behest. The claims are being investigated by the inspector general’s office.
Moore denied the allegations, telling The Times: “I have no such knowledge of any alleged investigation nor would I initiate any such investigation.”
The 63-year-old Moore secured the police chief’s job in 2018 after nearly four decades with the LAPD, rising through the ranks and becoming known for his statistics-driven policing approach. He was at the helm at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw a marked rise in violent crimes and homicides in L.A., as elsewhere. Last year, however, there was a drop in violent crimes and homicides, a decline that has continued through most of 2023.
Moore pledged a more compassionate approach to policing following his appointment by Mayor Eric Garcetti. Early in his tenure, he weathered severe criticism for his handling of mass demonstrations in Los Angeles over the deaths of Floyd and other Black Americans killed in police custody. Officers were repeatedly accused of using heavy-handed tactics against protesters who took to the streets.
Moore has also faced the challenge of running a department that is several hundred officers short of its allotted strength of 9,500 officers, a gap that made it harder to keep police on the streets.
Bass, who took office in December 2022 after campaigning on the promise of bringing more police accountability and transparency, said previously she believed Moore shared her desire to see the department improve its recruitment of “reform-minded” officers and change how it responds to calls involving the mentally ill.
But Moore’s leadership has come into question as several of his top commanders and closest confidantes have become caught up in scandals. One assistant chief retired under a cloud of suspicion, after being caught having sex with a subordinate in a government car.
Another LAPD captain was found to have leaked confidential details of a sex crime victim and her police report to the alleged perpetrator, then CBS head Les Moonves.
In 2022, a jury awarded a female Los Angeles police commander $4 million in damages for a sexual harassment lawsuit against the city over a nude photograph that was doctored to look like her and shared around the department.
In 2021, a botched fireworks explosion by the department’s bomb squad leveled a South L.A. neighborhood. Moore faced withering criticism over the incident. Last July, he issued a statement promising to improve the department.
“This neighborhood is resilient, and we will continue the work of repairing our relationship with this community we have sworn to protect and serve,” Moore said.
Times legal affairs reporter Kevin Rector contributed to this report.
Less than 24 hours after news broke that a serial predator might be targeting some of Los Angeles’ most vulnerable residents, police on Saturday announced the arrest of a suspect linked to the homicides of three homeless men across the city in the past week.
Jerrid Joseph Powell, 33, is accused of walking up to men in three different Los Angeles neighborhoods over a four-day span, killing each for no apparent reason, Police Chief Michel Moore said Saturday.
Moore described the killings as “senseless” and said footage of at least one homicide shows Powell acting borderline indifferent as he takes a man’s life.
“It was chilling and I’ve been in this work for four-plus decades,” Moore said of the Monday killing of Mark Diggs. “The cold-blooded manner in which he walks up and shoots this individual without any hesitation, no interactions.”
Powell was arrested Wednesday night by Beverly Hills police after his car was linked to the Sunday killing of 42-year-old Nicholas Simbolon in San Dimas. Powell allegedly robbed Simbolon at his home and shot him in what authorities have termed a “follow home robbery.” Simbolon, who worked for the L.A. County chief executive’s office, is survived by his wife, his mother and two sons, officials said.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said a 2024 BMW belonging to Powell was spotted at the scene of Simbolon’s slaying, and Beverly Hills police spotted the car and arrested Powell after a traffic stop late Wednesday.
Moore said investigators linked the car to the killings of the homeless victims, though he didn’t say how, and confirmed that a handgun recovered during Powell’s arrest has been tied to all four shootings.
While Powell was already in custody before Friday’s news conference, Moore said Saturday that investigators did not definitively connect him to the killings of the homeless victims until sometime “in the last 16 hours.”
A motive remains unclear. Moore said it appeared that the gunman was attacking homeless people who were isolated from groups. None of the homeless victims appear to have been robbed. It also does not appear Powell knew Simbolon or the homeless men.
Powell has a lengthy criminal history, including felony convictions, according to Moore, who said police are looking for additional victims. Moore said investigators will try to reconstruct Powell’s movements to see if he left “a path of destruction behind him that we have not yet determined.”
Authorities said the first shooting happened at 3:10 a.m. on Sunday in South L.A., when 37-year-old Jose Bolanos was found dead in an alleyway near 110th Street and Vermont Avenue. Bolanos was sleeping on a couch when he was shot, Moore said.
Roughly 24 hours later, Diggs, 62, was shot in the 600 block of Mateo Street in the Arts District. Diggs was pushing a shopping cart and had stopped to plug in his phone, according to Moore, who said the victim was about to go to sleep when the assailant opened fire.
The third shooting occurred Wednesday around 2:30 a.m. near Avenue 18 and Pasadena Avenue in the Lincoln Heights area, where the body of a 52-year-old Latino man was discovered. Police have not released the man’s identity yet, pending notification of his family.
The shootings came to light Friday hours before a gunman shot five homeless people beneath a Las Vegas freeway overpass, authorities said. One man died of his injuries and another was in critical condition. The other victims were listed as stable, police said. No one has been arrested in that case.
Murder charges are expected to be filed early next week, according to Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón. He said prosecutors will consider filing special circumstances enhancements in the case. If that happens, Powell would face life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The spasm of violence sparked immediate concern among the city’s homeless populations and those who minister to people living on the city’s streets. In an emergency meeting with outreach coordinators and service providers on Friday afternoon, LAPD officials asked advocates to urge people to either seek shelter space for the night or at least stay in groups until the killer was caught.
News of the suspect’s arrest on Saturday made Jose Fajardo, 64, feel more at ease.
“This is good news,” he said, smiling. “For those of us living outdoors, it gives us a sense of peace knowing he’s been caught.”
Fajardo was unaware of the killings until a Times reporter informed him about it Friday night. He lives in the Vermont Vista neighborhood, where the first homicide occurred six days ago.
The killings made him rethink scavenging for recyclables Saturday morning, since the slayings often took place during the early hours of the day. Instead, he slept in.
Not far from where Fajardo stayed, 41-year-old Eric Muñoz was sweeping trash outside of his RV. He said he was an acquaintance of Bolanos, the man killed near 110th and Vermont.
“He was cool and never got into arguments with people and would try to avoid conflicts,” Muñoz said. “He often spoke about his family, his daughter and how he wanted to get his life in order and return to them. I told him do it, just go and do it. ”
Hearing of the arrest Saturday afternoon, Muñoz nodded in approval.
“I’m glad they got the person,” he said. “Give him the chair.”
But the arrest did not make Muñoz feel any safer. He’s always on alert, and the killings made him worry that someone could easily attack him while he’s sweeping the area outside of his RV.
“I stay here with my girlfriend, they can also just get in the RV and do something,” he said, pointing to a side window of the vehicle. “Someone already broke a window, so you never know. I’m always on alert.”
In Little Tokyo, 46-year-old Amber Schoen had just returned to her tent after washing her clothes when her sister drove up and rushed toward her.
“She didn’t say hi or anything, she just immediately said, ‘I want you to know there’s a serial killer on a mad rampage killing people who are sleeping on the ground,’” Schoen said. “She just wanted me to be careful.”
Schoen was relieved to hear of the arrest, but said she knows she needs to remain vigilant sleeping on the street.
“You can’t let the foot off the gas, so to speak,” she said. “I try to stay in my tent at night and not go out.”
Times staff writer Richard Winton and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Los Angeles police have launched a search for a killer suspected of fatally shooting three homeless people in separate incidents around the city, police officials announced Friday.
All three killings occurred in the early morning hours over a three-day span in November, Police Chief Michel Moore said at an afternoon news conference at police headquarters downtown, where he was joined by Dist. Atty. George Gascón and Mayor Karen Bass.
“This is a killer preying on the unhoused,” Bass said.
The first victim was shot about 3:10 am. on Nov. 26 in an alley near the intersection of 110th Street and Vermont Avenue in South L.A., police said. The man, identified by police as Jose Bolanos, 37, was found dead with a gunshot wound.
The following day, Mark Diggs, 62, was shot and killed about 4:45 a.m. in the 600 block of Mateo Street. Moore said Diggs was pushing a shopping cart and had stopped to plug in his phone and was about to go to sleep when the assailant approached him and shot him.
The third shooting occurred on Nov. 29 about 2:30 a.m. near the intersection of Avenue 18 and Pasadena Avenue in the Lincoln Heights area, where the body of a 52-year-old adult Latino man was discovered.
Los Angeles police are seeking help to find a suspect and a vehicle possibly involved in the death of three people.
(Image courtesy of the Los Angeles Police Department)
Police did not identify the victim pending notification of his family.
Moore said in all three instances the victims were alone and out in the open.
“Each one was shot and killed as they slept” or were preparing to turn in for the night, Moore said.
Moore said the department has set up a task force of investigators that is working 24/7 to apprehend the killer.
Bass urged the city’s homeless residents not to sleep alone and to seek available services. She said homeless outreach workers have been informing those living on the street about the killings and the search for the killer.
“To the person responsible for this, I say this: We will find you, we will catch you and you will be held accountable.”
“An assault on one of us is an assault on all of us,” Gascón said.
Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
Two Los Angeles police officers violated department rules on lethal force by shooting and killing a schizophrenic man who barricaded himself in a cramped kitchen as officers ordered him to drop his knife, the LAPD’s civilian Police Commission ruled Tuesday.
The decision marked the second time in recent weeks the commission found that city officers were not facing an imminent threat when they used force against someone in the throes of a mental health crisis.
Furthermore, officials concluded that the officers’ attempts in January to coax Takar Smith out of the kitchen were undermined by a combination of poor planning, questionable tactics and a disregard for protocols that direct officers to summon the department’s mental health unit for such occasions.
The incident came after Smith’s wife, Shameka, called police on Jan. 2 to report her husband had violated a restraining order by showing up at her apartment, where he grew violent.
She mentioned several times that he hadn’t been taking his medication to treat schizophrenia, but the information wasn’t relayed over a radio transmission dispatching officers to the scene. Rather, a dispatcher informed the responding officers that Smith said he intended to fight police.
By a 4-0 tally, the commission agreed with Chief Michel Moore’s findings that officers Joseph Zizzo and Nicolas Alejandre acted inappropriately when they fired a combined seven rounds at Smith, who used a pair of bikes to create a barrier between himself and police as he stood in the kitchen, holding a knife.
After officers shocked Smith several times with a Taser, he was knocked to his knees and lost control of the blade; officers opened fire when he picked up the knife again.
Moore agreed with an internal force review board that said Alejandre and his police partner, Audrey Lopez Alonzo, had “sufficient time to contact” the Mental Evaluation Unit, or MEU, which pairs officers with county social workers trained in de-escalating standoffs with people thought to be mentally ill.
Lopez Alonzo was a probationary officer at the time of the incident. Neither she nor Alejandre considered contacting the MEU, Moore said, nor did they relay information about Smith’s history of schizophrenia to the other responding officers, including Zizzo.
The layout of the small, cluttered apartment posed several tactical disadvantages for officers, according to the report. For one thing, they had little space to maneuver and find better cover, Moore wrote in the report. Still, Moore said he would’ve liked the officers to retreat, even briefly, so they could reevaluate the situation and come up with a better plan of action.
What punishment the officers will receive, if any, falls to Moore.
Smith’s death came amid a string of fatal police encounters to start the year, which set off protests and prompted Mayor Karen Bass to voice her “grave concerns” after watching body camera video of the encounters.
Last month, the commission concluded that officers involved in one of those deaths broke from department policy on multiple occasions. In that incident, Keenan Anderson, a school teacher and cousin of Black Lives Matter Global Network co-founder Patrisse Cullors, died several hours after an officer stunned him repeatedly with a Taser after a traffic accident.
As with Anderson’s case, Smith’s death was held up by mental health practitioners and critics of the department as proof that officers are ill-equipped to make the right decisions when confronting people in distress. Days after Smith was shot, Moore took the unusual step of publicly second-guessing the officers’ actions, telling reporters at a news conference that he worried about the “actions of our officers and supervisors.”
Some of those concerns were reflected in his report about the incident, released Tuesday, which synthesized the findings of a months-long investigation of the incident.
In an interview after the shooting, Alejandre told department investigators he felt that even while on his knees Smith could still cause him harm because of his 6’1” height. “The stabbing motion to me appeared that it could reach me,” said Alejandre, who is 5’4”, according to the chief’s report.
No officers were injured in the incident.
Relatives said Smith, a father of six, had been on medication the last several years to treat schizophrenia. But, his wife and others said, his mental health had been worsening, which had strained the couple’s relationship.
On the day of the shooting, Smith became enraged and started throwing things around the apartment. When he refused to leave, Shameka Smith walked into the nearby Rampart police station and told an officer at the front desk that her husband had violated a restraining order.
The officer gave her the number for the department’s nonemergency dispatch and advised her to return to the apartment and wait for police there, the chief’s report said. Moore said the officer’s actions are the subject of an internal investigation.
A few hours later, a group of officers showed up and instructed her to wait outside while they checked on her husband, Shameka Smith said. In an exchange that was captured on Alejandre’s body-worn camera, she warned him that her husband had threatened to fight police if they were called and that there was a knife in the kitchen. But she also relayed that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and implored them not to kill him.
Inside, the officers confronted Smith, engaging in a tense back-and-forth with the incoherent man.
Both Alejandre and Zizzo fired their Tasers at Smith after he picked up a kitchen knife and wouldn’t drop it; but the electrified barbs didn’t appear to have any effect on Smith, who pulled them out of his skin. Another officer deployed pepper spray. At one point, Smith fell to the ground and dropped the knife, but picked it up.
The standoff ended when the officers opened fire, killing Smith as he knelt on the kitchen floor holding a knife. Alejandre shot twice, while Zizzo fired five rounds.
Smith’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city in July, alleging that the involved officers unnecessarily escalated the encounters while contending that “there were other reasonable alternatives to using deadly force against (Smith) which were available and not utilized prior to using deadly force.” The suit is pending.
In recent years, the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies nationwide have faced increasing criticism for how often officers shot people in the throes of a mental health crisis. LAPD data show that 35% of the people shot at in 2022 were showing obvious signs of mental distress, a 6% decrease from the year before.
Moore has expressed support for partnering officers with mental health workers but has maintained that incidents involving armed suspects require some sort of police response. Understaffing at the county has resulted in gaps of coverage by the mental health co-responder teams, Moore has previously said.
Several of Smith’s relatives attended the Nov. 14 meeting of the Police Commission, giving emotional testimony, calling for the officers involved to be held accountable and describing how his death had left a huge hole in their lives that they could never hope to fill.
His cousin, Daphne White, said his death had devastated Smith’s mother, who had suffered two mini-strokes that family members think may have been from the pain and stress of losing her son so suddenly. She has been given to long bouts of crying since the incident, White said. “She misses her baby.”
White wondered why the officers hadn’t called a mental health unit upon recognizing they were dealing with someone who wasn’t in his right mind, and may not have understood what was happening.
“They could’ve handled it way differently. I mean he wasn’t charging them,” she told a reporter before the meeting.
Raischard Smith, Smith’s brother, wore a gray hoodie and held a photo of Smith.
“They didn’t go through the right procedures. If they’d gone through the right procedures we wouldn’t be here,” he said. “We want justice. They keep killing us and getting away with it.”
The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating whether several men were initially turned away at a police station when they tried to a report that someone paid them hundreds of dollars to dispose of human remains, Chief Michel Moore confirmed Tuesday.
The remains are believed to belong to Mei Haskell, whose husband, Samuel Bond Haskell, was charged Monday with three counts of murder in connection with the disappearance of his wife and in-laws.
Authorities said Haskell tried to get day laborers to remove what he said were several trash bags from his Tarzana home on Nov. 7. But after initially taking the bags, which weighed about 50 pounds, the men stopped their truck a block away, checked inside and saw dismembered body parts, identifying a belly button, and drove them back.
Haskell then reportedly loaded the bags into the back of his Tesla and drove them to Encino, where he dumped them — and was caught on video doing so.
In an interview with NBC4, one of the men said Haskell had tried to pay them $500 to haul away bags he first said were full of rocks, then later said contained Halloween decorations. But the day laborers told NBC4 the contents felt soft and soggy, like meat. “When we picked up the bags, we could tell they weren’t rocks,” one of the workers said in Spanish.
The workers ended up at the LAPD’s Topanga-area police station, where they tried to lodge a report at the front desk but were told to call 911. The officer at the station desk did not speak Spanish and couldn’t understand the day laborers’ story, according to police sources who requested anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.
Speaking to reporters after Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting, Moore said the department had launched an internal investigation into the matter. Based on a preliminary inquiry, he said, the individuals were directed to the station after first going to a nearby state Highway Patrol office with “a report of concerns relative to the contents of some trash bags that they had been asked to dispose of.”
“They didn’t have those bags with them, [which] were back at the individual’s home or location where they had been asked to do this service, and they believed that the bags, as I understand it, contained potentially human remains,” Moore said during the news briefing. Instead, he said, the workers were instructed to go outside and call 911.
“My concern is that very act right there, of having them go outside and call 911 versus summoning a unit via other available channels and ensuring that the people remain there with their cooperation,” Moore said.
The chief said that a police squad was eventually dispatched to the location where the workers reported seeing the suspicious bags, but that officers did not find any remains. The following morning, a bag containing human remains was found in a “garbage container” some distance away, Moore said, and police eventually made the connection to the earlier report.
The case is being investigated by the department’s elite Robbery-Homicide Division.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office filed three special circumstances murder counts against Haskell, the son of a Hollywood executive. Haskell briefly appeared in a courtroom Monday, where a judge ordered that he be held without bail; his next court date is set for Dec. 8.
LAPD Capt. Scot Williams said police were still searching for Mei Haskell’s missing parents. “We have not found them yet,” he said. “Our search efforts continued today, but no luck. We are confident we are searching all the places we believe [Haskell] may have gone in the days leading up to his arrest.”
Moore said he was concerned that the workers weren’t immediately helped at the station.
Asked whether there was any reason the desk officer couldn’t have simply taken a report on the spot, Moore said he “didn’t have one in my mind.”
“The desk officer has at his or her disposal the watch commander on scene, so the supervisor there, they have radio communications that they can summon, communications that issue or dispatch units,” Moore said.
He said he had similar concerns in the case of Takar Smith, a man who was in the midst of a mental health crisis when he was fatally shot in his kitchen by LAPD officers in January after he wouldn’t drop a knife he’d picked up. Hours before the incident, Smith’s wife had walked into the Rampart police station to report he was behaving aggressively and was told to return to her apartment and call police from there. Moore said he also ordered a complaint investigation “regarding that action.”
An off-duty Los Angeles Police Department officer and his front-seat passenger were killed in a car crash early Saturday after a drunk driving suspect sped through a red light in Northridge and slammed into their vehicle, authorities said.
Officer Darrell Cunningham Shamily, a four-year veteran of the department in his early 30s, and the unidentified passenger were killed in the crash that occurred about 1:15 a.m. near Roscoe Boulevard and Lindley Avenue, police said during a news conference Saturday. An off-duty San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy, who was riding in the backseat of Cunningham Shamily’s car, was also injured and transported to a hospital.
“These were all individuals who were known to each other as lifelong friends,” said LAPD Chief Michel Moore, who called the incident an act of “senseless violence” by the driver of the other vehicle. He said the department would do everything possible to support Cunningham Shamily’s “fiancée, two young boys, mom & two brothers.”
Brian David Oliveri, 20, the driver of the other vehicle, was injured in the crash and was transported to a hospital, police said. Based on preliminary evidence, it is suspected that he was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the collision, police said.
Oliveri is expected to be arrested and charged with gross vehicular manslaughter, Moore said.
He is believed to have been driving his black BMW at more than 100 mph down Roscoe Boulevard when he ran a red light at Lindley Avenue and crashed into Cunningham Shamily’s white Infinity, which was traveling northbound on Lindley, police said.
Oliveri’s passenger, an unidentified female in the front seat, was able to exit the vehicle on her own, police said.
“All others were trapped because of the force and the level of damage created by this horrific collision,” Moore said. L.A. Fire Department personnel were able to free Oliveri and the San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy in the other vehicle using the Jaws of Life. One the vehicles sheared off a fire hydrant in the crash, the fire department reported.
All three survivors of the crash suffered a number of injuries and are being treated at a nearby hospital, police said. Oliveri was in critical condition.
The sheriff’s deputy was being treated for a broken hip and other injuries; the woman’s condition was not immediately known. Both were expected to survive.
Cunningham Shamily and another passenger died at the scene.
Cunningham Shamily, who worked the overnight shift at LAPD’S West L.A. station, was a “hardworking, honest, a person you can go to get the job done, with a great attitude,” Moore said. “As a department we’re grieving today, but we will work through this and will hold the line, and we’ll work in tribute to the reputation that he held and the work that he did in protecting the citizens of this great city.”
Moore said that he did not consider a suspected DUI crash to be an accident. “You don’t drive down Roscoe Boulevard at over 100 mph through a red trilight as an accident. That’s willful and gross negligence and criminality, in the sense of reverence for other people’s lives,” he said.
Several Los Angeles police officers broke with department policy in the arrest of Keenan Anderson, whose death after a traffic stop in January reignited debates about the suitability of police for dealing with people in distress, the Police Commission ruled.
Although not unanimous, the commission Tuesday found that officers deviated from LAPD policy on multiple occasions when they restrained and shocked the 31-year-old teacher and father with a Taser while trying to take him into custody.
The civilian oversight panel generally agreed with the conclusions of LAPD Chief Michel Moore and an internal department review board, which itself was split on several policy questions.
Moore and police commissioners concluded that one of the officers continued to use a stun gun on Anderson, a Black man, even after he no longer posed an immediate threat. Moore and the commission also ruled that, whether inadvertently or not, two of the officers did not have cause to hold Anderson down by the neck. Under the department’s policy, such contact to a person’s neck is considered deadly force.
Anderson’s case garnered international attention, in part because he was a cousin of Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass strongly condemned the incident, which happened weeks after she took office and sparked calls for changes to police policies related to traffic enforcement and the use of stun guns.
It also added kindling to a fiery debate about how police interact with people in crisis, after a string of high-profile deadly encounters in recent years.
Veteran civil rights attorney Carl Douglas, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of Anderson’s family, called Tuesday’s ruling a rare but welcome decision from an oversight body he said too often signs off on police misbehavior. The finding was “one small step toward justice,” he said.
“However, we are mindful that this fight is not over. The city is going to be defended vigorously by the city attorney as they do in virtually every case,” Douglas said Wednesday, pointing out that the city has already filed motions denying any responsibility for Anderson’s death. “We are heartened that the commission saw the decision to Taser Mr. Anderson as an abomination. They don’t call it an abomination, but I can.”
What the body camera footage captured was the lack of training for officers on when Taser use is appropriate, Douglas said, adding that officers often misinterpret a person squirming as a form of resistance that justifies the device’s use.
Douglas joined about two dozen activists and members of Anderson’s family who held a press conference before Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting, demanding the officers involved be held accountable. Afterward, the group appealed directly to the commissioners in what became an emotionally-charged meeting.
The commission’s ruling was denounced by the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents the city’s rank-and-file officers.
“We strongly disagree with these politically influenced findings, each responding officer acted responsibly in dealing with Mr. Anderson who was high on cocaine and ran into traffic after fleeing a car accident he caused,” the League’s board of directors said in a statement to The Times Wednesday.
“The coroner confirmed he was not tased(SIC) but rather drive-stunned when he refused to follow simple directions while in the middle of a busy street, the board wrote. “Mr. Anderson and Mr. Anderson alone was responsible for what occurred.”
The encounter that ended with Anderson’s death began sometime before 3:30 p.m. on Jan. 3, when Joshua Coombs, a motorcyle officer assigned to the West Traffic Division, responded to what the LAPD referred to at the time as a “felony hit-and-run” car crash at Venice and Lincoln boulevards.
Coombs encountered Anderson darting on foot through traffic in apparent distress and ordered Anderson to sit on a nearby street corner. Anderson complied for some time, but then took off running, yelling that he was fearful for his safety.
Coombs followed after him, as did officers Jaime Fuentes and Rasheen Ford, who had seen the incident unfold as they drove past in their department squad car. The officers eventually caught up to Anderson and pinned him to the ground, as he resisted their efforts to put him on his stomach and handcuff him. They were eventually joined by two other officers, Christopher Walters and Stephen Feldman.
The commission reviewed the case during a closed-door session of its regular meeting, which was was briefly interrupted when president Erroll Southers ordered the room cleared because of disruptions in the audience.
Much of the criticism of the police response centered on Fuentes discharging his Taser six times in the span of 42 seconds. But Moore ruled, and the commission agreed, that officer Fuentes’ first four deployments of the stun gun were within policy.
However, a department force review board faulted Fuentes for his final two Taser uses, delivered as other officers used their body weight and arm holds to control Anderson. Fuentes, a patrol officer in Pacific Division, told internal investigators that he used the so-called drive stun function, in which the device is pressed directly against someone’s skin rather than fired from a distance, to prevent the incident from escalating further. Fuentes said he continued shocking Anderson because he wouldn’t stop resisting.
The ruling wasn’t unanimous. The majority of the board said that, although Anderson was still pulling away from the officers, he didn’t present a threat to them and appeared instead to be starting to comply with their commands.
The majority noted that Fuentes admitted in his department interview to using the drive-stun mode for pain compliance, against department policy, and said it would have preferred that he had reassessed the situation and switched “to a different force option after the third TASER deployment.”
Several board members argued that the first four stuns were in compliance because the officers believed they could still be harmed due to Anderson’s continued resistance.
Moore wrote in his report that, in making his decision, he considered that “Anderson was violently resisting the officers’ attempts to take him into custody.”
“I noted the use of the TASER to be effective in assisting officers to take control of Anderson,” Moore wrote. “As it pertains to TASER activation five and six, I opined the officers had sufficient control of Anderson and that his level of resistance, while still ongoing, did not justify the use of a TASER as a reasonable force option.”
During the final activation, Fuentes told investigators that he saw Anderson tense up, which he interpreted as an attempt to prevent officers from handcuffing him.
Anderson was taken to an area hospital, where he later died.
Last month, the department announced it would soon start testing out a new generation of Tasers with greater range that would preclude officers from having to use higher levels of force against uncooperative people. The eventual switch to the next-generation Taser 10 model comes on the heels of changes in the department’s Taser policy, including barring officers from using the drive stun function.
The officers’ tactical decisions were scrutinized almost from the onset. Anderson’s family, some elected officials and police watchdogs decried what they saw as an overly aggressive response by police against someone who was disoriented and needed care after being involved in a traffic collision.
Several policing experts who reviewed video for The Times of the Jan. 3 incident — from cameras worn by officers — previously said the amount of force used by the officers seemed excessive given Anderson’s actions and that their tactics appeared haphazard.
An autopsy by the L.A. County coroner’s office later identified an enlarged heart and cocaine use as the causes of death, and did not rule it a homicide. Whether his death was natural, an accident or a homicide remains undetermined, according to the coroner’s website. Anderson’s family has disputed the report’s findings, contending that it deflected blame from the police.
During their investigation, detectives from the LAPD’s force investigations division slowed down footage of the encounter and counted nine times in which officers Fuentes and Ford made contact with Anderson’s neck during the struggle. Both officers denied applying pressure or otherwise restricting Anderson’s ability to breathe.
At one point in a video of the encounter, Anderson is lying on the pavement and struggling with officers when he yelled out, “They are trying to kill me. Kilo tried to kill me.” After being told to stop struggling, video showed Ford’s right hand on the side of Anderson’s jaw, with his thumb apparently near Anderson’s neck, the report says.
With a 3 to 2 vote, commissioners also found fault with officers for failing to put Anderson “in a recovery position as soon as practical.”
After days of mounting public pressure, Moore took the rare step of releasing additional footage from the encounter, which showed a distraught Anderson crying out for help as multiple officers held him down. Eventually, he washandcuffed and hobbled at his ankles before paramedics take him away. He later died at a hospital.
Anderson’s death also galvanized a push for removing police from responding to minor traffic collisions, as well as to stop them from pulling over motorists for traffic violations, arguing that communities of color have historically borne the brunt of such enforcement. Instead, they said, such tasks could be handled by unarmed civilians.
Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and a professor at Cal State L.A., said she was heartened by the commission’s ruling, even if it was a somewhat hollow “victory” since it wouldn’t bring Anderson back.
“Justice for Keenan Anderson would mean that he were there to raise his child, that he was there to continue to be a model for his brothers, that he was there to be a model teacher,” said Abdullah. “But justice in his name looks like accountability, making sure that the cops who killed him are held accountable.”
A 47-year-old Fresno man pleaded guilty Thursday to stealing millions of dollars with his former girlfriend from a Malibu doctor in an elaborate scheme involving deception and psychoactive drugs before his death in 2018.
Anthony David Flores, also known as Anton David, pleaded guilty to nine felony violations for his role in the scheme, including wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering and conspiracy. His ex-girlfriend, Anna Rene Moore, 40, had pleaded guilty in August to seven felony violations in the same case, according to Flores’ plea agreement released by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In 2017, Flores and Moore met ophthalmologist Mark Sawusch, a wealthy Malibu doctor and savvy investor with a net worth of $60 million. Sawusch had been experiencing severe episodes of mental illness that had led to his hospitalization and later his arrest.
Within days of meeting Sawusch, federal prosecutors said, Flores and Moore moved into his home and began pretending to be his caregivers and friends. They lived with Sawusch from September 2017 until his death in May 2018.
According to the plea agreement, Flores convinced Sawusch to grant him power of attorney during a severe mental breakdown that September, which ended in his arrest. The move was meant to be only for Flores to pay Sawusch’s bail, but the power was never revoked after his release from jail. Flores used the power of attorney to open bank accounts in Sawusch’s name and gain access to his money, prosecutors said.
Days before Sawusch’s death, Flores and Moore gave him LSD, which sent Sawusch’s mental health into a tailspin, authorities said. While Sawusch was under the influence, Flores changed the two-factor authentication on Sawusch’s brokerage account to go to Flores’ phone, then initiated two $1-million wire transfers that ended up in his and Moore’s bank accounts.
Sawusch died alone in his home that Memorial Day weekend. The plea agreement revealed that before his death, Flores and Moore had been surveilling Sawusch via the security cameras in his house from a luxury hotel in Santa Monica.
After his death, Flores and Moore continued to withdraw money from his accounts until Sawusch’s mother and sister sued them. The funds were frozen, and Flores and Moore attempted to salvage the funds through various money-laundering schemes.
In late 2018, Flores and Moore claimed Sawusch had promised them his house and one-third of his estate but was unable to change his will before his death. The ensuing litigation over Sawusch’s estate resulted in the pair withdrawing their claims and agreeing to repay the estate $1 million, which has never been fulfilled, according to authorities.
The pair moved to Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic, where they later split up. In December 2022, a Los Angeles grand jury indicted both of them on suspicion of defrauding Sawusch. Flores was arrested at his home in Fresno, and Moore was arrested at a Houston airport. Both have been in federal custody since January.
Flores faces a maximum sentence of up to 20 years for each fraud count, 10 years for each money-laundering count and up to 20 years for the conspiracy charge. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 26, while Moore’s sentencing is set for Jan. 22.
