Department

LA QUINTA — Briana Ortega had been home for all of three minutes when she heard a fist pounding against her door.

She opened it to find a Riverside County sheriff’s deputy “claiming a black man with dreadlocks had jumped over her backyard fence” and was trying to break into her La Quinta home, according to court records.

Almost immediately, Ortega, 29, suspected Deputy Eric Piscatella was there for other reasons. The encounter last summer wasn’t the first time they’d met. It wasn’t even the first time he’d shown up at her home unannounced, according to an arrest affidavit and claims in a civil lawsuit.

“You look pretty without makeup … sorry I don’t mean to be rude or unprofessional,” Piscatella said, after spending a scant few seconds looking out a window for the purported suspect, according to a recording of the incident.

It was the fourth time in less than a year that Piscatella had either shown up at Ortega’s home or contacted her without a legitimate law enforcement purpose, according to the affidavit and lawsuit. Ortega shared text messages showing the deputy tried to flirt with her and ask her out on dates, but she rebuffed him at every turn.

A former Riverside County sheriff’s deputy is accused in a lawsuit of using law enforcement resources to pursue a woman he met at a public event.

(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

Last year, Riverside County prosecutors charged Piscatella, 30, with seven counts of illegally using law enforcement databases to look up information about Ortega.

But instead of resolving the situation, Ortega says, the way Piscatella’s case played out in criminal court has only prolonged her ordeal.

Ortega said she remains “terrified” of Piscatella and declined to testify against him. In July, a Riverside County judge downgraded all charges against Piscatella to misdemeanors. He pleaded guilty and received probation, avoiding jail time.

Last month, Ortega filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Piscatella, the department and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a leading Republican candidate in the 2026 governor’s race.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco kicks off his campaign to run for governor at Avila’s Historic 1929 center on Feb. 17 in Riverside.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

“I feel like with him getting the misdemeanor, nothing is ever going to change… If it takes me having to [file this lawsuit], I will, if it helps,” she said.

Piscatella declined to comment through his defense attorney.

A spokesperson for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said Piscatella resigned last October after roughly five years on the job. His ability to work as a police officer in California is suspended, accreditation records show, but without a felony conviction it could be restored.

Ortega recalled her first run-in with Piscatella as innocent enough.

She was attending what she described as a “family fair,” with her two sons in Coachella in September 2023, enjoying amusement rides and carnival games when she said her oldest son ran up to a group of sheriff’s deputies who were giving out stickers. Piscatella was among them, according to Ortega, who said they had a polite but forgettable conversation.

They did not exchange contact information, but a few months later, in January of 2024, Ortega said, she got a text from an unknown number.

The texter claimed to be her “personal officer.” A fitness influencer with more than 100,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram, Ortega gets random flirtatious messages from men. So she shrugged it off.

That same month, Piscatella searched Ortega’s name and the city of La Quinta in both the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System and other sheriff’s databases shortly before the texts were sent, according to court records. In Ortega’s civil suit, she alleged this was how Piscatella tracked her down.

One month later, Piscatella showed up at Ortega’s La Quinta home while she was at work, according to her lawsuit. Her mother answered the door, and was “alarmed” when the deputy questioned where her daughter was. Still, Ortega wasn’t bothered.

“I’m like, he’s a cop, he can’t be that crazy. He’s on the force for a reason … of course he knows where I live,” she said.

Echoing claims in her lawsuit, she added: “I’m not thinking he’s going to continue to look for me or stalk me. If I would have known, I would have complained.”

Ortega was so unfazed that she actually went to Piscatella for help a month later. Her younger sister had been the victim of an assault and was struggling to get attention from the Sheriff’s Department. So Ortega contacted the man who claimed to be her “personal officer.”

But when Ortega began describing the purported crime, Piscatella responded by asking her to send a “selfie” and insisting they should go to the gym together. Annoyed, Ortega eventually changed her number when instead of help, all she got was a picture of Piscatella wearing Sheriff’s Department clothes, according to text messages.

Court records show Piscatella continued to use law enforcement databases to keep tabs on Ortega in the months that followed. In May 2024, he searched her name and ran her license plate, according to court records. He did the same in July, right before showing up at Ortega’s house, claiming he saw the man with dreadlocks break in.

At that point, Piscatella’s interest in Ortega had turned into an “obsession,” according to her lawsuit. Since he arrived just minutes after she’d returned from a trip to San Diego, Ortega said it felt like Piscatella was “waiting for me.” She alleges in her lawsuit that the deputy “used law enforcement resources and databases … to stalk her.”

After letting him in, she surreptitiously recorded the deputy standing in her living room, talking to her children. In the lawsuit, Ortega said she was “confused, scared and uncomfortable,” especially after Piscatella asked for her new number, which she gave him out of “fear.”

Piscatella texted her a short time later, according to messages reviewed by The Times, describing her kids as “so cool.”

“I don’t feel comfortable with everything that just happened. Please do not contact me again,” Ortega wrote back.

Briana Ortega filed a lawsuit alleging that she has been living in fear of a former Riverside County sheriff’s deputy.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

She made a complaint to the Sheriff’s Department the same day. Court records show the department launched an internal investigation and quickly determined Piscatella had used law enforcement databases to look up information on Ortega several times, according to an affidavit seeking a warrant for his arrest.

The affidavit shows there was “no corresponding call for service” related to the day Piscatella showed up at Ortega’s home and claimed someone was breaking in.

Riverside County prosecutors filed seven felony charges against Piscatella.

Ortega said she refused to testify because, even though the Sheriff’s Department had presented a case against one of their own, she feared Piscatella or a fellow deputy might seek retribution against her.

At a July court hearing in Indio, Piscatella made an open plea to the court seeking to downgrade each charge to a misdemeanor and avoid jail time, according to a transcript of the proceeding.

Riverside County Deputy Dist. Atty. Natasha Sorace pleaded with Superior Court Judge Helios J. Hernandez not to accept the lesser charges.

“The defendant was a police officer — a sheriff’s deputy, who used his position of power and the information he had access to as a result of that position to put someone in the community in significant fear for their safety,” Sorace said.

“He searched information — conducted a search about a particular individual and used that information to come up with an excuse to get into that woman’s house, where he proceeded to hit on her and make her feel uncomfortable in her own on home.”

But Hernandez rebuffed her attempts to argue the point further. In his view, “nothing actually happened.”

“He never, like, broke into the house or threatened her,” Hernandez said, according to a transcript of the hearing.

Hernandez sentenced Piscatella to probation and community service and ordered him to stay away from Ortega. Records show prosecutors have appealed the decision.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office would not say if Ortega’s refusal to testify affected their ability to bring other charges, including the stalking allegation she made in the civil suit.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s spokesperson declined to comment on the pending litigation.

The entire ordeal left Ortega feeling like law enforcement failed her at every level. She noted that Piscatella still knows where she lives.

While she previously did not hold a negative view of police, now she says she turns the other direction and grows anxious anytime she sees a Sheriff’s Department cruiser.

“It’s a betrayal of trust from law enforcement … who do you call when it’s the police who are the problem?” asked her attorney, Jamal Tooson. “When can you ever feel safe? You almost feel trapped, in your own house.”

L.A. County’s watchdogs suddenly need to ask permission before barking to the press and public.

County oversight officials and civil rights advocates are raising concerns about a new policy they say improperly limits their rights to communicate — including with other members of local government.

The policy, enacted Sept. 11, requires oversight officials to send many types of communications to the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors for approval.

The policy says “press releases, advisories, public statements, social media content, and any direct outreach to the BOS or their staff” must be “reviewed, approved and coordinated” before being released publicly or sent to other county officials.

The policy says the change “ensures that messaging aligns with County priorities, protects sensitive relationships, and maintains a unified public voice.”

Eric Miller, a member of the Sybil Brand Commission, which conducts inspections and oversight of L.A. County jails, said the policy is the latest example of the county “attempting to limit the oversight of the Sheriff’s Department.” He said he made the remarks as a private citizen because he was concerned the new communications policy barred him from speaking to the media in his role as an oversight official.

Michael Kapp, communications manager for the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors, said in an email that he personally drafted the policy shortly after he started in his position in July and discovered there “was no existing communications guidance whatsoever for commissions and oversight bodies.”

“Without clear guidance,” he said, “commissions and oversight bodies – most of which do not have any communications staff – were developing their own ad hoc practices, which led to inconsistent messaging, risks of misinformation, and deeply uneven engagement with the Board, the media, and the public.”

Although it is increasingly common for government agencies to tightly restrict how employees communicate with the press and public, L.A. County oversight officials had enjoyed broad latitude to speak their minds. The watchdogs have been vocal about a range of issues, including so-called deputy gangs in the Sheriff’s Department and grim jail conditions.

Some questioned the timing of the policy, which comes after a recent run of negative headlines, scandals and hefty legal payouts to victims of violence and discrimination by law enforcement.

Long-time Los Angeles Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission Chair Robert C. Bonner presides over the commission‘s meeting at St. Anne’s Family Services in Los Angeles on June 26, 2025. Bonner says he has since been forced out of his position as chair.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Longtime Los Angeles Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission chair Robert Bonner said he was ousted this summer as he and his commission made a forceful push for more transparency.

In February, former commission Chair Sean Kennedy resigned after a dispute with county lawyers, stating at the time that it was “not appropriate for the County Counsel to control the COC’s independent oversight decisions.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced this month that his office is suing L.A. County and the Sheriff’s Department over a “humanitarian crisis” that has contributed to a surge in jail deaths.

Kapp said the policy came about solely “to ensure stronger, more effective communication between oversight bodies, the public, and the Board of Supervisors.”

Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, called the policy “troubling” and said it appears to allow the county to tell “Sybil Brand you’ve got to tone it down, or telling COC this isn’t the message the board wants to put out.”

“I learn about this policy right around the same time the state attorney general sues the county over horrific conditions in the jails,” Eliasberg said.

“There’s a ton of stuff in that lawsuit about Sybil Brand and Sybil Brand reports,” he added, citing commission findings that exposed poor conditions and treatment inside county jails, including vermin and roach infestations, spoiled food and insufficient mental health treatment for inmates.

Some current and former oversight officials said the new policy leaves a number of unanswered questions — including what happens if they ignore it and continue to speak out.

Kapp, the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors official who drafted the policy, said in his statement that “adherence is mandatory. That said, the goal is not punishment – it’s alignment and support.”

During the Civilian Oversight Commission’s meeting on Thursday, Hans Johnson, the commission’s chair, made fiery comments about the policy, calling it “reckless,” “ridiculous and ludicrous.”

The policy “represents one of the most caustic, corrosive and chilling efforts to squelch the voice of this commission, the office of inspector general and the Sybil Brand Commission,” Johnson said. “We will not be gagged.”

Times staff writer Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.

Los Angeles County is moving to add more checks on how federal immigration officials can access data collected by the Sheriff’s Department that can be used to track where people drive on any given day.

County supervisors voted Tuesday to approve a motion, introduced by Supervisor Hilda Solis, to beef up oversight of data gathered by law enforcement devices known as automated license plate readers.

It’s already illegal in California for local law enforcement agencies to share information gleaned from license plate readers with federal agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement without a warrant.

But after a summer of ramped-up deportations, the county supervisors decided to impose more transparency on who’s requesting license plate data from the Sheriff’s Department — and when the agency provides it.

The change will create a clear policy that the data cannot be “disclosed, transferred, or otherwise made available” to immigration officials except when “expressly required” by law or if they have a warrant.

“In a place like Los Angeles County, where residents depend on cars for nearly every aspect of daily life, people must feel safe traveling from place to place without fear that their movements are being tracked, stored, and shared in ways that violate their privacy,” the motion states.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger cast the sole no vote. Helen Chavez, a spokesperson for Barger, said the supervisor voted against the motion because it calls for the county to support a bill that would limit the amount of time law enforcement can keep most license plate data to 60 days. Law enforcement has opposed that bill, she said.

Across the country, law enforcement agencies use cameras to collect data on millions of vehicles, poring over the records for clues to help find stolen vehicles, crime suspects or missing persons.

A sheriff deputy’s patrol car is equipped with a license plate scanner. The plate numbers are instantaneously processed and if the registered vehicle owners are wanted for felonies or certain types of misdemeanors, if they are registered sex or arson offenders or if an Amber Alert has been issued, an alarm will sound to alert the officer.

(Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement it has roughly 366 fixed licensed plate readers from Motorola Vigilant and 476 from Flock Safety in contract cities and unincorporated areas. An additional 89 mobile systems from Motorola are mounted on vehicles that patrol these areas.

The department said its policy already prohibits it from sharing data from plate readers, known as ALPR, with any entity that “does not have a lawful purpose for receiving it.”

“LASD shares ALPR data with other law enforcement agencies only under an executed inter-agency agreement, which requires all parties to collect, access, use, and disclose the data in compliance with applicable law,” the statement read. “LASD has no current agreements for ALPR data sharing with any federal agency.”

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that the agency has multiple resources at its “fingertips to ensure federal law is enforced in Los Angeles, and throughout the entire country.”

“These sanctuary politicians’ efforts to stop the Sheriff’s Department from cooperating with ICE are reckless and will not deter ICE from enforcing the law,” McLaughlin said.

Southern California law enforcement departments — including LAPD and authorities in San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties — have been accused of routinely flouting state law by sharing license plate data with federal agents. A recent report from CalMatters cited records obtained by the anti-surveillance group Oakland Privacy that showed more than 100 instances in a single month when local police queried databases for federal agencies.

“When you collect this data, it’s really hard to control,” said Catherine Crump, director of UC Berkeley’s Technology & Public Policy Clinic. “It’s no different from once you share your data with Meta or Google, they’re going to repackage your data and sell it to advertisers and you don’t have any idea which of the advertising companies have your data.”

Even with the board cracking down on data sharing, advocates say it’s nearly impossible to ensure federal agents are barred from license plate data in L.A. County.

Dave Maass, the director of investigations for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said private companies that operate in California still collect and sell data that ICE can use.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection also has its own license plate readers around Southern California, he said.

Maass said even if a county bars its local sheriff’s department from sharing data with ICE, it’s difficult to guarantee the rule is followed by the rank-and-file. Immigration officers could informally pass on a plate number to a deputy with access to the system.

An L.A. County Sheriff’s Department patrol car equipped with a license plate reader can scan somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 plates a day.

(Los Angeles Times)

“Maybe they run the plate,” Maass says. “Unless there’s some public records release from the Los Angeles side of things, we just really don’t know who accessed the system.”

Under the motion passed Tuesday, the sheriff department would need to regularly report what agencies asked for license plate data to two county watchdogs groups — the Office of Inspector General and the Civilian Oversight Commission.

“Having somebody who is somewhat independent and whose role is more aggressively overseeing reviewing these searches is actually quite a big deal,” Maass said.

The Emmy Awards bring together the best and brightest in television each year, and as such, it’s always a tightly secured event. This year will be no exception.

The security measures for Sunday’s awards ceremony, which will be held at the Peacock Theater at L.A. Live in the heart of downtown, was reviewed with close eyes this week in light of Wednesday’s fatal shooting of political commentator Charlie Kirk in Utah.

With any large event, law enforcement officials and organizers take caution with security measures, but the recent spate recent of political violence targeting elected officials and those in the public eye have brought increased attention to how these large and highly publicized events are secured.

Though LAPD did not offer specifics about the security measures it was taking, an official for the department said they are ready for the event. “For security reasons, the Department does not discuss protective measures for special events or any public gatherings. What I can assure you is that we are appropriately staffed and fully prepared,” said Jennifer Forkish, LAPD communications director.

For several years, the LAPD has had a SWAT team at the scene, and numerous Metro officers and counter snipers have been visibly stationed on rooftops. Law enforcement officials also design a vehicle approach with barriers that prevents car bombings and vehicle attacks.

Since the attacks on 9/11, the 24th anniversary of which were recognized this week, the department has applied an extensive layer of security to the biggest awards ceremonies with large red carpets. The Peacock Theater also has security personnel who use metal-detector screening, visual inspection and bag inspection to keep guests safe.

The Television Academy revisited its security system for the weekend in light of Kirk’s shooting death at a speaking event on a college campus.

“We’re absolutely relooking at all of our security plans, but we always have a very robust security plan in place,” Television Academy president and chief executive Maury McIntyre told Variety on Thursday. “I know that basically once things happened yesterday, our security personnel all gathered together to just recheck things like that. Sitting with the LA Police Department, sitting with our department of transportation, just to make sure that we felt buttoned up. We are confident in the plans we’ve got in place.”

Stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze is hosting the 77th Emmy Awards, which begin at 5 p.m. PDT Sunday and will be broadcast live on CBS and available to stream live and on-demand on Paramount+.

Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.

CHICAGO — A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a man who officials said tried to evade arrest Friday in a Chicago suburb by driving his car at officers and dragging one of them.

The shooting just outside the city follows days of threats by the Trump administration to surge immigration enforcement in the nation’s third-largest city and less than a week into an operation labeled “Midway Blitz” by federal officials targeting the so-called sanctuary policies in Chicago and Illinois.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a news release that the officer was trying to arrest a man who had a history of reckless driving, but he refused officers’ orders and instead drove his car at them. An ICE officer who was hit and dragged by the car felt his life was threatened and opened fire, the department said.

ICE said both the officer and the driver from the shooting in the Franklin Park suburb, about 18 miles west of Chicago, were taken to a hospital, where the driver was pronounced dead.

“We are praying for the speedy recovery of our law enforcement officer. He followed his training, used appropriate force, and properly enforced the law to protect the public and law enforcement,” said spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said he is aware of the shooting and demanded “a full, factual accounting of what’s happened today to ensure transparency and accountability.”

Video from the scene shows police tape and traffic cones blocking off parts of the street where a large food distribution truck and gray car can be seen from a distance. Multiple law enforcement vehicles were surrounding the area.

Erendira Rendón, chief program officer at a local advocacy group called the Resurrection Project, said the shooting “shows us the real danger that militarized enforcement creates in our neighborhoods.”

“A community member is dead, and an officer was injured,” Rendón said in a statement. “These are outcomes that serve no public safety purpose and leave entire communities traumatized. … When federal agents conduct unaccountable operations in our communities, everyone becomes less safe.”

Chicagoans, meanwhile, have been preparing for weekend Mexican Independence Day celebrations that include parades, festivals, street parties and car caravans, despite the potential immigration crackdown.

McLaughlin said that “viral social media videos and activists encouraging illegal aliens to resist law enforcement” have made the work of ICE officers more dangerous.

Santana and Fernando write for the Associated Press. Santana reported from Washington.

Ten days after a Russian man was mysteriously killed amid a crowd of tens of thousands at the Burning Man festival, Russian media is reporting that the man’s father has asked President Donald Trump to have the FBI investigate.

Vadim Kruglov, 37, had been living in Washington state and, according to friends’ Instagram accounts, was making his first pilgrimage to Burning Man. He was killed sometime between 8 and 9:30 pm on the night of August 30, his body found “in a pool of blood” around the time the giant wooden effigy of a man was lit on fire.

The Pershing County Sheriff’s Department, which has jurisdiction over the Black Rock Desert where the annual event takes place, is leading the homicide investigation but has made no public comments about what might have happened. The agency has issued public appeals for information about “any person who would commit such a heinous crime against another human being.”

The agency has also announced that Kruglov’s family has been formally notified of his death, and that “our sincerest condolences from the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office go out to Vadim Kruglov’s family for their tragic loss.”

The sheriff’s department declined to comment on reports of the father’s appeal, or his criticisms of the pace of the investigation.

The Moscow Times reported Thursday that the pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda published a video from Kruglov’s father Thursday. In it, the father, Igor Kruglov bemoaned that “ten days have passed” and yet the investigation is “being conducted by one local sheriff.”

“Evil must be punished,” the father continues, “therefore, I appeal to you, dear Mr. President, and ask you to order the FBI to immediately begin investigating the murder of my son.”

Kruglov’s friends have been pushing a similar message to their tens of thousands of Instagram followers.

One post claimed that Kruglov died “from a professional knife strike to the neck —a single fatal blow. This happened in a place where more than 80,000 people from all over the world were gathered.” The Pershing County sheriff’s office declined to comment on the manner in which Kruglov was killed or say whether the friend’s post was accurate.

The Instagram post contained several photographs of Kruglov enjoying himself at the festival.

“A young and talented man, who made a big contribution to this world, has been killed,” the friend wrote. “And the person who did this is still walking free.” The post added: “We strongly believe a federal investigation is needed.”

Sept. 10 (UPI) — The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General announced Wednesday that it will conduct a review of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ collection and reporting activities for the Consumer Price Index and the Producer Price Index.

In a letter to the BLS’s acting director, William Wiatrowski, the OIG announced the intent to review the department.

“Our focus will be on the challenges and related mitigating strategies for (1) collecting PPI and CPI data, and (2) collecting and reporting, including revising, monthly employment data,” said the letter from Laura Nicolosi, assistant inspector general for audit.

The announcement arrives just weeks after President Donald Trump fired the BLS administrator Erika McEntarfer in August after a weak monthly jobs report. He has nominated conservative economist E.J. Antoni to replace her, but the nomination hasn’t yet been confirmed by the Senate.

The letter said that the BLS recently issued “a large downward revision of its estimate of new jobs in the monthly Employment Situation Report.”

The Labor Department in a preliminary report Tuesday revised jobs data sharply downward for the year ending March 2025 — a drop of 911,000 from initial estimates. The revisions were the largest in more than 20 years.

The BLS has long said that lower survey response rates and other trends have made it harder to measure the state of the U.S. economy, the New York Times reported. But experts inside and outside the agency say a lack of resources slows its efforts to mitigate those challenges.

The Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday released a report touting a decline in shootings by officers in 2024, even as officials acknowledged this year’s numbers show the trend reversing with a major uptick in incidents of deadly force.

LAPD officers opened fire on 29 people last year, compared with 34 in 2023 — a sign, the report’s authors maintained, that the department’s efforts to curb serious uses of force are having an effect.

Already in 2025, however, LAPD officers have surpassed the total number of shootings recorded last year, with police opening fire at least 31 times in less than nine months.

Teresa Sánchez-Gordon, who on Tuesday was announced as the Police Commission’s new president, said she was struck by the fact that during encounters with people exhibiting signs of mental illness last year, officers sometimes shot instead of first deploying weapons meant to incapacitate.

“Why can we not increase that … use of that less-lethal means?” asked Sánchez-Gordon.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell told the commission that the use of Tasers and launchers that shoot hard foam projectiles was “foremost on everybody’s minds.”

But oftentimes, he said, encounters with people in crisis unfold so quickly and unpredictably that officers are left with little time to consider other tools. He noted that the vast majority of shootings stem from 911 calls, rather than “proactive policing,” which he said underscores “the reactive nature of these events.”

The timing of Tuesday’s report seemed incongruous amid mounting public anger over a recent rise in police shootings, including a continued pattern of officers killing people who appear to be in the midst of some behavioral crisis.

The report also noted a rising number of shootings last year in which officers mistakenly believe someone is armed, an increasingly common scenario that has also been cause for recent concern.

In July, LAPD officers fatally shot a man sitting inside a utility van on the city’s Eastside after, they said, he ignored repeated commands to drop what turned out to be a toy Airsoft gun, which resembled a real rifle. The dead man’s fiancee said he had dealt with mental health issues in the past.

In recent weeks, the commission has pushed McDonnell to do more to curb the number of shootings.

Last year, the Southeast, North Hollywood and Harbor patrol areas saw the biggest jumps in the number of police shootings, while 77th Street, Foothill, Rampart and Newton divisions recorded the biggest decreases.

The shootings cut across racial lines. Roughly 55% of those shot by officers were Latino, with Black and white people each accounting for around 21% of the incidents, with the remaining 3% involving Asians.

More than half of the officers who fired their weapons were Latino, which is roughly in line with the department’s racial makeup. A quarter of the officers were white, with Asian officers responsible for 11% of the shootings.

From 2023 to 2024, the number of officers injured in shootings rose from eight to 11, according to the report.

The rise in police shootings has been a regular point of contention for the police critics and social justice advocates who show up to speak at the commission’s weekly meetings.

On Tuesday, Melina Abdullah, a prominent civil rights leader who has long been critical of the department’s history of excessive force against communities of color, accused the commission of failing to take seriously its role as police shootings continue to rise.

“I don’t know how this oversight body is not overseeing and demanding something different,” she said.

The recent report found that officers fired nearly twice as many bullets last year as they did in 2020. On average, LAPD officers fired more than 10 rounds per shooting.

In addition to the decline in police shootings last year, the department’s report revealed that so-called non-categorical uses of force — LAPD speak for the deployment of a Taser or beanbag shotgun or incidents that result in serious but non-life-threatening injuries — dipped slightly to 1,451 from 1,503.

The decline came amid a drop in both crime and the number of people who came into contact with the LAPD in 2024.

There was also a significant decline in shootings of people with knives, swords and other edged weapons. Preventing those types of confrontations from turning deadly has been a point of emphasis by the department and the commission in recent years. In February, LAPD officers faced criticism after they shot and killed a transgender woman holding a knife at a Pacoima motel room after she called 911 to report that she had been kidnapped.

Much like with most crime statistics, experts caution against reading too much into year-over-year fluctuations. But department statistics show that despite the recent uptick, police shootings are still down considerable from their highs in the early 1990s and make up only a small fraction of all public encounters every year.

Three days after President Trump publicly accused Sen. Adam Schiff of committing mortgage fraud, an attorney for Schiff wrote privately to the Department of Justice that there was “no factual basis” for the claims — but “ample basis” to launch an investigation into Bill Pulte, the Trump administration official digging into the mortgage records of the president’s most prominent political opponents.

“We are disturbed by the highly irregular, partisan process that led to these baseless accusations; the purposeful, coordinated public disclosure of these materials containing confidential personal information, without regard to the security risks posed to the Senator and his family; and Mr. Pulte’s role in this sordid effort,” attorney Preet Bharara wrote in the July 18 letter reviewed by The Times.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, where Pulte serves as director, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

A Justice Department spokesperson said Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi has directed Ed Martin — a Trump loyalist and director of the department’s “Weaponization Working Group” — to “commence a probe” into criminal referrals from the housing agency, and Martin “will make public statements regarding the matter when appropriate.”

Trump previously nominated Martin — a Missouri lawyer and conservative activist with no prosecutorial experience — to serve as the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. However, Schiff, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, placed a hold on Martin’s nomination, and it was ultimately withdrawn amid a lack of support from Republican senators.

Bharara outlined several reasons why he believed the president’s allegations against Schiff are without merit, and attached a copy of a letter from Schiff to the mortgage lender on his home near Washington, D.C, that Bharara said proved Schiff had been “completely transparent” about listing both that home and a unit in his home district in Burbank as primary residences in mortgage documents.

Schiff’s simultaneous designation of two different homes as primary residences was the basis for Trump’s allegations and for Pulte’s referral of the matter to the Justice Department for criminal review.

Bharara blasted Pulte as “a Presidential appointee who seems to have made it his mission to misuse the power of his office to manufacture allegations of criminal conduct against the President’s perceived political adversaries,” and advised top Justice Department officials to not become complicit in such a politically motivated campaign.

“You should decline Mr. Pulte’s invitation to join his retaliatory harassment of Senator Schiff,” Bharara wrote to Bondi and Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche. “Instead, Mr. Pulte’s misuse of his position should be investigated by a nonpartisan Inspector General to determine whether Mr. Pulte’s conduct should be referred to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation.”

Democrats have questioned the legality of Pulte’s probes into several of Trump’s political opponents, including Schiff, who led a House impeachment of Trump; New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, who has led investigations into and lawsuits against the president; and Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor who has voted to maintain federal interest rates rather than reduce them as Trump has demanded.

Pulte has lodged different allegations against each, but at their core is the claim that they all misrepresented facts in mortgage documents to secure favorable tax or loan terms, including by listing more than one home as their primary residence at the same time.

Trump cited the claims against Cook as reason to remove her from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which she is challenging in court. Critics have condemned the move as a partisan attack designed to allow Trump to wrest control of the economy away from the independent Federal Reserve.

Pulte has downplayed or ignored reporting by ProPublica that several of Trump’s own Cabinet members have made similar housing claims in mortgage and other financial paperwork, and reporting by Reuters that Pulte’s father and stepmother have done so as well. Additional Reuters reporting on eight years of court data found that the federal government has only rarely brought criminal charges over misstatements about primary residence in mortgage records.

With Schiff, who is a former prosecutor, Trump alleged that he intentionally misled lenders about his primary residence being in Potomac, Md., rather than in California, in order to “get a cheaper mortgage and rip off America.” Trump cited an investigation by the Fannie Mae “Financial Crimes Division” as his source.

California Sen. Adam Schiff’s lawyer wrote a letter to the Department of Justice saying there was “no factual basis” for President Trump’s accusations that Schiff had committed mortgage fraud.

(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)

A memorandum from Fannie Mae investigators to Pulte, previously reported by The Times, noted that investigators had been asked by the Federal Housing Finance Agency inspector general’s office for loan files and “any related investigative or quality control documentation” for Schiff’s homes.

Investigators said they had concluded that Schiff and his wife “engaged in a sustained pattern of possible occupancy misrepresentation” on their home loans between 2009 and 2020 by simultaneously identifying both the Potomac home and the Burbank unit as their primary residence. The investigators didn’t say they had concluded a crime had been committed.

Schiff has publicly dismissed Trump’s allegations as baseless, accusing the president of making mortgage fraud claims “his weapon of choice to attack people standing in his way and people standing up to him, like me.” Bharara’s letter outlined his defense in more detail.

Part of that defense was the letter Bharara said Schiff sent to his lender on his Maryland home, Quicken Loans, a copy of which was provided to the Justice Department and reviewed by The Times.

In that letter, which he sent during a 2010 refinancing, Schiff wrote that while California was his “principal legal residence” and where he paid taxes, he had been informed both by counsel for the lender and for the House Administration Committee that the Maryland home “may be considered a primary residence for insurance underwriting purposes” because members of his family lived in it for most of the year.

Bharara called the letter a “transparent disclosure” and “the antithesis of ‘mortgage misrepresentation.’”

Schiff has previously said that neither of the homes were vacation or investment properties and were classified correctly, both in accordance with how they were used by his family and in consultation with House attorneys and his lenders.

Another part of Schiff’s defense, Bharara wrote, was that even if he had committed fraud by making false statements in his mortgage filings — which Bharara said he did not — the 10-year statute of limitations for charging him has lapsed, as the “most recent mortgage application that Mr. Pulte even accuses of inaccuracy is more than twelve years old.”

Bharara also laid out several reasons why he felt that Pulte’s actions deserve to be investigated.

Bharara asserted that the Federal Housing Finance Agency inspector general appeared to have asked the Fannie Mae Financial Crimes Investigation Unit to delve into Schiff’s mortgage records “at Mr. Pulte’s behest,” and that Pulte personally referred the matter to the Justice Department in May, before the Fannie Mae unit had even provided him with its findings.

He also wrote that the criminal referral was made public “as the President sought to distract from criticism related to [convicted sex offender] Jeffery Epstein.”

Schiff’s address was published as a result, which Bharara said presented a threat to the senator and forced him to take “extra security precautions.” Schiff also has launched a legal defense fund to help him defend himself against the president’s accusations.

Bharara, a former U.S. attorney in New York, described Pulte’s actions as “highly irregular,” and part of a “pattern” of him “misusing his office” to go after Trump’s political opponents.

“Opening an investigation on these deficient facts, after this much time has passed, after such an irregular and suspect process, and when the President has repeatedly expressed his longtime desire to investigate and imprison Senator Schiff, would be a deeply partisan and unjust act, unworthy of the Department of Justice,” Bharara wrote. “Instead, it is Mr. Pulte’s conduct that should be investigated.”

“Chipocalypse Now.” When the slogan rolled out Saturday, it sounded like a campaign for Chipotle’s latest rebrand of the humble burrito. The reality was less savory. It was a declaration of war, on an American city, by a sitting president, under the guise of a harmless meme.

Referencing the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now,” President Trump’s Truth Social account posted an AI-generated image of the 79-year-old as the much younger Lt. Col. William Kilgore (Robert Duvall’s character in the film). It was captioned, “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” a parody of a famous quote from Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece. (The original line: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”)

The image, meant to look like a movie poster, was emblazoned with the words “Chipocalypse Now” and showed Trump’s image in front of the Chicago skyline, replete with helicopters, flames and a plume of smoke. As for the “Department of War” reference, Trump signed an executive order Friday to rename the Department of Defense, alleging that its old moniker is “woke.” Your tax dollars at work …

Trump’s post generated all manner of concern and outrage, as it should when the White House threatens a military operation on American soil. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker blasted Trump’s meme via X. “The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal,” he wrote. “Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who spoke to reporters while attending Mexican Independence Day celebrations in Chicago over the weekend, called Trump’s post “disgusting.”

It’s no mistake that “Chipocalypse” sounds as innocuous as a bag of Flamin’ Hot Doritos, but subterfuge is the point. The “I’m kidding but not really” tactic has been referred to as memetic warfare, where everything in a manufactured ecosystem like Trump’s appears to be a harmless joke. MAGA has mastered the art, deploying pop culture-inspired memes that feature an AI-generated Trump as Superman, a Jedi or Sydney Sweeney posing seductively for a denim ad. How can such a playful fellow have dictatorial aspirations?!

If you get upset like Sen. Durbin, MAGA insists it’s because you are “humorless and can’t take a joke.” Funnily enough, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom used the same approach to troll Republicans, they weren’t laughing.

Trump wasn’t jokey or fun Sunday when NBC News’ Yamiche Alcindor asked him about the meme on the South Lawn of the White House. He was condescending when he called her “darling” and referred to her question as “fake news.” When Alcindor attempted to respond, Trump snapped back.

“Be quiet, listen! You don’t listen! You never listen,” he said. “That’s why you’re second-rate. We’re not going to war. We’re gonna clean up our cities. We’re gonna clean them up, so they don’t kill five people every weekend. That’s not war, that’s common sense.”

If sense of reason were part of his crime-fighting quotient, his troops would be invading the metro areas with the highest number of murders per capita — New Orleans first, then Memphis, Tenn., and St. Louis. Yet he has left those red-state cities off his list in favor of places run by Democrats.

Trump has talked for weeks about sending ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other enforcement agencies to Chicago. The president claims it’s to combat out-of-control crime rates and to execute mass deportations. He’s already targeted Los Angeles and Washington. D.C., which like Chicago are under Democratic control.

“The president’s threats are beneath the honor of our nation, but the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution, we must defend our democracy from this authoritarianism by protecting each other and protecting Chicago from Donald Trump,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wrote on social media.

Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that it was launching a surge of immigration law enforcement in Chicago. They came up with another slogan: “Operation Midway Blitz.”

If only that was a stupid meme too.

President Trump on Monday continued to flirt with the idea of mobilizing National Guard troops to combat crime in Chicago, just a day after he had to clarify that he has no intent to “go to war” with the American city.

The push to militarize local law enforcement operations has been an ongoing fixation for the president, who on Saturday used war imagery and a reference to the movie “Apocalypse Now” to suggest that the newly rebranded Department of War could descend upon the Democrat-run city.

Trump clarified Sunday that his post was meant to convey he wants to “clean up” the city, and on Monday once again floated the possibility of deploying federal agents to the city — a move that Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, has staunchly opposed.

“I don’t know why Chicago isn’t calling us saying, please give us help,” Trump said during a speech at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. “When you have over just a short period of time, 50 murders and hundreds of people shot, and then you have a governor that stands up and says how crime is just fine. It’s really really crazy, but we’re bringing back law and order to our country.”

A few hours earlier, Trump posted on social media that he wanted “to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them” — a statement that Pritzker mocked as insincere, saying that Trump had “just threatened an American city with the Department of War.”

“Once again, this isn’t about fighting crime. That requires support and coordination — yet we’ve experienced nothing like that over the past several weeks,” Pritzker said in a post on X. “Instead of taking steps to work with us on public safety, the Trump administration’s focused on scaring Illinoisians.”

The White House did not respond when asked whether Trump would send National Guard troops to Chicago without the request from the governor. But the Department of Homeland Security announced in a news release Monday that it was launching an immigration enforcement operation to “target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago.”

For weeks, Trump has talked about sending the military to Chicago and other cities led by Democrats — an action that governors have repeatedly opposed. Most Americans also oppose the idea, according to a recent CBS/YouGov poll, but the Republican base largely sees Trump’s push as a means to reduce crime.

If Trump were to deploy U.S. forces to the cities, it would follow similar operations in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles — moves that a federal judge last week said was illegal and that amounted to Trump “creating a national police force with the President as its chief” but that Trump sees as victories.

In his Monday remarks, Trump claimed that he “saved Los Angeles” and that crime is down to “virtually nothing” in Washington because he decided to send military forces to patrol the cities. Trump downplayed instances of domestic violence, saying those are “much lesser things” that should not be taken into account when trying to discern whether his crime-fighting efforts have worked in the nation’s capital.

“Things that take place in the home, they call crime. They’ll do anything they can to find something,” Trump lamented. “If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime. Now, I can’t claim 100%, but we are a safe city.”

Trump said “we can do the same thing” in other cities, like Chicago and New York City.

“We are waiting for a call from Chicago,” Trump said. “We’ll fix Chicago.”

As of Monday afternoon, Pritzker’s office had yet to receive any “formal communication or information from the Trump administration” about potential plans to have troops deployed into the city, said Matt Hill, a spokesperson for the Illinois governor.

“Like the public and press, we are learning of their operations through social media as they attempt to produce a reality television show,” Hill said in an email. “If he cared about delivering real solutions for Illinois, then we would have heard from him.”

Pritzker, in remarks posted on social media Sunday, said the Trump administration was trampling on citizens’ constitutional rights “in the fake guise of fighting crime.”

“Once Donald Trump gets the citizens of this nation comfortable with the current atrocities committed under the color of law — what comes next?” he said.

SACRAMENTO — A Riverside County lawmaker accused of driving drunk after a car crash, but cleared by a blood test, took the first step Monday toward suing the Sacramento Police Department, saying officers had tarnished her reputation.

After Sen. Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside) was broadsided by an SUV near the Capitol in May, Sacramento police interviewed the 37-year-old lawmaker for hours at a Kaiser Permanente hospital before citing her on suspicion of driving under the influence. Prosecutors declined to file charges after the toxicology results of a blood test revealed no “measurable amount of alcohol or drugs.”

In an 11-page filing Monday, Cervantes alleged that officers had retaliated against her over a bill that would sharply curtail how police can store data gathered by automated license plate readers, a proposal opposed by more than a dozen law enforcement agencies.

The filing also alleges that the police treated Cervantes, who is gay and Latina, differently than the white woman driver who ran a stop sign and broadsided her car.

“This is not only about what happened to me — it’s about accountability,” Cervantes said in a prepared statement. “No Californian should be falsely arrested, defamed, or retaliated against because of who they are or what they stand for.”

Cervantes, a first-year state senator, has said since the crash that she did nothing wrong. She represents the 31st Senate District, which covers portions of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, and chairs the Senate elections committee.

Cervantes’ lawyer, James Quadra, said the Sacramento police had tried to “destroy the reputation of an exemplary member of the state Senate,” and that the department’s “egregious misconduct” includes false arrest, intentional infliction of emotional distress and defamation.

A representative for the Sacramento Police Department declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

After news broke of the crash, the Sacramento Police Department told reporters that they had “observed objective signs of intoxication” after speaking to Cervantes at the hospital. She said in her filing that the police had asked her to conduct a test gauging her eyes’ reaction to stimulus, a “less accurate and subjective test” than the blood test she requested.

The toxicology screen had “completely exonerated” Cervantes, the filing said, but the police department had already “released false information to the press claiming that Senator Cervantes had driven while under the influence of drugs.”

The filing alleges that one police officer turned off his body camera for about five minutes while answering a call on his cell phone. The filing also said that the department failed to produce body camera footage from a sergeant who also came to the hospital.

After Los Angeles police officers shot at people on three consecutive days late last month, the LAPD’s civilian bosses turned to Chief Jim McDonnell for an explanation.

The Police Commission wanted to know: What more could the department be doing to keep officers from opening fire?

But in his response at the panel’s meeting last week, McDonnell seemed to bristle at the notion his officers were too trigger-happy.

“I think what we’re seeing is an uptick in the willingness of criminals within the community to assault officers head-on,” he said at the Aug. 26 meeting. “And then officers respond with what they have to do in order to control it.”

The commission has heaped praise on McDonnell for his performance since taking over the department in November. But the exchange over the recent cluster of police shootings — part of an overall increase that has seen officers open fire in 31 incidents this year, up from 20 at the same point in 2024 — marked a rare point of contention.

Commission Vice President Rasha Gerges Shields told the chief that she and her colleagues remained “troubled by the dealings of people both with edged weapons — knives, other things like that — and also those who are in the midst of a mental health crisis.”

During a radio appearance earlier this year, the chief brushed aside questions about shootings, saying officers are often put into dangerous situations where they have no choice but to open fire in order to protect themselves or the public.

“That is something that’s part of the job unfortunately,” he said. “It’s largely out of the control of the officer and the department as far as exposure to those types of threats.”

Such remarks have left some longtime observers worried that the department is backsliding to the days when department leaders tolerated pervasive and excessive use of force. McDonnell’s defense of aggressive tactics during this summer’s pro-immigration protests, critics argue, sends a dangerous message to the rank-and-file.

The LAPD sits at a “pivotal” crossroads, according to Jorja Leap, a professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The federal consent decree that followed the Rampart gang scandal of the late 1990s pushed the LAPD into becoming a more transparent and accountable agency, whose leaders accepted community buy-in as essential to their mission, said Leap.

Out of the reforms that followed came its signature outreach program, the Community Safety Partnership, which eschews arrests in favor of bringing officers together with residents to solve problems at some of the city’s most troubled housing projects.

Leap said support for the program has in recent years started to wane, despite research showing the approach has helped drive down crime. “The LAPD has now evolved into an inward-facing organization,” she said.

McDonnell was not available for an interview this week, an LAPD spokeswoman said.

Others faulted the chief for his response to the Trump administration’s immigration raids in Southern California, taking issue with the local police presence at federal operations and the aggressive actions of LAPD officers toward protesters and journalists during demonstrations in June.

Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University, said McDonnell seems unwilling to acknowledge how the sight of riot-gear-clad officers holding off protesters created the impression that police were “protecting the feds and the buildings more than the residents of L.A. who pay for LAPD.”

McDonnell has repeatedly defended his department’s response, telling reporters earlier this year that officers were forced to step in to quell “direct response to immediate, credible threats.”

He also issued an internal memo voicing his support to officers in the Latino-majority department and acknowledging the mixed feelings that some may have about the immigration raids.

After his public swearing-in in November, McDonnell acknowledged how much had changed with the department since he left in 2010, while saying that “my perspective is much broader and wider, realizing that we are not going to be successful unless we work very closely with the community.”

At the time, his appointment was viewed with surprise in local political circles, where some questioned why a progressive mayor with a community organizing background like Karen Bass would hitch her fortunes to a law-and-order chief. Others argued that McDonnell was an appealing choice: A respected LAPD veteran who also served as the chief in Long Beach and later as Los Angeles County sheriff.

After numerous scandals in recent years, McDonnell’s selection for the job was widely seen as offering stability while the city prepared for the massive security challenges of the upcoming World Cup and Olympic Games.

With an earnest, restrained manner, McDonnell has won over some inside the department who were put off by his predecessor Michel Moore’s micromanaging leadership style. After his much-publicized union battles during his tenure as sheriff, McDonnell has courted the powerful Los Angeles Police Protective League by putting new focus on police hiring and promising to overhaul the department’s controversial disciplinary system.

By some measures, McDonnell has also delivered results for Bass. Violent crime numbers continue to drop, with homicides on pace for 50-year lows.

But the two leaders have taken starkly different positions on the White House’s indiscriminate raids and deployment of National Guard troops.

McDonnell took heat during a City Council hearing in June when he described federal law enforcement officers participating in immigration operations as “our partners.”

Andrés Dae Keun Kwon, policy counsel and senior organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that McDonnell’s record on immigration was one of the reasons the ACLU opposed his selection as chief. Since then, Kwon said, the chief seems out of touch with the message of Bass and other local leaders rallying around the city’s immigrants.

“Given that we’re three months into this Trump regime siege of Los Angeles you’d think that the leader of this police department” would be more responsive to the community’s needs, Kwon said.

In a statement, Clara Karger, a spokeswoman for Bass, said that “each leader has a different role to play in protecting Angelenos and all agree that these indiscriminate raids are having devastating consequences for our city,” she said.

McDonnell’s relationship with the Police Commission has been cordial, but several department insiders — who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose private discussions — said that behind the scenes some commissioners have started to second-guess the chief’s handling of disciplinary cases.

The tensions were evident at the recent meeting when the issue of officer shootings led to a public dressing-down of the chief.

Echoing the frustrations of LAPD critics who flood the commission’s meetings on a weekly basis, board members questioned how it was possible that officers needed to fire their weapons on back-to-back-to-back days last month.

Commissioner Fabian Garcia called the three shootings “a lot.”

He and his colleagues told McDonnell they expected the LAPD to present a report on the shootings at a future meeting.

McDonnell responded, “Great, thank you,” before launching into his regular crime and staffing updates.

WASHINGTON — After months of campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize, President Trump sent a sharply different message Friday when he signed an executive order aimed at rebranding the Department of Defense as the Department of War.

Trump said the switch was intended to signal to the world that the United States was a force to be reckoned with, and he complained that the Department of Defense’s name, established in the aftermath of World War II, was “woke.”

“I think it sends a message of victory. I think it sends, really, a message of strength,” Trump said of the change as he authorized the Department of War as a secondary title for the Pentagon.

Congress has to formally authorize a new name, and several of Trump’s closest supporters on Capitol Hill proposed legislation earlier Friday to codify the new name into law.

But already there were cosmetic shifts. The Pentagon’s website went from “defense.gov” to “war.gov.” Signs were swapped around Hegseth’s office while more than a dozen employees watched. Trump said there would be new stationery, too.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whom Trump has begun referring to as the “secretary of war,” said during the signing ceremony that “we’re going to go on offense, not just on defense,” using “maximum lethality” that won’t be “politically correct.”

The attempted rebranding was another rhetorical salvo in Trump’s efforts to reshape the U.S. military and uproot what he has described as progressive ideology. Bases have been renamed, transgender soldiers have been banned and military websites have been scrubbed of posts honoring contributions by women and minorities.

The Republican president contended that his tough talk didn’t contradict his fixation on being recognized for diplomatic efforts, saying peace must be made from a position of strength. Trump has claimed credit for resolving conflicts between India and Pakistan; Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and Armenia and Azerbaijan, among others, though some leaders and others have disputed the significance of the U.S. role. (He’s also expressed frustration that he hasn’t brought the war between Russia and Ukraine to a conclusion as fast as he said he would.)

“I think I’ve gotten peace because of the fact that we’re strong,” Trump said, echoing the “peace through strength” motto associated with President Reagan.

When Trump finished his remarks on the military, he dismissed Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from the room.

“I’m going to let these people go back to the Department of War and figure out how to maintain peace,” Trump said.

Rep. Gregory W. Steube (R-Fla.) proposed legislation in the House to formally change the name of the department.

“From 1789 until the end of World War II, the United States military fought under the banner of the Department of War,” Steube, an Army veteran, said in a statement. “It is only fitting that we pay tribute to their eternal example and renowned commitment to lethality by restoring the name of the ‘Department of War’ to our Armed Forces.”

Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) are introducing companion legislation in the Senate.

The Department of War was created in 1789, then renamed and reorganized through legislation signed by President Truman in 1947, two years after the end of World War II. The Department of Defense incorporated the Department of War, which oversaw the Army, plus the Department of the Navy and the newly created independent Air Force.

Hegseth complained that “we haven’t won a major war since” the name was changed. Trump said, “We never fought to win.”

Trump and Hegseth have long talked about restoring the Department of War name.

In August, Trump told reporters that “everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War. Then we changed it to Department of Defense.”

When confronted with the possibility that making the name change would require an act of Congress, Trump told reporters that “we’re just going to do it.”

“I’m sure Congress will go along,” he said, “if we need that.”

Trump and Hegseth have been on a name-changing spree at the Pentagon, sometimes sidestepping legal requirements.

For example, they wanted to restore the names of nine military bases that once honored Confederate leaders, which were changed in 2023 following a congressionally mandated review.

Because the original names were no longer allowed under law, Hegseth ordered the bases to be named after new people with similar names. For example, Ft. Bragg now honors Army Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a World War II paratrooper and Silver Star recipient from Maine, instead of Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg.

In the case of Fort A.P. Hill, named for Confederate Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill, the Trump administration was forced to choose three soldiers to make the renaming work.

The base now honors Union soldiers Pvt. Bruce Anderson and 1st Sgt. Robert A. Pinn, who contributes the two initials, and Lt. Col. Edward Hill, whose last name completes the second half of the base name.

The move irked Republicans in Congress who, in July, moved to ban restoring any Confederate names in this year’s defense authorization bill.

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a Republican who co-sponsored the earlier amendment to remove the Confederate names, said that “what this administration is doing, particularly this secretary of Defense, is sticking his finger in the eye of Congress by going back and changing the names to the old names.”

Megerian, Kim and Toropin write for the Associated Press. AP writer Matt Brown contributed to this report.

Pentagon chief says name signals more offensive approach to US military, but change unofficial without change to law.

United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order changing the name of the Department of Defense to the “Department of War”.

In a ceremony from the Oval Office on Friday, Trump said the name change was part of a larger shift away from “woke” ideology within the department. He added it would beckon in a new age of military victory.

Administration officials said the “Department of War” will be used in official White House correspondence and public statements, however, a more permanent change would require Congress to pass new legislation.

The Department of Defense had previously been called the Department of War from 1979 to 1947. The name change following World War II when Congress passed the National Security Act of 1947, which consolidated the branches of the US military under a single civilian-headed department.

Historians have said the name was also meant to signal an emphasis on preventing war amid the new threat of nuclear destruction.

After signing the executive order on Friday, Trump suggested the name change was in some way related to the US’s dearth of decisive military victories.

“So we won the first World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between. And then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense,” Trump said.

“We should have won everywhere. We could have won every war, but we we really chose to be very politically correct or woke,” he said.

Trump added he would bring the name change to Congress in hopes of codifying it into law.

‘Maximum lethality, not tepid legality’

Under the order, the US Secretary of Defense will also be referred to as the “Secretary of War”.

Speaking at the Oval Office, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said the change was about “restoring the warrior ethos”.

“The War Department is going to fight decisively, not endless conflicts. It’s going to fight to win, not not to lose,” he said.

“We’re going to go on offense, not just on defence. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct,” he said.

Trump has made several symbolic name changes since taking office, including dubbing the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America in White House usage.

He has also undone name changes of military sites originally named after Confederate officials.

The vows to take a more “war”-forward approach with the US military comes days after Trump announced a deadly strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in international waters in the Caribbean.

Trump and his top officials have vowed more extrajudicial strikes on alleged criminals, which they have dubbed “narco terrorists”.

Experts have said such strikes have scant legal basis and raise risks of civilians, including fishermen and migrants, being targeted.

Speaking on Friday, Trump said that boat traffic in the area of the strike, which killed 11, has been down since.

“I don’t even know about fishermen,” he said. “They may say, I’m not getting on the boat. I’m not going to take a chance.”

Sept. 5 (UPI) — President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Friday directing the Department of Defense to revert to its old title of Department of War and for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s title to be changed to Secretary of War.

The order makes clear the name change was aimed at emphasizing the armed services’ dynamic offensive capabilities with the aim of “projecting power and resolve,” as well as their role in defending the United States and its interests.

“The name ‘Department of War’ conveys a stronger message of readiness and resolve compared to ‘Department of Defense,’ which emphasizes only defensive capabilities,” the text of the order states.

It adds that the change would “sharpen the focus of this Department on our national interest and signal to adversaries America’s readiness to wage war to secure its interests.”

“The United States military is the strongest and most lethal fighting force in the world, and the president believes this department should have a name that reflects its unmatched power and readiness to protect national interests,” the White House added in a fact sheet.

However, the Pentagon, which replaced the George Washington-era War Department in 1947, will only be able to use the new title as a secondary name for now because formally creating new cabinet-level departments is a power reserved to Congress — although the administration can make the switch for official communications.

The order does direct Hegseth to bring forward legislative and executive actions to formalize the renaming in law, however, Trump has expressed confidence that the process wouldn’t prove an obstacle.

“We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along, if we need that. I don’t think we even need that,” he said.

Anticipation that a name change could be imminent has been stoked by Trump, who has sought to link the name used to the United States’ record in the theater of war, noting that the country prevailed in two world wars under the “War Department.”

“Everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was the Department of War. Then we changed it to Department of Defense,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last week.

A post from Hegseth on X late Thursday simply read: “DEPARTMENT OF WAR.”

However, the administration has been mute on the potential costs associated with the rebrand, when and if it is made permanent, amid reports that implementing the changes to emblems, email addresses, uniforms, at U.S. bases and around the world and across hundreds of related agencies could run to $1 billion.

The department was called the War Department from 1789 to 1947, when Congress enacted legislation merging it with the navy and air force to become the National Military Establishment.

Congress created the civilian-led Department of Defense two years later via an amendment to the National Security Act.

Sept. 4 (UPI) — The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to allow President Donald Trump to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission without cause, a direct challenge to a 90-year-old precedent that limits political influence on such agencies.

Trump attempted to fire to Democratic commissioners, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya in March. Both challenged the move, but Bedoya later dropped out of the case.

Solicitor General John D. Sauer said in the most recent court filing that the commission has more power now than it did at its inception, implying support for Trump’s ability to fire Slaughter by exercising his presidential authority under Article 2 of the Constitution.

“In this case, the lower courts have once again ordered the reinstatement of a high-level officer wielding substantial executive authority whom the President has determined should not exercise any executive power, let alone significant rulemaking and enforcement powers,” Sauer wrote.

Sauer asked the high court to expedite the case, sidestepping any more action by lower courts.

Slaughter remains listed as an active commissioner on the FTC’s website.

This move is the latest in a series of efforts by Trump to remove members of other independent federal agencies, which the Supreme Court has approved.

A 1914 law that established the agency said members of independent commission can only be removed from “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

Slaughter was appointed to the commission in 2018. Bedoya was originally appointed by Trump the same year. President Joe Biden re-appointed her in 2024.

It’s been said many times before.

In Los Angeles, for many people, the neighborhood park is their frontyard and backyard.

It’s where tables are staked out early and birthdays are celebrated.

It’s where kids learn how to swim and all ages play soccer, baseball and basketball.

It’s where neighbors gather to beat the heat, hike, catch a concert, slow down, escape the madness.

But as I said in my last column, L.A.’s roughly 500 parks and 100 rec centers, occupying 16,000 acres, are generally in bad shape and not easily accessible to many residents. In fact, in the latest annual ranking by the Trust for Public Land, they fell to 90th out of the 100 largest recreation and parks systems in the nation on the basis of access, acreage, amenities, investment and equity.

That’s shameful and inexcusable, especially for a city prepping to host World Cup soccer championships and the Olympics. But in every corner of Los Angeles, residents now have a chance to weigh in on what they like or don’t like about parks, what went wrong and what to do about it.

A months-long study, commissioned by the city and compiled by landscape design company OLIN with input from multiple urban planners, community groups and thousands of residents, was posted online Tuesday, explaining the long history of decline and laying out strategies for turning things around.

Residents have 45 days to weigh in online or at community meetings (details below). The final report will be delivered to the recreation and parks board of commissioners and then, in a perfect world, someone at City Hall will lead the way and restore pride in an essential but neglected community asset.

Among the key findings of the nearly 500-page needs-assessment study:

Fewer than half of survey respondents said there are enough parks and rec centers within walking distance of their homes.

Fewer than 40% said parks are in either excellent or good condition.

L.A. invests less per capita in parks ($92 annually) than many other large cities, including Chicago ($182), Dallas ($232), Washington, D.C. ($407) and San Francisco ($583).

The department’s maintenance and operations budget has been stagnant for years and its staff has been shrinking, with more trouble on the horizon as temporary funding sources dry up in the next few years.

Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents would support a bond, tax or levy for additional funding.

“I think it validated what we already knew,” Department of Recreation and Parks general manager Jimmy Kim said of the needs assessment study, adding that it provided a framework for making smarter use of existing resources while going after new sources of revenue. “My message to Los Angeles [is] please participate in this process.”

Kim told me last week that the current workforce is half what it once was, and basic park maintenance is like a “game of whack-a-mole.” The department’s budget has grown in the last 15 years, but lagged way behind growth of the citywide budget. In that time, it’s been hit by inflation, the citywide budget deficit and the rising cost of maintaining aging facilities (the deferred maintenance tab is greater than $2 billion).

The department is also hamstrung by a Charter-mandated, per-capita funding formula that hasn’t been tweaked since the 1930s. And because it’s a proprietary department, meaning that it raises some money through programs and concessions, it’s required to pay its own utility bills and reimburse the city for employee benefits, two expenses that swallow 40% of its budget.

“For the last century,” said Jessica Henson, of OLIN, “the same percentage of the city budget has been allocated to parks, but they’re doing a lot more today, and are on the front lines of so many critical public services like COVID response and fire response. They’re doing more with less over the last 15 years.”

In my last column, I laid out one of the easiest and quickest ways to add more park space — unlock the gates of L.A. Unified schoolyards. Ten have been opened so far, and a new agreement between the city and school district paves the way for more, although two major obstacles are funding and the need to replace blacktop with greenery.

To calculate how to make better use of existing resources, the study used an approach developed in part by UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. The PerSquareMile tool broke the city into tiny grids and identified two dozen park sites where improved facilities could impact the largest number of people, and three dozen sites where conversion of schools and other public spaces into parks would serve hundreds of thousands of people.

“It’s the greatest good for the greatest number of people in the most efficient way,” said Jon Christensen, of the UCLA institute.

But transforming the system will take more than that, said Guillermo Rodriguez, a member of the study’s steering committee and California state director of the Trust for Public Land, the nonprofit that ranked L.A. near the bottom of the 100 largest park systems.

“Cities have made investments across the board, and L.A. is lagging,” Rodriguez said.

The study cited several revenue-generating options, including a charter amendment to increase the percentage of funding that goes to parks, expanded nonprofit partnerships, extending Proposition K, the 1996 park improvement measure that is about to expire, and putting a new fundraising initiative on the ballot in the fall of 2026.

“In every administration since [Mayor] Tom Bradley, the park system was taken for granted,” Rodriguez said. “There’s no more tape, no more paint, no more magic tricks that they can use to fix the parks. It really requires leadership and a significant investment, and I think Angelenos are ready to step up.”

That leadership is going to have to come from Mayor Karen Bass and each member of the City Council. So if you’d like to get their attention, two public meetings are coming up:

Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Bellevue Recreation Center in Silver Lake, and Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon at the Westwood Recreation Center.

For a schedule of future virtual meetings, and to read an online copy of the needs assessment study, go to needs.parks.lacity.gov.

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The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has relieved three deputies of duty while it investigates the circumstances of the bloody beating of a Valencia man outside a Santa Clarita bar last year.

Parker Seitz, 25, alleged in a federal lawsuit that off-duty sheriff’s deputies attacked him outside a bar called the Break Room last Thanksgiving Day.

He sustained multiple serious injuries, according to the complaint filed in California’s Central District federal court on Aug. 25, including a fractured jaw, a punctured lung and a bruised collarbone.

Seitz is suing the county, multiple L.A. County sheriff’s deputies, hired security guards at the Break Room, and the bar itself for unspecified damages.

“Parker Seitz was violently attacked by off-duty Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputies, under the watchful eye of security guards contracted by a local business,” Josh Stambaugh, an attorney for Seitz, said in a statement. “He suffered serious injuries and, as we allege in our lawsuit, members and leaders of the LASD then attempted to conceal the truth of the attack and evade accountability on behalf of the organization.”

The sheriff’s department said in an email that it “takes these allegations seriously,” and that on Dec. 2 it “initiated an internal investigation into the incident. Three employees have been relieved of duty pending the outcome of the investigation.”

Management at the Break Room did not respond to requests for comment.

The complaint alleges assault and battery by off-duty deputies Randy Austin and Nicholas Hernandez and an unidentified third assailant, along with a civil conspiracy by the county and a number of sheriff’s department employees accused of trying to bury the incident.

Parker Seitz, 25, alleges off-duty sheriff’s deputies attacked him outside a Santa Clarita bar called the Break Room last Thanksgiving Day. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has relieved three deputies of duty while it investigates the incident.

(Robert Hanashiro / For The Times)

About 10:30 p.m. Nov. 27, Seitz and two friends visited the bar, where Austin, Hernandez and the third assailant “began to bother and harass Seitz, including by repeatedly reaching for the sunglasses resting on” his head, according to the complaint. Minutes after Seitz left the bar about 1:36 a.m. Nov. 28, the complaint said, Hernandez knocked the shades off Seitz’s head “in a rude and offensive manner” and “an altercation broke out.”

The altercation dissipated quickly, according to the complaint, but then at about 1:46 a.m., Austin, “suddenly and without any justification,” punched Seitz and knocked him down, then Austin, Hernandez and the unidentified third person proceeded “to beat and stomp on him while he was on the ground.”

Seitz was bloodied during the beating and taken to a nearby hospital. Shortly after his arrival there, Justin Diez — who was a captain in charge of the Santa Clarita Valley sheriff’s station at the time of the incident and was promoted in April to lead the department’s North Patrol Division as commander — and deputy Richard Wyatt allegedly defamed him and violated his constitutional and civil rights in an effort to intimidate him and cover up the assault, the complaint said.

Wyatt, Seitz alleged, told one of Seitz’s friends that he had thrown the first punch and that he had been disruptive while at the hospital, which Seitz denies.

Later that morning, Diez called Seitz’s father, Ryan Seitz, and told him his son had “started a fight with off-duty deputies of the LASD” and “if Ryan Seitz would leave it to” Diez, he “would make sure the situation would go away,” the complaints said, describing the call as an attempt “to cover up the true circumstances of the beating … and to intimidate and dissuade Seitz from filing or pressing charges or pursuing any claims against the deputies” or the county.

The Sheriff’s Department did not directly respond to the allegations outlined in Seitz’s complaint, but it said that it “has established policies and procedures that clearly outline the standards of conduct required of all employees. … Any violation of these standards will be addressed promptly, and appropriate action will be taken if evidence is found to support the allegation of misconduct.”

Stambaugh said Seitz “was out with friends after a Friendsgiving dinner celebrating the purchase of his first home” the night he was allegedly assaulted.

“Parker Seitz’s lawsuit is a demand for accountability in response to the wrongs he has personally suffered, and an effort to ensure that the actions of these specific LASD members remain an anomaly,” Stambaugh said in his statement. “This is not the LASD that the Seitz family had supported and believed in.”

WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday publicly posted the files it had received from the Justice Department on the sex trafficking investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, responding to mounting pressure in Congress to force more disclosure in the case.

Still, the files mostly contain information that was already publicly known or available. The folders — posted on Google Drive — contained hundreds of image files of years-old court filings related to Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 as he faced charges for sexually abusing teenage girls, and Maxwell, who is serving a lengthy prison sentence for assisting him.

The files also included video appearing to be body cam footage from police searches as well as recordings and summaries of law enforcement interviews with victims detailing the abuse they said they suffered.

The committee’s release of the files showed how lawmakers are eager to act on the issue as they return to Washington after a monthlong break. They quickly revived a political clash that has flummoxed House Republican leadership and roiled President Trump’s administration.

House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to quell an effort by Democrats and some Republicans to force a vote on a bill that would require the Justice Department to release all the information in the so-called Epstein files, with the exception of the victims’ personal information.

What’s in the released files

If the purpose of the release was to provide answers to a public still curious over the long concluded cases, the raw mechanics of the clunky rollout made that a challenge.

The committee at 6 p.m. released thousands of pages and videos via the cumbersome Google Drive, leaving it to readers and viewers to decipher new and interesting tidbits on their own.

The files released Tuesday included audio of an Epstein employee describing to a law enforcement official how “there were a lot of girls that were very, very young” visiting the home but couldn’t say for sure if they were minors.

Over the course of Epstein’s visits to the home, the man said, more than a dozen girls might visit, and he was charged with cleaning the room where Epstein had massages, twice daily.

Some pages were almost entirely redacted. Other documents related to Epstein’s Florida prosecution that led to a plea deal that has long been criticized as too lenient, including emails between the defense and prosecutors over the conditions of his probation after his conviction. Barbara Burns, a Palm Beach County prosecutor, expressed frustration as the defense pushed for fewer restrictions on their client: “I don’t know how to convey to him anymore than I already have that his client is a registered sex offender that was fortunate to get the deal of the century.”

Some of the interviews with officers from the Palm Beach Police Department date to 2005, according to timestamps read out by officials at the beginning of the files.

Most, if not all, of the text documents posted Tuesday had already been public. Notably, the probable cause affidavit and other records from the 2005 investigation into Epstein contained a notation indicating that they’d been previously released in a 2017 public records request. An internet search showed those files were posted to the website of the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office in July 2017.

Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, chided Republicans on the panel for releasing material that he said consisted almost entirely of already available information.

“The 33,000 pages of Epstein documents James Comer has decided to ‘release’ were already mostly public information. To the American people — don’t let this fool you,” Garcia said in a statement.

The disclosure also left open the question of why the Justice Department did not release the material directly to the public instead of operating through Capitol Hill.

Survivors meet with lawmakers

On Capitol Hill onTuesday, the House speaker and a bipartisan group of lawmakers met with survivors of abuse by Epstein and Maxwell.

“The objective here is not just to uncover, investigate the Epstein evils, but also to ensure that this never happens again and ultimately to find out why justice has been delayed for these ladies for so very long,” said Johnson, R-La., after he emerged from a two-hour meeting with six of the survivors.

“It is inexcusable. And it will stop now because the Congress is dialed in on this,” he added.

But there are still intense disagreements on how lawmakers should proceed. Johnson is pressing for the inquiry to be handled by the House Oversight Committee and supporting the committee as it releases its findings.

Push for disclosure continues

Meanwhile, Democrats and some Republicans were still trying to maneuver around Johnson’s control of the House floor to hold a vote on their bill to require the Justice Department to publicly release files. Democrats lined up in the House chamber Tuesday evening to sign a petition from Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, to force a vote. Three other Republicans also supported the maneuver, but Massie would need two more GOP lawmakers and every Democrat to be successful.

If Massie, who is pressing for the bill alongside Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), is able to force a vote — which could take weeks — the legislation would still need to pass the Senate and be signed into law by Trump.

The clash suggests little has changed in Congress since late July, when Johnson sent lawmakers home early in hopes of cooling the political battle over the Epstein case. Members of both parties remain dissatisfied and are demanding more details on the years-old investigation into Epstein, the wealthy and well-connected financier whose 2019 death has sparked wide-ranging conspiracy theories and speculation.

“We continue to bring the pressure. We’re not going to stop until we get justice for all of the survivors and the victims,” Garcia told reporters.

Groves writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Eric Tucker, Kevin Freking and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, Mike Sisak in New York and Meg Kinnard in Chapin, S.C., contributed.