first day

The Los Angeles Police Department has released a report that identifies several shortcomings in its response to the devastating Palisades fire, including communication breakdowns, inconsistent record-keeping and poor coordination at times with other agencies — most notably the city’s Fire Department.

The after-action report called the January blaze a “once in a lifetime cataclysmic event” and praised the heroic actions of many officers, but said the LAPD’s missteps presented a “valuable learning opportunity” with more climate-related disasters likely looming in the future.

LAPD leaders released the 92-page report and presented the findings to the Police Commission at the civilian oversight panel’s public meeting Tuesday.

The report found that while the Fire Department was the lead agency, coordination with the LAPD was “poor” on Jan. 7, the first day of the fire. Though personnel from both agencies were working out of the same command post, they failed to “collectively establish a unified command structure or identify shared objectives, missions, or strategies,” the report said.

Uncertainty about who was in charge was another persistent issue, with more confusion sown by National Guard troops that were deployed to the area. Department leaders were given no clear guidelines on what the guard’s role would be when they arrived, the report said.

The mix-ups were the result of responding to a wildfire of unprecedented scale, officials said. At times the flames were advancing at 300 yards a minute, LAPD assistant chief Michael Rimkunas told the commission.

“Hopefully we don’t have to experience another natural disaster, but you never know,” Rimkunas said, adding that the endeavor was “one of the largest and most complex traffic control operations in its history.”

Between Jan. 11 and Jan. 16, when the LAPD’s operation was at its peak, more than 700 officers a day were assigned to the fire, the report said.

The report found that officials failed to maintain a chronological log about the comings and goings of LAPD personnel at the fire zone.

“While it is understandable that the life-threatening situation at hand took precedence over the completion of administrative documentation,” the report said, “confusion at the command post about how many officers were in the field “resulted in diminished situational awareness.”

After the fire first erupted, the department received more than 160 calls for assistance, many of them for elderly or disabled residents who were stuck in their homes — though the report noted that the disruption of cell service contributed to widespread confusion.

The communication challenges continued throughout the day, the report found.

Encroaching flames forced authorities to move their command post several times. An initial staging area, which was in the path of the evacuation route and the fire, was consumed within 30 minutes, authorities said.

But because of communication breakdowns caused by downed radio and cellphone towers, dispatchers sometimes had trouble reaching officers in the field and police were forced to “hand deliver” important paper documents from a command post to its staging area on Zuma Beach, about 20 miles away.

Several commissioners asked about reports of journalists being turned away from fire zones in the weeks that followed the fire’s outbreak.

Assistant Chief Dominic Choi said there was some trepidation about whether to allow journalists into the fire-ravaged area while authorities were still continuing their search for bodies of fire victims.

Commissioner Rasha Gerges Shields said that while she had some concerns about the LAPD’s performance, overall she was impressed and suggested that officers should be commended for their courage. The department has said that dozens of officers lost their homes to the fires.

The report also recommended that the department issue masks and personal protective equipment after there was a shortage for officers on the front lines throughout the first days of the blaze.

The Palisades fire was one of the costliest and most destructive disasters in city history, engulfing nearly 23,000 acres, leveling more than 6,000 structures and killing 12 people. More than 60,000 people were evacuated. The deaths of five people within L.A. city limits remain under investigation by the LAPD’s Major Crimes Division and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The LAPD reports details how at 11:15 a.m., about 45 minutes after the first 911 calls, the call was made to issue a citywide tactical alert, the report said. The department stayed in a heightened state of alert for 29 days, allowing it to draw resources from other parts of the city, but also meaning that certain calls would not receive a timely police response.

As the flames began to engulf a nearby hillside, more officers began responding to the area, including a contingent that had been providing security at a visit by President Trump.

Initially, LAPD officers operated in largely a rescue- and traffic-control role. But as the fire wore on, police began to conduct crime suppression sweeps in the evacuation zones where opportunistic burglars were breaking into homes they knew were empty.

In all, 90 crimes were reported in the fire zone, including four crimes against people, a robbery and three aggravated assaults, 46 property crimes, and 40 other cases, ranging from a weapons violation to identity theft. The department made 19 arrests.

The new report comes weeks after the city of Los Angeles put out its own assessment of the fire response — and on the heels of federal prosecutors arresting and charging a 29-year-old Uber driver with intentionally setting a fire Jan. 1 that later grew into the Palisades fire.

The LAPD’s Major Crimes and Robbery-Homicide units also worked with the ATF to investigate the fire’s cause.

DEL MAR — Sometimes the toughest part of owning a horse is deciding what to name it. If you own a bunch of horses, you run out of logical names pretty quickly. You can only do a play on the sire’s name so many times. And if you name it after a living person, you need permission from that person.

But every once in a while happenstance is your guide.

Ned Toffey has been the general manager of Spendthrift Farm for 21 years. Spendthrift saw an Into Mischief colt it liked and bought the yet unnamed colt as a yearling for $650,000. Now the tough part, naming him.

Toffey had just completed an interview with a publication and it was trying to promote it on social media. The only problem is they got a couple of first letters transposed and sent out posted a message on X calling the longtime Spendthrift executive Ted Noffey. Innocent mistake. Once notified it was corrected but not before a few screenshots were taken.

John Velazquez smiles after riding Ted Noffey to victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile horse race in Del Mar on Friday.

(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)

Noffey went with the joke.

Now people will remember that colt as the winner of the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, pushing his name to the top of Kentucky Derby future pools.

His win wasn’t a surprise as he has won all four of his races, but none this prestigious on the first day of the two-day Breeders’ Cup held at Del Mar. All five of the races on Friday were worth no less than $1 million with nine more on Saturday.

Ted Noffey, the horse, was the favorite and was within a length of the lead all the way around the 1 1/16-mile race for 2-year-old males, winning by a length.

“It pretty much unfolded like we thought it would,” said trainer Todd Pletcher. “I’m just glad that he was able to keep finding more.”

Brant, the $3 million purchase for trainer Bob Baffert, went to the lead and was in front until the top of the stretch when Ted Noffey inched past and then kept going. He ended up winning by a length over Mr. A.P.

“I was happy with the trip, [Brant] just got tired,” Baffert said. “The lack of two turns caught up with him. He was beat by a real good horse, and they ran really fast. I think he will move up off this race.”

Brant finished third and Baffert’s other horse, Litmus Test, finished fourth. Ted Noffey was the favorite and paid $3.60 to win .

The other $2 million race, the Juvenile Fillies, was won by Super Corredora ($19.60 to win), whose last race was a maiden win, the only time this has happened in this race.

Southern California based John Sadler had to go 42 races before he won his first Breeders’ Cup race in 2018 when he won the Classic with Accelerate.

“My journey has been, there was a time when they’d say, he’s the best trainer that hasn’t won a Breeders’ Cup,” Sadler said. “They stopped asking that after Accelerate. So we’ve won quite a few of them now. So, I’m very pleased with that.

“And as you’re an older trainer, which I am at this point (he’s 69), these are the races you want to win. I think I hold most of the categories here at Del Mar, right behind Baffert—number of wins, number of stakes wins and money earned. The big days are especially rewarding.”

The 2-year-old filly led the entire 1 1/16 mile race and was the front half of a Southern California exacta with Baffert’s Explora finishing second. Hector Barrios was the jockey and it was his first Breeders’ Cup win with a three-quarters of a length victory.

The first race of the day, the $1 million Juvenile Turf Sprint, was won by Cy Fair ($12.00), a horse named after a high school in Texas and trained by George Weaver. Everyone gave Aidan O’Brien a good shot to win the five-furlong race since he had three horses in the race and his next win would give him 21, the most ever, breaking a tie with the late Wayne Lukas.

O’Brien had to wait for the last race of the day, the $1 million Juvenile Turf over one mile to pick up No. 21. Gstaad ($4.40) was the favorite and didn’t disappoint coming off the pace at the top of the stretch and winning by three-quarters of a length.

The other Breeders’ Cup race of the day, the $1 million Juvenile Fillies Turf, was won by Balantina ($43.20) by 1 ¼ lengths, the largest margin of the day. She came from well off the pace in the one mile race with a strong stretch drive for trainer Donnacha O’Brien, Aidan’s son.

The first day of the Breeders’ Cup is all 2-year-old races, but Saturday is where all the money is, $23 million in purses to be exact. It’s headed by the $7-million Classic, a 1¼ mile race for horses of any age or sex. The race, and the whole event, took a major blow when Sovereignty, the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes winner and top-ranked horse in the country, was scratched after he spiked a fever early in the week. He was the 6-5 morning line favorite.

Everyone was looking forward to the rematch of Sovereignty and Journalism (5-1 adjusted odds), who finished one-two in both the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes. McCarthy, who trains Journalism and owner Aron Wellman replaced jockey Umberto Rispoli after they didn’t like his ride in the Pacific Classic. Jose Ortiz picked up the mount.

“I think it’s unfortunate that Sovereignty is not in there but this is probably one of the best Classics we’ve seen in about 20 years,” McCarthy said. “We’ll bounce out of there and try and be tactical and try to be within four or five lengths of the lead.”

There should also be some interest in Fierceness (5-2), who won the Pacific Classic after a terrible break when he ducked near the rail breaking from the one. He drew the one for this race too.

“He’s got to break straight and establish the position he wants and run his race,” trainer Todd Pletcher said. “His best race gives him a big chance, if he can deliver that.”

Among others in the race are Santa Anita-based Baeza (10-1), who won the Pennsylvania Derby; Japanese horse Forever Young (7-2), winner of the Saudi Cup; last year’s winner Sierra Leone (7-2); and Nevada Beach (20-1) for Baffert and winner of the Los Alamitos Derby and the Goodwood Stakes at Santa Anita.

Another race to watch on Saturday is the $5-million Turf in which Rebel’s Romance is trying to become the first three-time winner of this race and the third horse to ever win three Breeders’ Cup races, joining Goldikova and Beholder.

As Matthew Stafford got to the podium on Thursday, he joked that he was sure reporters wanted to ask him questions about the paper cut he suffered.

The Rams star quarterback then fielded inquiries about the subject that clouds all conversation about the Rams: The back injury that sidelined Stafford until this week.

Stafford practiced for the fourth day in a row, another small milestone for the 17th-year pro and a team aiming to make a Super Bowl run.

“The good thing is I feel pretty good,” said Stafford, who practiced for the fourth day in a row. “The last couple days out there practicing, I was able to do even more than I thought I was going to be able to do the first day, and then I’ve just been trying to stack days.

“Backs are sometimes interesting things. It’s not cut and dry, what’s what and how you’re going to feel. So I’m really appreciative of our team, our head coach and everybody taking a day-to-day approach with me and doing everything they can to try and help me out.

“I have a feeling of responsibility to our team to do what’s right by them and I’m trying to do that as best as I can day in and day out.”

Stafford, 37, declined to discuss specifics of his injury, which coach Sean McVay has described as an aggravated disc that required at least one epidural injection.

Stafford said there was not a particular offseason incident that caused the condition, which apparently flared while training between the time the Rams returned from Maui in June and the start of training camp in late July.

“It wasn’t like one thing where I knew right away,” he said. “Just kind of something that crept up on me a little bit.”

Stafford said he had done “everything under the sun” to be able to return to the field.

Asked if he expected to be ready for the Sept. 7 opener against the Houston Texans, he said, “I’m not going to answer questions like that. … It’s probably a day-to-day thing. I’m just doing everything I can to try and be out there for the next practice.”

Rams coach Sean McVay, left, talks with quarterback Matthew Stafford, right, during training camp in Woodland Hills on Thursday.

(Gary Klein / Los Angeles Times)

Stafford’s return to the field began on Monday, two days after he did not go through a scheduled individual throwing session. Stafford recovered well enough from Monday’s workout to practice again on Tuesday. He participated in a team jogthrough on Wednesday, and then went through a full practice on Thursday.

Throughout the week, he looked sharp and showed no discernible signs of discomfort or limitations.

“I’ve seen a guy that’s gotten better and better,” McVay said. “He looks like the stud that we know.”

Stafford’s availability will be paramount for a team aiming to return to the Super Bowl for the first time since the 2021-22 season, when Stafford led the Rams to a victory in Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium.

During the offseason, the Rams adjusted Stafford’s contract — he will carry a salary-cap number of $47.5 million this season, according to Overthecap.com — because they believe that with the addition of star receiver Davante Adams and a rising defense, they have a shot at another title.

During training camp and joint practices with the Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints, veteran Jimmy Garoppolo took first-team snaps in place of Stafford. Third-year pro Stetson Bennett also made major strides during training camp and two preseason starts.

Yet Stafford’s availability and performance will dictate whether the Rams can improve their performance from last season, when they advanced to the NFC divisional round before losing to the eventual Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles.

So the Rams and Stafford must manage the back issue.

The Rams play their final preseason game at Cleveland on Saturday, but Stafford — and perhaps other veterans — will not travel, McVay said.

Stafford sounded as if managing this back issue will be nothing new for a quarterback who played through numerous injuries during 12 seasons with the Detroit Lions and four with the Rams.

“There’s soreness all over the place, every time I wake up,” he joked. “It’s something that I’ll manage like I do a million other things throughout the year.”

MIAMI — When Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno visits Colombia this week as part of a three-nation tour of Latin America, it will be something of a homecoming.

The Ohio senator, who defeated an incumbent last year with the help of Donald Trump’s endorsement and the highest political ad spending in U.S. Senate race history, was born in Bogota and has brothers who are heavyweights in politics and business there.

Moreno has emerged as an interlocutor for conservatives in Latin America seeking to connect with the Trump administration.

In an interview with the Associated Press ahead of the trip, he expressed deep concern about Colombia’s direction under left-wing President Gustavo Petro and suggested that U.S. sanctions, higher tariffs or other retaliatory action might be needed to steer it straight.

The recent criminal conviction of former President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative icon, was an attempt to “silence” the man who saved Colombia from guerrilla violence, Moreno said. Meanwhile, record cocaine production has left the United States less secure — and Colombia vulnerable to being decertified by the White House for failing to cooperate in the war on drugs.

“The purpose of the trip is to understand all the dynamics before any decision is made,” said Moreno, who will meet with both Petro and Uribe, as well as business leaders and local officials. “But there’s nothing that’s taken off the table at this point and there’s nothing that’s directly being contemplated.”

Elected with Trump’s support

Moreno, a luxury car dealer from Cleveland, defeated incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown last year and became Ohio’s senior senator on practically his first day in office after his close friend JD Vance resigned the Senate to become vice president.

In Congress, Moreno has mimicked Trump’s rhetoric to attack top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer as a “miserable old man out of a Dickens novel,” called on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and threatened to subpoena California officials over their response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.

On Latin America, he’s been similarly outspoken, slamming Petro on social media as a “socialist dictator” and accusing Mexico of being on the path to becoming a “narco state.”

Such comments barely register in blue-collar Ohio, but they’ve garnered attention in Latin America. That despite the fact Moreno hasn’t lived in the region for decades, speaks Spanish with a U.S. accent and doesn’t sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“He’s somebody to watch,” said Michael Shifter, the former president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “He’s one of the most loyal Trump supporters in the senate and given his background in Latin America he could be influential on policy.”

Moreno, 58, starts his first congressional delegation to Latin America on Monday for two days of meetings in Mexico City with officials including President Claudia Sheinbaum. He’ll be accompanied by Terrance Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who is making his first overseas trip since being confirmed by the Senate last month to head the premier federal narcotics agency.

Seeking cooperation with Mexico on fentanyl

Moreno, in the pre-trip interview, said that Sheinbaum has done more to combat the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. than her predecessor and mentor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who he described as a “total disaster.” But he said more cooperation is needed, and he’d like to see Mexico allow the DEA to participate in judicial wiretaps like it has for decades in Colombia and allow it to bring back a plane used in bilateral investigations that López Obrador grounded.

“The corruption becomes so pervasive, that if it’s left unchecked, it’s kind of like treating cancer,” said Moreno. “Mexico has to just come to the realization that it does not have the resources to completely wipe out the drug cartels. And it’s only going to be by asking the U.S. for help that we can actually accomplish that.”

Plans to tour the Panama Canal

From Mexico, Moreno heads to Panama, where he’ll tour the Panama Canal with Trump’s new ambassador to the country, Kevin Marino Cabrera.

In March, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate struck a deal that would’ve handed control of two ports on either end of the U.S.-built canal to American investment firm BlackRock Inc. The deal was heralded by Trump, who had threatened to take back the canal to curb Chinese influence.

However, the deal has since drawn scrutiny from antitrust authorities in Beijing and last month the seller said it was seeking to add a strategic partner from mainland China — reportedly state-owned shipping company Cosco — to the deal.

“Cosco you might as well say is the actual communist party,” said Moreno. “There’s no scenario in which Cosco can be part of the Panamanian ports.”

‘We want Colombia to be strong’

On the final leg of the tour in Colombia, Moreno will be joined by another Colombian American senator: Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona. In contrast to Moreno, who was born into privilege and counts among his siblings a former ambassador to the U.S., Gallego and his three sisters were raised by an immigrant single mother on a secretary’s paycheck.

Despite their different upbringings, the two have made common cause in seeking to uphold the tradition of bilateral U.S. support for Colombia, for decades Washington’s staunchest ally in the region. It’s a task made harder by deepening polarization in both countries.

The recent sentencing of Uribe to 12 years of house arrest in a long-running witness tampering case has jolted the nation’s politics with nine months to go before decisive presidential elections. The former president is barred from running but remains a powerful leader, and Moreno said his absence from the campaign trail could alter the playing field.

He also worries that surging cocaine production could once again lead to a “narcotization” of a bilateral relationship that should be about trade, investment and mutual prosperity.

“We want Colombia to be strong, we want Colombia to be healthy, we want Colombia to be prosperous and secure, and I think the people of Colombia want the exact same thing,” he added. “So, the question is, how do we get there?”

Goodman and Smyth write for the Associated Press. Smyth reported from Columbus, Ohio.

Eight weeks ago, on the first day of USC football’s summer workout program, Trumain Carroll hoped to drive home one particular message.

How you do one thing, he told the team, is how you do everything.

Carroll had just been hired as USC’s new strength and conditioning coach, replacing Bennie Wylie, who was abruptly let go in April. The late start for Carroll left him with only so much time to lay a foundation. But this lesson was especially critical. Not only was it one of his core beliefs as a strength coach, it was also one of the main reasons he was brought to USC, where discipline, especially late in games, had often unraveled.

Carroll knew, that first day, that he needed to make clear how much details mattered. So when the team was lacking effort during warm-ups, he made players start again. And again. Soon enough, before the workout even started, they were out of time.

USC quarterback Jayden Maiava, third from left, and quarterback Husan Longstreet, fourth from left, join fellow quarterbacks during a preseason camp workout on Wednesday.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

“We were supposed to do some half-gassers that day,” Carroll said Wednesday, “but we didn’t make it to them. We didn’t make it for the simple reason that how you do one thing is how you do everything. That workout was a warm-up, learning the standard for how we warm up, for one full hour.”

The message was received after that, Carroll says. The question now, as USC opened preseason camp on Wednesday, is whether it’ll show on the field.

A year ago, the Trojans inexplicably blew fourth-quarter leads in five of their six losses, often in devastating fashion. They also didn’t win a single conference game outside of L.A. in their debut Big Ten season, their only road victory coming in a close call at UCLA.

How you view those narrow losses is a matter of perspective. At the time, coach Lincoln Riley claimed it was a sign of how close USC was to being a contender.

But by spring, he’d settled on a new explanation. That the team needed someone else demanding discipline and calling for accountability. So he parted ways with Wylie, who’d come with him from Oklahoma four years ago, knowing that something needed to be done.

“We’ve had a lot of success together, a lot of success,” Riley said of Wylie at Big Ten media day. “It was not an easy decision. But I felt like for USC, at this time and place where our program was at, that we needed a new voice down there.”

That voice carried across Howard Jones Field early Wednesday morning, bellowing above the din of a Drake song at the start of USC’s first preseason practice. As he barked out the team’s next moves, Carroll paced between the Trojans’ offense and defense, scanning for anything that might be amiss.

Watching him command the group, it wasn’t hard to see why Riley sought out such a firm hand for the job — and why Carroll has had little trouble thus far in getting the respect others say he demands.

USC coach Lincoln Riley watches the team on the first day of preseason camp at Howard Jones Field on Wednesday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“The way Coach T came in here and put his foot down early, we knew we weren’t going to have any problems,” said Trovon Reed, USC’s new cornerbacks coach. “Coach Tru yell at them sometimes, and I get scared.”

But before the yelling could be effective, Carroll wanted the players to know he respected them. He and his staff learned as many names as they could before the first workout, so the players would understand how serious they were about details.

The team was scheduled to run stairs at the Coliseum every Friday this summer. But after one walk-through of the stadium, Carroll decided the players would need to prove they deserved the opportunity first.

“This is such a sacred place,” Carroll said of the Coliseum. “I don’t want to come in and disrespect it before we’re ready.”

Players and staff have raved about Carroll’s influence in the months since. But how much a new strength and conditioning staff can tangibly affect wins and losses for the Trojans remains to be seen.

Count Riley as one who believes Carroll’s hire will help close the gap for a team that was so close, so often last season.

“When you first get started, you’re just teaching guys what this stuff looks like,” Riley said. “Then they start really wanting to win and believing they can win, and that’s great, but at some point, that expectation has got to go through the roof, where they know they’re going to win and they know exactly what to do. That’s obviously a big emphasis point for us. The better job you do at being consistent and demanding that out of the guys, the better job the team does to accept that and understand that every little thing is going to matter, the faster you become a championship team.”

Carroll knows he’s not capable of changing all that on his own.

When it comes to actually closing out games in the fourth quarter, he said, “I’m going to have a Powerade towel in one hand and a Powerade bottle in the other hand.

“But,” he continued, “I firmly believe you don’t rise to the occasion, you fall to the level of your training.”

And with Carroll in the building, no one seems all that worried about that baseline any longer.

Etc.

Adrian Klemm, a former offensive line coach at UCLA, Oregon and in the NFL, has been hired to USC’s staff as a defensive analyst. … Wideout Ja’Kobi Lane was limited for USC’s first practice, but otherwise the Trojans open camp with a mostly clean bill of health.