LAPD

R&B singer Ray J was arrested early Thanksgiving morning, according to jail records and a police spokesman.

The 44-year-old artist — whose legal name is Willie Norwood — was arrested on suspicion of making criminal threats, according to Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Mike Bland.

Jail records show Norwood was arrested around 4 a.m. by officers from LAPD’s Devonshire Division, which patrols parts of the San Fernando Valley including Chatsworth and Northridge.

Bland could not provide details on the incident or say exactly where Norwood was arrested. He was released on $50,000 bond a few hours after his arrest, according to jail records.

The younger brother of actress and singer Brandy, Norwood is best known for the tracks “One Wish” and “Sexy Can I.” He was sued for defamation in October by his ex-girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, over comments he made in a TMZ documentary.

Ray J is married to actor and producer Princess Love Norwood, whom he co-starred with on the reality show “Love & Hip Hop,” which showcased an often contentious relationship. The two, who share two children, are in the process of a divorce, as People reported last year.

The Los Angeles City Council will consider an ordinance that would prevent the LAPD from using crowd control weapons against peaceful protesters and journalists.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, who represents District 13, is pushing for regulations that would prohibit the Los Angeles Police Department from using “kinetic energy projectiles” or “chemical agents” unless officers are threatened with physical violence.

The Public Safety Committee unanimously approved the proposal and forwarded a vote with all council members on Wednesday. The items would be considered by the council in November or December, said Nick Barnes-Batista, a communications director for District 13.

The ordinance would also require officers to give clear, audible warnings about safe exit routes during “kettling,” when crowds are pushed into designated areas by police.

After the first iteration of the “No Kings” protest over the summer that saw multiple journalists shot by nonlethal rounds, tear-gassed and detained, news organizations sued the city and Police Department, arguing officers had engaged in “continuing abuse” of members of the media.

U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera granted a temporary restraining order that restricted LAPD officers from using rubber projectiles, chemical irritants and flash bangs against journalists.

Under the court order, officers are allowed to use those weapons “only when the officer reasonably believes that a suspect is violently resisting arrest or poses an immediate threat of violence or physical harm.”

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell called the definition of journalist “ambiguous” in a news release Monday, raising concerns that the preliminary injunction could prevent the LAPD from addressing “people intent on unlawful and violent behavior.”

“The risk of harm to everyone involved increases substantially,” McDonnell wrote. “LAPD must declare an unlawful assembly, and issue dispersal orders, to ensure the safety of the public and restore order.”

The L.A. Press Club, plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to the injunction, has alleged journalists were detained and assaulted by officers during an immigration protest in August. The Press Club is also involved in a similar lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“This case is about LAPD, but if necessary, we are ready to take similar action to address misconduct toward journalists by other agencies,” the organization wrote in a news release from June.

Vera ruled in September that “any duly authorized representative of any news service, online news service, newspaper, or radio or television station or network” would be classified as a journalist and therefore protected under the court’s orders. Journalists who are impeding or physically interfering with law enforcement are not subject to the protections.

Any ordinance passed by the City Council would apply to the LAPD but not other agencies that could be responding to protests that turn chaotic, such as the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department or California Highway Patrol, thereby complicating operational procedure.

Barnes-Batista, the District 13 spokesman, said the City Council would need to discuss how to craft the rules.

“There are definitely unanswered questions about [how] the city wouldn’t want the city to be liable for other agencies not following policy,” he said. “So that will have to be worked out.”

Last month, the City Council, led by Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, voted unanimously to deny a request by the city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto, to push for Vera’s injunction to be lifted.

“Journalism is under attack in this country — from the Trump Administration’s revocation of press access to the Pentagon to corporate consolidation of local newsrooms,” Hernandez said. “The answer cannot be for Los Angeles to join that assault by undermining court-ordered protections for journalists.”

The Los Angeles Police Department took more than a year to begin fully disclosing domestic abuse allegations against officers after the state passed a law that mandates reporting and can trigger permanent bans from police work in California.

The revelation came out through testimony at an administrative hearing last month for a rookie LAPD officer who was fired after the department alleged she committed time card fraud and physically assaulted her former romantic partner, a fellow cop.

A sergeant from the LAPD’s serious misconduct unit testified in a proceeding against Tawny Ramirez, according to Ramirez’s attorney and evidence from the closed-door hearing reviewed by The Times. The sergeant said the department did not start reporting certain spousal abuse cases to the state until after Ramirez was terminated in early February 2024. That is more than a year after rules took effect requiring the LAPD and other police agencies to promptly report officers accused of “serious misconduct” to the state’s police accreditation body, which grants authorization to work in law enforcement.

Senate Bill 2, passed in 2021, made domestic violence one of the nine categories of “serious misconduct” — including excessive force, dishonesty, sexual assault and acts of bias on the basis of factors including race, sexual orientation and gender — that police agencies are obligated to report to the state’s Commission on Police Officer Standards and Training, or POST.

The LAPD sergeant testified that the reporting practices were based on guidance from POST’s former compliance director, who said at a training session that agencies did not have to “report first-time misdemeanor domestic violence,” according to Ramirez’s attorney Nicole Castronovo and the hearing evidence reviewed by The Times.

Ramirez appealed the basis for her firing and has maintained she did not commit any misconduct. She denied allegations she abused her former partner.

LAPD officials believed the partial POST reporting went “against best practices” and tried to get the directive in writing, the sergeant testified, but still went along with what the official advised, according to Castronovo and the hearing evidence.

When the department sought further clarification from the POST compliance director’s successor, officials were informed that nearly all domestic-related incidents must be reported, Castronovo said.

She said she tried to press the LAPD about how many of these cases may have gone unreported, but the department said it didn’t know.

When SB 2 took effect in January 2023, police agencies were supposed to start disclosing “serious misconduct” to POST within 10 days of learning of credible allegations.

The sergeant who testified declined comment and directed questions to the department’s press office, which in a statement said that at the time SB 2 was being rolled out the LAPD “consulted” with POST “to determine which misconduct types required reporting.”

“The Department was advised that first-time, non-aggravated domestic battery did not meet the reporting threshold,” the statement read. “The Department followed this guidance, reporting only those cases with aggravating factors. In 2024, the Department adopted a new standard of reporting all allegations of domestic battery, regardless of severity.”

Ramirez’s lawyer said the testimony raises questions about the LAPD’s compliance with the law — and whether it has gone back to report other officers’ past offenses.

“It’s very scary to think that that crime wouldn’t be reported,” Castronovo said.

The LAPD accused Ramirez of assaulting her ex, Jorge Alvarado, in May 2023 based on a texted photo he provided that showed yellowish bruising on his arm from where she had squeezed it, according to the hearing evidence. Ramirez maintains Alvarado was bruised during consensual sex and argued at her at an administrative hearing that the department was unwilling to consider emails, text messages and other evidence she tried to provide that cast doubt on her accuser’s account.

The couple started dating in 2022 while both were at the Police Academy, according to Ramirez. She claims she tried to end the relationship after a few months when Alvarado turned overbearing and possessive. A colleague from Topanga Division helped her fill out an application for a temporary restraining order, Ramirez said.

A judge denied the stay away order on the grounds that Ramirez wasn’t in imminent danger, and Alvarado did not face any charges.

Alvarado did not respond to a request for comment sent to his department email.

According to hearing evidence, Alvarado first disclosed the alleged abuse by Ramirez during an interview with LAPD Internal Affairs in January 2024. Ramirez was fired less than a month later — weeks shy of completing her 18-month probationary period — after the department alleged that she lied about her reason for taking time off from work.

Meagan Poulos, a spokesperson for POST, said she wasn’t familiar with Ramirez’s case but if anything, the state agency deals with police departments “over-reporting” misconduct. Poulos said data on serious misconduct reports from the LAPD were not immediately available for review.

She added that reporting is not mandatory for spousal abuse cases that are quickly deemed unfounded or that don’t prompt an Internal Affairs investigation, and suggested LAPD officials may have “misconstrued” that to mean they didn’t have to report any such cases.

“I don’t know if that’s the case in this particular case, but I can say that’s not something that POST would advise any agency to not do,” she said.

According to Poulos and data from the agency, in 2023 there were 250-plus law enforcement agencies — the vast majority of which have fewer than 50 officers — that didn’t report a single case of serious misconduct. She said the agency regularly sends out reminders about their obligations under SB 2.

Larger agencies like the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have their own coordinators or standalone units charged with referring qualifying cases to state authorities for consideration. In a brief statement, the Sheriff’s Department said it has been its “practice since the inception of SB 2 to report all allegations of acts that violate the law.”

POST revoked 57 officers’ certification this year, compared to 84 last year. Another 43 officers voluntarily surrendered their certifications, while 77 had theirs at least temporarily suspended.

A POST notification doesn’t automatically result in an officer losing his or her policing certificate. Cases are reviewed by a disciplinary board comprised of civilians with a professional or personal background related to police accountability. That board convenes every few months to review POST’s investigation of misconduct allegations and recommend whether the commission should seek decertification.

Ramirez told The Times the LAPD initially said domestic violence had nothing to do with her firing. She says she was unfairly accused of violating department policy during a 2023 incident in Canoga Park in which she and another officer used force while trying to take a man into custody. It was only later that the photos of Alvarado’s bruises were used against her, Ramirez said, along with an allegation of time card fraud — which she also denies.

The LAPD said Ramirez lied and told her supervisor she needed time off to take care her of her ailing brother when she actually went to apply for a job at the Beverly Hills Police Department.

Ramirez said she was a caregiver for her brother — who has since died — and that she was applying to the Beverly Hills job in an attempt to get away from Alvarado.

Alvarado was placed on administrative leave after Ramirez reported him but has since completed his probationary period and been elevated to the rank of Police Officer II.

A decision from the LAPD disciplinary review process on whether Ramirez can be fired remains pending. She thinks it’s unfair her ex has been allowed to return to work while she’s stuck in limbo.

“Here I am still trying to get my job back and he’s a happy officer, enjoying his benefits, while I’m living this nightmare,” she said.

Times staff writer Connor Sheets and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Noah Goldberg and Libor Jany, giving you the latest on city and county government.

L.A.’s elected leaders took a dramatic step to cut police spending this year, chopping in half the number of officers that Mayor Karen Bass had been hoping to hire.

In May, the City Council voted to give the LAPD just enough money to recruit 240 officers this year, down from the 480 requested by Bass. They did so not just to close a $1-billion budget shortfall, but also to prevent other city workers from being laid off.

But on Tuesday, council members learned that the LAPD is on track to blow way past its budget allocation by adding 410 officers by summer 2026, the end of the fiscal year. That would mean hiring as many as 170 officers who lack funding in this year’s budget.

Councilmember Tim McOsker voiced frustration, saying the LAPD’s overspending represents “everyone’s worst fear about a department running rogue.”

“The budget has to mean something,” McOsker said during a Budget and Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday.

Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky was equally irritated. At the meeting, she asked City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo whether his office had identified the funds to hire the 170 extra officers. Szabo, a high-level budget official, said no.

“At some point, we’re going to have to stop the hiring,” Yaroslavsky replied. “That’s all I’m going to say. If we can’t find the money, we have to stop the hiring once we hit the 240 that’s budgeted for in this year’s budget.”

Police hiring was the biggest source of tension between Bass and the council during this year’s budget deliberations. Bass, who has seen the LAPD lose hundreds of officers since she won office in 2022, had been hoping, at minimum, to keep the department from shrinking significantly this year.

Council members, on the other hand, were determined to avert the mayor’s proposal to lay off as many as 1,600 civilian workers — even if that meant scaling back police. Cutting the number of recruits ultimately freed up the money to save scores of jobs, including civilian crime specialists working at the LAPD.

By the end of May, Bass was seriously considering a veto of the council’s budget. But by that point, the city was being upended by federal immigration raids, with helmet-wearing LAPD officers captured on video using tear gas while facing off against protesters in downtown Los Angeles.

Bass ultimately signed the budget but, at the 11th hour, said she had reached an agreement with the council’s leadership — that is, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson — to find the additional money to restore the police hiring.

In her announcement, Bass said that would happen within 90 days. For now, they haven’t come up with the money.

Clara Karger, a Bass spokesperson, said in a statement that her office is working to find the additional funding. The city is preparing for next year’s World Cup, as well as other large-scale events, she said.

“Crime is down and we are going to keep reducing crime and, obviously, hiring officers is a key component of a comprehensive approach,” Karger said.

Police Chief Jim McDonnell, in an interview, said his agency’s recruiting numbers are “substantially up” after a long slump. Yet even if the council signs off on the additional hiring, sworn personnel will still drop by the end of the budget year, he said.

“We’re going to still have a net loss, because we’re projected to lose [through] attrition between 500 and 600 people this year,” he said.

On Tuesday, Yaroslavsky and McOsker said they want to hire more officers — but only if the city has the money to pay for them. They warned that if the additional funding isn’t there, overspending at the LAPD could force city leaders to contemplate cuts to other city jobs, which they oppose.

“Either we find the money, new money, for the additional hires, or we need to have a serious conversation about following the budget,” Yaroslavsky said.

Szabo told council members this week that, if the budget committee instructed him to, he would prepare a report identifying additional money to cover the cost of the extra 170 officers.

“But we didn’t,” McOsker, an attorney who at one point represented the police union, quickly responded. “If we did, we would. But we didn’t. And it still came out the same.”

The council’s budget advisors had previously projected that the city would need an extra $13.3 million to restore the 240 police hires sought by Bass. In 2026-27, the cost of those same officers would grow to about $60 million, since they would have worked a full year, the advisors said.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents about 8,600 rank-and-file officers, supports the mayor’s effort to increase LAPD hiring. In a statement, the union’s board of directors said it is confident that Bass and the council will find the money to add the additional officers.

“We have every confidence that city leaders will act with the same sense of urgency to identify funds for additional officers … as they recently did to protect other city workers from layoffs,” the union said.

State of play

— END OF AN ERA: Bass announced this week that she is ending her declaration of emergency on homelessness, nearly three years after she announced it. Bass was facing pressure from council members to lift the emergency, which allowed her to award contracts and leases without bidding or council oversight. In her letter, she said she would not hesitate to reinstate the emergency if she finds that insufficient progress is being made on the crisis.

— WHITHER ED1? The biggest question mark is the mayoral initiative known as Executive Directive 1, which fast-tracks the approval of 100% affordable housing projects and was made possible by the homelessness emergency. The council recently voted to make ED1 permanent law. But City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto still needs to finalize the legal language, and for now, it’s not clear how long that will take. The homelessness emergency expires Nov. 18.

— POOR COMMUNICATION: L.A.’s emergency responders had communication breakdowns, inconsistent recordkeeping and poor coordination during their response to the Palisades fire, according to a new report issued by the LAPD. The report said communications were particularly poor between the LAPD and the city’s fire department on the wildfire’s first day.

— LOOKING FOR TEXTS: Meanwhile, a federal grand jury issued a subpoena seeking text messages and other communications from the fire department regarding the Jan. 1 Lachman brush fire, which reignited six days later into the massive Palisades fire, according to an internal memo. The Times previously reported that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to pack up and leave the burn area the day after the Lachman fire, even though some firefighters said the ground was still smoldering.

— MANY, MANY McOSKERS: Councilmember Tim McOsker is just one of the many McOskers who have had a toehold at City Hall. There’s daughter Nella McOsker, who heads the Central City Assn., the business group that weighs in on city policy, and brother Pat McOsker, who was at one point president of the firefighters union. There’s nephew Emmett McOsker at the tourism department and a few others beyond that. We spell it all out here, along with a helpful family tree.

— CAPPING THE RENT: The council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee voted 3-2 to endorse Councilmember Nithya Raman‘s plan to limit rent increases in rent-stabilized apartment buildings to no more than 3%, down from 10%. (The city’s housing department had proposed lowering the cap to 5%.) The proposal heads to full council on Wednesday.

— NO SOLICITORS: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors took the first step toward cracking down on “predatory” salespeople who they say hit up vulnerable residents seeking benefits from social services offices. The looming crackdown follows a Times investigation that found nine plaintiffs in sex abuse lawsuits against the county who said they were recruited outside the offices.

— PRESS PROTECTIONS: Councilmember Ysabel Jurado is looking to change the way the city issues press credentials to journalists in the wake of the LAPD’s treatment of the news media at anti-ICE protests. Her proposal would, among other things, change the design of press passes so officers can more easily identify journalists.

— WILL HE OR WON’T HE? Billionaire developer Rick Caruso still isn’t saying. The erstwhile mayoral hopeful might run for mayor or governor, but had no answer on either while speaking with podcaster Adam Carolla on Monday at a town hall at Caruso’s Americana at Brand mall in Glendale.

Caruso asked the audience, which was filled with his supporters, to clap for the office they want him to run for. Carolla concluded that mayor won out by a small margin. “I’m getting pushed in a lot of different directions,” Caruso said.

— HE’S BACK: Councilmember Curren Price returned to the council chamber after a monthlong absence. He suffered a “health-related incident” during an Oct. 1 press conference, with his staff saying at the time that he had been dehydrated. Price also made an appearance in court this week for a preliminary hearing in his ongoing corruption case. The hearing was delayed until Dec. 11.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to the area around 15th Street and St. Andrews Place, which is in the Harvard Heights section of Councilmember Heather Hutt’s district.
• On the docket next week: The council’s Public Safety Committee takes up the mayor’s nomination of Deputy Chief Jaime Moore to be the next fire chief on Wednesday.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

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.