officer

Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown was in the middle of a brand event at a Beverly Hills mansion on Valentine’s Day when police showed up.

It was 7 p.m., and the music for the event — an invite-only gathering for his 741 Performance brand — had long been silent. Brown came down to talk to an officer, expressing confusion at why police had been called.

“We’re just trying to have an event — a panel talking about culture, talking about future, talking about leadership, and for whatever reason I feel like we’re being targeted,” Brown said in a video of the encounter posted on social media.

He asked the officer why the city was shutting it down. “It’s beyond my pay grade,” the officer replied. “They want it shut down.”

The video immediately went viral, with many questioning why the city shut down what appeared to be a calm event. The debate was framed by a series of incidents in recent years in which the local Police Department was accused of profiling Black people.

Beverly Hills officials issued a statement defending their actions. But it didn’t take long for the city to reverse course, issuing an apology to the NBA star and the owner of the home that hosted the event, Oakley founder James Jannard, for initially putting out inaccurate information.

Brown told ESPN he is considering legal action against the city, saying the episode tarnished his and his brand’s image.

“I feel offended by it,” he said. “It’s hard to say that you were not being targeted.”

Beverly Hills officials insist the city did not unfairly single out Brown and stressed the incident was a code-enforcement matter, not one involving policing issues.

The police’s presence at the event on Trousdale Place was prompted by a resident reporting “excessive vehicles on the street,” Beverly Hills Deputy City Manger Keith Sterling said in an email to The Times. A traffic control officer then found “high vehicular traffic, numerous parking violations (including a vehicle blocking a driveway and several vehicles parked in the wrong direction) and numerous people congregating in the driveway.”

“Code enforcement was on site for several hours and observed what they believed to be well in excess of 50 people congregating for an event, which would require a public assembly permit for the safety of event attendees,” he added.

There was also the sound of a generator, which would require a permit, a check-in table, a metal detector and a temporary wall with branding, Sterling said.

Brown’s function occurred during the NBA’s All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles. Sterling noted there were six other NBA-related events in the city at that time.

“The City was aware that the event was timed to coincide with NBA All-Star Weekend but did not have details on who was sponsoring or participating in the event,” Sterling wrote. “The event was shut down for safety reasons alone without regard to the event sponsor or participants.”

Still, the incident revived questions of policing in Beverly Hills — a majority white city in which Black residents make up about 2% of the population.

Some advocates called on Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate allegations of racial profiling in Beverly Hills. Bonta’s office declined to comment.

In 2020, the Beverly Hills Police Department launched a special detail — the Rodeo Drive Team — amid complaints over what residents and shop owners said was a “criminal element” along the famed shopping corridor. Officers were tasked with combating what officials said was a rise in thefts, people spending money obtained by defrauding the state’s unemployment system and quality of life issues like loud music and the smell of marijuana drifting into stores, according to a 2021 Times investigation. One document The Times reviewed that year showed about 90% of those arrested by the task force were Black.

The task force was disbanded after just two months.

Attorneys Bradley Gage and Benjamin Crump filed a class-action lawsuit against the city in 2021 that remains ongoing. The lawsuit claims none of the arrests led to convictions and some were never prosecuted because police lacked probable cause to make the initial arrest.

The department has denied allegations that it targeted Black shoppers, saying in a statement in 2021 that officers are “committed to keeping our community safe while enforcing the law with respect and dignity for all.”

Shortly after the task force was disbanded, Salehe Bembury, then the vice president of sneakers and men’s footwear for Versace, was carrying a Versace shopping bag and crossing Rodeo Drive next to the luxury store when police stopped him for jaywalking, told him to put his hands behind his back and searched him for weapons.

Body camera footage showed Bembury repeatedly said he was uncomfortable and thought the pat-down was “excessive,” adding he’d designed the shoes inside the bag he was carrying. He started recording on his cellphone.

“I’m getting f— searched for shopping at the store I work for and just being Black,” Bembury said in the recording, holding up the Versace bag. One of the officers involved in the stop disagreed, saying Bembury was changing “the narrative.”

“It’s a very dangerous, scary situation for people of color, and one that we want to remedy so everyone is treated fairly. I don’t know why that’s such a novel idea, but it seems to be a foreign concept for a lot of folks,” Gage said.

In his clients’ lawsuit against the city, two plaintiffs say they were arrested for riding a scooter on the sidewalk. Another allegedly was jailed for three days after officers pulled him and his friend over on their way to the beach for stopping about three inches over the limit line at an intersection. He never was charged with a crime, according to the complaint.

Mike Asfall, president of Beverly Hills/Hollywood Branch of the NAACP, said he’s been working behind the scenes with city officials and the police chief over issues of race and policing. Asfall was honored in February by the Beverly Hills City Council in recognition of Black History Month.

“I do know that we’ve had obstacles,” he said. “We shouldn’t have to walk on eggshells or tiptoe around things just because of the color of our skin. But what I’m not going to do is create more of a rift to give us a problem that’s going to create drama for us.”

Staff writer Cierra Morgan contributed to this report.

Myles Garrett is in a hurry to become the greatest pass rusher in NFL history. The Cleveland Browns All-Pro defensive end set the single-season sack record in 2025 and has cracked the top 20 career leaders after only nine seasons.

“I’m going to take that down, and I prefer I take it down in the next five years,” Garrett told Casino Guru News last month.

Off the field, however, his urgency to get from point A to B is a problem. He’s accumulating speeding tickets at an alarming rate.

On Feb. 21, Garrett was handed his ninth speeding ticket since his NFL career began in 2017. He was cited for driving 94 mph in a 70-mph zone on Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio.

The citation from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office says Garrett was driving his green 2024 Porsche at 1:35 a.m., returning home after attending a Miami of Ohio basketball game in Oxford.

Body cam footage shows the officer telling Garrett that she kept the charge under 100 mph so that a court appearance wouldn’t be mandatory. Garrett reportedly still holds a Texas driver’s license — he attended Texas A&M — and told the officer that he did not have an Ohio license.

Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett wears a jacket displaying his girlfriend Chloe Kim before the women’s snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy.

(Lindsey Wasson / AP)

The officer wrote that the famously affable Garrett was “kind and cooperative,” and that drugs and alcohol were not a factor.

Garrett’s need for speed flies in the face of his persona. He has written poetry since high school, peppers social media with inspirational sayings and donates time and money to several charities.

His girlfriend is two-time gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim, for whom he wrote a poem he shared on social media: “You enrapture fools to kings, and exist without a peer, put on this Earth for many things, but our love is why you’re here.”

Verse hasn’t slowed his roll. On Aug. 9 he was cited for ticket No. 8, clocked at 100 mph in a 60-mph zone in a Cleveland suburb a day after the Browns returned home from a preseason game at Carolina.

Garrett’s seventh ticket followed a frightening crash in 2022. He flipped his gray 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S off State Road in Sharon Township and he and a female passenger were injured. He was cited for failing to control his vehicle due to unsafe speeds on what had been a slick roadway.

A witness told a responding police officer that Garrett’s vehicle went airborne, took out a fire hydrant and rolled three times. Garrett sustained shoulder and biceps sprains and was sidelined for the Browns’ game that week against the Atlanta Falcons. His companion was not seriously injured.

Cleveland television station WKYC reported that in September 2021 Garrett was stopped twice in a 24-hour period — for driving 120 and 105 mph. The infractions occurred on Interstate 71 in Medina County, where the speed limit is 70 mph, and he paid fines of $267 and $287.

A year earlier, Garrett was cited for driving 100 mph in a 65-mph zone of Interstate 77 — again while driving a Porsche — and paid a $308 fine. He accumulated his first batch of speeding tickets in 2017 and 2018, and the police reports recite similar circumstances: Garrett driving well over the speed limit, cited without incident, paid a nominal fine.

The piddly fines certainly aren’t a deterrent. Garrett, 30, and the Browns agreed to a four-year contract extension in March 2025 that made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history at the time. The deal pays the seven-time All-Pro more than $40 million a season and includes more than $123 million in guaranteed money.

He set the NFL single-season sack record with 23.0 last season, surpassing the 22.5 accumulated by T.J. Watt and Michael Strahan. Garrett has 125.5 career sacks, averaging 14 a season, a pace that would enable him to break Bruce Smith’s career record of 200 in five years.

“That is definitely on my mind to go out there and get,” Garrett said. “That’s a goal I’ve had for years now since college.”

Garrett has declined to discuss his driving habits.

“I’d honestly prefer to talk about football and this team than anything I’m doing off the field other than the back-to-school event that I did the other day,” he told reporters after ticket No. 8 in August, referring to a charity appearance.

“I try to keep my personal life personal. And I’d rather focus on this team when I can.”

A strange quirk at San Quentin state prison is that most of those incarcerated behind its towering walls are unable to see the San Francisco Bay that literally laps at the shore a few yards away.

That changed recently with the completion of new buildings — holding among other accouterments a self-serve kitchen, a library, a cafe and a film studio — and third-floor classrooms that look out over that beautiful blue expanse, long a symbol of freedom and possibility.

In the new San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, along with learning job skills and earning degrees, incarcerated men can do their own laundry, make their own meals, and interact with guards as mentors and colleagues of sorts, once a taboo kind of relationship in the us-and-them world of incarceration.

“You want to clothes wash? You wash them,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom, debuting the new facilities, including laundry machines, for reporters last week. “You want to get something to eat. You can do it, whenever.”

“All of a sudden, it’s like you’re starting to make decisions for yourself,” he said. “It’s called life.”

Listen closely, and one can almost hear President Trump’s brain exploding with glee and outrage as his favorite Democratic foil seemingly coddles criminals. A cafe? C’mon. Bring on the midterms!

March 2024 of the East Block of San Quentin’s former death row.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

But what Newsom has done inside California’s most notorious prison, once home to the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere, is nothing short of a remarkable shift of thinking, culture and implementation around what it means to take away someone’s freedom — and eventually give it back. Adapted from European models, it’s a vision of incarceration that is meant to deal with the reality that 95% of people who go to prison are eventually released. That’s more than 30,000 people each year in California alone.

“What kind of neighbors do you want them to be?” Newsom asked. “Are they coming back broken? Are they coming back better? Are they coming back more enlivened, more capable? Are they coming back into prison over and over?”

When it comes to reforming criminals, “success looks like more and more people gravitating to their own journey, their own personal reform,” Newsom said, sounding more like a lifestyle influencer than a presidential contender. “It’s not forced on you, because then it’s fake, man. If it’s coerced, I don’t buy it.”

Of course, coming back better should be the goal — because better people commit fewer crimes, and that benefits us all. But coming back over and over has become the norm.

Traditional incarceration, a lock-’em-up and watch-them-suffer approach, has dramatically failed not only our communities and public safety writ large, but also inmates and even those who guard them.

Incarcerated people come out of prison too often in California (and across the country) with addictions and emotional troubles still firmly in place, and no job or educational skills to help them muddle through a crime-free life. That means they often commit more crimes, create more victims and cycle back into this failed, expensive, tough-on-crime system.

Still, it’s a favorite trope of Trump, and the justification for both his immigration roundups and his deployment of National Guard troops in Democratic cities, that policies such as Newsom’s are weak on crime and have led to the decline of American society.

This narrative of fear and grievance goes back decades, recycled every election by the so-called law-and-order party because it’s effective — voters crave safety, especially in a chaotic world. And locking people up seems safe, at least until we let them go again.

But, as Chance Andes, the warden of San Quentin, pointed out last week, “Humanity is safety,” and treating incarcerated people like, well, people, actually makes them want to behave better.

Here’s where the tough-on-crime folks will begin composing their angry emails. Why are we paying for killers to have a view? Why should I care if a rapist has a good book to read? Our budget is bleeding red, why are tax dollars being used for prison lattes? (To be fair, I do not know whether they actually have lattes.)

But consider this: The prison guards back Newsom.

“Done right, it improves working conditions for our officers and strengthens public safety,” said Steve Adney, executive vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., the union that represents guards, of the California model, as Newsom calls his vision.

Faced with high rates of suicide and other ills such as addiction, corrections officers have long been concerned about the stress and violence of their jobs. A few years ago, some union members traveled to Norway to see prisons there. I tagged along.

A correctional officer at Halden prison in Norway checks out the ice cream freezer in the grocery store inside the facility.

(Javad Parsa/For The Times)

The American officers were shocked to see Norwegian prisoners access kitchen knives and power tools, but even more shocked that the guards had built relationships with these criminals that allowed them to do their jobs with far less fear.

Rather than jailers, these corrections officers were more like social workers or guides to a better way of living. Of course, the corrections officers aren’t dumb. That only works with vetted inmates, such as those at San Quentin, who have proved they want to change.

But when you have officers and incarcerated people who are able to coexist with respect and maybe a dash of kindness, you get a different outcome for both sides.

“If we are capable of building this at San Quentin, then we are capable of making the workplace safe for every officer who walks in the gates,” said CCPOA President Neil Flood, a startling statement in favor of radical reform from a law enforcement officer.

But in a moment when most Democrats with ambitions for national office (or even an eye on replacing Newsom) are backing away from criminal justice reform, it would be naive to think the California model won’t be used to bludgeon Newsom in a presidential race, and provide further fuel to the dumpster-fire narrative about the state.

Soon — before the midterms — many expect Congress to move forward on Trump’s expressed desire for a crime bill that would empower police with even greater immunity for wrongdoing, create longer sentences for crimes including those involving drugs and further erode criminal justice reform in the name of public safety.

Trump is going hard in the opposite direction, toward more punishment, always the easier and more understandable route for voters fed up with crime (even though crime rates have been declining since President Biden was in office).

The California model is “a political liability in this environment,” said Tinisch Hollins, a victims advocate who worked on the San Quentin transition and heads Californians for Safety and Justice.

But she retains faith that “the majority of people don’t believe that shoving everyone into prison is how we resolve the problem.”

Newsom deserves credit for standing by that position, when simply backing away and dropping the California model would have been the simpler and safer route — it’s complicated and messy and oh-so-easy to make it sound dumb.

I refer you back to the cafe. If construction had been cut at San Quentin, the budget cited as the reason, no one would have noticed and few would have complained.

Instead, sounding a bit like Trump, Newsom said he “threatened the hell out of them if they didn’t get it done before I was gone.”

“This is not left or right,” he said. “This is just being smart and pragmatic and you know, I just … I believe people are not the worst thing they’ve done.”

Politically at least, San Quentin is a legacy for Newsom now, the best or worst thing he’s done on crime, depending on your personal views of second chances.

But it is undeniably a vision of public safety starkly at odds with Trump, one Newsom will carry into his next political fight — where it is certain to cause him some pain.

The cause of death for Victoria Jones, the daughter of Hollywood legend Tommy Lee Jones, has been revealed a month and a half after she was found dead in a hotel in San Francisco on New Year’s Day.

The San Francisco medical examiner released a report Tuesday ruling her death accidental, the result of the toxic effects of cocaine. The 34-year-old was discovered dead at the Fairmont San Francisco in the early hours of Jan. 1.

San Francisco police responded to a call at 3:14 a.m. regarding a report of a deceased person at the hotel. Officers met with medics at the scene who declared an adult female dead.

Jones briefly pursued acting, making a cameo alongside her father in “Men in Black II” (2002) and later appearing in “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” (2005), which was directed by her father. She later largely remained out of the spotlight and struggled with substance abuse.

In August 2023, her father petitioned that she be placed under temporary conservatorship, according to Marin County court records.

At the time of the filing, she was under a 14-day involuntary psychiatric hold at a hospital in the community of Greenbrae, and her father wanted her to be transferred to a rehabilitation facility, according to a copy of the petition acquired by the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The proposed conservatee needs to recover and work towards sobriety,” the petition stated. “For these reasons, the proposed conservatee will suffer irreparable harm if her residence is not changed from a hospital to a rehab facility.”

Margaret Caron Schmierer was granted temporary conservatorship over Jones in August 2023. Jones retained an attorney and fought the conservatorship.

Then, in December 2023, Tommy Lee Jones filed a petition for the convervatorship to be terminated, which was granted, court records show.

In 2025, Jones was arrested twice in Napa County.

She was charged with three misdemeanor counts — being under the influence of a controlled substance, possession of a narcotic and obstruction of a peace officer — from an incident on April 26. She was later charged with misdemeanor domestic battery from an incident on June 13, court records show. She pleaded not guilty to all charges and the cases remained open at the time of her death.

Jones was the daughter of Tommy Lee and ex-wife Kimberlea Cloughley. She is also survived by her older brother, Austin Jones.

Tommy Lee Jones is known for his Academy Award-winning role as U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard in “The Fugitive” (1993) alongside other iconic roles such as Agent K in “Men in Black” (1997) and as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in “No Country for Old Men” (2007).

Staff writer Tracy Brown contributed to this report

CHICAGO — There were three Swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago — three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on Feb. 28, 1969.

One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other.

For years, no one asked about those events. But now they are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election with a group of Swift boat veterans and others contending that Kerry didn’t deserve the Silver Star for what he did on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for other actions.

Many of us wanted to put it all behind us — the rivers, the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry’s service — even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune, where I work.

But Kerry’s critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say they’re not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It’s gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there.

Even though Kerry’s own crew members have backed him, the attacks have continued, and in recent days Kerry has called me and others who were with him in those days, asking that we go public with our accounts.

I can’t pretend those calls had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this. What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it.

I was part of the operation that led to Kerry’s Silver Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the Bronze Star.

But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of PCF-23, one of three Swift boats — including Kerry’s PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz’s PCF-43 — that carried Vietnamese Regional and Popular Force troops and a Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in the area.

The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret.

Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no exception.

The difference was that Kerry, who had tactical command of that particular operation, had talked to Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way the boats usually did to an ambush.

We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats’ twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the plan.

The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush, firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream and putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the ambush site. Often, they were long gone by the time the troops got there.

The first time we took fire — the usual rockets and automatic weapons — Kerry ordered a “turn 90” and the three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an Army advisor, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half-dozen VC, wounded or captured others and found weapons, blast masks and other supplies used to stage ambushes.

Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream with his, leaving Droz’s boat at the first site.

It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn’t fired as two men jumped up from their spider holes.

We called Droz’s boat up to assist us, and Kerry, followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and chased a VC behind a hooch — a thatched hut — maybe 15 yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there that day recall the man being wounded as he ran. Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat’s leading petty officer with whom I’ve checked my recollection of all these events, recalls that, which is no surprise. Recollections of those who go through experiences like that frequently differ.

With our troops involved in the sweep of the first ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew, and I also went ashore to search the area. I was checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard gunfire nearby.

Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.

John O’Neill, author of a highly critical account of Kerry’s Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry chased as a “teenager in a loincloth.” I have no idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man, dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.

The man Kerry chased was not the “lone” attacker at that site, as O’Neill suggests. There were others who fled. There was also firing from the tree line well behind the spider holes and at one point, from the opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of just one attacker.

Our initial reports of the day’s action caused an immediate response from our task force headquarters in Cam Ranh Bay.

Known over radio circuits by the call sign “Latch,” then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three Swift boats, saying at one point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a “shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy” and that it “may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers.”

Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry’s and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry’s inclination to be impulsive to a fault.

Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all three boat officers.

It was also well within the aggressive tradition that was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam. Months before that day in February, a fellow boat officer, Michael Bernique, was summoned to Saigon to explain to top Navy commanders why he had made an unauthorized run up the Giang Thanh River, which runs along the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Bernique, who speaks French fluently, had been told by a source in Ha Tien at the mouth of the river that a VC tax collector was operating upstream.

Ignoring the prohibition against it, Bernique and his crew went upstream and routed the VC, pursuing and killing several.

Instead of facing disciplinary action as he had expected, Bernique was given the Silver Star, and Zumwalt ordered other Swifts, which had largely patrolled coastal waters, into the rivers.

The decision sent a clear message, underscored repeatedly by Hoffmann’s congratulatory messages, that aggressive patrolling was expected and that well-timed, if unconventional, tactics like Bernique’s were encouraged.

What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with the tone set by our top commanders.

Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base at An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the Silver Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and commendation medals on the rest of us.

My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised the charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were “caught completely off guard.”

There’s at least one mistake in that citation. The name of the river where the main action occurred is wrong, a reminder that such documents were often done in haste, authored for their signers by staffers. It’s a cautionary note for those trying to piece it all together. There’s no final authority on something that happened so long ago — not the documents and not even the strained recollections of those of us who were there.

But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they’re saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.

Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60 machine gun as we charged the riverbank; Kenneth Martin, who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our boat; and Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at our aft gun mount suppressing the fire from the opposite bank.

Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz’s boat went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they saw Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong Keo River. That was just a few months after the birth of his only child, Tracy.

The survivors of all these events are scattered across the country now.

Jerry Leeds lives in a tiny Kansas town where he built and sold a successful printing business. He owns a beautiful home with a lawn that sweeps to the edge of a small lake, which he also owns. Every year, flights of purple martins return to the stately birdhouses on the tall poles in his backyard.

Cueva, recently retired, has raised three daughters and is beloved by his neighbors for all the years he spent keeping their cars running. Lee is a senior computer programmer in Kentucky, and Lamberson finished a second military career in the Army.

With the debate over that long-ago day in February, they’re all living that war another time.

*

William Rood is night city editor at the Chicago Tribune; previously, he was a reporter and an editor at the Los Angeles Times. Both publications are owned by Tribune Co.

Federal authorities announced an investigation Friday of two immigration officers who appeared to have made untruthful statements under oath about a shooting in Minneapolis last month.

It is among at least five shootings in which initial descriptions by the immigration officials were later contradicted by video evidence. Those included the fatal Minneapolis shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in which bystander video quickly raised questions about how federal officials initially described the incidents.

The inquiry announced Friday came hours after a federal judge dismissed felony assault charges against two Venezuelan men who were accused of beating an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel on Jan. 14. The officer, who is not named in court filings, fired a single shot from a handgun that struck one of the men, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, in the thigh.

In an unusual reversal, prosecutors asked to dismiss the cases because they said new video evidence contradicted allegations made against the men in a criminal complaint and at a hearing last month.

Here is a look at how the five shootings were initially described and what was later learned:

Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis

Date and location: Jan. 14, 2026, in Minneapolis.

What federal officials said initially: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the immigration officer was “ambushed” by Sosa-Celis and others, and fired a “defensive shot” out of fear for his life. “What we saw last night in Minneapolis was an attempted murder of federal law enforcement,” she said.

What came out later: Investigators have not released the new evidence that led charges to be dropped, but cracks were already apparent in a Jan. 21 court hearing. The immigration officer’s testimony recounting the moments before the shooting differed significantly from that of the defendants and three eyewitnesses. Available video evidence did not support the officer’s account of being assaulted with a broom and shovel.

Renee Good

Date and location: Jan. 7, 2026, in Minneapolis.

What federal officials said initially: Noem described the incident as an “act of domestic terrorism” carried out against ICE officers by a woman who “attempted to run them over and rammed them with her vehicle.” She said the immigration agent shot “defensively” to protect himself and the people around him. Good died of gunshot wounds to the head.

What came out later: Videos filmed from multiple angles challenged the administration’s narrative. Shortly before the shooting, Good is seen at the wheel of her SUV that is parked diagonally on a street. She tells an immigration officer, “I’m not mad at you.”

Seconds later, another immigration officer grabs at the driver’s side door while Good’s wife urges her to “drive, baby, drive.” It’s unclear in the videos whether the SUV makes contact with ICE officer Jonathan Ross, who shoots while standing near the front of the driver’s side of the SUV and then twice more while quickly moving to the driver’s side as the vehicle pulls forward.

Alex Pretti

Date and location: Jan. 24, 2026, in Minneapolis.

What federal officials said initially: Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Pretti approached Border Patrol officers with a handgun and he “violently resisted” when they tried to disarm him. An agent feared for his life and fired “defensive” shots, she said. Pretti was pronounced dead at the scene. Border Patrol senior official Greg Bovino claimed Pretti intended to “massacre law enforcement,” and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller described him as “a would-be assassin.”

What came out later: None of the half-dozen bystander videos collected by investigators showed Pretti brandishing his gun, which he had a permit to carry. The videos showed Pretti was holding his mobile phone as a masked Border Patrol officer opened fire.

In a tense hearing Thursday in Washington, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky made leaders tasked with carrying out Trump’s mass deportation agenda watch a video of the shooting while he repeatedly scrutinized the forceful tactics used by immigration agents. Paul argued that Pretti posed no threat to the agents and said it was clear from the video that he was “retreating at every moment.”

Silverio Villegas González

Date and location: Sept. 12, 2025, in suburban Chicago.

What federal officials said initially: Homeland Security officials said federal agents were pursuing a man with a history of reckless driving who entered the country illegally. They alleged that Villegas González drove at officers and dragged one with his car. The Department of Homeland Security said the officer fired because he feared for his life and was hospitalized with “serious injuries.”

What came out later: Body-camera videos from local police contradicted the Trump administration’s account. Footage showed the agent who shot Villegas González walking around afterward and dismissing his own injuries as “nothing major.”

An autopsy made public in November declared Villegas González’s death a homicide. The report showed he was shot at “close range,” with wounds to his neck and fingers.

Marimar Martinez

Date and location: Oct. 14, 2025, in Chicago.

What federal officials said initially: A Homeland Security Department news release asserted that Martinez and the driver of another car involved in a crash with a Border Patrol officer were “domestic terrorists.” An FBI agent said in court documents that she was chasing the Border Patrol vehicle and drove at one of the officers after they got out of the vehicle. The officer was forced to open fire, the FBI agent alleged, striking Martinez seven times. She was treated at a hospital and arrested on felony assault charges.

What came out later: Videos emerged that her attorneys said showed agent Charles Exum steering his SUV into her truck.

In a text message presented during a Nov. 5 hearing, Exum appeared to brag about his marksmanship. “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys,” the text read.

The case against her was dismissed.

Schoenbaum writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A dispute over whether federal immigration agents should be allowed to wear masks during enforcement operations has become one of the biggest obstacles to keeping the Department of Homeland Security funded, pushing the government toward a partial shutdown early Saturday.

Democrats have described the practice as corrosive to public trust, arguing that masked agents create the appearance of a “secret police” force. Republican lawmakers, President Trump and his top advisors, meanwhile, have drawn a hard line against requiring officers to remove their face coverings, insisting that doing so would expose them to harassment, threats and online doxxing.

“They want our law enforcement to be totally vulnerable and put them in a lot of danger,” Trump said at a White House event Thursday. He added that it would be “very, very hard to approve” Democrats’ demands, such as unmasking federal officers.

The standoff over masking stalled negotiations as lawmakers raced to meet a funding deadline for the Department of Homeland Security at midnight Friday. Without a deal, key agency functions — from airport security to disaster relief coordination — could be affected if the shutdown drags on.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) rides the Senate subway Thursday ahead of the latest partial government shutdown.

(Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

As with every shutdown, the agency’s essential functions will continue to operate, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant Homeland Security secretary for public affairs, said in a statement. But employees performing those functions at agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, and the Transportation Security Administration could go without pay if the shutdown stretches for weeks.

The heads of those agencies told the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee on Wednesday that the shutdown is expected to create severe and lasting challenges.

Vice Adm. Thomas Allan, the acting vice commandant of the Coast Guard, said a shutdown would delay maintenance for boats and aircraft, and halt pay for 56,000 active-duty reserve and civilian personnel. Ha Nguyen McNeill, acting administrator of TSA, recounted how the last government shutdown affected her workers and spiked wait times at airports.

“We heard reports of officers sleeping in their cars at airports to save money on gas, selling their blood and plasma and taking on second jobs to make ends meet,” she said, adding that some are still recovering from the financial impact.

Operations within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — the agencies that are central to the budget impasse — are likely to be the least affected. That’s because both agencies still have access to $75 billion in funding approved last year as part of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

By midday Friday, it remained unclear when the partial shutdown would end, as lawmakers left Washington for a security conference in Munich and progress between Democratic and White House negotiators remained nebulous.

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters on Friday when asked about cutting a deal. “We always have to protect our law enforcement.”

The partial government shutdown comes at a moment of acute public anger at the agency’s approach to immigration enforcement, which has included the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis.

Since the shootings, the Trump administration has tried to quell tensions. Border policy advisor Tom Homan said Thursday that the administration was ending its immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced earlier this month that the agency would be acquiring and issuing body cameras to federal agents. Trump also said he wants to employ a “softer touch” to immigration enforcement after the killings of Good and Pretti.

But Democrats maintain that they need reforms written into law. Among their demands is requiring officers to wear and turn on body cameras, banning them from wearing masks, and ending the practice of “roving patrols” and instead requiring that they carry out only targeted operations.

“We will not support an extension of the status quo, a status quo that permits masked secret police to barge into people’s homes without warrants, no guardrails and zero oversight from independent authorities,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday.

Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of ICE, told a Senate panel Thursday that he does not want to see federal agents masked either, but said he is hesitant to bar face coverings because the threats to agents are too severe.

“I would work with this committee and any committee to work with holding individuals accountable that doxx ICE agents, because ICE agents don’t want to be masked,” Lyons said. “They’re honorable men and women, but the threats against their family are real.”

Federal immigration officials are more supportive of body cameras.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott told a House committee on Tuesday that he supports expanding the use of body cameras, but said more funding is needed to hire personnel to oversee the rollout.

“Fund the entire program so that we can be transparent and that we can make sure America knows what we’re doing, because that trust is critically important,” he said.

Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., said that while the White House has made some “tweaks around oversight,” its actions continue to fall short.

The association, which represents 18,000 immigration attorneys, has urged Congress to refuse more funding for ICE and CBP before implementing reforms.

“The American public wants and deserves real, meaningful guardrails that are written into law that ensure this administration — and, quite frankly, any administration — will abide by the Constitution and respect fundamental principles of due process,” Johnson said Wednesday on a call with reporters.

“Congress has a critical opportunity right now to meet that demand,” he added.

Republican Sens. James Lankford of Oklahoma, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky talk during a hearing Thursday on oversight of federal immigration agencies.

(Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)

So far, Democrats maintain they will continue to bock funding bills without accountability measures in place.

California’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, were among the Senate Democrats who helped block passage of funding bills Thursday that would have averted a shutdown because they lacked accountability measures.

“I will not support more funding for ICE until there are new guardrails to rein in its lawless conduct,” Schiff wrote on X. “I’m a no on anything but real reform.”

Padilla said he would be a “firm no” until lawmakers agree that federal immigration officers need to be held accountable.

“Donald Trump and Republicans want Americans to forget about their lawless immigration roundup, but we won’t,” Padilla said.

A probation officer who was caught on video bending a teen in half.

A Torrance police officer who shot a man in the back as he walked away from a crime scene.

Seven California Highway Patrol officers who piled atop a man screaming “I can’t breathe” as he died following a drunk driving stop.

All three cases had similar outcomes: charges dropped or reduced to no time behind bars after a plea deal.

After a year in office, a pattern has emerged for L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, who found himself saddled with a number of misconduct and abuse cases against police officers filed by his predecessor, George Gascón.

During his 2024 campaign, Hochman often chastised Gascón for filing cases he claimed wouldn’t hold up before a jury — while also promising to continue bringing prosecutions against police when warranted.

In recent months, Hochman has downgraded or outright dismissed charges in many high-profile cases that Gascón filed. In the two misconduct cases Hochman’s prosecutors have brought to trial, the district attorney’s office failed to win a conviction.

Those outcomes have infuriated the loved ones of victims of police violence, local activists and even former prosecutors, who say Hochman’s backslide on the issue was predictable after he received millions in campaign contributions from police unions.

Greg Apt, a former public defender who served under Gascón as second-in-command of the unit that prosecutes police cases, said he quit last year out of frustration with the new leadership.

“I had concerns that the cases were not going to be treated the same way under Hochman that they were under Gascón, that alleged police wrongdoing would not be given the same level of oversight,” he said.

Hochman has scoffed at the idea that he’s too cozy with cops to hold their feet to the fire, saying his campaign’s war chest reflected bipartisan support that included Democrats who have been critical of police.

The district attorney said he’s made decisions based on what he can actually prove in court, and argued case reviews within the Justice Systems Integrity Division have become even more rigorous under his leadership.

“I’m going to look at the facts and the law of any case. I don’t believe in the spaghetti against the wall approach where you throw the spaghetti against the wall, and see if anything sticks, and let the jury figure it out,” he said. “That would be me abdicating my responsibility.”

Hochman’s supporters argue he has restored balance to an office that was often filing cases against police that were either legally dubious or flat out unwinnable.

Tom Yu, a defense attorney who often represents cops accused of wrongdoing, said Hochman is handling things in a more fair and objective manner.

Former Torrance Police Officers Cody Weldin, center, and Christopher Tomsic, right, pleaded guilty last year in a conspiracy and vandalism case in which they allegedly spray painted a swastika on a car. Attorney Tom Yu, defense for Weldin, is seen listening to the proceedings.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“By and large, he’s not going after the cops. But he didn’t dismiss all the cases either. I’m OK with that,” Yu said. “On a personal level, I think he’s doing a very difficult job in the police cases, because someone is always going to be unhappy with the decisions he made.”

It is difficult to win a guilty verdict for an on-duty shooting, with no such convictions in Los Angeles County since 2000. Laws governing use-of-force give officers great latitude, often protecting them even when they shoot someone who is later found to be unarmed or in situations where video evidence shows no apparent threat.

Hochman questioned why he is being criticized when the California attorney general’s office has reviewed dozens of fatal shootings of unarmed persons throughout the state since 2020 and filed no criminal cases.

“If you bring weak cases and you lose, it undercuts your credibility of being any good at your job,” Hochman said. “It undercuts your credibility in saying that we believe in the facts and the law and bringing righteous cases.”

Hochman brought 15 cases against police officers in 2025, according to documents provided to The Times in response to a public records request, compared with 17 filed by Gascón in his final year in office.

But while Gascón had a strong focus on the kinds of excessive force cases the public was clamoring to see charged when he was elected in 2020, Hochman has more often filed charges for offenses such as fraud and evidence tampering.

Hochman’s recent dismissal of charges against most of the officers involved in the death of Edward Bronstein has drawn outcry from his family and at least one former prosecutor.

Bronstein died after screaming in agony as six California Highway Patrol officers piled on top of him in Altadena in 2020. The officers were trying to get a court-ordered blood draw after Bronstein was pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving.

Video from the scene shows Bronstein arguing with the officers while handcuffed and on his knees.

The officers warn Bronstein they’re going to force him down to get a sample. Right before they do, Bronstein mumbles that he’ll “do it willingly,” but they shove him face down while a seventh officer, Sgt. Michael Little, films the encounter. A minute passes. Then Bronstein’s body goes limp.

Officers can be seen trying to revive Bronstein, calling his name and slapping the side of his head, according to the video. But several minutes elapse before officers attempt to deliver oxygen or CPR. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón announces he will ask a judge to resentence Erik and Lyle Menendez for the killing of their parents in 1989, a decision that could free the brothers.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In 2023, Gascón filed manslaughter charges against the seven officers, as well as the nurse who carried out the blood draw. But late last year, Hochman dismissed charges against all except Little, whose case was reduced to a misdemeanor, for which he received 12 months of probation. Little is no longer a CHP officer, according to an agency spokesman.

Prosecutors are still pursuing manslaughter charges against the nurse at the scene, Arbi Baghalian. His defense attorney, Joe Weimortz, said Baghalian had no control over the officers’ actions or the decision to pursue the blood draw. Weimortz also said he believed the officers were innocent.

Bronstein’s daughter, Brianna Ortega, 26, said in a recent interview that Hochman’s decision to drop the charges felt like a betrayal.

“It just seems like because they’re cops … they must get away with it,” Ortega said. “How are you going to put the blame on one person when all of you are grown men who know better? You have common sense. You have human decency. He is literally telling you he can’t breathe.”

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office could not conclusively determine Bronstein’s cause of death but attributed it to “acute methamphetamine intoxication during restraint by law enforcement.” Bronstein’s family was paid $24 million to settle a wrongful death suit in the case.

Hochman said his office reviewed depositions from the civil case — which he said Gascón did not do before filing a case — and did not believe he could win a manslaughter case because it was impossible to say any officer specifically caused Bronstein’s death. Hochman said the officers had no intent to harm the man and were following orders of a superior officer.

“We looked at each officer, what they knew, what their state of mind was at the time. Understanding that there was both a sergeant there and a nurse, who was in charge of not only taking the blood draw but obviously doing it in a safe manner, and then deciding whether or not we could meet the legal standard of involuntary manslaughter for each officer,” he said.

Edward Tapia, the father of Edward Bronstein, speaks at a news conference about his son, a 38-year-old Burbank man who died while being restrained by California Highway Patrol officers in 2020 after refusing to have his blood drawn after a traffic stop. The family received a $24-million civil rights settlement in 2023 after filing a lawsuit against the state.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Bronstein’s killing was one of three cases in which Hochman assigned new prosecutors in the months before a trial started or a plea deal was reached. Aside from the Bronstein case, the others ended in an acquittal or a hung jury. All three prosecutors who were removed from the unit that handles police misconduct cases had either been appointed by Gascón or had a political connection to the former district attorney.

“When somebody’s lived that case for years, and then you take them off, it suggests that you’re less than serious about winning that case,” said Apt, the former prosecutor on the Bronstein case.

Hochman said he was simply bringing in staff with more trial experience on each case, insisting politics had nothing to do with the transfers. One of the cases, which involved allegations of perjury against L.A. County sheriff’s deputies Jonathan Miramontes and Woodrow Kim, ended with a lightning fast acquittal. Records show jurors deliberated less than an hour before coming back with a not guilty verdict.

In the other case, Hochman’s staff came closer to convicting a cop for an on-duty shooting than anyone else has in L.A. County in a quarter-century.

Former Whittier police officers Salvador Murillo, left, and Cynthia Lopez during their arraignment at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles. Murillo was charged in a 2020 shooting that left an unarmed man paralyzed. Murillo’s trial ended with a deadlocked jury in November 2025.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Former Whittier Det. Salvador Murillo stood trial in November for shooting an unarmed man in the back as he fled down an alley in 2023. Nicholas Carrillo ran away on foot from a vehicle stop and was leaping over a fence — unarmed — when Murillo squeezed off four rounds. Two severed Carillo’s spine, paralyzing him.

The jury came back deadlocked, although a majority of the panel was leaning toward a conviction. Hochman said it is likely he will ask prosecutors to take Murillo to trial a second time, though a final decision has not been made.

This year, Hochman will have to weigh in on a pair of politically charged police killings.

Keith Porter Jr., a 43-year-old father of two, was shot to death by an off-duty U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on New Year’s Eve, a case that has gained national attention following outcry over on-duty shootings by ICE officers in Minnesota and elsewhere.

The Department of Homeland Security said the off-duty ICE agent was responding to an “active shooter.” Porter’s family has said he was firing a rifle into the air as a celebration to ring in the new year.

Melina Abdullah, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter L.A., was part of a group that met with Hochman about Porter’s killing and other cases last month in South L.A.

She described the encounter as confrontational — and a disaster.

“I don’t know how we can expect any safety and accountability with this man in office,” Abdullah said.

Hochman must also decide how to proceed with the case of Clifford Proctor, a former LAPD officer charged for shooting an unarmed homeless man in the back in 2015.

Proctor left the LAPD in 2017 and was not indicted on murder charges until 2024. Gascón reopened the case in 2021, after prosecutors previously declined to file charges.

On Monday, The Times revealed Proctor was able to fly overseas and live at home for a year without the district attorney’s office making any attempt to arrest him on an active murder warrant in 2025.

Hochman has not said if he intends to take Proctor to trial.

Hochman said that while he knows cases of police violence drive emotional reactions, he has to constrain himself to a cold analysis of the facts in front of him.

Reflecting on his confrontational meeting with Black Lives Matter activists, which centered on his recent move to dismiss charges in the 2018 killing of Christopher Deandre Mitchell by Torrance police officers, Hochman said he can’t pursue cases just because people are upset.

“They couldn’t point out anything in that analysis that they disagreed with,” he said. “Other than the result.”