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Behind the counter at the busy Hart Lane driver testing center here, Rosa King looked over the man's fistful of documents, including a Mexican birth certificate and a separate, typewritten English translation. The translation, Ms. King explained in Spanish, was not exact enough. It would have to be redone. When the man returned, he would be eligible for a card bearing his photograph, date of birth, height, eye color and the words "Not Valid for Identification." Tennessee is one of only two states that issue two different driver's permits: a license, for citizens and permanent residents; and a certificate for...

When opponents of the “Real ID” legislation announced a rally for illegal immigrants and their allies in Montgomery County, MD, there was one immigration-related group I was absolutely certain would not show up: The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the people responsible for actually enforcing our immigration laws. Casa de Maryland and others claimed 5,000 people would gather on Saturday to protest the “Real ID” Act working its way through Congress, and many of these people would be illegal immigrants themselves, we were told. If I were looking for immigration criminals, it’s exactly where I would be. That’s why...

Latino and immigrant support groups are mobilizing against the proposed Real ID Act, a federal law that would prohibit states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Immigrant support groups say Real ID would make roads less safe and could erode national security, not improve it. "It will make millions of people that live in our nation hide even more," said Gustavo Torres, executive director of Casa de Maryland, a Latino advocacy group. "They are going to keep driving, keep working, but now they are going to be even more scared to participate in our society, to cooperate with police...

"Congressman Reconquista": Immigration Reformers Not Welcome In GOP by William Norman Grigg May 7, 2005 According to Utah Congressman Chris Cannon, a shameless flack for the illegal immigrant lobby, those committed to protecting our borders cannot be true Republicans. During a May 4 Washington, D.C. forum sponsored by the Latino Coalition, Representative Chris Cannon (R-Utah), a congressional point man for the Bush administration’s illegal immigrant amnesty proposal, suggested that fellow Republican congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado "ought to reconsider his membership in the Republican Party," reported the Rocky Mountain News. While Rep. Tancredo, like most politicians, has a lot to...

LIKE MANY other southern Arizonans, I am deeply grateful to the few dozen vigilantes calling themselves Minutemen who set up camp along the Arizona-Mexico border last month. That few people around here were much impressed with a bunch of retirees in camouflage playing soldier, and that there turned out to be almost as many reporters as patriots on the ground, was irrelevant: We were just thrilled by the publicity. We’ve been trying to get the rest of the country to notice what’s going on down here for years. U.S. immigration policy has turned the Arizona desert between Tucson and the...

The LAPD was once known as "the world's greatest police department," due largely to its stringent character screening. Back in the era of Sergeant Joe Friday, LAPD candidates were checked out as thoroughly as homicide suspects. Even a casual relationship with any known criminal excluded a candidate from being considered as a police officer. All that is now history. In a bid to appease racial activists and meet federal decrees, strict screening and testing measures were dismantled. New black and Hispanic officer candidates were hustled into the ranks at any cost. What former deputy chief Steve Downing called "a quagmire...

It was back in 1981 that the LAPD first entered into a federal consent decree that instituted quotas for female and minority hiring. To meet these demands, the standards for physical capability, intellectual capacity, and personal character were lowered. The result was that many incapable or mediocre recruits--even significant numbers with criminal links or gang associations--were accepted into the department. L.A. is not the only city that damaged its police force in a headlong rush for "diversity."

A police officer who was videotaped beating a suspected car thief with a flashlight last year has been relieved from duty for using ''unnecessary force.'' Officer John Hatfield was among six officers disciplined in the wake of the incident last year. Four will be suspended without pay and one other relieved of duty, records show, but Police Chief William Bratton said Thursday that two officers and a sergeant were cleared of misconduct. Hatfield struck Stanley Miller 11 times with a flashlight following a high-speed pursuit on June 23, 2004. Hatfield, who is Hispanic, was videotaped by television news cameras hitting...

WESTCHESTER — A Los Angeles Airport police officer has been killed in a traffic accident at Sepulveda and Lincoln boulevards, near Los Angeles International Airport, according to the LAPD.

TORONTO — She is perhaps 12 now, her hair still light blond, but she doesn't smile anymore. Over the last three years, she has appeared in 200 explicit photos that have become highly coveted collectibles for pedophiles trolling the Internet. They have watched her grow up online — the hair getting longer, the look in her eyes growing more distant. "She's a collector's item," says Det. Sgt. Paul Gillespie of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit. "I know somebody out there could lead us to her. But right now, the only ones who can see her face are the wrong ones."...

Central American community leaders on Wednesday demanded to meet with Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton to discuss proposed guidelines allowing police to make limited immigration inquiries about convicted felons they suspect reentered the U.S. illegally. Under Special Order 40, adopted in 1979 to encourage illegal immigrants to report crime, LAPD officers are prevented from inquiring about a person's residency status. However, Bratton plans to issue a clarification stating that officers can check on felons, mostly violent gang members, who were deported only to return illegally. More than half a dozen of the community activists said clarifying the police's...

LOS ANGELES - Police officers are still carrying heavy flashlights, despite Police Chief William Bratton's plan to equip them with lighter ones following an incident last year in which an officer hit a car-theft suspect 11 times with the standard-issued gear. The delay has frustrated the Police Commission, a civilian panel which must approve new gear before it's used by the Los Angeles Police Department. "This is a no-brainer. This is the type of thing the department has been known to take too long to come up with a solution," commission President David Cunningham III said Tuesday. "They need to...

Just when I convince myself that it really is all going to heck in a handbasket. Just when it looks like no one has an ounce of sanity left in them at all. Something surprising happens that completely knocks me off kilter and forces me to reevaluate. Today, finally, the LAPD has received a wake-up call on illegal immigration. Today, they finally realized that allowing a gang like MS-13 to operate out of the barrios of East LA could not coexist with their mission of upholding the law and protecting the peace. Against a stark backdrop of growing violence and...

Prompted by the police shooting of a distraught transient and guided by a federal consent degree, the LAPD will begin training its officers how to better deal with the hundreds of mentally ill suspects they encounter each year. Beginning in April, the Los Angeles Police Department's 9,100 sworn officers will take Internet courses to learn common symptoms of mental illness and how to cope with people who display them. "There's a new vision toward the mentally ill. We're much more sensitive," said LAPD Sgt. Alan Green, who is developing the online program. LAPD officers are involved in about 25 use-of-force...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Two alleged gang members fired at police officers during a traffic stop over the weekend, the second such attack in less than a week, authorities said Tuesday. Police arrested driver Brandan Dixon and passenger Troy Dyer, both 24, for investigation of attempted murder, the Police Department said in a statement. Authorities allege the two are gang members. Officers on Sunday night tried to pull over a green Hyundai driving erratically in South Los Angeles, but the driver refused. As officers pursued the car, the passenger leaned out a window and fired at the officers, police said....

A Cop at the Carnival - Stuck between crime and politics. Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse... In a further affront to the men and women they purport to lead, the Los Angeles Police Commission has unanimously voted to further restrict when officers can fire their weapons at moving cars. The new policy, laid out in Special Order No. 1, reads as follows: Firearms shall not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless a person in the vehicle is immediately threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle. For the...

LOS ANGELES - Outrage over alleged police brutality is shaking up a wide-open contest for City Hall in which an influential, if relatively small, black vote could determine whether Mayor James Hahn keeps his job. The death of 13-year-old Devin Brown, who was shot by police after driving a stolen car into an LAPD cruiser, galled black residents who see the killing as the latest example of Police Department abuse. The Feb. 6 shooting came three days after prosecutors declined to file charges against an officer who was videotaped hammering black car-theft suspect Stanley Miller with a metal flashlight -...

Is there no one in Los Angeles politics who can tell the truth? Not when it comes to crime, apparently, as has been vividly demonstrated this week in the aftermath of a police shooting that claimed the life of a 13-year-old auto-theft suspect. This is what we know: Just before 4 A.M. Sunday morning, LAPD Officers Dana Grant and Steve Garcia were on patrol in South-Central Los Angeles. They saw a maroon Toyota Camry run a red light, and when they attempted to pull the car over the driver led them on a brief, high-speed pursuit on the Harbor Freeway...

LOS ANGELES - In a vote colored by mayoral campaign politics, the City Council on Friday rejected for a second time a proposal that would have asked voters to consider raising the sales tax to put more police on the beat. The ballot proposal was defeated 9-6 - one short of the 10 votes needed to place it before voters. The proposal, pushed by Mayor James Hahn, called for raising the sales tax a half-cent, to 8.75 percent, to hire more officers and fund public-safety programs. The council rejected the same measure earlier this week by an identical vote. With...

LOS ANGELES - Police Chief William Bratton on Friday proposed a new policy that would ban officers from firing at moving vehicles, less than a week after the fatal police shooting of a 13-year-old suspected car thief. The change would prohibit officers from firing at a moving vehicle "unless the officer or another person is being threatened with deadly force by means other than the moving vehicle," Bratton said in a memo to police commissioners. He asked the civilian Police Commission to approve the policy at its meeting Tuesday. Police departments in major cities, including Boston, Cincinnati and Detroit, in...