L.A. police union backs Greuel candidacy with another $850,000

The Los Angeles Police Department's rank-and-file union dropped another $850,000 into the effort to elect mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel, the biggest single contribution over the two-year campaign, according to reports filed Wednesday.

The Police Protective League, which represents roughly 10,000 officers, has devoted more than $1.43 million to Greuel's candidacy since the campaign began. That makes it a close second to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, which represents workers at the Department of Water and Power and has devoted $1.45 million to Greuel's candidacy.

Spending by city employee unions in the mayoral contest has been hotly debated because City Hall faces continuing budget troubles caused in part by rising costs of employee salaries and benefits. The next mayor will serve on the committee that negotiates pay agreements with police officers and DWP workers, as well as the union that represents firefighters, which has spent $425,000 on various efforts to elect Greuel.

Rival Eric Garcetti's campaign charged Greuel has become "a wholly owned subsidiary of super PACs. The heavy impact of independent money, versus the people-powered base that I have, is a real contrast in this race," Garcetti said at a campaign stop in Venice.

Greuel's campaign hit back by unveiling a new TV ad criticizing Garcetti for accepting campaign contributions from Juri Ripinsky, a real estate developer convicted in the 1990s in a bank fraud case. Garcetti voted for a development project backed by Ripinsky in 2007 and, since 2008, received more than $11,000 in contributions from Ripinsky and his relatives.

The ad is part of a larger Greuel effort to cast Garcetti as a politician who is "in it for himself." The 30-second spot shows Garcetti praising Ripinsky as "incredible" at a polo match in Will Rogers State Park that doubled as a campaign fundraiser. "What's more incredible?" says the narrator in the video, as Garcetti embraces Ripinsky. "Collecting money from a felon at a polo match? Or voting to approve his development project?"

"This just shows that Eric Garcetti will say and do anything to get elected," Greuel strategist John Shallman said in a statement.

Garcetti contends that Ripinsky has paid his debt to society and deserves a chance to rehabilitate himself. His campaign also asserted that Greuel repeatedly accepted money over the past decade from Charles Francoeur, a real estate developer convicted on theft and conspiracy charges in the 1990s.

"Only an incompetent and discredited smear artist like Wendy Greuel would attack someone for doing the same thing that she has done," said Garcetti spokesman Jeff Millman.

Garcetti has ignored Greuel's demand that he return the money. Greuel sought to distinguish herself from her opponent by giving back $2,600 donated to her mayoral campaign by Francoeur and his wife. She gave another $4,000 to an after-school program — the same amount provided by Francoeur and his wife to previous Greuel campaigns, according to her spokesman.

The charges and countercharges came amid a day of high-profile events for the candidates. Garcetti spent part of the day touring the offices of Google in Venice, taking part in one of the company's fireside chat-style Q & A sessions. During his visit, he discussed topics ranging from bicycle safety to efforts to upgrade the city's information systems, which he described as "cutting-edge technology from 1982."

Greuel attended a reception in Beverly Hills that preceded a dinner honoring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Former President Bill Clinton has played a prominent role in the campaign, endorsing Greuel and appearing in TV ads promoting her that were shot by a group called Working Californians, a committee that has received a large share of its financing from the DWP union.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

james.rainey.@latimes.com

maeve.reston@latimes.com

Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.

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Oakland police chief takes medical retirement

OAKLAND — The embattled Oakland police chief abruptly announced a medical retirement Wednesday, hours before a team of consultants — working for former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton — was scheduled to lay out a crime-reduction plan for the state's most violent city.

Chief Howard Jordan's announcement came one week after a compliance director appointed by a federal judge to oversee significant areas of Police Department operations issued a scathing report that was critical of management.

A U.S. District Court judge had appointed the compliance director — one step short of a receiver — in December, 10 years into the department's effort to comply with a civil settlement agreement relating to racial profiling and inappropriate use of force by officers.

In his report, Tom Frazier said supervisors often failed to intervene in improper officer behavior and failed to thoroughly investigate allegations of officer misconduct. Executive leadership, he said, "has permitted members of the organization to believe that the behaviors … are both tolerated and acceptable."

The federal court had given Frazier the power to recommend the removal of top department officials, but city officials declined to say Wednesday whether he had pressed for Jordan's departure.

Oakland Police Officers Assn. President Barry Donelan said Jordan called him Wednesday and shared the news of his condition and his retirement.

"He is ill," Donelan said. "We all wish Chief Jordan and his family the best moving forward."

At an afternoon news conference, City Administrator Deanna Santana declined to discuss Jordan's medical condition, citing privacy law, but said his medical leave had already begun and retirement would soon follow.

Assistant Chief Anthony Tiribio was elevated to acting chief and a national search for a new leader will be conducted, she said.

Mayor Jean Quan, who met Jordan years ago when he was a young lieutenant in charge of school safety, said she admired his commitment to youth and was "very sad to see him leave."

Jordan had been on the force for 23 years when he took the helm as interim chief in the fall of 2011 — just weeks before Occupy Oakland protests erupted near City Hall and images of officers lobbing tear gas and other projectiles into a largely peaceful crowd made international news.

He was named permanent chief in February 2012. As he moved to discipline officers for improper use of force during Occupy protests and inch forward on compliance with the settlement agreement, he was also forced to contend with a department that lost a fourth of its force over five years.

Earlier this year the city hired Massachusetts-based Strategic Policy Partnership — which brought Bratton in as a sub-consultant — to devise crime-reduction plans that call for smarter policing and more community input.

The Bratton Group had drafted a short-term plan and was set to release it with Jordan at a midday Wednesday news conference.

It was abruptly canceled after the chief announced he was stepping down.

"This decision has been difficult but necessary," he wrote in a brief mid-morning letter to Oakland police employees. "Through my 24 years of wearing an OPD badge and uniform I have emulated the department's core values: Honesty, Respect and Integrity — values I have observed in all of you. I know that you and the department will carry on these values to generations to come."

The plan will now be released Thursday.

lee.romney@latimes.com

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Former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado criticizes Brown's prison policy

SACRAMENTO — Saying there is a "pretty good shot" he'll run for governor, former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado on Wednesday kicked off a drive against Gov. Jerry Brown's handling of prison crowding, labeling Brown's policies an "early release" program.

The Republican from Santa Maria, who lost a bid for Congress last year, said he was launching a campaign to repeal the governor's prison policies, implemented in late 2011 to meet court-ordered population limits in state lockups.

"Today will be the beginning [of the] end of early release," Maldonado declared at a news conference staged on the windy top of a parking garage, a made-for-TV shot of the state Capitol behind him. Beside him was an oversized placard bearing the image of an accused murderer whose case, it turned out, was unrelated to the new corrections law.

Maldonado said he was forming a political committee to gather signatures to put a repeal measure on next year's ballot. He is seeking to capitalize on the controversy over Brown's requirement that counties begin housing lower-level felons and parole violators who in the past would have done that time in prison.

Maldonado acknowledged that he does not have the financial backing for a statewide signature drive. Nor does he have his own plan to address prison crowding, although he said such a plan would probably include construction of new facilities.

That was a strategy pursued by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who appointed Maldonado to the empty lieutenant governor post in 2009. Though the Legislature approved $4.1 billion in borrowing, when Brown took office amid a budget crisis, he canceled most of those planned projects.

The 2011 law that Maldonado denounces is called "realignment" by the Brown administration. In areas where the jails are full, it has led to early releases, though there is no statewide tally of those because county jail reports collected in Sacramento have not been updated since June 2012.

Maldonado blamed Brown, along with the Democratic-controlled Legislature, for what he said was a rise of violent crime in California, though he offered no statistics to support the claim.

"This is the biggest issue — it threatens the lives of Californians," he told The Times. "This notion of families being afraid to go out on the street, being afraid of parking garages, families who are just afraid.

"The governor uses a fancy word called realignment," Maldonado said. "At the end of the day, it's early release.... A shell game is what it is."

On Wednesday, Maldonado pointed to a larger-than-life police mug of Jerome Anthony Rogers, 57, who is accused of murdering a 76-year-old San Bernardino woman, and recounted Rogers' history of "sodomizing a 14-year-old girl."

Rogers' alleged crime appeared to have little or no connection with realignment. California corrections officials said he was released from state prison in 2000 and finished parole in 2003, eight years before Brown's policy change took effect.

San Bernardino County corrections officials confirmed that Rogers, who has pleaded not guilty to murder in the woman's slaying, had no other criminal record in San Bernardino until December 2012, when he was sentenced to, and served, 13 days in jail for failing to register his address as a transient sex offender. That time behind bars occurred one month after the slaying.

A Maldonado advisor said Wednesday that Rogers' case was touted because "he is a prime example" of the public safety threat created by prison realignment.

"It's people like him who are being released," said the advisor, Jeffrey Corless. He could not specify, however, what about Rogers would put him in that category.

Maldonado's event attracted a representative from the Brown administration, corrections department spokesman Jeffrey Callison, who took issue with use of the term "early release."

"It's quite simple," Callison said. "There is no early release program called realignment. Realignment is not an early release program. There are no early releases as part of it."

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

seema.mehta@latimes.com

St. John reported from Sacramento and Mehta from Long Beach.

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Coliseum hid reports of financial woes, records show

The overseers of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum concealed from the public independent reports of lax financial controls and widespread spending abuses at the taxpayer-owned stadium that included sloppy accounting of hot dog sales and excessive perks for managers, records show.

Problems detailed in the reports by two independent audit and consulting firms compounded money woes that leaders of the Coliseum Commission cited as a chief reason they decided to turn over stewardship of the two-time Olympic venue to USC.

The Times obtained the reports through the court as part of a pending lawsuit the news organization filed against the commission, alleging that the panel has violated the California Public Records Act and open-meetings law. The commission refused to release the reports when The Times first inquired about them in 2011.

Other records obtained through the lawsuit show that the commission conferred with USC before responding to Times requests for email and other documents under the act.

Jim Ewert, an attorney for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., said it was "totally inappropriate" for a government agency to consult a private university about the requests.

"What if USC says, 'Don't release that?' " Ewert said. "The Public Records Act request needs to be considered on the merits."

At the time of the requests, the commission was negotiating a new lease with USC, whose football team is the Coliseum's main tenant, and holding closed-door deliberations on the proposed agreement.

The commission has withheld from The Times a number of email exchanges with the school, claiming they are exempt from disclosure under the records act. The lawsuit asks the court to order the email released.

The reports by SingerLewak and Mercer confirmed a pattern of financial irregularities on the watch of the nine-member commission, which is made up of representatives of the city, county and state. The reports were compiled in the wake of Times reports on questionable financial practices that eventually led to felony corruption charges against three former Coliseum managers and three people who did business with the stadium.

The commission president, county Supervisor Don Knabe, did not respond to an interview request. The panel's top manager, John Sandbrook, declined to be interviewed.

The SingerLewak report, which refers to examinations conducted in the summer of 2011, concludes that the Coliseum concession stands failed "to reasonably ensure that all sales are recorded and that all cash is collected."

It says that up to 44% of hot dogs were eaten by concession employees or declared "spoiled" during one USC game.

Water was another trouble spot, the reports says. For example, it says, a SingerLewak representative bought two $5 bottles of water, paying the full amount, but was given no receipt and the sale appeared to be recorded as a single $5 purchase.

Elsewhere, the report focuses on the practices of the Coliseum's former finance director, Ronald Lederkramer. Echoing Times revelations, it points to his use of a personal Visa card to charge about $273,000 in Coliseum equipment purchases to earn valuable travel points for himself, bypassing procedures designed to get the stadium the best terms.

The SingerLewak findings similarly questioned thousands of dollars in reimbursements for insurance, repairs and tires for Lederkramer's luxury car and for some of his medical expenses, including $1,000 in charges from a plastic surgeon that he double-billed to the commission.

Lederkramer went on leave in 2011 and later left the commission. He did not respond to an interview request Wednesday.

The Mercer report offers a survey of perks in other industries that shows Coliseum managers were among the elite. It says that fewer than 15% of top managers in the healthcare and the not-for-profit sectors receive the sort of car reimbursements given to Coliseum administrators at that time.

paul.pringle@latimes.com

ron.lin@latimes.com

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California ranks 11th in hospitals with A grades for safety

Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit healthcare quality organization, based the scores on an analysis of infections, injuries, medication errors and other problems that cause patient harm or death. The organization publicizes the scores in an effort to inform patients and reduce safety problems, said Leah Binder, its president and chief executive.

"It is not enough for hospitals to promise they will do everything they can to address patient safety," she said. "It takes more than that. It takes patients and others in the community to publicly demand improvements."

Each year, 180,000 people die nationwide from hospital errors and injuries, according to the organization. Hospital executives, patients, relatives and unions all play a role in making hospitals safer, Binder said. Patients can check the grades of their hospitals at hospitalsafetyscore.org.

California ranked 11th for the number of hospitals with an A grade. Among the Southern California hospitals that received the highest safety scores were Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood, UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica and Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. Nearly all of the state's Kaiser hospitals also received A grades.

There were just a few F grades in the state, including Western Anaheim Medical Center and Victor Valley Community Hospital in Victorville.

UCLA Health Sciences spokeswoman Roxanne Yamaguchi Moster said that the score was based on data from 2009 to 2011 and that she expected to see "significant improvement" in the future.

"We are disappointed, but not surprised by the latest Leapfrog rating and know that it does not reflect in any way the quality of care the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center provides its patients," she said in an email.

The three county hospitals had mixed scores, with L.A. County/USC Medical Center and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center receiving C grades and Olive View-UCLA Medical Center getting an A.

California requires hospitals to report certain errors and fines them for mistakes that kill or seriously injure patients. Neither Medicaid nor Medicare pays hospitals for costs incurred by certain preventable errors.

About three-quarters of the hospitals kept the same grades as in November, when the group issued its last report. About 10% of hospitals improved and 15% received lower grades.

"It is very unfortunate and distressing that we don't see more progress in this data," Binder said.

Leapfrog Group analyzed 2,514 acute-care hospitals around the nation and gave out 780 A's, 638 Bs, 932 Cs, 148 Ds and 16 Fs.

anna.gorman@latimes.com

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Four immigration officials charged with bribery, fraud

Attorney Kwang Man "John" Lee, authorities say, was a man who could make things happen — for a price.

For a pound of marijuana and $44,000, the Koreatown attorney allegedly said, he could get an immigrant client a U.S. citizenship.

"Price is OK for the risk," Lee told an associate, according to federal authorities.

The silver-Corvette-driving attorney, a former Immigration and Naturalization Service agent, allegedly had associates at various stages of the immigration process willing to take bribes and provide favors for his clients. At Los Angeles International Airport, he had Customs and Border Protection officer Michael Anders, according to prosecutors. At Citizenship and Immigration Services, they alleged, he had officers Jesus Figueroa and Paul Lovingood. At Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he had special agent James Dominguez, according to court documents.

And he apparently had a long list of clients from across the globe, from Japan to Morocco to the Czech Republic, willing to pay the tens of thousands to cut a corner or two in the process for a permanent residency or citizenship in the U.S.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors announced charges against Anders, Figueroa, Lovingood, Dominguez and a client of Lee's, Mirei Gia Hofmann. The current and former immigration officials were indicted Tuesday on charges including conspiracy, bribery, fraud and misuse of government seals. Hofmann faces a single count of immigration fraud.

Lee, who became an attorney in 1997, was previously charged in a separate criminal complaint of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government.

According to affidavits filed in the case, Lee plied the officials with lavish gifts and cash bribes in exchange for immigration benefits including forged admission stamps with a false date of entry into the U.S. and rubber-stamping fraudulent permanent residency or citizenship applications. Anders, who at one point lived with Lee, provided the attorney with a specialized security ink used by Border Patrol officials to stamp passports at airports, according to court papers.

In exchange, Lee bought round-trip tickets to Thailand for Dominguez and a 47-inch flat-screen TV and a computer for Lovingood, and gave thousands of dollars in cash to Figueroa, authorities allege. Anders was paid $50 each time he falsified an entry record, according to the indictment.

Lee complained to a confidential informant that he gets "headaches entertaining them, taking them out to dinner," according to an affidavit. He secured illegal immigration benefits for at least several dozen clients over the years, prosecutors said.

"It looks like this goes back at least 20 years," Assistant U.S. Atty. Meghan Blanco said. "By and large, it involves people who entered the country legally and then overstayed their visa."

Lovingood, who retired last year, and Dominguez surrendered to authorities Wednesday morning. The others had been arrested and are free on bond.

The defendants face maximum sentences of 10 to 80 years in federal prison, according to prosecutors.

Lee and the other defendants could not be reached for comment.

victoria.kim@latimes.com

Times staff writer Hector Becerra contributed to this report.

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Clinton plays down politics at event in Beverly Hills

Hours after Republican members of Congress sharply questioned Hillary Rodham Clinton and the State Department's handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, the former secretary of State did not explicitly mention the controversy in an appearance Wednesday night. But she did reference partisan bickering in the nation's capital as she accepted an award in Beverly Hills.

"We truly, still today — despite all of our partisan wrangling, and the gridlock that sometimes seems to take hold — we stand up for the rights and opportunities of all people," Clinton said in a speech that largely focused on U.S. policy toward Asia.

Earlier in the day, Foreign Service officers testified at a House committee hearing about the Benghazi terrorist attacks that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

The State Department, under Clinton's watch, has been criticized for failing to provide appropriate security at the Benghazi outpost, and some Republicans have argued that the blame extended to Clinton.

The decision not to step into the political fray was unsurprising for Clinton, who has avoided politics since stepping down as the nation's top diplomat in February. But the Benghazi security, or lack thereof, could become a challenge for her if she runs for president in 2016, as many are speculating.

Clinton did not discuss her plans Wednesday. Instead, she focused on the legacy of the late Secretary of State Warren Christopher as she accepted an inaugural public service award named after him from the Pacific Council on International Policy, a nonpartisan group.

Christopher "understood something America's leaders have to understand and act on: The United States remains a beacon of freedom and opportunity precisely because the American dream has been and must remain open to all," Clinton said.

"He had lived it, from a town of 350 people in North Dakota all the way to the highest levels of the United States government, and he certainly could see it every day around him in this diverse and vibrant city. He felt as I have, every time you land in a far-off country in that big blue and white plane that says United States of America, what an extraordinary honor and privilege and responsibility that is."

Christopher, who served as secretary of State in the Clinton administration, died in 2011.

Clinton recalled advice that Christopher received while he was a clerk for Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas — to get into "the stream of history and swim as fast as you can."

Christopher "lived his entire life in the stream of history, and we are so much the better for that," Clinton said. "And he didn't just swim with the current. Through the strength of his will and force of his talent, he helped change the course of history.... All of us and our country are safer, freer and more secure as a result."

Clinton also discussed foreign policy, notably the United States' relationship with China.

Noting that Christopher "understood, profoundly, the growing importance of Asia," she credited him with putting the U.S. alliance with Japan "back on firm footing," bolstering South Korea in the face of provocations from North Korea and relaunching the U.S.-China relationship "on a positive trajectory."

"I believe the shape of the global economy, the advance of democracy and human rights, our hopes for a 21st century that is less bloody than the 20th century, all hinge to a large degree on what happens in the Asia Pacific," Clinton said.

She praised China's new president as pragmatic, but said she and others were still trying to discern whether his references to "the Chinese dream" were a "rallying cry for resurgent nationalism."

"The Chinese Dream, like the American Dream, can be an aspirational goal that can help organize the forward movement of more than 1.3 billion people, or it can come at the expense of the neighborhood and the rest of Asia," Clinton said. "What we need to be forging is a shared dream — a shared dream of a more peaceful and prosperous region and world."

Political observers are watching Clinton's every move, and she has begun making the rounds on the lucrative speaking circuit. But she agreed to address the Pacific Council gratis — a sign of the respect she and her husband had for Christopher, said Mickey Kantor, who served as President Clinton's Commerce secretary as well as his campaign chairman in 1992.

Kantor, co-host of the dinner, acknowledged the speculation about her future when he introduced Clinton and noted that in 1992, then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton held a fundraiser in the same ballroom at the Beverly Wilshire hotel.

"On that night 21 years ago … we knew Hillary Clinton would be a ground-breaking first lady, but I doubt any of us imagined she would follow in [Christopher's] footsteps to the State Department," he said. "And what extraordinary things she would do, tirelessly traveling the globe, patiently working for peace, standing up to the bullies of the world, empowering and inspiring women and girls everywhere.

"And Hillary continues to be in focus and even the subject of some speculation," he said, to cheers and applause.

seema.mehta@latimes.com

maeve.reston@latimes.com

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Christian metal guitarist allegedly sought to kill wife

SAN DIEGO — Tim Lambesis has spent the last 13 years fronting As I Lay Dying, a San Diego-bred metal band that sought to blend a hard-edged punk sound with its members' Christian faith.

Lambesis recently posted a video on YouTube in which he and a bandmate trade "mosh calls for the Lord," including such rallying cries as "crowd surf for the virgin birth."

Fans had embraced the group, whose sixth album, "Awakened," debuted last fall at No. 11 on the Billboard pop chart. A tour of Asia recently ended and a summer U.S. tour was planned, beginning May 30 in Oklahoma City.

But on Wednesday, Lambesis, 32, sat in a Vista jail after he allegedly tried to hire an undercover San Diego County sheriff's detective, posing as a hit man for hire, to kill his estranged wife, Meggan.

The muscular, heavily tattooed Lambesis was arrested without incident Tuesday in Oceanside after detectives received a tip that he wanted to hire a killer and set up a meeting, authorities said. Lambesis, who is being held without bail, is set to be arraigned Thursday in San Diego County Superior Court in Vista on felony counts of soliciting murder.

Lambesis and his wife adopted three children in recent years before separating, Billboard magazine reported.

In divorce papers, Lambesis' estranged wife accused him of becoming emotionally distant from her and their adopted children, and being obsessed with bodybuilding and touring. Their 2010 gross income was put at $233,000.

The arrest "prevented a tragedy," sheriff's spokeswoman Jan Caldwell said. It was not immediately known if Lambesis had a lawyer.

Lambesis founded As I Lay Dying, taking its name from a William Faulkner novel, in 2000 and remains its lead guitarist and singer. He has been called the musical grandchild of Ozzy Osbourne, one of the original heavy metal rockers.

The band specializes in music that includes "thrash metal" sounds and "beat-down hardcore punk." Lambesis provides guitar riffs and what are described as "growled vocals."

In interviews, Lambesis has insisted that although the lyrics may seem harsh, the five band members are Christians and the songs include Christian themes of forgiveness and struggle. He graduated from a San Diego-area Christian high school.

As word of his arrest spread, fans took to the group's Facebook page expressing disbelief.

"I can't even imagine him resorting to this after all of the inspiration from this band," wrote one. "They have never produced a single thing that would make me believe any of them were capable of this. This would be absolutely heartbreaking to hear."

"I am praying for Tim's salvation with you God," wrote another. "Cover him and speak to his heart."

The band's 2007 single "Nothing Left" was nominated for the metal performance Grammy.

Lambesis has often spoken on the importance of writing about "philosophical topics," and when asked recently by metal website Suicide Scriptures if his Christian faith clashed with the genre, he said people get "stuck on it. They tend to focus on those ideas more than the music."

Late Wednesday, the four other members of As I Lay Dying issued a statement expressing surprise at Lambesis' arrest.

"Our thoughts right now are with Tim, his family, and with everyone else affected by this terrible situation — and with our fans, whom we love and draw strength from," the statement said.

Lambesis has a side project, Austrian Death Machine, which spoofs former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his movie persona.

Early this year, Lambesis posted a request for donations on the "crowdfunding" site http://www.indiegogo.com so Austrian Death Machine could produce its third album.

The post indicates that his project needed $63,000 by late April, and had raised $78,170 as of Wednesday.

Lambesis offered T-shirts with a cartoon image of Schwarzenegger and private exercise sessions for donors. He also promised to tattoo a donor's name on his buttocks for a donation of $5,000 or more.

As I Lay Dying's "Awakened" album was said to take the band down a darker thematic path than earlier releases.

"I wasn't purposefully trying to be negative, but I think sometimes we have to be honest with some of the darker and more difficult times of our lives to get back to that positivity," Lambesis said in a record label news release. "While the lyrics do perhaps seem like a dark window into my soul, they're written that way specifically because I want to move on and transcend those difficult moments in life."

tony.perry@latimes.com

Times staff writer Todd Martens contributed to this report.

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Gun crime has plunged, but Americans think it's up, study says

The number of violent crimes involving guns has plummeted in the last two decades, but more than half of Americans think the opposite is true, according to reports released Tuesday.

Killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes involving guns have dropped since their peak in the mid-1990s, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reported.

The rate of killings by gun has been cut nearly in half, according to another analysis of the same data by the Pew Research Center. The rate of other violent gun crimes fell even more sharply, by 75%, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium.

However, guns remain the most common murder weapon in the United States, the Bureau of Justice Statistics report noted. Between 1993 and 2011, more than two out of three killings in the U.S. were carried out with guns, the bureau found.

The facts are at odds with public perception, according to the results of a survey by the Pew center.

Despite the steep drop in gun crime, only 12% of Americans surveyed said they believed crimes with firearms had declined over the last two decades, Pew found in a survey of more than 900 adults this spring. Twenty-six percent said it had stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased.

Pew researchers say they aren't sure what is driving the misperception, but they noted that the mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., were among the news stories most closely followed by Americans last year.

Crime was also a growing focus for national newscasts and morning network shows between 2007 and 2012 but has become less common on local television news during roughly the same period.

"It's hard to know what's going on there," said D'Vera Cohn, senior writer at the Pew Research Center. Women, people of color and the elderly were more likely to believe that gun crime was up than were men, younger adults or white people. The center plans to examine crime issues more closely later this year.

Though violence has dropped, the U.S. still has a higher murder rate than most other developed countries, though not the highest in the world, the Pew study noted. A Swiss research group, the Small Arms Survey, says that the U.S. has more guns per capita than any other country.

Experts debate why overall crime has fallen, attributing the drop to a wide range of causes, such as the decline in crack cocaine use and surging incarceration rates. Some researchers have even linked dropping crime to reduced lead in gasoline, pointing out that lead can cause increased aggression and impulsive behavior in children exposed to it.

The victims of gun killings are overwhelmingly male and disproportionately black, government statistics show. Compared with other parts of the country, the South had the highest rates of gun violence, including both homicides and other violent gun crimes.

emily.alpert@latimes.com

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DWP average pay rose 15%, despite flagging economy

Average employee pay at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power rose 15% over the last five years, despite an economic slump that ravaged the city's budget, records released Tuesday show.

DWP workers received significantly more generous pay increases than other city workers, who received an average raise of 9% over the same period.

The median household income for Los Angeles residents — the public utility's customers — fell over roughly the same period, from $48,882 in 2008 to $46,148 in 2011, the latest year for which U.S. census numbers are available. By contrast, the average DWP pay rose from $88,299 in 2008 to $101,237 in 2012. DWP pay grew at about three times the rate of inflation in the Greater Los Angeles Area.

DWP compensation has become a central issue in the May 21 mayoral election, in which there has been much debate over whether the city's labor contracts are too costly given the fiscal problems that have resulted in major cuts in services.

The union representing most of the DWP's workers has become the single biggest source of campaign cash in the race, giving $1.45 million to an independent effort backing City Controller Wendy Greuel.

The only pay growth comparable to the DWP came at the city Fire Department, where average total salary and other payments also rose 15% over the five years to $132,131. But officials note that about 300 positions were cut from the Fire Department in that period, which required increased overtime payments to fill positions.

The firefighters' union, which is also backing Greuel, has spent about $250,000 on her campaign.

Average Los Angeles police officer pay increased by 2% over the same period, The Times analysis found.

The Times requested the DWP pay data in early February. Agency administrators repeatedly postponed the release, saying more time was needed to ensure that disclosing the information would not endanger employees.

The state of California, Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles routinely release their payroll with employees' names. Courts have allowed rare exceptions when employees' safety might be put in danger, such as undercover police officers and people who have restraining orders against potentially violent stalkers.

The DWP was poised to release the data last week. But the employees' union sued the agency, seeking more time for its roughly 8,000 members to object to the disclosure of their names. At a Los Angeles County Superior Court hearing Tuesday, the city attorney's office said it found 112 employees who may have restraining orders. An additional 357 are on disability leave and might not be aware of the pending release of information, Chief Deputy City Atty. William Carter told the court.

After the hearing, the union and the DWP agreed to release the pay data without names. Both sides are due in court again Wednesday to argue over disclosing employees' identities with their earnings.

The union may have relented because keeping the information secret has become a public relations problem, turning a once coveted political backing into a potential liability, said Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus of political science at Cal State L.A. "It looked really bad that they were trying to block access to their incomes," he said.

And the timing of the pay increases probably won't play well, he said. "The fact that they were those five years, when virtually all other city workers had to bite the bullet, it looks bad."

The $101,237 average pay covers more than 10,000 employees, including temporary workers and full-time staffers. They range from the highest-paid engineers to line workers to customer service representatives.

DWP spokesman Joseph Ramallo attributed the pay increases to a range of factors including cost-of-living adjustments and variations in annual overtime payments.

The Times analysis found average base pay at the DWP increased 19% over the five-year period. Unused vacation time payouts for retiring employees jumped 32%. And "other pay", which includes disability payments and compensation for unused sick time, rose 46%.

Overtime, which Ramallo said is driven mostly by responding to storm damage, was 22% lower in 2012 than it had been in 2008.

Last week, the Times reported that the DWP's average worker pay was $99,308 in 2011, the most recent data available at the time. That was more than 50% higher than other city employees. Also, DWP employees were paid about 25% more than workers at comparable public and private utilities, according to a report commissioned by the City Council last year. In addition, agency employees receive free healthcare benefits.

The report set off a frenzy of finger-pointing by Greuel and her rival, Councilman Eric Garcetti, who blamed each other for the agency's comparatively high pay.

Greuel noted that Garcetti voted for two sets of DWP raises in 2005 and 2009. Garcetti pointed out that Greuel voted for the 2005 raise too, and didn't have a vote in 2009 because she left the City Council to become controller.

On Tuesday, Greuel spokeswoman Laura Wilkinson accused Garcetti of championing the "reckless" 2009 raise, which came at a time when city residents "could least afford it." In the same period, funding for firefighters and 911 emergency response service was being slashed, she said.

Garcetti spokesman Jeff Millman said the 15% raises at the municipal utility are "exactly why the DWP [union] is spending a record amount of money to buy this election for Wendy Greuel, to protect the status quo."

Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, said the candidates should tell voters how they would negotiate a new contract as mayor to fix the problem.

"Each candidate has been very specific about what their opponent did wrong on this issue in the past," he said. "These numbers should push the discussion toward what they'll do if elected."

jack.dolan@latimes.com

Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this report.

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L.A. mayoral candidates support making teacher evaluations public

Los Angeles' two mayoral candidates said Tuesday that they support making teacher evaluations public, going well beyond a level of disclosure that is supported by top school district officials.

City Controller Wendy Greuel and City Councilman Eric Garcetti said they backed the release of individual performance evaluations based on so-called "value-added" formulas, which are controversial both locally and nationwide. These measures use the past performance of students on state standardized tests to help gauge a teacher's success, taking into account such factors as race and income.

"I think it's fair — absolutely," said Garcetti, when asked if the evaluations should be made public during an hourlong debate at the Petersen Automotive Museum sponsored by KCRW and Zocalo Public Square. He added that it was important to have a variety of measures to evaluate and compare teachers and to use data to help teachers improve.

Greuel said "yes" in response to the same question, and gave Los Angeles Unified Supt. John Deasy credit for looking at evaluations at all levels of the school system, including principals.

Critics call such formulas unreliable or unfair. Backers say that when done well, they offer due recognition to the work of teachers who take on tougher-to-educate students. While Deasy supports using such formulas, he opposes making them public.

As at most of their recent debates, this one was marked by acrimony from the opening moments.

"There is probably no other subject where my opponent and I differ more than on the subject of education," Greuel said. "I attended Los Angeles public schools my entire life.... I'm the only candidate who has a child attending LAUSD today. My opponent went to private school and eventually private college. And private schools are great, but they are not the reality for most of Los Angeles' children and families."

"If you really want to see a mayor make a difference in our public schools and not just talk about it, put a mom in charge, watch what happens," she said.

Garcetti countered the notion that he was privileged by noting that his grandfather immigrated to the United States with an eighth-grade education, but improved his life through the Army, which allowed his son — Garcetti's father, Gil Garcetti — to become the first in the family to graduate from college.

"Education has always been the great equalizer for our society and certainly here in Los Angeles. My family story is no different," he said.

Garcetti noted that he had been the father of public-school children who had to sit on the floors of overcrowded classrooms, referring to foster children that he and his wife had cared for. They also have a young girl.

"I think moms are great. I love dads too. I happen to be one…. Right now my daughter's too young to be in school, she's only 16 months old," he said. "But she's what propels me in the campaign, she's what propels me in life, to make sure she has the opportunity for a well-funded education system here first and foremost, one that cannot be shortchanged by our state any longer."

The mayor has no official power over the city's schools, but both candidates said they would follow the lead of termed-out Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Mayor Richard Riordan by trying to fix the nation's second-largest school district.

Meanwhile, The Times determined Tuesday that Greuel's campaign organization has suspended her TV advertising two weeks before the election, a move that reflects her continuing struggle to raise enough money to compete head-to-head on the airwaves with Garcetti.

Greuel's cancellation of ad time reserved for Tuesday and Wednesday does not entirely remove her presence from local TV stations. Working Californians to Elect Wendy Greuel, an independent committee controlled by leaders of a union for Department of Water and Power workers, is still running a spot showing former President Bill Clinton talking up her candidacy.

But the cancellation, confirmed by multiple sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, reflects the challenges that Greuel faces in the run-up to the May 21 election as a consequence of raising less money than Garcetti, and spending at a faster pace.

seema.mehta@latimes.com

howard.blume@latimes.com

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

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Judges select four to split $1-million Dorner reward

Four people who provided crucial information in the hunt for former Los Angeles Police Officer Christopher Dorner will split what is expected to be a $1-million reward in the case, authorities announced Tuesday afternoon.

The division of the highly anticipated reward, sought by at least 12 people after a February gun battle that led to Dorner's death, was overseen by three retired judges and made public in a 12-page report released by the Los Angeles Police Department.

The money will be paid in installments to a couple held captive by Dorner, a ski resort employee and a tow truck driver. The reward was divided based on the "value of the information provided to law enforcement and how directly" it led to authorities to the fugitive former LAPD officer, the report said.

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop

Jim and Karen Reynolds, who were bound and gagged by the rogue ex-officer, will get 80% of the reward because they provided information that "directly led to the hot pursuit and capture of Dorner," according to the report.

Karen Reynolds called 911 on Feb. 12 after she and her husband broke free inside their Big Bear condo where Dorner had been hiding, and provided her location and the description of the couple's Nissan SUV that Dorner had stolen. The call preceded a series of shootouts between Dorner and officers in the final hours before he turned his gun on himself as a fire sparked by tear gas projectiles engulfed the cabin where he had holed up.

"Had Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds failed promptly to escape their restraints and contact law enforcement, it is likely Dorner would have escaped," the report said.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

Calls seeking comment Tuesday evening to the Reynoldses, a family member and an attorney who has represented the couple were not returned.

Dorner, 33, was accused of killing four people, including two law enforcement officers, and wounding several others.

Authorities launched their manhunt after he allegedly shot an Irvine couple Feb. 3. At that point, Dorner's exact whereabouts were unknown as authorities cast a broad dragnet across several states.

But tow truck driver R. Lee McDaniel confirmed that Dorner was in the Inland Empire after he flagged down police Feb. 7 at a Corona gas station and said that he had spotted the fugitive former officer in his truck moments earlier, the report said: "McDaniel positively identified the truck as the one being driven by Dorner."

McDaniel will receive 5% of the reward, according to the report.

After two early morning shootouts Feb. 7 with police, including one that fatally wounded a Riverside officer, Dorner was still on the loose.

Hours later, Snow Summit employee Daniel M. McGowan alerted authorities after spotting a burning truck on a rarely used fire road in the Big Bear area. The vehicle turned out to be Dorner's and led authorities to the area where he was ultimately located. McGowan will get 15% of the reward because his "tip did not directly lead law enforcement to find Dorner," according to the report.

Among those not receiving any money is Richard Heltebrake, a camp ranger who was carjacked by Dorner in the Big Bear area and was seeking the reward. His phone call, after the ex-officer fled in Heltebrake's pickup, "did not lead to information leading to Dorner's capture," the report said, adding that officers had already spotted the fugitive in the white pickup.

A message seeking comment left on a phone belonging to Heltebrake was not returned Tuesday evening.

In announcing updated guidelines for the reward last month, the LAPD said retired judges would make the determination of who gets the $1 million.

The reward — a collection of smaller donations from numerous agencies, groups and individuals — was initially offered for Dorner's "capture and conviction."

But that became irrelevant under the new criteria because Dorner was chased into the cabin where he eventually shot himself.

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

robert.lopez@latimes.com

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Murder suspect is one of four L.A. County inmates wrongly released

A man accused of murder in a 2010 Baldwin Park gang shooting is one of four jail inmates the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has mistakenly released this year, officials revealed Tuesday.

According to the department's own investigation, missing paperwork resulted in the erroneous release of Johnny Mata, sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said. The department subsequently noted understaffing in the clerical operations and made a decision to hire more clerical staff and to add an additional supervisor to oversee the paperwork process, he said.

The department is also implementing a color-coding system to note high-risk inmates.

"There are no excuses. We are taking every step possible to ensure this kind of error doesn't occur again," Whitmore said. "We are installing systems to triple and quadruple check."

Mata, 33, a documented El Monte gang member, was set free from the sheriff's Inmate Reception Center in downtown Los Angeles on April 4. Sheriff's officials did not announce that he was a fugitive until last week.

Mata had appeared that same day in a Pomona courtroom, where an attempted murder charge was dismissed because authorities planned to combine it with a murder charge filed against him on March 26, according to Whitmore.

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office did indeed file the murder charge, but a processing clerk failed to enter a "hold" for Mata in the computer.

Mata was returned from the Pomona courthouse to the Inmate Reception Center, where he was processed and released because the sheriff's system showed no pending charges, Whitmore said.

"He is the first high-risk inmate to be released wrongly," Whitmore said. "Four inmates have been wrongly released this year and none of the others are high-risk and all [three] have been recaptured."

One of those inmates, Jason Gatewood, received an 851-day sentence for identity theft but was wrongly released when an Orange County law enforcement agency detention request was ignored. He was rearrested Jan. 3, the day after officials noticed him missing.

Valerie Ray had been arrested on suspicion of grand theft but was released Jan. 29 after a clerk missed a bail enhancement. Whitmore said Ray was detained again Feb. 1.

Charles Lee was arrested by Pomona police and appeared before a parole board for a violation. The board on Feb. 25 sentenced Lee to 114 days in jail for a parole violation but a jail clerk wrongly entered Feb. 25 as his release date and he was let go. Lee was recaptured two days later, Whitmore said.

In 2012, the department released 142,000 inmates, with seven mistaken releases, Whitmore said.

The department's Major Crimes Unit has been searching for Mata.

Authorities were trying to find Mata without "going to the public, because we feared it would drive Mr. Mata underground," sheriff's homicide Lt. Steve Jauch said at a news conference Tuesday. "We have some information that some folks out there know where he is."

Investigators said they did notify the victim's family and others involved in the case about Mata's mistaken release.

"Obviously, we are concerned where he is," Whitmore said.

Nicole Nishida, a department spokeswoman, said authorities did not immediately reveal Mata's accidental release because the unit was chasing leads to find him. The department opted to go public when it exhausted those leads, she said.

Sheriff's officials have now notified "all of Los Angeles County law enforcement" to help them locate Mata, Nishida added.

She said Mata has been charged in the killing of David DeAnda, who was shot to death Dec. 24, 2010, in Baldwin Park. According to a sheriff's news release, DeAnda was standing with two other people in a driveway when a man approached and shot him several times.

Mata is described as Latino, with brown hair and brown eyes. He is 6 feet, 1 inch tall and weighs 197 pounds. He has a tattoo across his chest reading EM Flores — a reference to the El Monte Flores gang. Anyone with information is asked to call sheriff's homicide detectives at (323) 890-5500.

richard.winton@latimes.com

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Berkeley accelerating access to course materials for disabled students

UC Berkeley is making its vast library collections and course textbooks more readily available to students with visual and other impairments under an agreement reached Tuesday that could set a precedent for universities nationwide.

The settlement with the nonprofit legal group Disability Rights Advocates was reached after more than a year of negotiations and will provide students with physical, developmental, learning and visual disabilities more timely access to printed materials in alternative formats such as Braille, large print and audio.

The agreement is important because there are few standards required on such accessibility. The Americans with Disabilities Act, for example, doesn't spell out what accommodations schools must make and includes a clause allowing schools not to make any concessions if costs create an undue burden, said Rebecca Williford, an attorney for the disability rights organization.

"We hope that this is setting a precedent for a model that other universities can follow nationwide," Williford said. "Access to print material is an emerging issue. We're hopeful that the technology is going to get better and better and that the agreement with UC Berkeley will help to put students on a more equal playing field."

The disability rights group represented three Cal students who said they were frequently stymied in obtaining course reading assignments and library research materials in accessible digital formats.

One of the students, Tabitha Mancini, said it could take two to three weeks to get materials on the course syllabus converted to the correct format and that she often had to go through the time-consuming process of scanning library books herself. Once scanned, she can use a computer software program that reads documents and tracks words.

"Any college is competitive, but when you're talking about a university like U.C. Berkeley, it's extremely competitive," said Mancini, a 41-year-old sociology major who has dyslexia. "To compete equally, it's really important to have access, and my ability to compete was severely lowered."

Another of the students, Brandon King, said a pilot project this semester to begin scanning library books opened up a new world.

"Imagine what it's like to never have been to the library and then suddenly have that available," said King, 31, a cognitive science major who also has dyslexia. "To go and have books scanned and be able to read, I felt like a kid in a candy store."

The university agreed to a number of improvements, including providing digital versions of textbooks within 10 days and course readers within 17 days and encouraging instructors to identify course materials earlier. In addition, Berkeley will provide scanning machines to allow students to self-scan materials and implement a library print conversion system, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, to enable students to request a specific library book or journal be made available in a different format within about five days.

"We've always made accommodations but the real change is that with technology advances, there are more and more materials given to our students to study and learn," said Paul Hippolitus, director of UC Berkeley's Disabled Students Program. "Through the settlement, we've advanced our capabilities to provide more materials quicker. We retooled our system and came up with new design features to get students with disabilities the same materials as other students."

More than 1,300 student with disabilities are enrolled at the Berkeley campus, but only about 70 require access to digital text, said Hippolitus.

With the new system, the university has been able to convert 750 textbooks for those students in just one semester, a 115% increase over the last four years, he said.

Even with new technology it is a complex task that can take months for specialized work, such as figuring out how to create Braille text for a blind student studying Mandarin.

"It's doing astrophysics, microbiology and all of those kinds of subjects with more than words that have to be translated like mathematical formulas, periodic tables, charts and all of the kinds of things that go with this," Hippolitus said.

The university has not estimated the new system's costs, said spokeswoman Janet Gilmore.

The Disabled Students Program will hire two additional staffers, in addition to two staffers already hired last summer to produce the alternative materials more rapidly, she said.

All of the new policies and procedures are expected to be fully in place for students by next fall.

carla.rivera@latimes.com

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Teen testifies she went shopping with mother's body in Jeep

The teenage couple drove to the shops in search of supplies for a Halloween party.

They visited a Party City store, purchasing glow sticks and knee-high stockings for a costume. They went to a discount store and bought sodas and chips.

Cynthia Alvarez, 16, told jurors Tuesday that she and her boyfriend ran the errands in her mother's Jeep Cherokee. But what appeared to be the normal preparations for a teenage soiree was anything but.

In the back of the SUV, Alvarez acknowledged, lay her mother's decomposing body.

Testifying at her murder trial in Compton, Alvarez said she and her boyfriend, Giovanni Gallardo, went shopping in the days after her mother and stepfather were slain. Gallardo, she testified, hung mini-bulb lights on her family's Compton mobile home, where he had killed the couple on Oct. 12, 2011.

Alvarez, who was 15 at the time of the killings but is being tried as an adult, told jurors this week that she was at home at the time but did not kill the adults. She said she felt powerless to stop the crimes, testifying that she feared her boyfriend would hurt her if she sought help.

The bodies of Gloria Villalta, 58, and Jose Lara, 51, were found buried in separate shallow graves. Alvarez told jurors that she and Gallardo buried her stepfather on the night of the killings but that the hole her boyfriend dug was not large enough to include her mother. She said the young couple kept her mother's body in her Jeep for several days, eventually burying her in a vacant lot in Norwalk.

Gallardo, now 17, is also charged with murder and is expected to be tried as an adult in the next few weeks.

During her two days on the witness stand, Alvarez acknowledged writing several notes to Gallardo on the evening of the killings. One said: "I am to scared. I cannot do it." Another ungrammatical note read: "What about if she going to her bed. Can you kill her." A third said, "you do it."

The girl testified that she intended for the notes to tell Gallardo that she did not want to be involved in his plan. She said she was not encouraging him and did not want the couple dead but hoped he would carry out the killings out of her sight if he was going to do it. The notes were written before her mother was killed, Gallardo said.

"I didn't want to see her being murdered in front of my face," she said on Tuesday.

Her attorney told jurors that Alvarez, who was in special-education classes, has a language processing disorder and has trouble communicating.

The teenager testified Monday that she kicked away a folding knife that her stepfather dropped when Gallardo ambushed him with a baseball bat when Lara returned home. She told the court that her boyfriend asked for help as he tried to strangle Lara and that she handed him a knife from the kitchen, which Gallardo used to stab her stepfather.

On Tuesday, however, Alvarez said she could not recall whether she or Gallardo was responsible for kicking away Lara's knife.

She said she felt paralyzed and wanted to flee in the days after the killings but feared Gallardo, who she said had previously held a knife and gun to her.

"He always told me if I ever did anything he would come and hurt me again," she said in court.

Alvarez testified that her mother beat her and that her stepfather raped her and repeatedly molested her for about a decade. She reported the sexual abuse to a sheriff's detective in 2008 but later recanted. She admitted she told child welfare workers that she had not been victimized.

"My mom told me to lie," she testified.

After the killings, Alvarez said she and Gallardo obtained cash by selling jewelry from the home as well as parts from Lara's truck. She admitted stealing money and jewelry from her mother in the past.

"I was mad at her," the girl said when asked why she had previously stolen from her mother. "She cared more about money, how to gain more money instead of loving me as a daughter."

Alvarez's older sister also testified Tuesday, saying that Alvarez told her around 2008 that she had been abused by their stepfather but stopped short of saying she had been raped.

Choking back tears, Dayana Villalta, 31, told the court through a Spanish-language interpreter that Alvarez looked after her mother despite her mother using a belt to discipline her. She called Alvarez "very caring, respectful."

"She loved my mother very much," Villalta said.

jack.leonard@latimes.com

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1 in 3 adults in parts of L.A. are in U.S. illegally, study finds

In some parts of Koreatown and South Los Angeles, one in three adult residents is in the country illegally, according to a study released Tuesday by researchers at USC.

Countywide, about one in 10 adults is an immigrant who crossed the border illegally or overstayed a visa, the study found. Many of those immigrants have put down roots here: Half have been in the country for more than a decade, and 12% are homeowners.

Many are also the parents of American citizens. In Los Angeles County, one in five children has a parent living in the country illegally, according to the study.

"The share of children with at least one undocumented parent really speaks to the interwoven generations," said Manuel Pastor, director of the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration and a coauthor of the research along with Enrico Marcelli of San Diego State. "Another thing that's striking to me is the length of settlement of the undocumented population. Rather than the person who stands in front of Home Depot who just got here a year ago, it's actually a more settled population."

As the debate over immigration reform gets underway in Washington, the stakes for California are particularly high.

One in four of the estimated 11 million people thought to be in the United States without legal authorization lives in California. Statewide, the USC study estimates that about 7% of residents, or more than 2.6 million people, are in the country illegally.

In Los Angeles County, 63% of immigrants here illegally are from Mexico and 22% from Central America, according to the study. Eight percent are from the Philippines, Korea or China.

In the Bay Area, the percentage of Asians in the unauthorized population is much higher, 23%. In the Sacramento area, 8% of immigrants in the country illegally are from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.

Immigrants residing in L.A. County illegally make a median wage of $18,000 a year, compared with $47,000 for U.S.-born residents. Half work in factories, restaurants, construction or house cleaning, the study found. Only 33% have health insurance.

Nearly half of the county's immigrants here illegally lack a high school diploma, and 60% do not speak English well, according to the study.

Nonprofits and foundations must work with the public sector to make sure there are enough English classes in the event of a mass legalization, said Maria Blanco, vice president of civic engagement at the California Community Foundation, which partially funded the study.

If newly legalized immigrants do not learn English, their job prospects are likely to remain limited.

"If we just do legalization but we don't do English language education, we'll really have to wait another generation," Blanco said.

The study's authors expect the earnings of unauthorized immigrants to increase if they receive legal status and can more easily switch jobs. By a conservative estimate, newly legalized immigrants in L.A. County could collectively earn an additional $1.5 billion annually, according to the study. Statewide, the income gain could be $4.6 billion annually.

Opponents of legalization have countered with studies showing that immigrants could use trillions of dollars in government benefits in the coming decades.

In addition to Koreatown, with 32% of the adult population here illegally, and Central Alameda at 39%, other areas with high concentrations include Echo Park, Bell, Huntington Park and East L.A. In Orange County, the study found that 30% of adult residents in Santa Ana are in the country illegally.

In El Monte, where one in five adults lacks proper documentation, Mayor Andre Quintero expects that more residents will be able to afford cars, homes and college for their children if they gain legal status.

"There's such uncertainty and instability. They don't have the opportunity to fully participate in anything and everything," Quintero said. "They're living almost in purgatory. It's not sustainable."

cindy.chang@latimes.com

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USC students accuse LAPD of bias after party clash

The Los Angeles Police Department opened an internal investigation into its response at an off-campus house party near USC amid complaints from some students that the department showed racial bias and used heavy-handed tactics.

The incident occurred early Saturday morning during an end-of-semester party at a house a few blocks from campus. A neighbor called police complaining about the noise. Officers arrived, and the situation escalated with the arrival of dozens more officers donning riot gear. Six people were arrested and one officer was injured. Two of those arrested were "treated for minor abrasions," police said.

The clash roiled the USC campus Monday, prompting a student sit-in at the center of campus.

"They were acting like they were going to war with us," said senior Jason Sneed, 23, a political science major. Sneed, who described the scene as chaotic and hostile, said he was handcuffed and thrown inside the back of a police car.

This incident comes after two violent events that shook the USC community in the last year and were followed by tighter security measures in the area. In April 2012, two graduate students were shot to death in a botched robbery less than a mile from campus. In October, four people were shot, one of them critically injured, outside an on-campus Halloween party.

The LAPD said it is investigating partygoers' complaints but defended the officers' actions.

The officers responded to complaints about a loud party in the area of West 23rd and Hoover streets shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday. They found two parties going on. One was attended by a mostly white crowd and the other was attended largely by African Americans, students said.

Police spoke to the organizer of the party attended by African Americans, who said he would lower the music and shut down the party.

Police then went to the party across the street, which started shutting down, Lt. Andy Neiman said.

"During that time, party one started up again. We went back to party one, having warned the organizer," Neiman said. "We went to cite the organizer and while we were trying to talk to him out front and cite him, another partygoer tried to intervene."

Other partygoers started pelting officers with debris, authorities said. Additional police responded to an "officer needs help" call. Security from USC's department of public safety also arrived.

"It was a party that got out of control, people were throwing things at the police, so we donned protective gear," Neiman said.

Neiman said officers used force on one partygoer because he resisted arrest. He was arrested on suspicion of felony interfering with the work of police officers. Four others were arrested on suspicion of failing to disperse, and another was arrested on misdemeanor interference. All six were released over the weekend, officials said.

Attendees of both parties took to social media, posting videos of the confrontation and personal accounts of what they perceived to be racial profiling by law enforcement. They noted what they saw as a stark contrast between how police responded to the two parties.

John Thomas, chief of USC's department of public safety, said his agency is "in constant communication with senior officers at the LAPD as they discuss solutions to ensure that the response of LAPD to complaints about student parties is properly calibrated."

"The Los Angeles Police Department has taken a necessary first step by starting an investigation into Saturday morning's events," Thomas said.

On a rainy Monday afternoon, more than 100 students gathered in protest on the steps of the Tommy Trojan statue. They held signs that read "Stop Criminalizing Us" while others chanted "Create your own world." Many of the protesters were black, but they were joined by classmates of other races.

"They definitely harassed the wrong students," said Teremy Jackson, 19, a sophomore neuroscience major. "We are scholars and high-achieving students. . . . We didn't do anything wrong."

Michael Jackson, vice president of USC student affairs, said he has heard from many students who were upset over the incident. "We understand their concern and are working closely with them, and commit ourselves to doing all we can to ensure respectful treatment of students at peaceful social gatherings," he said.

The LAPD, the chief of USC's public safety department and student representatives will hold an open forum Tuesday to discuss the issues raised by the incident.

angel.jennings@latimes.com

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

rosanna.xia@latimes.com

Times staff reporter Hector Becerra contributed to this report.

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Girl testifies she didn't kill mother, stepfather

A 16-year-old girl charged with murdering her mother and stepfather tearfully told a Compton jury on Monday that she did not kill them but admitted writing incriminating notes to her boyfriend and handing him a knife during one of the slayings.

Cynthia Alvarez testified that she kicked away a folding knife that her stepfather carried while her boyfriend, Giovanni Gallardo, attacked him with a baseball bat in her family's Compton mobile home on Oct. 12, 2011. She said Gallardo used another knife she gave him to stab the victim multiple times.

Alvarez, who was 15 at the time of the killings but is being tried as an adult, said she struck her stepfather, Jose Lara, with the bat in the lower part of his body, fearing that her abusive boyfriend would hurt her if she refused to help him.

"I was shaking, so I didn't hit him hard," she told the jury.

Alvarez acknowledged writing several notes to Gallardo on the evening of the killings. One said: "I am to scared. I cannot do it." Another ungrammatical note read: "What about if she going to her bed. Can you kill her." A third said, "you do it."

The girl testified that she intended for the notes to tell Gallardo she did not want to be involved in his plan. She said she was not encouraging him and did not want the couple killed but hoped he would carry out the killings out of her sight if he was going to do it.

"I didn't want to see it in front of my face," she said. "I might have flashbacks, like I do now."

Her attorney told jurors last week that Alvarez, who was in special education classes, has a language processing disorder and has trouble communicating.

The bodies of Gloria Villalta, 58, and Jose Lara, 51, were found buried in separate, shallow graves. Gallardo, who was 16 at the time of the killings, is also charged as an adult and is expected to be tried in the next few weeks. The teens face life sentences if convicted.

Alvarez testified that her mother beat her and that her stepfather raped her and repeatedly molested her for about a decade. She admitted stealing about $2,000 worth of jewelry and cash from her mother, who she said accused her of stealing $27,000.

Alvarez said her boyfriend arrived unannounced at her home some time before the slayings.

"I'm going to kill your parents," she said he told her.

"No," she said she replied.

Gallardo repeated his intention to kill the adults but stayed outside until Alvarez invited him into her home an hour or two later as it got dark and colder, the girl testified.

Alvarez told the court that she left the home and was outside while her mother was killed. When she returned, Gallardo told her to remove her dead mother's bracelet, she said. Gallardo dragged the body to another room and waited behind the front door with the bat as Lara entered about half an hour later, Alvarez testified.

She said she heard the sound of her stepfather's bones crunching as Gallardo struck him in the face. She said she handed her boyfriend a knife after he asked for help while he struggled to strangle her stepfather.

Alvarez testified that she was fearful of Gallardo, who had pulled a gun and a knife on her in the past, and did not contact neighbors, police or anyone else for help after the slayings because she felt paralyzed. She said she did not believe anyone would have helped her because no one had intervened in the past when she told authorities and relatives about her mother and stepfather's abuse.

"My mind was blank," Alvarez told jurors. "My body wasn't moving, but my spirit was. I just felt numbed, shaking, just panicking."

Gallardo, she said, loaded the bodies into her mother's Jeep Cherokee and the teens drove to a vacant lot, where her boyfriend dug a grave for her stepfather. The hole, she said, was not big enough to put her mother, so the teens left the decomposing body in the Jeep for several days before dumping it.

"What was the smell like in the Jeep?" asked her attorney, Carole Telfer.

"Death," Alvarez said.

"Did you ever feel sick?"

"Yeah, but we rolled down the windows," the girl responded.

Alvarez said she helped clean the house and threw some bloody items into the mobile home's trash. She admitted lying to sheriff's detectives when she was first questioned about her parents, telling them that her mother was in the hospital and that her stepfather had ordered her at gunpoint to throw away her mother's clothes and photographs.

"You have no problem lying," Deputy Dist. Atty. Kristin Trutanich suggested during cross-examination.

"Actually, I do have a problem lying," Alvarez responded. "I can't lie."

jack.leonard@latimes.com

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California faces another summer without San Onofre plant

California energy officials are preparing for another summer without the San Onofre power station while facing the growing possibility that the nuclear plant will never return to service.

The nuclear plant, one of only two in the state, was powered down more than a year ago when a small amount of radioactive mist leaked from one of the thousands of tubes in the plant's steam generators.

Southern California Edison officials said in financial statements last week that if federal regulators do not agree to the utility's proposal to restart one of the plant's two units at partial power, they might elect to retire the plant completely by the end of the year.

"There's just a general limit of how much we can continue to rack up these costs without certainty of cost recovery," Edison International Chief Executive Ted Craver told analysts.

So far, the mothballed plant has cost Edison more than half a billion dollars, and the tab continues to grow.

Officials with the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state's power grid, said Monday they expect to get through another summer without blackouts even if San Onofre remains shuttered — although damaging wildfires in the months ahead could undermine that prediction.

With the plant out of service, the region is more dependent on imported power, and California Independent System Operator Chief Executive Steve Berberich said he was "pretty concerned" that fires could threaten transmission lines in remote areas.

A long-range future without the plant is a more complicated scenario, largely because the state is also implementing new regulations on the way coastal power plants use seawater for cooling. San Onofre will loom large in upcoming discussions on whether to retire, retrofit or repower 11 gas-fired coastal plants that supply about 11,000 megawatts of power — nearly five times what San Onofre generates.

The nuclear plant, which once supplied enough power for about 1.4 million homes in Southern California, has been shuttered for 15 months because of unusual deterioration of tubes in its replacement steam generators.

The plant is now embroiled in a complex web of regulatory processes. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is weighing a proposal by Edison to restart the less heavily damaged unit and run it at partial power for five months in hopes that reduced power will eliminate the conditions that led to the wear and help to determine whether the other unit can run again without "extensive repairs."

The company asked the NRC for a decision on the restart plan before June but acknowledged last week that it is unlikely to get one by then.

Meanwhile, the NRC's office of investigations and office of inspector general are probing whether there was wrongdoing by Edison in connection with the steam generator replacement.

Separately, the California Public Utilities Commission is weighing whether to offer refunds to customers because of the plant's extended outage. Hearings in the initial phase of that process — focused on a portion of the plant's costs from last year — begin in San Francisco next week, with a preliminary ruling expected in July.

The commission will look at the $671-million cost of the steam generators and the cost of replacing the plant's power in a later stage.

Matthew Freedman, an attorney with ratepayer advocate group the Utility Reform Network, speculated that Edison might have publicly floated the specter of retiring the plant in an effort to pressure the NRC into acting more quickly or the PUC into agreeing to some sort of settlement on costs if the plant does close.

"Edison's worry is that they would shut down the plant and they would still eat a ton of money," he said.

Freedman said the costs could look "pretty ugly" for ratepayers if the plant limps along with one unit running at partial power, or if the plant closes and Edison is able to recover its investment from customers.

Edison has reported spending $109 million on repairs and inspections and $444 million for replacement power since the plant closed. But the company has not publicly said how much it might cost to make repairs that would allow the plant to run at full power again.

abby.sewell@latimes.com

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California Supreme Court upholds pot dispensary bans

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court gave local governments the power Monday to zone medical marijuana dispensaries out of existence, a decision that upholds bans in about 200 cities but does little to solve Los Angeles' years-long struggle to regulate hundreds of storefront pot outlets.

The unanimous decision provided clarity for cities and counties that want to rid themselves of the dispensaries, which sprouted up statewide after a 1996 voter-approved measure that sought to authorize medical marijuana but lacked specifics in how it would be regulated.

Now, attorneys on both sides of the issue say, many cities will be inclined to ban the pot outlets rather than allow a limited number and regulate them — a practice that has spawned expensive litigation up and down California.

"Only cities as liberal as Los Angeles will attempt to regulate," said Los Angeles Special Assistant City Atty. Jane Usher. "Unless you are a city that enjoys being in the litigation business, I think bans will become the order of the day."

The ruling by Justice Marvin R. Baxter underscored the state's lack of regulation of medical marijuana. Several lawyers described the decision as a call for the Legislature to step in and resolve the confusion.

The decision came in a test of a dispensary ban by the city of Riverside, which has shut down 56 cannabis operators since 2009.

With lower courts previously divided over the legality of the bans, some operators refused to obey them, including about a dozen in Riverside, said Riverside City Atty. Gregory Priamos.

Opponents of the ban said it was preempted by state law, which allows patients access to cannabis. But the court said such zoning ordinances were legal because neither the Legislature nor the voters had clearly barred them.

The ruling will make it easier for cities to persuade courts to sanction defiant dispensaries by issuing injunctions and fining and jailing operators who refuse to comply with them. Priamos said Riverside intended to make dispensary operators and property owners pay the city's legal costs in such cases.

But Priamos said cities would continue to enforce their bans and put pressure on operators.

"This battle is by no means over," he said. Dispensaries "pop up overnight."

Medical cannabis advocates lamented that patients in some parts of the state — the Central Valley and the northern reaches of California — might now have to drive long distances to obtain marijuana legally. But they also said that most communities that wanted to ban dispensaries already have done so.

Although the ruling did not specifically state that retail sales of medical marijuana were legal — an issue that has vexed lower courts — the decision appeared to accept the existence of dispensaries.

"While several California cities and counties allow medical marijuana facilities, it may not be reasonable to expect every community to do so," Baxter wrote.

In Long Beach, dispensary owners saw a possible silver lining in the ruling. The port city had been trying to regulate and permit a limited number of dispensaries for years. Officials held a lottery for the permits and pot shops each paid about $15,000 in fees.

Eighteen dispensaries were still working to comply with ever-changing rules, when a state appeals court decided the city could not regulate dispensaries because they violated federal law. The city changed course and banned them in August.

"It's been a roller-coaster," said Greg Lefian, 37, who closed his Chronic Pain Releaf in August. He and his partners had invested more than $400,000, mostly in building costs to comply with a city rule that all marijuana sold had to be grown in-house.

Now that the state's top court had made it clear that cities may regulate, he hopes that Long Beach will return to its original approach and he can reopen, he said.

But he's not betting on it. He and the other dispensaries — banded together as the Long Beach Collective Assn. — have gathered 43,000 signatures to put a measure on the city ballot that would call for permitting, regulating and taxing a limited number of dispensaries.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) said he hoped the ruling would spur legislators to action. He is sponsoring a bill to create a new agency to regulate medical marijuana.

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Water war between Klamath River farmers, tribes poised to erupt

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — For decades this rural basin has battled over the Klamath River's most precious resource: water that sustains fish, irrigates farms and powers the hydroelectric dams that block one of the largest salmon runs on the West Coast.

Now, one of the nation's fiercest water wars is on the verge of erupting again.

New water rights have given a group of Oregon Indian tribes an upper hand just as the region plunges into a severe drought.

Farmers and wildlife refuges could be soon cut off by the Klamath Tribes, which in March were granted the Upper Klamath Basin's oldest water rights to the lake and tributaries that feed the mighty river flowing from arid southern Oregon to the foggy redwoods of the Northern California coast.

Within weeks, the 3,700-member tribes are poised to make use of their new rights to maintain water levels for endangered Lost River and Shortnose suckers, fish they traditionally harvested for food. Under the "first in time, first in right" water doctrine that governs the West, the Klamath Tribes can cut off other water users when the river runs low.

Low flows have already raised tensions between tribes and farmers who draw from the river's headwaters. Cutting off water this year could dry up farmland and bring that looming conflict to a head.

"A lot of people's water could be shut off, and that has huge implications and it affects peoples' livelihoods to the core," said Jeff Mitchell, a tribal council member and its lead negotiator on water issues. "But I also look at our fishery that is on the brink of extinction. We have a responsibility to protect that resource, and we'll do what we need to do to make sure that the fish survive."

The tribes' cutting off water could also spell the end to a fragile truce that was supposed to bring lasting peace to the river. A coalition of farmers, fishermen, tribes and environmentalists forged the Klamath Restoration Agreements three years ago to resolve the distribution of water and restore habitat and bring back salmon by removing four hydroelectric dams. But the deal has languished in Congress, and a year of drought and discord could unravel it for good.

Before the attempt at compromise, the Klamath had lurched from crisis to crisis for more than a decade: water shut-offs that left farmland fallow, flows so low they caused a mass fish die-off, recurring toxic algae blooms that fouled reservoirs, and salmon population declines that closed 700 miles of coastline to fishing.

The tribes fear that exercising their new water rights will make them a target for retaliation or violence. Klamath County is 86% white, and the long history between Indians and some farmers is strained.

Some of the farmers resented payments that some tribal members received after the U.S. government terminated their federal recognition and dissolved their reservation in the 1950s.

In recent months, members monitoring water levels have reported being threatened by farmers, and the tribes have sought assurances from law enforcement that they will be protected. State officials have taken the unusual step of assembling a 15-person Klamath Action Team to protect public safety and stave off water conflicts as the region plunges into a severe drought, said Richard Whitman, natural resources policy advisor to Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber.

::

The truce was supposed to bring peace along the Klamath. Instead the discord has surged since it was signed and sent to Congress, where it has sat unsigned.

Several environmental groups say the deal provides too much water to irrigation interests and not enough for fish and wildlife. Conservative groups have organized in opposition to dam removal and the Endangered Species Act through the Tea Party Patriots and have unseated pro-restoration officials from local posts in the watershed's upper basin. In February, the Klamath County Board of Commissioners voted to withdraw from the deal altogether.

Tom Mallams, a hay farmer and tea party member from Beatty, Ore., who was elected Klamath County Commissioner in November, said the new tribal water rights are being used as a hammer to try to force opponents to sign on to the deal.

"The supporters of this are desperate," he said. "They're making a last-ditch effort to make it go through right now because they know it's dying. I think some people will sign on to it in sheer desperation, but there is no trust in those agreements."

Becky Hyde, a cattle rancher who lives across the road from Mallams on one of the Klamath's upper tributaries, is a close ally of the Klamath Tribes and worked for years to build support for the settlement. Now, she is trying to assess how many of her and her neighbors' pastures will go dry.

"A year like this," she said, "may be the only thing that gets the people who represent us in Congress to get serious."

Under the settlement, the Klamath Tribes agreed not to use their water rights to shut down the largest group of irrigators. In exchange, the tribes would see restored habitat and the probable return of their salmon fishery and would regain some 92,000 acres of private forestland, a small portion of the reservation the U.S. government dissolved when it terminated their federal recognition in the 1950s.

The Klamath River basin was harnessed for large-scale irrigation by the federal Bureau of Reclamation's 1905 Klamath Project, turning a relatively dry expanse on the Oregon-California border into a rich belt of farms and homesteads, many settled by World War I and World War II veterans. The irrigated lands now support 1,400 farms on 200,000 acres, where fields of alfalfa, potatoes, grains and mint feed from an intricate system of canals, drains and pumps.

Clashes over the water supply boiled over in 2001, when the federal government cut off water deliveries to Klamath Project farmers in order to protect endangered suckers and coho salmon from a drought. The enraged farmers made national news after they formed a massive "bucket brigade" to manually pass water into irrigation canals as an act of civil disobedience.

The Bush administration resumed water deliveries the next year, leaving so little flow that tens of thousands of fish in the river's lower reaches washed up dead. The fish kill devastated California's Karuk and Yurok tribes, who depend on the salmon harvest.

Confidential settlement negotiations began in earnest around 2006, when regulators made it clear that PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., would have to make expensive modifications to its series of dams near the California-Oregon border to get them re-licensed. The company agreed to the removal, a condition that was ultimately linked to the 2010 agreement.

Last month, the U.S. Department of the Interior recommended the removal of all four Klamath dams. In one of his last acts in office, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar urged Congress to approve the agreement and fund $800-million worth of habitat restoration and water management programs.

"Once again the communities of the Klamath Basin are facing a potentially difficult water year under a status quo that everyone agrees is broken," Salazar said in a statement.

Not everyone, though, seems ready to move on.

On country roads here, roadside signs in favor of the settlement compete with those reading "Stop the Dam Scams." The Klamath Tribes keep their official seal off government vehicles to prevent windows from being broken and tires flattened. And a giant metal bucket still stands outside the county government building in downtown Klamath Falls to commemorate the demonstrations 12 years ago, when the flow of irrigation water stopped.

tony.barboza@latimes.com

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'May miracle' of above-average rainfall is a gift to firefighters

A "May miracle" of almost perfectly timed, above-average rainfall helped firefighters battling the large Springs fire in Ventura County and guaranteed that Los Angeles would not break a dubious record.

The city was on track to having its fourth-driest year since 1877. But with about 0.70 inches of rain falling in downtown L.A. just before noon, that is no longer the case.

For firefighters trying to mop up the 28,000-acre wildfire that broke out last week under blistering temperatures, the rain couldn't have come at a better time — even if Southern California's fire season still looks to be an ominous one.

Tom Piranio, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said it didn't rain enough in the actual perimeter of the blaze for people to need an umbrella, but it was more than enough to help firefighters slow the Springs fire's momentum. It could be fully contained by Tuesday.

"It gave the firefighters an advantage to put out hot spots and strengthen the line," Piranio said, adding that the rain and cooling made it easier on crews who for days had been working in temperatures approaching 100 degrees.

Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, said that as of Monday morning, enough rain had fallen to push L.A.'s total to about 5.84 inches since July 1. That means the 2012-13 rain year, which runs from July 1 to June 30, is now the sixth-driest year on record, not the fourth.

With the rain, this year surpassed 1959, when 5.58 inches of rain fell, and 1899, which saw 5.59 inches. Patzert said it would take an unlikely amount of rainfall for this year to fall into seventh place, which belongs to 1924 when 6.67 inches fell.

"Rain is always good," he said. "This small May miracle couldn't have been better timed in terms of the fires, because although modest, it really gives the firefighters some help."

The Springs fire raged out of control after one of the driest winters in the 135 years since rain records have been kept for Southern California. Strong Santa Ana winds, unusual this time of the year, pushed the flames forward.

Southern California experienced an exceedingly dry stretch from January to March — normally the region's wettest months — and then received virtually no rainfall in April. May normally gets only about a third of an inch of rain, said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

Patzert said the rain came courtesy of a cutoff low, in which part of the jet stream that normally comes out of the north Pacific gets pinched off and drops into a low-pressure system, which then sits off the coast for a couple of days.

"So now it no longer has the jet stream to steer it rapidly through the Southland," Patzert said. "It lingers for a couple of days before passing through."

Despite the immediate relief the rain provided firefighters, experts said that once the weather system goes away, it won't take much for conditions to heat up and for vegetation to dry out again. And the rain doesn't change the fact that Southern California still has the driest and hottest months of the year ahead.

"It's just a little temporary relief," Patzert said. "A week from now you'll probably never know this happened. This is not going to change the summer and fall forecast for fires or anything else. And this is definitely no drought-buster."

Speaking at CalFire's aviation management unit in Sacramento, Gov. Jerry Brown said the state would have to grow accustomed to more forest fires as a consequence of global climate change. State firefighters have responded to about twice the average number of wildfires this year — more than 1,100 in all.

"Our climate is changing, the weather is becoming more intense," Brown said in an airplane hangar filled with trucks, airplanes and helicopters used by the state to fight fires. "It's going to cost a lot of money and a lot of lives."

With the Sierra snowpack at just 17% of normal, state officials are bracing for a long, destructive fire season.

CalFire Director Ken Pimlott said more than 40,000 acres have burned in California this month alone.

While an early start to fire season has become more common in Southern California, officials opened the season in Northern California six weeks earlier than normal — just the fourth time in state history that has happened, Pimlott said.

hector.becerra@latimes.com

anthony.york@latimes.com

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