WitnessLA.com

• Being Thankful….

  Number of comments: 4
  Like most of you, I’m thankful for many, many things. In relation to WitnessLA specifically, I’ll name two: 1. I’m thankful for the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Other than my kid and those whom I love, I can’t think of much I’d die for. But I would die for [...]
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  Posted: November 26, 2009, 12:29am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• LA City Council Says Yes to Medical Marijuana

  Number of comments: 2
  After a meeting that lasted seveTuesday, the LA City Council decided to act sensibly by voting to allow retail dispensaries to continue selling medical marijuana. According to John Hoeffel of the LA Times, the Los Angeles City Council is also strongly considering a draft ordinance that may cap the number [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 12:22am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Charlie Beck: The Shape of the New Command Staff

  Number of comments: 2
  I’ve been madly editing and grading around a zillion pages of student papers (and will be doing so through next Friday), thus I’m a bit slow in posting the list of command staff that new Chief of Police Charlie Beck announced yesterday after noon. The complete text of Beck’s announcement is [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 4:59am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Arresting R*E*V*O*K

  Number of comments: 10
  On Sunday, November 22, a store called 33rd Los Angeles had an event—a group art show— featuring nine nationally famous graffiti artists, one of whom was a 32 year-old star of the medium named Jason Williams, otherwise known as REVOK. The store mainly retails high end graffiti supplies, including Montana [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 4:07am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Sunday, Monday Hits, Picks & Must Reads

  Number of comments: 10
  VANISHING IN A DIGITAL AGE I’m bored out of my mind with the New Conventional Wisdom that persists in opining that the Internets have killed storytelling…..narrative writing….long form journalism…. or what have you, when research and practical observation repeatedly tells us otherwise. We are a storytelling species. I bring this up because [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 12:03am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Charlie Beck’s 1st Staff Meeting: It’s All About the Accessories

  Number of comments: 10
  So ….when you are a brand new chief of police how do you gain the respect and professional devotion of your newly acquired troops? What unmistakable signal can you give that will communicate to your officers that you have their best interests in mind? One method is to give all the [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 12:36am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• UC Regents Hiking, Students Protesting, Cops Dispersing

  Number of comments: 10
  The UC Board of Regents has evidently taken a break in its meeting, which was disrupted by a group of angrily chanting students. At this, the frustrated UCLA police cleared the room of spectators and declared the protest in general unlawful. The UC Board of Regents is set to decide today [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 12:11pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Training the Gang Interventionists – Politics Intervenes

  When all the gang intervention dollars were gathered under the single roof of the mayor’s office two years ago, there were several promises made by then Gang Czar Jeff Carr, to make sure the money was spent wisely. One promise was to train and professionalize the so-called hard core interventionists who [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 1:38am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• The LA Weekly’s Truthiness Problem

  Number of comments: 10
  Yesterday I linked to Kevin Grant’s Neon Tommy story about new LA Weekly editor-in-chief, Drex Heikes and his plans to bring the paper back to strength and relevance. Last night, as I reread Kevin’s piece I got to thinking about what has become so bothersome about the existing LA Weekly [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 11:13pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Can Drex Heikes Rescue the LA Weekly?

  Number of comments: 2
  For many of us, the LA Weekly has been painful to watch in the past couple of years. The economy and the stewardship of a new set of owners—who seemed to care little about the paper’s traditional journalistic strengths—have done discernible damage to what was once the most successful alternative [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 12:21am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Charlie Beck is Confirmed as LA’s 55th LA Police Chief

  Number of comments: 10
  An hour and a half into a meeting that started at 8:30 a.m. or so, and after much self-congratulatory pontificating (on the part of the council members, that is) the Los Angeles City Council has confirmed Charlie Beck as the 55th Chief of the LAPD. Congratulations Chief Charlie. We are utterly [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 10:50am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Social Justice Shorts

  Number of comments: 3
  UPDATE: FROM THE OH, REALLY? SEZ YOU! FILE Once again proving my contention that the world of city politics is just like high school, but with higher stakes, according to the LA Times, District Attorney Steve Cooley said today that he is going to prosecute marijuana dispensaries no matter what the city [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 1:57am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Sunday/Monday Picks & Must Reads

  Number of comments: 10
  THE MATTER OF JUDGE MANUEL L. REAL His reversal rate is estimated to be 10 times the average for sitting federal judges. He has had ten cases outright snatched away from him by appeals courts. In 2006, there was serious talk of impeaching him. The Judicial Council of the U.S. 9th [...]
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  Posted: November 16, 2009, 3:34am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Social Justice Shorts: 2 Cases of Professional Dodging…& More

  Number of comments: 10
  USC’S NEON TOMMY REPORTER CALLIE SCHWEITZER CAUSES LA’S PUBLIC HEALTH GUY TO HIDE OUT Yes I know my pals Marc Cooper and Kevin Roderick already mentioned this, but after reading two inexcusably fact-challenged stories by so-called experienced and professional journalists, this tale of the exploits of Callie Schweitzer and her [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 1:57am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• While Police Were Out Front, Murderer Crept Through a Back Window- UPDATED

  Number of comments: 10
  This report has has been updated, corrected and expanded as I got more information. Sometimes everybody does everything right, and everybody loses anyway. Tragically so. Such was the case with a ghastly stabbing murder and officer involved shooting that took place Wednesday night in a pleasant-looking pink apartment building located at 1344 [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 4:04pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• When a Sex Offender Moves to Your Neighborhood

  Number of comments: 10
  Okay, I believe in second chances, (and third chances, and fourth chances) and I also understand that a lot of people are on the sex offender list who do not really belong there, and are not a danger to anybody. You know the kind I mean: They were nineteen years [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 2:31am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• CA’s Unemployment at 12 percent, But What If You’re a Felon?

  Number of comments: 3
  Unemployment in California is at 12.2 percent and expected to go higher when the new figures come out this month. Newly minted college graduates are having trouble getting jobs. Teachers and other laid off professionals are having trouble. So how bad is the job market for those applicants who, when they [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 2:02am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Happy Veterans Day…With Gratitude

  Number of comments: 10
  With respect and gratitude to those who have served our country.….here is an excerpt from David Finkel’s wonderful new book, The Good Soldiers. The following clip is about soldiers who served in Iraq during the surge. Neither it, nor the book from which it was excerpted, The Good Soldiers, are meant [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 2:01am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Handicapping SCOTUS and Juvenile LWOP

  Monday’s hearings on the two Florida cases, each involving juveniles who received sentences of Life Without the possibility of Parole—LWOP—has had reporters on the Supremes beat scrambling to analyze what exactly the various justices comments and questions portend for the decision. The precedent that both SCOTUS watchers and the justices themselves [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 1:14pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Floating Garbage Nation

  Number of comments: 5
  One should not miss Lindsey Hoshaw’s gruesomely fascinating article in Tuesday’s NY Times, about the vast garbage islands in the Pacific. Most of us had heard about these giant floating garbage collections, but somehow Hoshaw has gone the needed distance to make us feel how impossibly and fantastically awful these [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 1:18am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Jesse Katz and Ressurecting an LA Field of Dreams

  Number of comments: 10
  Saturday night, my pal Jesse Katz had a book reading at Vroman’s in Pasadena, for his newly released memoir, The Opposite Field. Jesse is a former LA Times gang reporter, two-time Pulitzer winner and, up-until-recently, an LA Magazine feature writer. He is also an insightful cultural analyst and a prose [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 12:13am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Suing California’s Prisons Over State-Ordered Solitary

  Number of comments: 10
  Last February I linked to an NPR report by Michael Montgomery about a man named Ernesto Lira, a low-level but chronic petty thief and drug user, who was arrested for 3 grams of meth, and put in solitary confinement in Pelican Bay for nearly eight years. The California Department of Corrections [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 12:10am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Monday Alerts: Charlie Beck & SCOTUS

  CHARLIE BECK & THE COUNCIL Monday, Chief of Police designate Charlie Beck will go before the City Council’s Public Safety committee as the first step of his confirmation process. So far it’s mostly been love and kisses from the council. Greig Smith, the Public Safety committee’s chairman, has said that [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 12:10am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• 11:07 p.m eastern: Health Care Reform Has Passed the House

  Number of comments: 10
  Next step. The Senate. [...]
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  Posted: November 07, 2009, 8:08pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Bratton, Colbert, Beck and….um…McGruff the Crime Dog

  Number of comments: 10
  The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c [...]
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  Posted: November 06, 2009, 10:33am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• 12 Dead at Fort Hood, 31 Wounded

  I’ve put up a live twitter freed about the ongoing Fort Hood story, in the box to the right. Terrible stuff. This morning I was talking to a south LA mother friend about her worry about her son. Earlier in the week, the kid had been stopped and “hit up” by [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 2:52pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• USC’S Neon Tommy Reporters Tackle the Swine Flu

  Number of comments: 6
  One of the models being talked about for its importance to journalism’s future is the collaboration between journalism schools and public news organizations, particularly non -profits. Today, Thursday, Neon Tommy, one of the student run online publications coming out of the Annenberg School of Journalism demonstrated a case in point with [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 11:16am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Did Florida’s LWOP 13-year-old Get a Fair Trial?

  Number of comments: 2
  Amy Bach, author of Ordinary Justice: How America Holds Court, has a troubling article in Slate about the question that no one seems to be asking regarding one of the juvenile life cases that will soon be heard by SCOTUS: Namely, did the kid even do the crime that got [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 2:06am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Meet the New Chief-to-Be

  Number of comments: 1
  Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa invites you personally (plus all your closest friends and associates) to meet Charlie Beck, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Nominee, on Thursday November 5, 2009 at 6:00 p.m. at a Community Town Hall. The Town Hall will take place at the El Sereno Senior Center located at [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 1:44am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Choosing Charlie Beck: The Spin Factor & the Future

  Number of comments: 3
  Most who closely tracked the selection of, at first, 13-candidates, then three finalists, and finally Deputy Chief Charlie Beck as the yet-to-be confirmed new chief of the LAPD, have likely read the article by Joel Rubin and Phil Willon in Wednesday morning’s paper, an account of the last minute wrestling [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 1:04am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Back later this morning.

  Number of comments: 10
  Feeling slightly under the weather. But back mid morning with more on the choice of a new chief…..And other news. UPDATE: (Yes, I realize that “mid-morning” has come and gone—as has mid afternoon. I evidently I’m battling the thing that all my students have been getting.) I’m working on a post now, [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 12:47am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• It’s Charlie!

  Number of comments: 10
  Although many false messages went out last night…… (More about that later or tomorrow.) …The New Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department is Charlie Beck. CONGRATULATIONS TO CHIEF OF POLICE CHARLIE! GREAT choice, Mr. Mayor. (Chosen from a 3-some of strong choices.) The new era begins! P.S. For a glimpse into what [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 9:01am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Choosing the Chief: THIS IS IT

  Number of comments: 8
  The official announcement is scheduled for Tuesday morning at 11 a.m. at Getty House. The news media will start setting up at 4:30 a.m., and start broadcasting around 8 or 8:30. I was made dizzy contemplating the various rumors that swirled about last night. None were conclusive, but the one thing [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 1:33am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Choosing the Chief: Rumor Central

  Number of comments: 1
  I am hearing from surprisingly credible sources that everyone’s sure bet of this weekend may not be a sure bet after all. Too early to say what this means. Stay tuned. [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 8:33pm EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Choosing the Chief: Tuesday is the New Monday

  Number of comments: 10
  Okay, so we were all geared up, popcorn in hand, waiting for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to announce his selection for Chief of Police on Monday. We were primed. We were deliriously anticipatory. We had paper streamers and noisemakers and were entirely prepared to whoop and holler supportively for whichever of [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 1:07am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Sunday/Monday Picks

  Number of comments: 2
  BILL BRATTON AS CHIEF – LOOKING BACK Frank Stolz has a very good three-part series that gives a multifaceted perspective on Bill Bratton’s tenure as Chief of the LAPD: 1. What Bratton faced when he arrived—big things, and little things. 2. Bratton’s civil rights legacy —what he did and did not accomplish. 3. Bratton’s [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 1:05am EST
  by Celeste Fremon

• Gavin’s Bailing, Jerry’s Guy Taping, Antonio Thinking…?

  Number of comments: 10
  Okay, Gavin Newsom has dropped out of the race for California Governor, for “family” reasons (AKA bad polling numbers). Meg Whitman is a rich witch [It's Halloween and that's a technical term.] who believes she can buy an election, can’t remember when she last voted and won’t show up for debates. [...]
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  Posted: October 31, 2009, 11:57am EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• On Deadline LA Talking About Choosing the C.O.P

  Number of comments: 10
  I’ll be on KPFK’s Deadline LA today along with the LA Times’ Joel Rubin talking about the three finalists for LA’s Chief of Police—and who was NOT on the final list (cough–a woman or a minority candidate—cough, cough) and speculating why those names didn’t appear. Host Howard Blume, as always, [...]
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  Posted: October 30, 2009, 10:39am EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• How 2 SCOTUS LWOP Cases May Affect California

  The Daily Journal’s Supreme Court reporter, Lawrence Hurley, has written a very good, very clear and very informative story about the California implications of the two upcoming SCOTUS cases as the court considers the issue of life sentences for juveniles who have not committed homicides. The Daily Journal is behind [...]
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  Posted: October 30, 2009, 1:28am EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• McDonnell’s USC Visit and a Great Teacher Story

  Annenberg grad student, Kevin Grant, has this well-written report of Jim McDonnell’s Tuesday night visit to our classroom Here’s how Kevin’s report begins: A 28-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department told a journalism class this week that he expects to step into a very difficult budget situation if he [...]
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  Posted: October 30, 2009, 1:28am EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• Owning LA’s Homelessness

  Number of comments: 1
  Every night, 43,000 people in LA County have no place to sleep according to a new census released Wednesday by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Yet while that number is down 38 percent since 2007, it is still the worst in the nation. On Wednesday, the same day that [...]
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  Posted: October 30, 2009, 1:16am EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• Andre Birotte Jr. 4 US Attorney? Please, Let it Be So!

  Number of comments: 6
  All morning emails have been flying about the fact that, Wednesday night, Scott Glover of the LA Times reported that Andre Birotte Jr. is the likely nominee to be the next U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles, replacing Thomas P. O’Brien, who resigned in September. If Birotte is indeed the nominee, this is [...]
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  Posted: October 29, 2009, 10:43am EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• Tom Hayen on Alex Sanchez & the Power of Judges

  Number of comments: 10
  Tom Hayden opens his latest column in The Nation magazine as follows: I never expected to write anything like this, but the federal judge in the Alex Sanchez case, Manuel Real, is even worse than Judge Julius Hoffman, who presided over the 1969 Chicago conspiracy trial in which I was a [...]
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  Posted: October 29, 2009, 1:08am EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• Tonight: “Which Way LA?” plus KNBC’s “The Filter”

  I’m on Which Way LA? tonight ( Wednesday night) at 7 p.m. I’ll be discussing the three finalists for the post of Los Angeles Chief of Police. That’s on KCRW 89.9 FM. Later on, you’ll also be able to find it online here. (My segment is a ten minute news [...]
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  Posted: October 28, 2009, 6:23pm EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• Picking the Chief: 3 Finalists Named & 1 Comes to Class

  Number of comments: 10
  The timing was perfect. Three weeks ago, when LAPD Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell agreed to speak to my Tuesday night class of Annenberg grad students about policing in general and about the job of LAPD Chief in particular, none of us had any idea that the short list of candidates [...]
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  Posted: October 28, 2009, 1:31am EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• Picking the Chief of Police: And the 3 Are…….

  Number of comments: 1
  As any avid LAPD watcher knows by now, the short list of three is: First Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, Deputy Chief Charlie Beck and Deputy Chief Michael Moore Much more soon after I get back from USC. [...]
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  Posted: October 27, 2009, 6:15pm EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• List of 3 for Chief of Police Likely to be Announced Today

  Number of comments: 7
  Waiting for the short list. Last we heard, the Police Commission was going to give the mayor its list of three candidates tonight or early tomorrow. Now we hear it will likely be today, and that the mayor will make an announcement before sundown—give or take a few rays of light. [...]
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  Posted: October 27, 2009, 10:12am EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• Tod Goldberg Tells Stories

  Number of comments: 1
  My friend Tod Goldberg is a very funny man who has popularized the term….well, you can find it on his blog. (Hint: It has two syllables, begins with F and ends something that rhymes with petard.) Tod also is also the director of the UC Riverside MFA program in Creative Writing [...]
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  Posted: October 27, 2009, 1:34am EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• Smart Cops, Smart Students…and Wrongful Convictions

  Number of comments: 4
  Two stories about justice & injustice—and wrongful convictions AN LAPD LIEUTENANT TALKS ABOUT A FLAWED CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM My friend LAPD Lieutenant Sunil Dutta has written an Op Ed for the Ventura Star that is very much worth reading. Dutta is a scientist and scholar of music and poetry turned police officer [...]
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  Posted: October 26, 2009, 2:30am EDT
  by Celeste Fremon

• The LAPD Officially Moves Into Its New Home

  One of my very smart Annenberg grad students, Su Liu, happened to be downtown on Saturday during the opening celebration for the new LAPD administration building and so she snapped a bunch of photos that she made into the video slideshow above. Su is an international student from Bejiing and has [...]
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  Posted: October 26, 2009, 2:13am EDT
  by Celeste Fremon