| Law and Government |
Los Angeles city hall |
|
| Law enforcement |
| The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) polices
the city of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
polices all unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County and some
cities which have contracted for law enforcement services because
they lack police departments of their own, including Calabasas,
West Hollywood, and Compton. |
| City government |
| The city has a mayor-council system. The current
mayor is James Hahn and the mayor-elect is Antonio Villaraigosa.
There are 15 city council districts. Other elected city officials
include the city attorney, Rocky Delgadillo, and the city controller,
Laura Chick. The city attorney prosecutes misdemeanors within
the city limits. The district attorney, elected by the county
voters, prosecutes misdemeanors in unincorporated areas and
in 78 of the 88 cities in the county, as well as felonies everywhere
in the county. |
| The city government has been perceived as inefficient
and ineffective by residents of some areas, which ultimately
led to an unsuccessful secession movement by the San Fernando
Valley and Hollywood in 2002. The main problem seems to be that
the city administration in Downtown gives more priority to high-density
neighborhoods like Mid-City and Downtown at the expense of its
far-flung suburban neighborhoods. |
| To make the government more responsive and to
help encourage the cohesiveness of neighborhood communities,
the city council has promoted the formation of neighborhood
councils. These advisory councils were first proposed by city
council member Joel Wachs in 1996 and were incorporated in the
Charter Reform of 1999. The councils cover districts which are
not necessarily identical to the traditional neighborhoods of
Los Angeles, the borders of which often reflect those of cities
that were annexed to Los Angeles (see Communities, neighborhoods
and districts below). More than 90 neighborhood councils have
been formed and all stakeholders in a district may vote for
council members. Though the councils have little actual power,
they are still official government bodies and so must abide
by California's Brown Act that strictly governs the meetings
of deliberative assemblies. These and other regulatory requirements
have proven frustrating for activists unaccustomed to bureaucratic
procedures. The first notable achievement of the neighborhood
councils was their organized opposition in March 2004 to an
18% increase in water rates by the Los Angeles Department of
Water and Power (a municipal monopoly), which led the city council
to suspend the rate hike pending further study. |
| Legal system |
One of the Superior
Court's many courthouses. |
|
| The Los Angeles County Superior Court has jurisdiction
over all cases arising under state law, while the U.S. District
Court for the Central District of California hears all federal
cases. Both are headquartered in a large cluster of government
buildings in the city's Civic Center. |
| Unlike the largest city in the United States,
New York, all of the city of Los Angeles and most of its important
suburbs are located within a single county. As a result, both
the county superior court and the federal district court are
respectively the busiest courts of their type in the nation. |
| Thanks to Hollywood, celebrities like O.J. Simpson
are frequently seen in Los Angeles courts. In 2003, the tabloid
television show Extra (based in nearby Glendale) found itself
running so many reports on the legal problems of local celebrities
that it spun them off into a separate show, Celebrity Justice. |
| State cases are appealed to the Court of Appeal
for the Second Appellate District, which is also headquartered
in the Civic Center, and then to the California Supreme Court,
which is headquartered in San Francisco but also hears argument
in Los Angeles (again, in the Civic Center). Federal cases are
appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which
hears them at its branch building in Pasadena. Of course, the
court of last resort for both federal and state cases is the
U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. |
| Crime |
| Many movies and songs about Los Angeles depict
the fact that the city is home to a large number of gangsters
and professional criminals. As a result, people around the world
know that the number 187 stands for murder in California. According
to a May 2001 Drug Threat Assessment by the National Drug Intelligence
Center[1] (http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs0/668/overview.htm),
Los Angeles County is home to 152,000 gang members organized
into 1,350 gangs. Every day, the middle pages of Los Angeles
newspapers are packed with reports of violent crimes which would
be front page news in almost any other city in the United States. |
| In Los Angeles, car chases happen more often than
in most major cities (sometimes a few times in one week). The
city's complex freeway system makes it easier to go on for miles,
while still remaining in the same general area. Other common
crimes include: car-to-car shootings (see road rage), drive-by
shootings, thrill killings, hit-and-run accidents, and carjackings.
Numerous instances of all these crimes are documented on the
LAPD press release Web site |
| [2] (http://www.lapdonline.org/press_releases/press_releases |
| One interesting example is a report on ten freeway
shootings within two months |
| [3] (http://www.nbc4.tv/news/4449599/detail.html). |
| There are crime video games that take place in
Los Angeles such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (which has
a city named Los Santos which is based on Los Angeles) and True
Crime: Streets of LA (which takes place in Los Angeles and is
a close replica of the area). |
