Ex-Bell officials defend themselves as honorable public servants

Less than three years ago, they were handcuffed and taken away in a case alleged to be so extensive that the district attorney called it "corruption on steroids."

But on Monday, two of the six former Bell council members accused of misappropriating money from the small, mostly immigrant town took to the witness stand and defended themselves as honorable public servants who earned their near-$100,000 salaries by working long hours behind the scenes.

During her three days on the stand, Teresa Jacobo said she responded to constituents who called her cell and home phone at all hours. She put in time at the city's food bank, organized breast cancer awareness marches, sometimes paid for hotel rooms for the homeless and was a staunch advocate for education.

"I was working very hard to improve the lives of the citizens of Bell," she said. "I was bringing in programs and working with them to build leadership and good families, strong families."

Jacobo, 60, said she didn't question the appropriateness of her salary, which made her one of the highest-paid part-time council members in the state.

Former Councilman George Mirabal said he too worked a long, irregular schedule when it came to city affairs.

"I keep hearing time frames over and over again, but there's no clock when you're working on the council," he said Monday. "You're working on the circumstances that are facing you. If a family calls … you don't say, '4 o'clock, work's over.' "

Mirabal, 65, said he often reached out to low-income residents who didn't make it to council meetings, attended workshops to learn how to improve civic affairs and once even made a trip to a San Diego high school to research opening a similar tech charter school in Bell.

"Do you believe you gave everything you could to the citizens of Bell?" asked his attorney, Alex Kessel.

"I'd give more," Mirabal replied.

Both Mirabal and Jacobo testified that not only did they perceive their salaries to be reasonable, but they believed them to be lawful because they were drawn up by the city manager and voted on in open session with the city attorney present.

Mirabal, who once served as Bell's city clerk, even went so far as to say that he was still a firm supporter of the city charter that passed in 2005, viewing it as Bell's "constitution." In a taped interview with authorities, one of Mirabal's council colleagues — Victor Bello — said the city manager told him the charter cleared the way for higher council salaries.

Prosecutors have depicted the defendants as salary gluttons who put their city on a path toward bankruptcy. Mirabal and Jacobo, along with Bello, Luis Artiga, George Cole and Oscar Hernandez, are accused of drawing those paychecks from boards that seldom met and did little work. All face potential prison terms if convicted.

Prosecutors have cited the city's Solid Waste and Recycling Authority as a phantom committee, created only as a device for increasing the council's pay. But defense attorneys said the authority had a very real function, even in a city that contracted with an outside trash company.

Jacobo testified that she understood the introduction of that authority to be merely a legal process and that its purpose was to discuss how Bell might start its own city-run trash service.

A former contract manager for Consolidated Disposal Services testified that Bell officials had been unhappy with the response time to bulky item pickups, terminating their contract about 2005, but that it took about six years to finalize because of an agreement that automatically renewed every year.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Miller questioned Mirabal about the day shortly after his 2010 arrest that he voluntarily told prosecutors that no work was done on authorities outside of meetings.

Mirabal said that if he had made such a statement, it was incorrect. He said he couldn't remember what was said back then and "might have heed and hawed."

"So it's easy to remember now?" Miller asked.

"Yes, actually."

"More than two years after charges have been filed, it's easier for you to remember now that you did work outside of the meetings for the Public Finance Authority?"

"Yes, sir."

Miller later asked Mirabal to explain a paragraph included on City Council agendas that began with the phrase, "City Council members are like you."

After some clarification of the question, Mirabal answered: "That everybody is equal and that if they look into themselves, they would see us."

corina.knoll@latimes.com

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Rome Journal: Itavia Flight 870 Ruling Adds Support to a Theory

Emiliano Grillotti/Associated Press

A police officer near Rome guarded the reconstructed wreckage of Itavia Flight 870, in 2003.

ROME — Itavia Flight 870 was entering the final leg of a routine domestic trip from Bologna, Italy, to Palermo, Sicily, one clear summer evening when it suddenly plunged into the Tyrrhenian Sea near the small island of Ustica, killing all 81 people aboard.

Mechanical failure was ruled out early on, and almost 33 years later, the causes that led to the crash on June 27, 1980, are still a topic of passionate debate in Italy, fueled by three decades of inquiry boards, parliamentary commissions, countless expert reports and one of the longest judicial inquiries in recent Italian history. But despite all that, no formal charges have ever been filed in connection with the crash.

The crash, known as the Ustica affair, has produced legions of conspiracy theories here, the way the Kennedy assassination — or, on a lesser scale, the crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in 1996 — have in the United States. But in the Ustica affair, the case for a cover-up is far stronger.

Last week, when Italy’s highest court ruled that the country’s Defense and Transportation Ministries had to compensate the families of some of the victims, the court implicitly acknowledged the most widely accepted theory behind the crash: that a missile fired by a warplane had hit the twin-engine McDonnell Douglas DC-9 on Itavia, a now-defunct domestic Italian airline. But the court did not say where that missile came from.

To conspiracy buffs, it was vindication — to a point.

“It’s like the O. J. Simpson affair, where he got off in criminal court but was found guilty in a civil procedure and had to pay damages,” said Andrea Purgatori, an investigative reporter whose exhaustive book on the disaster and the presumed cover-up was made into a 1992 film.

Over the years, several Air Force officials have been investigated for withholding evidence — wiping clean flight tracks and radar scans — and four generals were tried on charges of treason and obstructing investigations. But no one has been convicted.

In this hothouse atmosphere, it is not surprising that conspiracy theories have proliferated over the years. The crash has been blamed on U.F.O.’s (several Web sites subscribe to this reconstruction) or domestic terrorism (the Bologna train station was bombed not five weeks later, killing 85 and wounding dozens more). In this scenario, the plane went down after a bomb exploded onboard, most likely in the toilet.

The missile theory gained a new impetus in 2008 when Francesco Cossiga, the prime minister at the time of the Ustica affair, said in an interview that the flight had been shot down by French military planes. Mr. Cossiga did not provide further details, nor can he. He died in 2010, at age 82.

Cover-up theories have been fueled through the years by what news reports have described as a “suspiciously high mortality” among military personnel and others connected to the case. (Mr. Cossiga is not included among them.)

Through traffic accidents, shooting deaths and suicides by hanging, there were 36 untimely deaths by 2011, according to a television report about Ustica. The program also cited a number of “bizarre accidents” that befell Ustica witnesses, like being run over by a tricycle and slipping on a banana peel in a Rome subway station.

“What terrifying truth warranted a cover-up at the cost of the lives of all these people?” asked the show’s host, Adam Kadmon, who plays a mysterious masked vigilante who investigates topics like Ustica, underskin microchip implants and, more recently, Michael Jackson’s prophecy about Sept. 11, and favors the French missile theory.

At the time, proponents say, Italy was covertly allowing Libyan aircraft to fly through its airspace undisturbed. They did so by gliding in the slipstream of Italian domestic aircraft, where they could not be detected by radar. On the night of June 27, 1980, there were unsubstantiated reports that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was on one of those planes, the theory goes, and French forces tried to shoot it down to kill the Libyan leader, but hit the DC-9 by mistake. Don’t ask why. It has to do with rebels in North Africa and jockeying for oil concessions between Italy and France.

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Relive All the Grammy One-Liners & Tweets

01/04/2011 at 10:00 AM EST

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After early start, worst of flu season may be over

NEW YORK (AP) — The worst of the flu season appears to be over.

The number of states reporting intense or widespread illnesses dropped again last week, and in a few states there was very little flu going around, U.S. health officials said Friday.

The season started earlier than normal, first in the Southeast and then spreading. But now, by some measures, flu activity has been ebbing for at least four weeks in much of the country. Flu and pneumonia deaths also dropped the last two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

"It's likely that the worst of the current flu season is over," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

But flu is hard to predict, he and others stressed, and there have been spikes late in the season in the past.

For now, states like Georgia and New York — where doctor's offices were jammed a few weeks ago — are reporting low flu activity. The hot spots are now the West Coast and the Southwest.

Among the places that have seen a drop: Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pa., which put up a tent outside its emergency room last month to help deal with the steady stream of patients. There were about 100 patients each day back then. Now it's down to 25 and the hospital may pack up its tent next week, said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital.

"There's no question that we're seeing a decline," she said.

In early December, CDC officials announced flu season had arrived, a month earlier than usual. They were worried, saying it had been nine years since a winter flu season started like this one. That was 2003-04 — one of the deadliest seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths.

Like this year, the major flu strain was one that tends to make people sicker, especially the elderly, who are most vulnerable to flu and its complications

But back then, that year's flu vaccine wasn't made to protect against that bug, and fewer people got flu shots. The vaccine is reformulated almost every year, and the CDC has said this year's vaccine is a good match to the types that are circulating. A preliminary CDC study showed it is about 60 percent effective, which is close to the average.

So far, the season has been labeled moderately severe.

Like others, Lehigh Valley's Burger was cautious about making predictions. "I'm not certain we're completely out of the woods," with more wintry weather ahead and people likely to be packed indoors where flu can spread around, she said.

The government does not keep a running tally of flu-related deaths in adults, but has received reports of 59 deaths in children. The most — nine — were in Texas, where flu activity was still high last week. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, the CDC says

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.

According to the CDC report, the number of states with intense activity is down to 19, from 24 the previous week, and flu is widespread in 38 states, down from 42.

Flu is now minimal in Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

___

Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/

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Irvine shooting victims shared a love of basketball

Four days before her death, Monica Quan had news for her team. Quan, an assistant coach at Cal State Fullerton, held up her hand to show off an engagement ring. The players screamed and huddled around her for a closer look, head coach Marcia Foster recalled.

Quan was as happy as her basketball players, and later said she wished she had recorded the moment. She loved to have pictures taken with her friends. She wanted a big wedding, and her fiance, Keith Lawrence, a public safety officer at USC, was trying to work extra hours to make it possible.

The couple was talking about who would be in the wedding party. They had yet to pick a date and a location when they were found Feb. 3, shortly after the Super Bowl, shot to death in their car in the parking structure of their Irvine condominium complex.

They had multiple gunshot wounds. There were no signs of a robbery, and investigators ruled out a murder-suicide.

The next day, Quan's father got a call from a close friend of the family. Randall Quan, a former captain with the Los Angeles Police Department, and Wayne Caffey, a detective with the Southeast Division, had known one another for almost 25 years. Caffey recalled their conversation.

"We lost her," Quan said. "She's gone."

The two men were overwhelmed by the senselessness of the slayings. We don't know anything, Quan said; we don't know what happened.

He would later learn that his daughter and her fiance were probably killed by a former LAPD officer who had been fired in 2009; Randall Quan had represented Christopher Jordan Dorner at his termination hearing.

What was once incomprehensible — the deaths of these two young people — was now considered a revenge killing. The reasons were spelled out in an 11,000-word post police found on a Facebook page that they believe belonged to Dorner, 33, who is now a fugitive.

"I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own," Dorner supposedly wrote. "I'm terminating yours."

The killings have left the Quan and Lawrence families struggling with their loss. The Quans are in seclusion and not ready to talk about their daughter.

Lawrence's father, who lives in Denver, had just gotten to work when he heard the news from his wife. "I was caught in a whirlwind," said Kevin Lawrence, who could not immediately comprehend his son's death. "My first instinct was to get down there and protect him."

Lawrence met with the Quans last week and talked with them on the phone. They've discussed funeral arrangements and agreed that Monica and Keith should be buried at the same time. Neither family is ready to share details.

"Keith loved his life, and he loved Monica," Lawrence said.

Basketball was the center of the couples' lives, but it was more than a game for them.

"Basketball was an avenue for her to learn about other people," said Caffey, who coached Monica in a local league. "She was a competitor, and this was a way for her to enjoy friendships and build relationships."

She was 28, a year older than Keith. He was calm and collected on the court; she was spirited and fiery. He was a Clippers fan, and she rooted for the Lakers. She modeled herself after Michael Jordan, taking his number — 23 — as her own. Keith admired the play of point guard Steve Nash.

She wore red-and-black Air Jordans, and he didn't care about the brand as long as they were brightly colored, highlighter yellow, lime green, red. They both could have spent hours together shooting hoops or shopping at Nike, their favorite store. They would often meet friends at the restaurant and arcade, Dave & Busters.

"We joke that they are up in heaven at a Nike store, or playing basketball at Dave & Buster's," said Natasha Belou, a friend of Keith's.

He grew up playing ball with his father, who would try to block his outside shot with a broom to help him get more arc. His Moorpark High School coach, Tim Bednar, believed that Keith, who was just under 6 feet, would have made it to the NBA if he had been taller. After Keith's graduation, the school retired his jersey.

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Tiger Woods & Lindsey Vonn Are 'Spending More Time' Together: Source

Buzz

By Steve Helling

02/09/2013 at 06:00 PM EST

Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn

Mick Tsikas/Reuters/Landov; Luis Guerra/Ramey

It was quite the gesture.

After Lindsey Vonn suffered a devastating injury during the Alpine World Championships in Austria, she got a bit of help from Tiger Woods. Walking on crutches, Vonn – who tore two ligaments in her right knee and fractured her shin when she crashed on Tuesday ­– boarded Woods's private jet to return home.

Is it a sign that the rumored relationship between Woods and Vonn is heating up?

"Tiger and Lindsey have been friends for a while, and nothing started out romantically at all," a source tells PEOPLE. "But they really have a lot in common and got closer and closer. He still refers to her as 'my very good friend,' but he's been spending more and more time talking to her – and talking about her."

Last month, Vonn's reps kept mum about the rumored relationship, telling PEOPLE that her "focus is solely on competing and on defending her titles and thus she will not participate in any speculation surrounding her personal life at this time."

But the source close to Woods tells PEOPLE that Woods, 37, and Vonn. 28, talk and text frequently.

"Tiger really does want a woman who he can have good conversations with," he says. "He wants shared interests and outlooks. He is finding that with [Lindsey]."

Woods made international headlines in 2009 when he was linked to dozens of women while still married to his ex-wife, Elin Nordegren.

Since then, he has dated sporadically, but struggled to find someone who wanted a relationship for the right reasons.

"She's not freaked out by his past, and that's really appealing to him," says the source. "He really does deserve to be happy. He has been flogging himself for three years, and it's good to see him moving forward."

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After early start, worst of flu season may be over

NEW YORK (AP) — The worst of the flu season appears to be over.

The number of states reporting intense or widespread illnesses dropped again last week, and in a few states there was very little flu going around, U.S. health officials said Friday.

The season started earlier than normal, first in the Southeast and then spreading. But now, by some measures, flu activity has been ebbing for at least four weeks in much of the country. Flu and pneumonia deaths also dropped the last two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

"It's likely that the worst of the current flu season is over," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

But flu is hard to predict, he and others stressed, and there have been spikes late in the season in the past.

For now, states like Georgia and New York — where doctor's offices were jammed a few weeks ago — are reporting low flu activity. The hot spots are now the West Coast and the Southwest.

Among the places that have seen a drop: Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pa., which put up a tent outside its emergency room last month to help deal with the steady stream of patients. There were about 100 patients each day back then. Now it's down to 25 and the hospital may pack up its tent next week, said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital.

"There's no question that we're seeing a decline," she said.

In early December, CDC officials announced flu season had arrived, a month earlier than usual. They were worried, saying it had been nine years since a winter flu season started like this one. That was 2003-04 — one of the deadliest seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 deaths.

Like this year, the major flu strain was one that tends to make people sicker, especially the elderly, who are most vulnerable to flu and its complications

But back then, that year's flu vaccine wasn't made to protect against that bug, and fewer people got flu shots. The vaccine is reformulated almost every year, and the CDC has said this year's vaccine is a good match to the types that are circulating. A preliminary CDC study showed it is about 60 percent effective, which is close to the average.

So far, the season has been labeled moderately severe.

Like others, Lehigh Valley's Burger was cautious about making predictions. "I'm not certain we're completely out of the woods," with more wintry weather ahead and people likely to be packed indoors where flu can spread around, she said.

The government does not keep a running tally of flu-related deaths in adults, but has received reports of 59 deaths in children. The most — nine — were in Texas, where flu activity was still high last week. Roughly 100 children die in an average flu season, the CDC says

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.

According to the CDC report, the number of states with intense activity is down to 19, from 24 the previous week, and flu is widespread in 38 states, down from 42.

Flu is now minimal in Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

___

Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/

Read More..

Police seeking Dorner opened fire in a second case of mistaken identity

David Perdue was on his way to sneak in some surfing before work Thursday morning when police flagged him down. They asked who he was and where he was headed, then sent him on his way.

Seconds later, Perdue's attorney said, a Torrance police cruiser slammed into his pickup and officers opened fire; none of the bullets struck Perdue.

His pickup, police later explained, matched the description of the one belonging to Christopher Jordan Dorner — the ex-cop who has evaded authorities after allegedly killing three and wounding two more. But the pickups were different makes and colors. And Perdue looks nothing like Dorner: He's several inches shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter. And Perdue is white; Dorner is black.

"I don't want to use the word buffoonery but it really is unbridled police lawlessness," said Robert Sheahen, Perdue's attorney. "These people need training and they need restraint."

The incident involving Perdue was the second time police looking for the fugitive former LAPD officer opened fire on someone else. The shootings have raised concerns that the fear Dorner has instilled has added another layer of danger.

"Nobody trains police officers to look for one of their own," said Maria Haberfeld, a police training professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "I wouldn't want to be in their shoes and I don't think anybody else would."

Torrance police said the officers who slammed into Perdue were responding to shots fired moments earlier in a nearby area where LAPD officers were standing guard outside the home of someone targeted in an online manifesto that authorities have attributed to Dorner.

In the first incident, LAPD officers opened fire on another pickup they feared was being driven by Dorner. The mother and daughter inside the truck were delivering Los Angeles Times newspapers. The older woman was shot twice in the back and the other was wounded by broken glass.

In Perdue's case, his attorney said he wasn't struck by bullets or glass but was injured in the car wreck, suffering a concussion and an injury to his shoulder. The LAX baggage handler hasn't been able to work since, and his car is totaled, Sheahen said.

"When Torrance issues this ridiculous statement saying he wasn't injured, all they mean is he wasn't killed," his attorney said, referring to a press release reporting "no visible injuries" to Perdue.

A department spokesman said Saturday that the shooting is still under investigation. In a statement to The Times, the department said: "The circumstances of the incident known to the responding officers would have led a reasonable officer under normal circumstances — and these were far from normal circumstances — to believe that fellow officers were being shot at and that the vehicle traveling toward them posed a serious risk.

"In the split seconds available to them," the statement continued, "action was appropriate to intervene and stop the actions of the driver of that vehicle."

According to the police department, Perdue's car was headed directly for one of their patrol vehicles and appeared not to be yielding. When the vehicles collided, Perdue's air bag went off, blocking the view of the driver, and one officer fired three rounds.

The Torrance police chief apologized to Perdue and offered him a rental car and payment for his medical expenses, the statement said.

The search for the ex-LAPD officer has spanned the region, with authorities hoping they had tracked Dorner down in Big Bear only for the trail to go cold there. His alleged campaign to take revenge on those he blamed for his dismissal from the LAPD has stoked fears among local police, many of whom are involved in the search. The sense of chaos has been amplified by police around the state and beyond being forced to chase down bogus leads and erroneous sightings.

Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney, said it's not surprising when police make mistakes during manhunts.

"They don't know where he is, and they're going to be edgy and jumpy," she said. "Don't get in their way. They're in a special state of consciousness right now, and they're not used to being hunted."

Perdue's attorneys said their client was shot at without warning.

"As you know, officers of the Torrance Police Department attempted to kill Mr. Perdue" Thursday, the attorneys wrote in a letter to the agency's chief.

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

matt.stevens@latimes.com

Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Feb. 9

After a failed attempt to set spending targets at a summit meeting in November and in a 24-hour marathon of talks this week, European leaders finally agreed late Friday to a common budget for the next seven years. The new budget, which is slightly smaller than its predecessor — the first decrease in the European Union’s history — reflects the climate of austerity across a Continent still struggling to emerge from a crippling debt crisis. James Kanter and Andrew Higgins report from Brussels.

Few things divide British eating habits from those of Continental Europe as clearly as a distaste for consuming horse meat, so news that many Britons have unknowingly done so has prompted alarm among shoppers and plunged the country’s food industry into crisis. A trickle of discoveries of horse meat in hamburgers, starting in Ireland last month, has turned into a steady stream of revelations, including, on Friday, that lasagna labeled beef from one international distributor of frozen food, Findus, contained in some cases 100 percent horse meat. Stephen Castle reports from London.

The coaches of England’s Premier League are an aggressively unstylish bunch, stalking the sideline in the most scrutinized sport in the world with wardrobes that speak less of Savile Row than of the remainder rack on the Island of Misfit Clothes. The way the coaches dress, there’s no mistaking the English Premier League sideline for a fashion runway. Sarah Lyall reports from London.

With only two weeks to go before national elections, the Italian campaign has become a surreal spectacle in which a candidate many had given up for dead, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has surged. Although he is not expected ever to govern again, with his media savvy and pie-in-the-sky offers of tax refunds, Mr. Berlusconi now trails the front-runner, Pierluigi Bersani, the leader of the Democratic Party, by about five or six points, according to a range of opinion polls published on Friday. Rachel Donadio reports from Rome.

ARTS The auction of Impressionist and Modern art followed by Surrealist works that took place at Sotheby’s on Tuesday evening ended with 52 lots fetching £121 million. It will be remembered by auction house professionals as the second most successful sale in the field held at Sotheby’s London and, by some of those attending, as the strangest session in living memory. Souren Melikian reports from New York.

SPORTS If size or the weight of history were the sole determining factors in a soccer match, then you might wonder why Burkina Faso would even bother to turn up against Nigeria in the Africa Cup final. Rob Hughes reports from London.

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Minka Kelly: 'I'm Not Worthy' of Acting with Oprah

By Jennifer Cress

02/08/2013 at 07:40 PM EST

Minka Kelly as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Pacific Coast News

It's intimidating enough to play Jackie O, but Minka Kelly felt even more pressure to perform when she found out who was joining the cast of her latest film, The Butler.

"I'm not worthy. I feel so lucky and grateful. I was like, 'What am I doing here?!' " Kelly tells PEOPLE of starring alongside Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, John Cusack, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda and more in the upcoming film, which tells the story of a butler who served eight presidents.

The movie also features another major star: the one and only Oprah Winfrey. "I didn't get to meet Oprah because our shooting schedules were different, but she's a pretty loved lady," Kelly says. "I have yet to hear a bad thing about her!"

Kelly found that the most difficult part of playing Jackie Kennedy was nailing the former first lady's distinct accent. "I think she spoke in a way she thought she should speak, so getting that down was hard. There's a musicality and rhythm to the way she speaks," Kelly explains. "I went to sleep listening to her."

Another tough task? Slipping into the retro costumes. "My body is so different from her because I have curves, so fitting into those vintage clothes was actually really hard," she shares. "Also it was hot – and there was a lot of wool!"

Jennifer Graylock / Getty

But Kelly had no issue slipping into the stunning Oscar de la Renta gown (left) she strutted down the runway in at the Red Dress Collection fashion show in N.Y.C. on Wednesday night. The actress walked for the second year in a row in honor of The Heart Truth campaign, which encourages women to monitor their heart health.

For the month of February, Diet Coke will donate $1 for every person who uploads a heart-inspired photo to Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #showyourheart. Visit to dietcoke.com/showyourheart for more information.

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