Yesterday afternoon there was a shooting in Venice, followed up by another in Santa Monica last night. Both shootings left one victim dead and countless others terrified. The LA Times Blog has lots of details on the actual shootings but makes no mention that these were both gang related shootings, a fact the LAPD confirmed with Yo! Venice. Residents of the area heard shots and began questioning things right away. A source which asked not to be named told me that both the victim in the first shooting in Venice and the shooters who were apprehended in the second shooting in Santa Monica are members of the Venice Shoreline Crips. The LAPD hasn’t confirmed that publicly yet however. If you’ve been following this at all you’ll remember that last year a huge sting brought down 19 members and earlier this year I spotted some of their tags on a wall in the area. Clearly the busts didn’t eradicate the gang as was hoped by many, and clearly something is going down right now. Hopefully it gets under control before more people get shot.

UPDATE: Here’s an eye witness report from Bujinkan Santa Monica.

It was a year ago tomorrow that I learned his name: John McGraham. A homeless man who was a fixture in the neighborhood radiating out from 3rd Street and Berendo where he could often be found, McGraham, 55, was attacked and murdered there October 9th, 2008, reportedly doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire with a flare.

I biked by there this morning to find the above poster McGraham’s family mounted to the long-empty dentistry office outside of which he had lived and so brutally died.

Such unfathomable violence galvanized the community and after more than three months of intense investigations detectives from LAPD Robbery/Homicide Division arrested 30-year-old Benjamin Matthew Martin in Ranch Mirage, Riverside County on January 22. Though unemployed at the time of his arrest, Martin had reportedly worked as a barber in and around the area where McGraham was killed.

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LAPD Chief Bill Bratton’s dissatisfactions with the way things run in Los Angeles, compared to Boston and New York where he was also police chief prior to his tenure here, have been known. And in some respects, there is no love lost for him over his departure at the end of this month. (Yes, his last day on the job in LA is Halloween.)

Yesterday he laid out east vs. west complaints at Los Angeles Magazine’s regular Breakfast Conversation confab at the Foundry restaurant on Melrose.

East Coast, it’s much more in your face, bloody the nose and then go and have a drink. Here it’s basically, don’t have it out and hold a grudge and try to undermine each other at every turn. I don’t know whether that’s the ethos of the movie industry that’s now basically going into the rest of the society out here.

My style is basically, fight it out, get it done and move on… Life is too short, get it over with, instead of this lingering payback.

This city is almost a city that doesn’t work in so many respects and it’s frustrating. The New York minute – the reason that phrase is so appropriate for New York, things get done.

Audio excerpts were aired this morning on KPCC by Frank Stoltze on Morning Edition. A video of the entire event is on LA Mag’s site.

Yesterday I posted about a flight being detained at LAX because of suspicious activity, and later it was announced it was a disturbance with a passenger who wouldn’t listen to flight attendant instructions. Well apparently Cruftbox was on that flight and posted a first hand account of what happened in the comments. He writes:

I was on the plane, in the back row.

The guy really had to go to the bathroom and didn’t listen to the flight attendants telling him to sit down. We were first in line to take off and it forced the plane to leave the runway.

The guy also caused trouble at the gate, so the plane headed back to the gate to take him off. Once they discovered he had been speaking arabic and that it was Yom Kippur the crazy begun.

The plane filled up with LAPD, TSA, and FBI. Paranoia began with the passengers quickly. I met the bomb testing guy. We all had to deplane while they went over the whole plane with dogs and lots of people. We got rescreened and got back on the plane. 4+ hours later, the plane took off.

All because a guy couldn’t wait until after takeoff to pee.

So there you have it.

This is all hearsay and speculation and whatnot but I’ve been hearing a lot of people complaining about both an uptick in crime near their houses, as well as a serious increase in response time when they call the LAPD to report said crime. I’m hoping to have a little more solid reporting on this shortly but in the meantime I thought I’d ask you folks if you’ve had any experience with either of these issues recently so I can compare issues around town. I live in Venice and apparently we just had our designated patrols cut from over 30 officers to less than 10 for the entire area. In the past 24 hours I’ve spoken to two residents who have called the police because of disturbances right outside their house (one called the local dispatch one called 911) and in both cases officers took over an hour to respond. Members on the forums over on Yo Venice are discussing an increase in robberies. So, is this just something happening around me or is the rest of the city seeing similar changes?

The 1960s may have had its Summer of Love, but in certain neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles, this has been the Summer of Pot. Based on my observations and conversations with friends, the herb has been a-permeatin’.

I can’t recall all the times that I have smelled or seen open weed smoking lately. Venice Beach (where I took the photo) is probably Ground Zero — no surprise there.   Last time I was on Venice Beach, I was in a shop that had a corner window facing South, and, through the window, the smell of chronic was mighty powerful.  I  also notice plenty of 420 in Santa Monica, such as at a recent concert on the Pier.  A friend also tells me that the bud is sprouting a-mighty in West Hollywood.

The little I think I know of the situation is that (more…)

A few short hours ago it looked like my gut reaction that the Angeles National Forest fire had been caused by a fiendish rapscallion (I’m no longer using the word “terrorist”) wasn’t far off the mark.

But wait, what’s this? A new report on KNX 1070 says that the U.S. Forest Service has retracted its earlier “human caused” statement about the fire.

What does this mean? It means my two-year-old daughter’s assertion that dragons are behind the blaze may still be a valid theory.

You can run, Puff, but you can’t hide.

Image: A Michael Martchenko illustration from Robert Munsch’s The Paper Bag Princess.

Out with the old...

Enough is enough. How many fires must we endure before we start treating arsonists as terrorists?

I know the jury’s still out on the exact cause of these most recent fires, but just consider all the endangered lives, wasted resources, interrupted commerce, health hazards, environmental damage, destroyed property and the psychological damage that one arsonist creates when he ignites a forest.

If it turns out that somebody did indeed purposely start one of these blazes, doesn’t he deserve an all-expense paid trip to Guantanamo Bay?

Or at least somewhere where he can chill out?

Guerrilla Garden snapped with my craptacular phone cam, bigger with a click.

In a nearby cul-de-sac in my Silver Lake neighborhood, a neighbor with an affinity for gardening has undertaken a beautification project atop a small, neglected patch of earth.

The green-thumbed gal in question works only under cover of darkness, thus this garden popped up seemingly overnight. Up until a few weeks ago, this derelict corner was just sad, dry dirt. Now, a variety of plants and flowers have been cultivated there.

Alas, there is trouble in this guerrilla garden. Some leafy residents have gone missing! It would seem an interloper covets the life on this land and has stolen some of the plants.

I know this based upon the sign in the garden. Join me beyond the jump for a close-up of the sign and an opportunity to help…

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Another Feinstein Folly: the “Save Kids from Dangerous Drugs Act of 2009.”

Would you take a moment and call your LA City Council member today, Thursday August 6th? You can use this quick helpful script for this fifteen-second phone call, beyond the jump.

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