Booster club electrocution

News about an electrocution on a high school campus spread fast. Still, the details were conflicting.

Officials were quick to point out the injured men were not contracted to work by the school district. Still, they had set up scaffolding in the school’s football field and had been allowed to work inside of the campus without bother.

I heard the men had been working in Mission Viejo High School had been working for a member of the school’s booster club, and the banner they were trying to hang was for an upcoming tournament.

The issue set up a conflicting dilemma. Though school officials did not sanction the work, the company had been somehow allowed to go into the campus and hang the banner without a problem.

Two friends, both convicts, and five missing women

Steven Gordon and Franc Cano were best friends – and the only link between four women who suddenly went missing in Orange County.

Both men held a troubled past. Both had been convicted of sex offenses. Both were separated from their families in some part because of their crimes, and both wore GPS anklets so law enforcement officials could keep track of them.

Franc Cano

Steven Gordon

They were convicted child molesters and transients, living out of a vehicle in Anaheim’s industrial neighborhoods. They went by mostly unnoticed, even as police continued to search for three missing women whose only link to each other at the time was their disappearance and their ties to prostitution.

On May 9, 2014 By Salvador HernandezIn Portfolio, Recent articles, The crimeLeave a comment

Released from jail but still a suspect

Eder Herrera was in handcuffs hours after his mother and brother were stabbed to death in their Yorba Linda on Oct. 25, 2011.

Facing two charges of murder, the 24-year-old street sweeper maintained his innocence during the three months he spent behind bars.

Then, on Feb. 1, 2012, Itzcoatl Ocampo, a suspected serial killer charged with the deaths of four homeless men, told investigators he was also responsible for the deaths of Herrera’s family.

Ocampo described in detail how he snuck into the home with plans to kill the family. He told detectives he stabbed them multiple times with the same knife he used against the homeless men.  He also had plans to wrap an extension cord around Eder Herrera’s neck, but Ocampo said the youngest member of the family walked out of the house before the bloodshed began.

More than two years after the deaths, and after charges against Herrera were dropped, but Herrera is wondering why police and prosecutors still consider him a suspect.

180-day plan to reform OCFA

Fire Chief Keith Richter

I sat down with OCFA Fire Chief Keith Richter last week to discuss some of last year’s troubles in the fire agency, as well as his proposals to reform Orange County’s biggest fire department.

Richter faced a tense job review this year, with some of the members of the 25-member board hinting at the need for a possible replacement.

What was supposed to be a one-day closed-door review turned out to be spread across three closed-door meetings in three months.

Though some details of his plan are still being kept close to the chest – such as a possible restructuring of command staff – Richter shared some of his plans for the future.

First among them: He will still be the chief.

To read the rest of my coverage on this topic, click here.

The Dorner manhunt

The Dorner manhunt

Check out this great read from the Los Angeles Times – but make sure you have the time to sit down and really take it in. It’s a long one.

Journalists are supposed to provide you with new information, but every once in a while a reporter gets a chance to revisit an old story like this one and, with the advantage of hindsight, give you a fresh, detailed new look at it.

As a crime reporter, the search for Christopher Dorner was one of the most hectic times I’ve spent on my beat.

 

Hazmat coverage

I wasn’t sure I had a story, but I was confused enough to begin asking questions.

What followed were more than 15 articles on mandatory hazardous material inspections that were skipped over a span of five years, and more than $1.7 million in refunds that the county’s largest fire agency would have to issue to local businesses.

The Orange County Fire Authority’s Fire Marshal was suspended and later placed on leave. A few months later she suddenly retired as pressure increased on administrators.

Now elected officials are demanding reform and the Fire Chief is developing a plan to change Orange County’s largest fire agency.

Here are my articles on the topic going back to 2012, and how the coverage of the topic developed.

Credit card skimmers get more sophisticated.

Seems like your cell phone is out of date by the time you get around to buying a protective case for it. That’s how fast technology changes for criminals and the law enforcement agencies chasing after them as well.

Skimmers began to show up on the criminal radar a couple of years ago, but the devices investigators first ran into were clunky machines that still left plenty of risk for whoever planted and picked them up to collect the data.

That meant criminal enterprises hired “runners” to plant the devices at ATMs, gas station pumps and other places were people readily used their ATM.

The devices needed space for memory and a camera planted nearby to pick up the victim’s pin.

No more.

The devices law enforcement is running into now are as small, smart, and convenient. They are blue-tooth enabled, small, unobtrusive and less risky for the criminal who needs only park close enough to get the information transferred wireless.

“It’s like installing a virus,” Sgt. Scott Spalding of the Orange County Sheriff Department’s economic and computer crimes detail.

In this story, Spalding and other investigators shared their work with the Glendale Police Department, leading to the arrest of seven people in a sophisticated skimming scheme. They also shared details about some of the technological advances that have made these financially devastating machines as accessible as $50-worth of equipment from Fry’s.

GPS company left convicts unsupervised

A GPS company hired by the county’s Probation Department to keep an eye on about 300 convicts left more than a dozen of them unsupervised days, sometimes weeks.

It seems many of the probationers using the devices had no idea they were not functioning properly. But when they checked in with their probation officers, officials found several of the devices had stopped sending signals of their location.

The GPS devices are supposed to send the company, Sentinel Offender Services, a signal every 60 seconds telling them where the probationers are. Instead, some of the devices didn’t send a signal for days. Some where found to have stopped sending coordinates for nearly a month.

But it wasn’t just GPS devices that failed.

In one instance, a convict required to take an alcohol-content breath test at his home failed it more than 80 times, but the company never told officials in the Probation Department.

Officials are already working to transition about 300 convicts to another company, but it has raised serious concerns with elected and law enforcement officials.

With a rising population in county jails, local officials across the state are relying more and more on GPS devices and private companies to keep an eye on probationers.

It’s going to be more money

Turns out the $360,000 (or so) of refunds the Orange County Fire Authority was to disburse to local businesses – after finding it didn’t do hundreds of inspections it billed for – is going to be a lot more.

Five times more.

An audit of the agency’s hazardous material inspection program showed the problem actually extended several years back. After reviewing records going back to 2005, officials found they could not find evidence for hundreds of inspections that were billed, meaning they would have to issue about $1.7 million in refunds to hundreds of businesses.

It also suggests problems with fee-based programs in Orange County’s largest fire department could be more serious than officials had officially let on.

I first reported on the missed inspections in Sept. 2012, when officials first considered about $360,000 in refunds. The following February – after the completion of an internal review – I wrote about the Fire Marshal’s suspension, here.

It’s an issue that has required persistent attention.

Less beds for female inmates

MICHAEL GOULDING, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

California county jails are seeing the impact of the state’s realignment plan through its jail doors – more men and women are walking through them.

The largest impact has, of course, been men.

The plan has sent several convicts that would have ended up in state prison – or under the auspices of parole officers – to county jails and probation officers. Nearly 90 percent of the added load has been men.

Yet Orange County’s women’s jails have also been severely affected. Sections of the county’s jails that could be used for women are being used to house the increase of men being arrested for new charges, probation violations, or flash incarcerations – 10-day stints used for those not abiding by the terms of their release.