Crime

Regional law enforcement agencies performed a sweep of several cities Thursday in response to a recent spike in property crimes, arresting eight people and seizing three weapons. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department joined forces with Glendale police as well as state parole and probation authorities. During the sweep, which began at 7 a.m., deputies and officers checked 44 locations in La Cañada Flintridge, La Crescenta, Montrose, Sunland, Tujunga, Lake View Terrace, Pasadena and Altadena.

Every Wednesday promptly at 1:30 p.m., 50 or more cops and some civilian staffers assemble in the meeting room at the Glendale Police Department for the fastest 60 minutes in crime-fighting. They call it the “Week in Crime.” A glimpse inside what Glendale police are doing with high-tech computers in every car, software that connects them to every database, video surveillance systems on the streets and increasingly sophisticated analytical techniques gives a civilian the feeling he has entered a world that resembles crime-of-the-week TV shows like NCIS.

CRESCENTA VALLEY — The number of crime-related responses fielded at Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Station increased 9% in January, although the station has seen an 8% decrease in crimes over a five-year period, according to recently released figures. Violent and property crimes reported in the Crescenta Valley increased from 14 last year to 22 last month compared with the same period last year, a 57% increase, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Los Angeles police are investigating a hate crime at a West Hills synagogue where suspects spray-painted two swastikas and "Go Home" on the congregation's property, officials said Monday. The graffiti, which also included the numbers "666" within the swastikas, was discovered about 6:30 a.m. Monday spray painted on the corner of temporary offices at the Temple Judea satellite campus in the 6600 block of Valley Circle Boulevard, according to LAPD officials. There was no immediate description of a suspect or suspects, police said.

The Glendale City Council accepted $23,778 in federal funding to pay for equipment that will allow Glendale police detectives to more effectively investigate computer and Internet-related crimes. The U.S. Department of Justice issues grants to local police agencies to improve public safety and reduce crime. Police have used similar grants in the past to purchase “less lethal” weapon technology, training supplies, tactical equipment, digital evidence photography systems and update computer equipment.

$10,000 reward for information after church covered in anti-religious graffiti.LA CRESCENTA -- The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors announced a $10,000 reward Tuesday for information leading to the arrest and conviction of vandals who destroyed doors, screens and playground equipment and sprayed "God is Gay" on Gethsemane Lutheran Church. The vandals who defaced the church at 2723 Orange Ave. on Sunday are wanted for committing a hate crime, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Det. Daniel Zumer said.

The Glendale Police Department began the first half of the decade with two homicide investigations they believe were linked. In 1950, the badly beaten body of an 84-year-old woman was found in her home on Monterey Road. The primary suspect in the case was an 80-year-old man who was also reported missing at the same time. The whereabouts of the man - who lived three blocks away and was an old friend of the victim - was not known for years. The case took an even stranger twist when in 1954, the man's remains were found in Dead Horse Canyon.

Gretchen Hoffman Five years ago, Bob Packwood sat down in the Glendale Adventist Medical Center cafeteria with Glendale Police Officer Louie Mazadiego and began to outline what was to become an annual tradition in the city. After four hours, they had enough to set up a committee in charge of Glendale's first National Night Out event. Half a decade later, Packwood is still on the job and has worked for the past five months to expand the reach of the event, which is designed to "give crime and drugs a going-away party," he said.

Karen S. Kim GLENDALE -- Escalating reports of hate crimes against citizens of Middle Eastern descent have prompted the Armenian National Committee Western Region to establish its own hate crime watch program. "The idea behind the program was to first and foremost help law enforcement authorities in identifying hate crimes," said Alex Sardar, executive director of the Glendale-based committee. The program stems from fears that Armenians might be the targets of anti-Middle Eastern or anti-Muslim crimes after the terrorist attacks of Sept.

About 100 local residents circled the Montrose Shopping Park on Thursday night to express their stance against crime and their unity as neighbors as part of the 2008 National Night Out. The nationwide event was started in 1984 by the National Assn. of Town Watch, a nonprofit, crime-prevention organization. The annual neighborhood walk is designed to strengthen the relationship between police and the community, raise awareness about drug and crime prevention efforts, and demonstrate to criminals that law-abiding citizens have a stake in their neighborhoods.

Reporting a crime in Glendale could soon be just as easy as the press of a button. Possibly as soon as this summer, residents who want to report vandalism, lost property and identity, petty and grand theft and bicycle thefts to Glendale police can do so via their computers or smartphones. Police Department officials have plans to launch a new Citizen Online Police Reporting system through which the public can file reports online instead of calling an officer out to the scene for minor crimes.

The Glendale Police Foundation recently donated a vital piece of DNA sterilization equipment to the Police Department's regional crime laboratory, officials said. The sterilizing hood will allow forensic specialists to work with DNA evidence without having to worry about contamination. Ultraviolet light inside in a hood, which is enclosed by Plexiglas, sterilizes evidence. The hood costs about $5,000, according to Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz. The Verdugo Regional Crime Laboratory will serve Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena, allowing for faster processing of crime-scene evidence.

Glendale's overall drop in violent and property crimes in 2012 may be a short-lived trend as the city saw auto burglaries and assaults jump last month. Property crimes increased from 270 in January 2012 to 330 last month, according to the Glendale Police Department's latest crime statistics, which also showed that the number of violent crimes rose slightly to 21. While certain offenses climbed in January, officials say the increase doesn't immediately indicate residents will see more crime in the future.

A 36-year-old man was arrested Saturday after he allegedly beat and yelled racial slurs at a worker from the temporary winter homeless shelter in Glendale, police said. Even as officers hauled the man, Jorge Tanchez, into their patrol car, he allegedly continued to yell racial slurs and threatened to kill the 56-year-old worker, whom police identified as a male Glendale resident. Saturday's incident marks the first hate crime of the year, Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said. The city averages between three and five hate-related incidents per year, he added.

For the fourth year in a row, violent and property crime rates dropped in Glendale in 2012, according to figures released by police on Thursday. The number of violent crimes - including homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assaults - fell from 258 in 2011 to 233 last year for a roughly 10% decrease, according to the Police Department's 2012 crime statistics. Property crimes - burglary, arson auto theft and burglary, grand and petty theft - also dipped from 3,464 incidents in 2011 to 3,051 last year, or by approximately 12%. Police Chief Ron De Pompa said he was surprised by the downward trend because of the spree of residential burglaries in Glendale's affluent neighborhoods that occurred early 2012.

In 1994, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Jr. - teenagers who came to be known as the West Memphis Three - were convicted of murdering three little boys in a Satanic ritual. There were a lot of things wrong with their trial, and in 1996 filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky stirred up public interest with “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Woods” - the first of this set's three features. Despite the subsequent activism by their supporters, it was 17 years before the boys-now-men were released.

A 24-year-old Los Angeles man pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges that he allegedly led police officers on a car chase into Burbank, where he pulled into the driveway of Providence Saint Joseph's Medical Center and crawled under a patrol car. The man, Leonard Lemos, was taken into custody Monday on suspicion of evading a police officer, hit-and-run, driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, being under the influence of a controlled substance,...

Bruce Willis must really like projects that muck with time or at least involve confrontations between past and present: from his first major feature, “Sunset” (old guy vs. young guy, real West vs. more modern myths of the West) through “Lucky Number Slevin” with its deceitful layers of narrative, to (obviously) “Pulp Fiction.” One might even (in a stretch) include his voice-over for “Look Who's Talking,” whose central joke was derived from the clash between Willis' adult voice and the adorable moppet it represented.

A former Glendale man was sentenced Monday to 10 years in federal prison for scheming to defraud private lenders of more than $5 million, officials said. U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips also ordered the man, 44-year-old Henrik Sardariani, to pay $5.4 million to the victims of his scheme and also to pay a $100,000 fine, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Henrik Sardariani pleaded guilty in January to five felony counts of wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering for organizing the loan-fraud scheme.

The arrest this week of a Hollywood couple accused of leaking confidential court records to organized crime groups, including Armenian Power, exposed a major “betrayal within the system” that forced authorities to move up timelines and change tactics to cope with the breach, Glendale police officials said. Nune Gevorkyan, 35, a federal court employee in Los Angeles, and her husband, Oganes Koshkaryan, 40, were arrested Tuesday on charges that they conspired to obstruct justice by tipping off organized crime about police investigations and upcoming arrests.