latimes--2020-06-21--She's been by his side for years. Now an L.A. councilman's wife figures in FBI probe

For years , Richelle Huizar stood by her husband , Jose Huizar , as his political star rose .
She stuck with the Los Angeles city councilman in 2013 , when he admitted to having an extramarital affair with an aide .
She was beaming at his reelection party two years later .
And she was seen as a strong contender to replace him on the City Council once he reached his term limit .
Then , FBI agents descended on their home and her political plans were shattered .
Now , as a federal investigation of City Hall corruption @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by prosecutors raise questions about whether Richelle Huizar could be called to testify in a case targeting her husband .
Federal prosecutors have laid out a devastating series of allegations against Councilman Huizar , portraying him in court filings as the head of a criminal scheme who used bribes and other illegal tactics to enrich himself and maintain his grip on power .
Richelle Huizar has appeared repeatedly in those filings , but whether she knew of any criminal activity is not clear .
Four people have agreed to plead guilty so far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do not name Jose Huizar or his wife in those plea agreements , numerous details in those filings , and the accompanying documents , make clear that the councilman is at the heart of the inquiry .
Those same filings show that investigators have been documenting Richelle Huizar ’ s activities , including her bank deposits and her attendance at a meeting to discuss a consulting agreement that prosecutors later characterized in a plea agreement as an “ indirect bribe.
” Federal investigators have not said whether they think Richelle Huizar knew that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Unlike her husband , she has not been identified as a member of the “ criminal enterprise ” described in their filings .
Neither Huizar nor his wife have been arrested or publicly charged .
Attorney Alyssa Bell , who is representing Richelle Huizar , declined to answer questions about the case , saying her client is “ not comfortable speaking publicly at this stage.
” Richelle Huizar is identified in filings only as “ Relative A-1 '' — an unnamed relative of the councilman who worked for a law firm and as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a campaign in September 2018 to succeed him .
Those biographical details all match up with Richelle Huizar .
Investigators have depicted Relative A-1 as being involved in discussions about a consulting agreement involving an L.A.-based real estate consultant and an unnamed associate of the councilman .
In federal filings , they have characterized the consulting payments as an “ indirect bribe ” from a hotel developer to the councilman , provided in exchange for help with a high-rise project .
The consulting agreement resulted in payments of $ 11,000 per month to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of 2016 , according to a deal between prosecutors and George Chiang , a real estate consultant who has agreed to plead guilty to a racketeering charge .
According to the filings , Huizar told Chiang that his wife would be involved in arranging the deal .
Richelle Huizar met with the developer ’ s relative at a Pasadena cafe to discuss the complex arrangement , according to the narrative laid out by prosecutors .
Filings in the case also describe repeated trips by Richelle Huizar in 2016 to deposit cash in her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up to $ 1,000 .
In several instances , those deposits were made around the time that the monthly payments were made in that consulting deal , the filings said .
Investigators have portrayed Richelle Huizar ’ s short-lived council campaign as another component of the criminal scheme .
By getting Richelle Huizar elected , the councilman and his associates hoped to preserve their political power over real estate projects , ensuring they would continue receiving cash bribes and other financial benefits from developers in the district , according to the filings .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ associates repeatedly pressured developers to give to a political action committee supporting Richelle Huizar ’ s council bid in exchange for “ favorable treatment ” of their projects at City Hall .
Councilman Huizar allegedly sought a $ 100,000 contribution from a real estate developer to assist his wife ’ s candidacy in exchange for helping their project , according to details in the filings .
His aide George Esparza said in one phone call that the councilman was going to “ strong-arm everyone , ” according to prosecutors .
The councilman also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where Richelle Huizar was paid approximately $ 5,000 per month , investigators said .
The ongoing federal investigation has already resulted in plea deals from Esparza , Chiang , political fundraiser Justin Jangwoo Kim and former City Councilman Mitchell Englander .
All have agreed to plead guilty , and federal filings have hinted that more is to come .
FBI agents also have been looking into other members of the Huizar family .
In a 2018 search warrant , they sought bank records for Huizar ’ s mother and brother .
Neither has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crimes .
Jose Huizar made his wife a prominent part of his campaigns for years .
His campaign mailers have featured photos of the couple on their wedding day , sitting with their children in front of a Christmas tree , and posing together at a Halloween pumpkin patch .
The couple have four children — three girls and a boy .
In 2017 , Mayor Eric Garcetti chose her to serve on a city commission focused on women ’ s issues .
When she was appointed , Councilwoman Nury Martinez praised her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a warrior ” on behalf of children , calling her a “ good friend.
” “ I can ’ t think of anyone that has ever said anything bad about Richelle , ” said Samuel Robles , former principal of Bishop Mora Salesian High School , where Richelle Huizar worked from 2012 to 2016 .
“ On the contrary , everything I ’ ve ever heard was positive — she ’ s nice , she ’ s smart .
Everybody liked her.
” Richelle Huizar ended her council campaign in November 2018 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Huizars ’ home and the councilman ’ s offices .
By then , former aides to the councilman had also filed lawsuits alleging that staffers were ordered to work on Richelle Huizar ’ s council bid during city time .
They also alleged they were tasked with picking their kids up from school , for the high school where she was employed as a paid fundraiser , and even moving her car to avoid a parking ticket on street sweeping days .
The councilman denied their allegations .
Several claims in those lawsuits @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city time , have since been dismissed , said Linda Savitt , Huizar ’ s lawyer .
( Savitt has represented The Times in unrelated litigation . )
The federal corruption inquiry is posing only the latest test of the Huizars ’ marriage .
In 2013 , a former Huizar aide sued the councilman alleging he sexually harassed her and retaliated against her for refusing his advances .
Huizar denied the allegations , saying instead that he had engaged in a consensual affair — one that had forced him to apologize to his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Esparza alleged that a Chinese developer helped Huizar secure a $ 570,000 loan to pay off the staffer in 2014 — allowing him to resolve the case in secret , according to his plea agreement .
In recent years , former Huizar staffers have alleged in court filings that the councilman engaged in an affair with another aide .
Huizar has repeatedly called those allegations false .
Richelle Huizar , originally known as Richelle Rios , grew up in Downey and went on to earn degrees at UC San Diego and UCLA Law @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the city .
She began dating Jose Huizar while both were law students , according to a 2011 interview with “ Political Sazón with Sylvia Robledo.
” After they became a couple , they moved into a “ small , little apartment ” with a futon in the living room , the councilman told Robledo .
Richelle Huizar was hired to work at L.A. ’ s Commission on Children , Youth and Their Families in 1996 , eventually rising to become its assistant executive director .
Years later , while appearing before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personal experiences — including being adopted as a child — propelled her to use her law degree to advocate for children .
“ I ’ m raising three daughters here in Los Angeles , so I care deeply about the status of women and girls , ” she said .
“ I care about the future of my daughters and all the other daughters that are out there in Los Angeles.
” By 2006 , Jose Huizar was on the council and their family was living in a newly renovated , nearly 3,000-square-foot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She left her post at the commission that year and in 2007 secured a job with Vanderford & Ruiz , where she continued working for more than a decade .
Managing partners at Vanderford & Ruiz did not respond to requests for comment on Richelle Huizar , who has described herself as a consultant for the law firm .
In the federal corruption inquiry , prosecutors have alleged that Huizar repeatedly set up meetings to pressure developers with projects in his district to hire his wife ’ s law firm , according to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hall lobbyist , who is not involved in the FBI case , told The Times that Jose Huizar asked him at a breakfast meeting to refer potential clients to Vanderford & Ruiz .
During that conversation , Huizar made clear that his wife worked for the firm and would benefit from the additional business , said the lobbyist , who declined to be named because he is not authorized to discuss the meeting .
“ I said , ‘ Yes , of course I will do that , ’ ” the lobbyist said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ answer you can give a councilman when he asks , ‘ Can you send business to my wife ?
’ ” The lobbyist said he did not ultimately refer any business to the firm .
By 2012 , Richelle Huizar was working as a paid fundraiser for Bishop Mora Salesian High School , the Catholic school in Boyle Heights that is her husband ’ s alma mater .
The Times reported in 2018 that companies with business before the councilman , many of them real estate developers , donated repeatedly to Salesian during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ employed by the school .
Jose Huizar repeatedly solicited the donations , according to documents and former staffers .
Salesian High became a sticking point with some Huizar aides .
In one lawsuit , a former aide accused the councilman of improperly assigning staffers to work on Salesian ’ s yearly fundraiser .
Legal and government experts said it would be questionable for an elected official to use his office staff to raise money for a charity that employed his wife as a fundraiser .
Jose Huizar denied many of the allegations in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they were part of a coordinated attack by former employees who have the same lawyer .
Terrence Jones , an attorney for both aides , said he has negotiated a proposed $ 200,000 settlement in those cases .

Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar trades a glance with his wife, Richelle, at an election night party in 2015 at Bishop Mora Salesian High School.
For years, Richelle Huizar stood by her husband, Jose Huizar, as his political star rose.
She stuck with the Los Angeles city councilman in 2013, when he admitted to having an extramarital affair with an aide. She was beaming at his reelection party two years later. And she was seen as a strong contender to replace him on the City Council once he reached his term limit.
Then, FBI agents descended on their home and her political plans were shattered.
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Now, as a federal investigation of City Hall corruption zeroes in on the councilman, filings by prosecutors raise questions about whether Richelle Huizar could be called to testify in a case targeting her husband.
Federal prosecutors have laid out a devastating series of allegations against Councilman Huizar, portraying him in court filings as the head of a criminal scheme who used bribes and other illegal tactics to enrich himself and maintain his grip on power. Richelle Huizar has appeared repeatedly in those filings, but whether she knew of any criminal activity is not clear.
Four people have agreed to plead guilty so far in the pay-to-play investigation. Although prosecutors do not name Jose Huizar or his wife in those plea agreements, numerous details in those filings, and the accompanying documents, make clear that the councilman is at the heart of the inquiry.
Those same filings show that investigators have been documenting Richelle Huizar’s activities, including her bank deposits and her attendance at a meeting to discuss a consulting agreement that prosecutors later characterized in a plea agreement as an “indirect bribe.”
Federal investigators have not said whether they think Richelle Huizar knew that the alleged arrangement was a bribe. Unlike her husband, she has not been identified as a member of the “criminal enterprise” described in their filings.
Neither Huizar nor his wife have been arrested or publicly charged. Attorney Alyssa Bell, who is representing Richelle Huizar, declined to answer questions about the case, saying her client is “not comfortable speaking publicly at this stage.”
Lawyers for Jose Huizar declined to comment.
Richelle Huizar is identified in filings only as “Relative A-1” — an unnamed relative of the councilman who worked for a law firm and as a high school fundraiser, who launched a campaign in September 2018 to succeed him. Those biographical details all match up with Richelle Huizar.
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Los Angeles City Council member Jose Huizar speaks during a council meeting on June 16, 2015. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)
Investigators have depicted Relative A-1 as being involved in discussions about a consulting agreement involving an L.A.-based real estate consultant and an unnamed associate of the councilman. In federal filings, they have characterized the consulting payments as an “indirect bribe” from a hotel developer to the councilman, provided in exchange for help with a high-rise project.
The consulting agreement resulted in payments of $11,000 per month to an unnamed associate of Huizar for part of 2016, according to a deal between prosecutors and George Chiang, a real estate consultant who has agreed to plead guilty to a racketeering charge.
According to the filings, Huizar told Chiang that his wife would be involved in arranging the deal. Richelle Huizar met with the developer’s relative at a Pasadena cafe to discuss the complex arrangement, according to the narrative laid out by prosecutors.
Filings in the case also describe repeated trips by Richelle Huizar in 2016 to deposit cash in her Bank of America account in amounts of up to $1,000. In several instances, those deposits were made around the time that the monthly payments were made in that consulting deal, the filings said.
Investigators have portrayed Richelle Huizar’s short-lived council campaign as another component of the criminal scheme. By getting Richelle Huizar elected, the councilman and his associates hoped to preserve their political power over real estate projects, ensuring they would continue receiving cash bribes and other financial benefits from developers in the district, according to the filings.
Prosecutors allege that the councilman and his associates repeatedly pressured developers to give to a political action committee supporting Richelle Huizar’s council bid in exchange for “favorable treatment” of their projects at City Hall.
Councilman Huizar allegedly sought a $100,000 contribution from a real estate developer to assist his wife’s candidacy in exchange for helping their project, according to details in the filings. His aide George Esparza said in one phone call that the councilman was going to “strong-arm everyone,” according to prosecutors.
The councilman also encouraged developers to hire the law firm where Richelle Huizar was paid approximately $5,000 per month, investigators said.
The ongoing federal investigation has already resulted in plea deals from Esparza, Chiang, political fundraiser Justin Jangwoo Kim and former City Councilman Mitchell Englander. All have agreed to plead guilty, and federal filings have hinted that more is to come.
FBI agents also have been looking into other members of the Huizar family. In a 2018 search warrant, they sought bank records for Huizar’s mother and brother. Neither has been arrested or publicly charged with any crimes.
::
Jose Huizar made his wife a prominent part of his campaigns for years. His campaign mailers have featured photos of the couple on their wedding day, sitting with their children in front of a Christmas tree, and posing together at a Halloween pumpkin patch. The couple have four children — three girls and a boy.
In 2017, Mayor Eric Garcetti chose her to serve on a city commission focused on women’s issues. When she was appointed, Councilwoman Nury Martinez praised her as a “fighter, a champion and a warrior” on behalf of children, calling her a “good friend.”
“I can’t think of anyone that has ever said anything bad about Richelle,” said Samuel Robles, former principal of Bishop Mora Salesian High School, where Richelle Huizar worked from 2012 to 2016. “On the contrary, everything I’ve ever heard was positive — she’s nice, she’s smart. Everybody liked her.”
Richelle Huizar ended her council campaign in November 2018, weeks after FBI agents searched the Huizars’ home and the councilman’s offices.
By then, former aides to the councilman had also filed lawsuits alleging that staffers were ordered to work on Richelle Huizar’s council bid during city time. They also alleged they were tasked with picking their kids up from school, raising money for the high school where she was employed as a paid fundraiser, and even moving her car to avoid a parking ticket on street sweeping days.
The councilman denied their allegations. Several claims in those lawsuits, including the allegations about campaigning on city time, have since been dismissed, said Linda Savitt, Huizar’s lawyer. (Savitt has represented The Times in unrelated litigation.)
The federal corruption inquiry is posing only the latest test of the Huizars’ marriage. In 2013, a former Huizar aide sued the councilman alleging he sexually harassed her and retaliated against her for refusing his advances.
Huizar denied the allegations, saying instead that he had engaged in a consensual affair — one that had forced him to apologize to his wife. During the corruption probe, Esparza alleged that a Chinese developer helped Huizar secure a $570,000 loan to pay off the staffer in 2014 — allowing him to resolve the case in secret, according to his plea agreement.
In recent years, former Huizar staffers have alleged in court filings that the councilman engaged in an affair with another aide. Huizar has repeatedly called those allegations false.
::
Richelle Huizar, originally known as Richelle Rios, grew up in Downey and went on to earn degrees at UC San Diego and UCLA Law School, according to a biography filed with the city. She began dating Jose Huizar while both were law students, according to a 2011 interview with “Political Sazón with Sylvia Robledo.”
After they became a couple, they moved into a “small, little apartment” with a futon in the living room, the councilman told Robledo.
Richelle Huizar was hired to work at L.A.’s Commission on Children, Youth and Their Families in 1996, eventually rising to become its assistant executive director. Years later, while appearing before a council committee, she said her personal experiences — including being adopted as a child — propelled her to use her law degree to advocate for children.
“I’m raising three daughters here in Los Angeles, so I care deeply about the status of women and girls,” she said. “I care about the future of my daughters and all the other daughters that are out there in Los Angeles.”
Former L.A. City Councilman Mitchell Englander, who agreed to plead guilty in the ongoing federal corruption investigation. (Los Angeles Times)
By 2006, Jose Huizar was on the council and their family was living in a newly renovated, nearly 3,000-square-foot Spanish Colonial home in Boyle Heights. She left her post at the commission that year and in 2007 secured a job with Vanderford & Ruiz, where she continued working for more than a decade.
Managing partners at Vanderford & Ruiz did not respond to requests for comment on Richelle Huizar, who has described herself as a consultant for the law firm.
In the federal corruption inquiry, prosecutors have alleged that Huizar repeatedly set up meetings to pressure developers with projects in his district to hire his wife’s law firm, according to details in the filing.
One City Hall lobbyist, who is not involved in the FBI case, told The Times that Jose Huizar asked him at a breakfast meeting to refer potential clients to Vanderford & Ruiz. During that conversation, Huizar made clear that his wife worked for the firm and would benefit from the additional business, said the lobbyist, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to discuss the meeting.
“I said, ‘Yes, of course I will do that,’” the lobbyist said. “There’s no other answer you can give a councilman when he asks, ‘Can you send business to my wife?’”
The lobbyist said he did not ultimately refer any business to the firm.
California Here’s a closer look at the ex-deputy mayor enmeshed in City Hall corruption probe Prosecutors alleged that a deputy mayor was paid by a real estate consultant to help shepherd a major project through L.A. City Hall — and leveraged his power as a city official to aid the development.
By 2012, Richelle Huizar was working as a paid fundraiser for Bishop Mora Salesian High School, the Catholic school in Boyle Heights that is her husband’s alma mater. The Times reported in 2018 that companies with business before the councilman, many of them real estate developers, donated repeatedly to Salesian during the four years that his wife was employed by the school.
Jose Huizar repeatedly solicited the donations, according to documents and former staffers.
Salesian High became a sticking point with some Huizar aides. In one lawsuit, a former aide accused the councilman of improperly assigning staffers to work on Salesian’s yearly fundraiser.
Legal and government experts said it would be questionable for an elected official to use his office staff to raise money for a charity that employed his wife as a fundraiser.
Jose Huizar denied many of the allegations in the lawsuits, saying in 2018 that they were part of a coordinated attack by former employees who have the same lawyer. Terrence Jones, an attorney for both aides, said he has negotiated a proposed $200,000 settlement in those cases.
Times staff writer Joel Rubin contributed to this report.


latimes--2020-06-21--Metro adjusts bus service to promote social distancing

A number of changes to Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus service took effect Sunday as the agency sought to promote social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic .
Metro added trips to 95 bus lines and increased the frequency of stops on some heavily-used lines , the agency said in a news release .
It is also adjusting running times based on faster speeds due to reduced traffic .
Larger , 60-foot articulated buses will continue to be employed on some lines “ to the extent possible , ” the agency said .
Other bus lines will continue to run @ @ @ @ @ @ @ full list is available on Metro ’ s website .
The changes are meant to help riders observe social distancing rules by adding capacity to buses .
The transit agency has already taken a number of other steps , including requiring face coverings for all riders , stepping up cleanings and having bus passengers board through rear doors only .
It ’ s also required bus operators to be isolated by a transparent protective barrier .
The agency had reported 109 cases of the coronavirus among its employees , contractors and vendors as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tracking cases of the virus .
Two people — a bus driver and a security guard who was a contractor for Metro — have died .

A bus motors down 3rd Street in downtown Los Angeles. As of Sunday, social distancing measures are in place on MTA’s buses.
A number of changes to Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus service took effect Sunday as the agency sought to promote social distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Metro added trips to 95 bus lines and increased the frequency of stops on some heavily-used lines, the agency said in a news release. It is also adjusting running times based on faster speeds due to reduced traffic. Larger, 60-foot articulated buses will continue to be employed on some lines “to the extent possible,” the agency said.
Other bus lines will continue to run on an enhanced Sunday schedule. A full list is available on Metro’s website.
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The changes are meant to help riders observe social distancing rules by adding capacity to buses.
The transit agency has already taken a number of other steps, including requiring face coverings for all riders, stepping up cleanings and having bus passengers board through rear doors only. It’s also required bus operators to be isolated by a transparent protective barrier.
The agency had reported 109 cases of the coronavirus among its employees, contractors and vendors as of Friday, according to its webpage tracking cases of the virus. Two people — a bus driver and a security guard who was a contractor for Metro — have died.


latimes--2020-06-21--Mysterious deaths of infants, children raise questions about how early coronavirus hit California

A cluster of mysterious deaths , some involving infants and children , is under scrutiny amid questions of whether the novel coronavirus lurked in California months before it was first detected .
But eight weeks after Gov .
Gavin Newsom declared a statewide hunt for undetected early COVID-19 deaths , the effort remains hobbled by bureaucracy and testing limits .
Among those awaiting answers is Maribeth Cortez , whose adult son , Jeremiah DeLap , died Jan. 7 in Orange County while visiting his parents .
He had been healthy , suffering on a Friday from what he thought was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bed the following Tuesday , drowned by fluid in his lungs .
China didn ’ t announce its first COVID-19 death until four days later .
But by DeLap ’ s Feb. 1 funeral service , frightening stories of a deadly new virus in Wuhan dominated the news .
“ Everybody that knew him when they were talking to me after this all started would say , ‘ Do you think he died from that ?
’ ” Cortez said .
Preserved samples of DeLap ’ s lungs are among tissue from more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decision by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on whether to test for COVID-19 .
Orange County has nine of the cases , as does Los Angeles County .
Kern County has identified two respiratory deaths that might suggest COVID-19 , both of young women , one of whom died Dec. 21 .
Interviews and internal documents show medical examiners in Shasta , Sacramento and Santa Clara counties , meanwhile , are scrutinizing the deaths of children and babies , amid growing recognition of COVID-19 infection rates in children who show @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in any of the cases could dramatically rewrite the narrative of COVID-19 in the United States .
Researchers tracking the virus ’ genetic mutations peg its jump from an unknown animal host to humans as occurring in November .
China ’ s first documented illnesses began in early December .
It was well into March before most California coroners and medical examiners began to routinely test decedents who fell under their jurisdiction for COVID-19 , using now-familiar nasal swab tests that must be done within days of death .
Even then , testing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — those who had symptoms of respiratory failure , traveled to China or died without witness .
Checking for missed cases of COVID-19 requires examining preserved tissue , a test available only through the CDC .
It took months for CDC pathologists to realize the virus had already killed people in the United States in early February .
At the time , U.S. health officials believed they could control the virus spread by monitoring international travelers and isolating a dozen known infected individuals in California and four other states .
DeLap , 39 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Basalt , Colo. , near the Aspen ski area .
He returned to his inland Riverside County hometown for Christmas , and was at the home of his roommate ’ s parents in nearby Orange County on Jan. 3 when he became sick .
He thought the cause was something he ate the night before .
DeLap believed he was on the mend , even going for a walk Monday , but was worsening again Tuesday morning when he spoke to his mother .
“ He was having trouble breathing and I told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the urgent care , ” Cortez said .
“ He told me he ’ d talk to me later and he went and [ lay ] down.
” He was found dead in bed hours later , his lungs filled with fluid and his body still burning from fever .
The Orange County coroner ruled DeLap ’ s death the result of severe acute lobar pneumonia , one lung so congested it had doubled in weight .
But the coroner did not identify the organism infecting DeLap .
The thought that it might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she heard story after story of similar deaths .
DeLap was an organ donor , so four weeks ago Cortez called the organization that received his tissue to ask if they will test it for COVID-19 .
Unknown to Cortez , the Orange County coroner harbored similar questions .
DeLap ’ s death is among nine cases from late December to March that the county has asked the California Department of Public Health to consider .
The deceased range in age from 33 to 61 , and include an elderly homeless man found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who collapsed .
Initial autopsies attributed their deaths to congested lungs , pneumonia or blood clots .
If the state agency agrees , the cases will be forwarded to the CDC for more review before preserved tissue is tested for COVID-19 .
Los Angeles County ’ s medical examiner has forwarded nine cases for review but county lawyers blocked the release of details .
Tissue from a 10th Los Angeles death , a 17-year-old boy who died March 18 , was sent two months ago to the CDC for COVID-19 testing .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other viruses : streptococcal pneumonia and human metapneumovirus .
After the CDC confirmed a Silicon Valley tech worker ’ s Feb. 6 death as the nation ’ s first known COVID-19 fatality , Newsom called on medical examiners statewide to hunt for missed cases extending back to mid-December .
But the CDC is limiting California — a state of 39 million people — to just eight to 10 cases a week .
The state health department has stepped in as a gatekeeper between county morgues and the federal lab .
By the end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forwarded only two cases to the CDC and had 40 other deaths under state review .
Such restrictions did not exist before the COVID-19 pandemic .
They are new to Dr. Deirdre Amaro , the Shasta County sheriff ’ s forensic pathologist who relies on the CDC lab for infectious disease workups when someone dies inexplicably in her rugged , deeply forested Northern California county .
Amaro was jolted this winter by the back-to-back deaths of two children , one an infant , and local accounts of other sick children .
She called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and hospital officials .
She remembers someone in the room theorizing that it was a “ bad year ” for respiratory syncytial virus , usually referred to as RSV .
It is a common childhood disease that seldom kills .
“ Since I ’ ve been here ... we have never had sequential cases that are pediatric deaths .
I do NOT want to practice forensic pathology in a setting where that is the norm , ” Amaro said .
“ The emotional/psychological toll is too great.
” She had already sent tissue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the CDC for testing when the California health department set up hurdles .
She has since sought virus testing for another pediatric death and is awaiting a decision on whether the CDC will accept the cases .
Early reports out of China and California suggested COVID-19 had very low infection rates among children .
“ What has emerged now , the experience we ’ ve had on the East Coast and in Europe has been markedly different , ” said Dr. Roberta Lynn DeBiasi , chief of the pediatric division at Children ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and a co-author of several studies on COVID-19 and children .
DeBiasi is among researchers who in May began documenting growing numbers of hospitalized children with COVID-19 and symptoms normally associated with an otherwise rare inflammatory illness called Kawasaki disease .
Some had high fever , joint pain and rashes .
Others had abdominal pain .
An alarming number show organ failure and heart damage , DeBiasi said .
Amid those reports , a California health department physician called Amaro , who in addition to her own two deaths told her of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ County to hospitals in Sacramento .
Dr. Chante Buntin , the state health department medical consultant , wrote to Sacramento County ’ s coroner expressing interest in infants and children who died with what might have been “ COVID-like symptoms , Kawasaki-like symptoms in California during the period of December to present.
” Sacramento County ’ s coroner has sent a single case to the CDC for testing but would not provide further details .
California has no confirmed child deaths from COVID-19 .
The CDC in early April listed three suspected virus-related @ @ @ @ @ @ @ since not updated that information .
The federal health agency has , however , alerted pediatricians to watch for signs of what it now calls “ multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children , ” or MIS-C .
The California Department of Public Health did not answer questions about its hunt for child deaths , and gave only limited responses to broader questions about postmortem testing .
The agency did provide an email exchange in which a state epidemiologist offered to intervene on a “ flood of requests ” from California medical examiners , health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both deceased adults and children .
Dr. Shua Chai told the CDC that California would narrow its criteria for testing the dead , based not on the questions arising in morgues , but to fit the number of cases the CDC lab would take .
“ The capacity will really help drive our prioritization , ” Chai said .
At first the federal agency said it could handle only three to four cases a week and that it could take as long as two months to send back results .
On May 1 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s COVID-19 mortality team suggested the federal lab would take as many as 10 a week .
“ I ’ m not saying this will be acceptable by my leadership , ” warned Dr. Sarah Reagan-Steiner , clinical lead on the CDC ’ s COVID-19 mortality unit .
There was no response to repeated questions sent to the CDC public affairs office over several months regarding postmortem testing .
The state Health Department ’ s press office defended the state ’ s reliance on the CDC and the federal agency ’ s 10-case @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states are not only testing many more dead , but using other methods such as postmortem testing for antibodies .
The state agency ’ s press office said the CDC testing is “ highly specialized and requires careful validation.
” “ Other types of testing may not provide results that are as reliable as CDC testing.
” In Seattle , the King County medical examiner considers death itself as a reason to test on the spot for the virus with a nasal swab .
“ COVID-19 is so new as an infection , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different ways , ” associate Medical Examiner Dr. Sharon Yarid said .
“ So anyone who dies basically had , you know , already some reason to be tested.
” King County is scanning funeral homes for cases to test and checking blood serum from older cases for signs of COVID-19 antibodies .
Family members have only to ask to have a death tested for the virus .
The liberal guidelines have led to the identification of 58 additional COVID-19 deaths , including young adults , and accounting for more than one out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus .
That ’ s nearly double the 29 coronavirus deaths identified under the more restrictive policies of the Los Angeles County medical examiner , though Los Angeles County has more than five times the number of COVID-19 cases .
( The medical examiner handles only violent , sudden , or unusual deaths , which account for a relatively small percentage of overall COVID-19 deaths . )
Yet when it comes to testing preserved tissue , Yarid is also at the mercy of the CDC .
She said she has asked the federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death .
As of last week , Yarid said she had not received an answer .
Those frustrated by the hurdle in answering the question — was it COVID-19 ?
— include family members of a man found dead on a Los Angeles bus bench in late January .
The Los Angeles County medical examiner-coroner ’ s office classified the death as “ complications of alcohol abuse , ” though there was no sign of recent alcohol use .
The man ’ s brother , who asked not to be named in order @ @ @ @ @ @ @ medical examiner has refused repeated requests to test the body for COVID-19 .
“ They have not , they haven ’ t really gotten off of that February , March , early April mindset that we live in an environment of testing scarcity , ” said the brother .
Los Angeles County supervisors cited such complaints this month in telling the medical examiner ’ s office to provide COVID-19 testing for families that ask for it .
A spokeswoman for the medical examiner said the office is still working out a procedure .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ CDC testing for missed COVID-19 deaths .
“ So you found that there were several cases that were not identified early on ... what does that tell you ?
” Ventura County Medical Examiner Dr. Christopher Young said .
“ How does that add to where we ’ re at with dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic right now ?
” San Diego officials told The Times that a paper review of more than 700 deaths turned up none that met the state ’ s written criteria — deaths from Dec. 17 to March @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , fever or cough , or known exposure to COVID-19 or international travel .
San Mateo County , a part of Silicon Valley home to California ’ s earliest COVID-19 cases , identified one suspect death .
According to agency emails , a county pathologist checked the freezer for tissue to send to the CDC , and discovered the samples had been “ tossed , ” along with tissue from everyone else who died prior to March 11 .

Maribeth Cortez, with her husband, Jerry, wonders if her son Jeremiah DeLap, 39, died of COVID-19 after a four-day illness in early January. The Orange County coroner wants to know too.
A cluster of mysterious deaths, some involving infants and children, is under scrutiny amid questions of whether the novel coronavirus lurked in California months before it was first detected. But eight weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide hunt for undetected early COVID-19 deaths, the effort remains hobbled by bureaucracy and testing limits.
Among those awaiting answers is Maribeth Cortez, whose adult son, Jeremiah DeLap, died Jan. 7 in Orange County while visiting his parents. He had been healthy, suffering on a Friday from what he thought was food poisoning, and found dead in bed the following Tuesday, drowned by fluid in his lungs.
For the record: This article incorrectly refers to streptococcal pneumonia as a virus. It is caused by a bacterial pathogen.
In an earlier version of this article, Maribeth Cortez was erroneously referred to as Maribeth Ortiz.
China didn’t announce its first COVID-19 death until four days later. But by DeLap’s Feb. 1 funeral service, frightening stories of a deadly new virus in Wuhan dominated the news.
“Everybody that knew him when they were talking to me after this all started would say, ‘Do you think he died from that?’” Cortez said.
“And I said, ‘I don’t know.’”
She still doesn’t.
Preserved samples of DeLap’s lungs are among tissue from more than 40 California deaths waiting for a decision by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on whether to test for COVID-19. Orange County has nine of the cases, as does Los Angeles County. Kern County has identified two respiratory deaths that might suggest COVID-19, both of young women, one of whom died Dec. 21.
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Interviews and internal documents show medical examiners in Shasta, Sacramento and Santa Clara counties, meanwhile, are scrutinizing the deaths of children and babies, amid growing recognition of COVID-19 infection rates in children who show mysterious inflammatory symptoms.
A positive finding in any of the cases could dramatically rewrite the narrative of COVID-19 in the United States.
Researchers tracking the virus’ genetic mutations peg its jump from an unknown animal host to humans as occurring in November. China’s first documented illnesses began in early December.
It was well into March before most California coroners and medical examiners began to routinely test decedents who fell under their jurisdiction for COVID-19, using now-familiar nasal swab tests that must be done within days of death. Even then, testing is limited to a fraction of cases — those who had symptoms of respiratory failure, traveled to China or died without witness.
Checking for missed cases of COVID-19 requires examining preserved tissue, a test available only through the CDC. It took months for CDC pathologists to realize the virus had already killed people in the United States in early February. At the time, U.S. health officials believed they could control the spread of the virus by monitoring international travelers and isolating a dozen known infected individuals in California and four other states.
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DeLap, 39, worked as a house painter in Basalt, Colo., near the Aspen ski area. He returned to his inland Riverside County hometown for Christmas, and was at the home of his roommate’s parents in nearby Orange County on Jan. 3 when he became sick. He thought the cause was something he ate the night before. DeLap believed he was on the mend, even going for a walk Monday, but was worsening again Tuesday morning when he spoke to his mother.
“He was having trouble breathing and I told him he should try and go to the urgent care,” Cortez said. “He told me he’d talk to me later and he went and [lay] down.”
He was found dead in bed hours later, his lungs filled with fluid and his body still burning from fever.
The sudden January death of Jeremiah DeLap, 39, is among cases now considered for COVID-19 testing. (Family photo)
The Orange County coroner ruled DeLap’s death the result of severe acute lobar pneumonia, one lung so congested it had doubled in weight. But the coroner did not identify the organism infecting DeLap. The thought that it might have been the coronavirus haunted Cortez as she heard story after story of similar deaths. DeLap was an organ donor, so four weeks ago Cortez called the organization that received his tissue to ask if they were going to test it for COVID-19.
Unknown to Cortez, the Orange County coroner harbored similar questions. DeLap’s death is among nine cases from late December to March that the county has asked the California Department of Public Health to consider. The deceased range in age from 33 to 61 and include an elderly homeless man found in his RV and a young surfer who collapsed. Initial autopsies attributed their deaths to congested lungs, pneumonia or blood clots.
If the state agency agrees, the cases will be forwarded to the CDC for more review before preserved tissue is tested for COVID-19. Los Angeles County’s medical examiner has forwarded nine cases for review, but county lawyers blocked the release of details. Tissue from a 10th Los Angeles death, a 17-year-old boy who died March 18, was sent two months ago to the CDC for COVID-19 testing. It came back last week positive for two other viruses: streptococcal pneumonia and human metapneumovirus.
After the CDC confirmed a Silicon Valley tech worker’s Feb. 6 death as the nation’s first known COVID-19 fatality, Newsom called on medical examiners statewide to hunt for missed cases extending back to mid-December.
But the CDC is limiting California — a state of 39 million people — to just eight to 10 cases a week. The state Health Department has stepped in as a gatekeeper between county morgues and the federal lab.
By the end of May, the state agency had forwarded only two cases to the CDC and had 40 other deaths under state review.
Such restrictions did not exist before the COVID-19 pandemic. They are new to Dr. Deirdre Amaro, the Shasta County sheriff’s forensic pathologist who relies on the CDC lab for infectious disease workups when someone dies inexplicably in her rugged, deeply forested Northern California county.
Amaro was jolted this winter by the back-to-back deaths of two children, one an infant, and local accounts of other sick children. She called a Jan. 29 meeting with county health and hospital officials. She remembered someone in the room theorizing that it was a “bad year” for respiratory syncytial virus, usually referred to as RSV. It is a common childhood disease that seldom kills.
“Since I’ve been here ... we have never had sequential cases that are pediatric deaths. I do NOT want to practice forensic pathology in a setting where that is the norm,” Amaro said. “The emotional/psychological toll is too great.”
She had already sent tissue from one of those pediatric deaths to the CDC for testing when the California Health Department set up hurdles. She has since sought virus testing for another pediatric death and is awaiting a decision on whether the CDC will accept the cases.
Early reports out of China and California suggested COVID-19 had very low infection rates among children.
“What has emerged now, the experience we’ve had on the East Coast and in Europe has been markedly different,” said Dr. Roberta Lynn DeBiasi, chief of the pediatric division at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., and a co-author of several studies on COVID-19 and children.
DeBiasi is among researchers who in May began documenting growing numbers of hospitalized children with COVID-19 and symptoms normally associated with an otherwise rare inflammatory illness called Kawasaki disease. Some had high fever, joint pain and rashes. Others had abdominal pain. An alarming number showed organ failure and heart damage, DeBiasi said.
Amid those reports, a California Health Department physician phoned Amaro, who in addition to her own two deaths told her of others — two infants sent from Shasta County to hospitals in Sacramento.
Dr. Chante Buntin, the state Health Department medical consultant, wrote to Sacramento County’s coroner expressing interest in infants and children who died with what might have been “COVID-like symptoms, Kawasaki-like symptoms in California during the period of December to present.”
Sacramento County’s coroner has sent a single case to the CDC for testing but has not provided further details.
California has no confirmed child deaths from COVID-19. The CDC in early April listed three suspected virus-related deaths of children nationwide, but has since not updated that information. The federal health agency has, however, alerted pediatricians to watch for signs of what it now calls “multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children,” or MIS-C.
The California Department of Public Health did not answer questions about its hunt for child deaths, and gave only limited responses to broader questions about postmortem testing. The agency did provide an email exchange in which a state epidemiologist offered to intervene on a “flood of requests” from California medical examiners, health departments and pathologists seeking COVID-19 testing for both deceased adults and children.
California The pandemic’s toll: Lives lost in California Hundreds of people have died in California due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These are some of their stories.
Dr. Shua Chai told the CDC that California would narrow its criteria for testing the dead, based not on the questions arising in morgues but to fit the number of cases the CDC lab would take.
“The capacity will really help drive our prioritization,” Chai said.
At first the federal agency said it could handle only three to four cases a week and that it could take as long as two months to send back results. On May 1, the head of the CDC’s COVID-19 mortality team suggested the federal lab would take as many as 10 a week.
“I’m not saying this will be acceptable by my leadership,” warned Dr. Sarah Reagan-Steiner, clinical lead on the CDC’s COVID-19 mortality unit. There was no response to repeated questions sent to the CDC public affairs office over several months regarding postmortem testing.
The state Health Department’s press office defended the state’s reliance on the CDC and the federal agency’s 10-case weekly limit. Medical examiners in other states are not only testing many more dead, but also using other methods such as postmortem testing for antibodies.
The state agency’s press office said the CDC testing was “highly specialized and requires careful validation.”
“Other types of testing may not provide results that are as reliable as CDC testing.”
In Seattle, the King County medical examiner considers death itself as a reason to test on the spot for the virus with a nasal swab.
“COVID-19 is so new as an infection, and it probably affects different people in different ways,” associate Medical Examiner Dr. Sharon Yarid said. “So anyone who dies basically had, you know, already some reason to be tested.”
King County is scanning funeral homes for cases to test and checking blood serum from older cases for signs of COVID-19 antibodies. Family members have only to ask to have a death tested for the virus.
The liberal guidelines have led to the identification of 58 additional COVID-19 deaths, including young adults, and accounting for more than one out of 10 local deaths attributed to the virus. That’s nearly double the 29 coronavirus deaths identified under the more restrictive policies of the Los Angeles County medical examiner, though Los Angeles County has more than five times the number of COVID-19 cases. (The medical examiner handles only violent, sudden or unusual deaths, which account for a relatively small percentage of overall COVID-19 deaths.)
Yet when it comes to testing preserved tissue, Yarid is also at the mercy of the CDC. She said she had asked the federal lab to evaluate a troubling Feb. 6 death. As of last week, Yarid said she had not received an answer.
Those frustrated by the hurdle in answering the question — was it COVID-19? — include family members of a man found dead on a Los Angeles bus bench in late January. The Los Angeles County medical examiner-coroner’s office classified the death as “complications of alcohol abuse,” though there was no sign of recent alcohol use.
The man’s brother, who asked not to be named in order to preserve family privacy, said the medical examiner had refused repeated requests to test the body for COVID-19.
“They have not, they haven’t really gotten off of that February, March, early April mindset that we live in an environment of testing scarcity,” said the brother.
Los Angeles County supervisors cited such complaints this month in telling the medical examiner’s office to provide COVID-19 testing for families who ask for it. A spokeswoman for the medical examiner said the office was still working out a procedure.
Not all California medical examiners are seeking CDC testing for missed COVID-19 deaths.
“So you found that there were several cases that were not identified early on ... what does that tell you?” Ventura County Medical Examiner Dr. Christopher Young said. “How does that add to where we’re at with dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic right now?”
San Diego officials told The Times that a paper review of more than 700 deaths had turned up none that met the state’s written criteria — deaths from Dec. 17 to March 16, with signs of respiratory failure, fever or cough, or known exposure to COVID-19 or international travel.
San Mateo County, a part of Silicon Valley home to California’s earliest COVID-19 cases, identified one suspect death.
According to agency emails, a county pathologist checked the freezer for tissue to send to the CDC, and discovered the samples had been “tossed,” along with tissue from everyone else who died prior to March 11.


latimes--2020-06-21--How two Black women in L.A. helped build Black Lives Matter from hashtag to global movement

Melina Abdullah stood in the bed of a white pickup truck parked in the middle of Vine Street in Hollywood before a sea of people whose end she could not place .
Speaking into a microphone , she told the crowd on that early June day that they were going to honor the spirits of people whose lives had been stolen by police violence .
She called out George Floyd .
She called out Ryan Twyman .
She called out Wakiesha Wilson .
She called out Kisha Michael .
After each name , she poured water from a plastic bottle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protesters responded with “ Àse ” ( ah-shay ) , a word used by the Yoruba people of Nigeria akin to ending a prayer with “ Amen.
” “ Our power comes not only from the people who are here but from the spirits that we can not see , ” said Abdullah , a Cal State L.A. professor , single mother of three and the leader of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles .
“ When we say their name , we invoke their presence.
” The unprecedented size and scope of recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has transformed from a small but passionate movement into a cultural and political phenomenon .
And in few places has that movement generated more passion than in Los Angeles , home to two of BLM ’ s guiding forces , Abdullah and Patrisse Cullors .
A core group of Los Angeles activists has worked relentlessly for years protesting LAPD actions , advocating criminal justice reform , speaking out at Police Commission meetings and picketing outside City Hall .
Now , four weeks after Floyd was killed when a Minneapolis police officer pressed his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nearly nine minutes , members are continuing to channel their outrage and grief over his killing into a sustained mass campaign for profound social change .
The group has political sway that would have seemed unimaginable just a few months ago , with defunding police now becoming a mainstream political policy question .
And their protests have brought together a melting pot of people demanding change .
It ’ s been seven years since the group formed after George Zimmerman ’ s acquittal in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin .
On July @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an Oakland activist , posted what she called a love letter to Black people on Facebook , telling them , “ Our lives matter.
” Los Angeles activist Cullors turned it into a hashtag : # BlackLivesMatter .
New York activist Opal Tometi built the digital platform .
A few days later , Cullors called her friend Abdullah and 30 others together to form the first chapter of what is now a network of 16 across North America .
The movement spread after protests erupted nationwide in 2014 when a white police officer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ killed Michael Brown , an unarmed Black 18-year-old .
Between instances of nationwide unrest , BLM L.A. has pursued racial justice reforms and supported the families of those killed by law enforcement in the region .
The organization has been viewed by some as controversial for its confrontational tactics and rejection of so-called respectability politics .
But its approach has also attracted young Black people and embraced those who are LGBTQ .
Despite its growing renown among Black Americans , only recently has Black Lives Matter become a household phrase among people outside @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , likens the organization to an underground cult band that has now broken into the mainstream .
Leadership within the movement is decentralized .
But Cullors , who serves as chair of the BLM Global Network Foundation , the group ’ s international arm , assists her hometown chapter when needed .
She also collaborates with organizers outside BLM under the broader Movement for Black Lives , a national coalition of more than 100 organizations .
With nearly 100,000 estimated protesters , the June 7 Hollywood protest was the biggest organized gathering so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s death .
BLM has made it easier for people to lean into social justice , Cullors said , in part through use of social media and the engagement of celebrities like the rapper YG , who promoted that protest and used footage from it in a music video for his song “ FTP , ” which is an abbreviation for “ F— the police.
” “ It ’ s unheard of in L.A. to bring out 100,000 people to protest , ” Cullors said .
“ That ’ s very New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ L.A. is a very apathetic town.
” Before the march began , E ’ Layjiah Wooley approached Cullors to ask how she could join the movement .
The 19-year-old with curly pink hair told Cullors that they ’ d met a year before at a march in Oakland and that she had just moved to Los Angeles .
“ You ’ re in the right place , ” Cullors told her .
Cullors , who grew up in Van Nuys in the 1990s , said her earliest memory of police is watching officers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ looking for her uncle and ransacking the place without acknowledging the family .
She was 7 .
For Cullors , the mother of a 4-year-old boy , the current struggle is being waged for this generation — and those to come .
“ This is a movement led and envisioned and directed by Black women , ” she said .
“ Many of us are queer , we ’ re moms , and we really started this work because we wanted to see our children survive .
We ’ re laying the groundwork @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not just for our descendants but for right now.
” With 500 members , the L.A. chapter is one of the biggest and most influential in the BLM network .
The core leadership team consists of five people , including Abdullah , who manages messaging and strategy .
She said she tries to ensure that members have a say in most decisions , though the core team takes on alone issues that could risk danger or arrest .
None of the leaders are paid for their organizing work .
Scot Brown , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at UCLA , said people like Abdullah are the “ real heroes ” for leading the resistance long before there was international support .
“ There was a time when this movement was vilified , ” he said .
“ Now it ’ s become the chant that affirms human rights.
” The current moment has brought a wave of support from other progressive organizations .
But at times , good intentions have proved insufficient .
This month , the group behind the yearly LA Pride parade organized a march in solidarity with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after they submitted a special event permit application to the Los Angeles Police Department .
As a matter of practice , Black Lives Matter Los Angeles does not collaborate with police on any of its events .
Under pressure , LA Pride apologized and said it would step back from the event .
The All Black Lives Matter solidarity march at the direction of a newly formed group , Black LGBTQ+ Activists for Change , whose board is composed entirely of Black LGBTQ people .
For Abdullah , the situation illustrates the deeper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what solidarity really means .
“ It ’ s more than just saying ‘ Black lives matter ’ or painting it on the street , ” she said .
Abdullah , who is in her 40s , grew up the daughter of two schoolteachers in East Oakland during the rise of the Black Panther Party .
She now teaches pan-African studies at Cal State L.A. — and was supposed to spend this year writing a book .
In September , she took her first sabbatical in 18 years .
While Abdullah is more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the world of art .
Originally trained as a dancer , her work lives at the intersection of performance and activism .
For her master ’ s thesis last year at USC ’ s Roski School of Art and Design , Cullors contrasted the “ history of Black bodies being harmed , tortured and brutalized ” with pieces designed to This month , she performed which centers on a prayer she contributed to writing after the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia .
Cullors released her first book , a “ poetic memoir @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lives Matter titled in 2018 .
Art , she believes , is essential to the movement .
“ We didn ’ t build it as a policy think tank ; we built it as a cultural movement , ” she said .
“ That ’ s why everybody feels moved by it .
It ’ s why it tugs at people ’ s hearts .
It ’ s why it pisses people off .
It ’ s why people felt like they had to pick a side.
” That ’ s what it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 30 , who was having a mental episode when he ran through the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza shopping mall with a knife and was shot dead by police .
The Los Angeles Police Commission later ruled that the 2018 shooting Catherine Walker , Mack ’ s mother , said the leaders of BLM L.A. have become like a second family to her during a three-year period when she lost three family members .
She spoke at a protest June 3 that drew thousands .
Having that platform has made her feel validated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my son is gone , George Floyd opened our doors to show there is hope that justice can be gotten , ” she said .
BLM L.A. helps families like Walker ’ s by ordering independent autopsies , which can cost upwards of $ 6,000 .
Abdullah said those autopsies can make all the difference in wrongful-death lawsuits .
The organization also requests body-cam video from police departments , removes the narration by law enforcement officials and pushes the raw footage back out on social media .
“ We try to strip it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can see what actually happened , ” Abdullah said .
That kind of continued support is part of the core mission of BLM L.A. , whose two main tenets are to prosecute police whose use of force is unjustified and to defund police departments while shifting resources toward social services including mental health , schools and housing .
BLM organizers , who take inspiration from the civil disobedience tactics of the Black Power era of the 1970s , have clashed at times with veteran activists in L.A. ’ s Black community , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Others question BLM ’ s follow-through after moments of confrontation .
Longtime community activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson , president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable , said BLM ’ s tactics opened city leaders ’ eyes to the seriousness of police violence .
Without the recent protests , he said , leaders would never have agreed to reduce the LAPD budget .
“ However , without sustained , focused political engagement and a structured organization to carry out a concrete program for police overhaul , the great danger is that when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every one of the gains , ” Hutchinson said .
Juliet Hooker , a political science professor at Brown University who has studied the BLM movement , called it the most effective Black political mobilization since the civil rights era .
“ It ’ s only seven years old and there are these massive protests all over the U.S. , all over the globe in solidarity and raising questions about racism in their own local context , ” she said .
“ That ’ s an enormous potential transformation in political consciousness.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , to judge BLM on legislative or policy outcomes .
But she said that the groundwork for those changes is being laid now and that political candidates have no choice but to address systemic racism ahead of the November election .
Increasingly , BLM ’ s strategy appears to be working .
At Los Angeles City Hall on Monday , to stop relying on police and embrace new strategies for public safety .
“ The world is speaking right now , ” she said at the meeting .
“ They ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system of policing that puts targets on the backs of Black people.
” Abdullah ’ s remarks came during a special meeting devoted to the People ’ s Budget , an alternative spending plan for City Hall that would allocate 5.7 % of the city ’ s general fund to the LAPD , a reduction of about 90 % compared with Mayor Eric Garcetti ’ s spending plan for the upcoming budget year .
Garcetti said that the city needs more law enforcement reforms and that leaders are exploring how to respond to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health workers .
He announced a moratorium on adding people to the CalGang database and new processes for reporting police misconduct .
“ But we can ’ t limit our law enforcement budget to a point that would deny our communities critical emergency services , ” he said .
“ We have to continually work to improve all of our government services , including policing.
” Law enforcement officers have including Twyman , in Los Angeles County since 2000 .
Almost all were men and nearly 80 % were Black or Latino .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the use of force was deemed legally justified by the L.A. County district attorney ’ s office .
Local organizers with Black Lives Matter have built momentum through aggressive tactics — camping out at City Hall , shutting down freeways — and targeting top law enforcement officials and Garcetti .
They advocated firing former Police Chief Charlie Beck and his successor , Michel Moore , as well as L.A. County Dist .
Atty .
Jackie Lacey , over their perceived mishandling of police shootings and misconduct .
Though the Police Commission , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was praised for passing reforms including de-escalation training , use of body cameras and limiting the use of chokeholds , Abdullah has maintained that those don ’ t go far enough .
Among Black Lives Matter organizers ’ achievements , they count the firing of the five Inglewood officers who fatally shot Kisha Michael and Marquintan Sandlin in 2016 ; the end of a Los Angeles Unified School District policy of randomly searching students with metal detectors ; the 2019 arrest of Democratic donor Ed Buck , accused of preying on gay Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doses of methamphetamine ; and Police Commission rulings of wrongdoing by officers in the deaths of numerous L.A. residents at the hands of police .
They also say they forced Lacey into a November runoff election against progressive challenger George Gascón .
After public pressure last year , city prosecutors against Abdullah after she allegedly grabbed the arm of an LAPD officer during a contentious Police Commission meeting .
In February , Abdullah alleging that the police and city attorney ’ s office illegally targeted her for prosecution because of her activism .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ March , at Abdullah and other unarmed Black Lives Matter protesters during a confrontation outside the couple ’ s home , telling them : “ I will shoot you .
Get off of my porch.
” State officials are whether Lacey ’ s husband committed a crime and should face prosecution .
After the incident , Lacey apologized on her husband ’ s behalf but also derided the protesters for what she called repeated harassment and threats throughout her two terms in office .
Recent BLM protests have come against the backdrop of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ killed Black Americans .
Abdullah said she ’ s fighting a more existential threat .
“ We pray that we don ’ t get sick , ” she said .
“ But if we do , it is what it is because my children are under greater threat by these officers who kill people than they are by COVID-19.
” After days of protests , which at times were marred by instances of vandalism and theft , local officials lifted curfews and pulled back the heavy police presence .
Faced with growing criticism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ peaceful demonstrators , top law enforcement officials said they will not pursue criminal or financial penalties against the protesters .
Garcetti committed to making a $ 250-million investment in communities of color .
The money will be cut from city operations , including as much as $ 150 million from the Los Angeles Police Department , which has a budget of $ 1.8 billion .
Abdullah called the cuts a positive step forward but said that commitment came after five years of pressure to defund police while the department ’ s budget increased @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hollywood march , Abdullah ’ s day started with a radio interview at 4 a.m. She tuned into the city ’ s Budget and Finance Committee meeting and then spoke at a news conference in front of City Hall in support of When she got home close to 7 p.m. , she pulled her hair into a bun and sank into her burnt orange sectional for a conference call .
During the initial weeks of the coronavirus stay-at-home orders , Abdullah said , she slowed down for the first time since Black Lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ returned to cooking family dinners of eggplant Parmesan and fried fish and greens .
The family grew closer .
Then Floyd was killed .
And though Abdullah regularly brings her children to protests and other actions , she worries she isn ’ t giving them the same attention as mothers who aren ’ t leading a social movement .
For Abdullah , this historic moment means 20-hour days that end with her answering emails until her eyes get blurry and she crashes on the couch .
It ’ s a sacrifice she ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own children , for those whose parents died at the hands of police and for a vision of a better United States that for so long has been maddeningly out of reach .
“ We decided as a family — we talked about it , that we got to be all in in this moment , ” she said .
“ But it ’ s not going to be forever .
”

Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, addresses the crowd during a June 8 memorial service and funeral procession honoring George Floyd and demanding justice for those killed by police.
Melina Abdullah stood in the bed of a white pickup truck parked in the middle of Vine Street in Hollywood before a sea of people whose end she could not place.
Speaking into a microphone, she told the crowd on that early June day that they were going to honor the spirits of people whose lives had been stolen by police violence.
She called out George Floyd. She called out Ryan Twyman. She called out Wakiesha Wilson. She called out Kisha Michael. After each name, she poured water from a plastic bottle onto the hot pavement below, while protesters responded with “Àse” (ah-shay), a word used by the Yoruba people of Nigeria akin to ending a prayer with “Amen.”
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“Our power comes not only from the people who are here but from the spirits that we cannot see,” said Abdullah, a Cal State L.A. professor, single mother of three and the leader of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. “When we say their name, we invoke their presence.”
Melina Abdullah, center, stands with others for a group photo at a Black Lives Matter event June 6 at Norman O. Houston Park in Baldwin Hills. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
Then they marched.
The unprecedented size and scope of recent rallies speaks to how Black Lives Matter has transformed from a small but passionate movement into a cultural and political phenomenon. And in few places has that movement generated more passion than in Los Angeles, home to two of BLM’s guiding forces, Abdullah and Patrisse Cullors.
A core group of Los Angeles activists has worked relentlessly for years protesting LAPD actions, advocating criminal justice reform, speaking out at Police Commission meetings and picketing outside City Hall. Now, four weeks after Floyd was killed when a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, members are continuing to channel their outrage and grief over his killing into a sustained mass campaign for profound social change.
The group has political sway that would have seemed unimaginable just a few months ago, with defunding police now becoming a mainstream political policy question. And their protests have brought together a melting pot of people demanding change.
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It’s been seven years since the group formed after George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. On July 13, 2013, Alicia Garza, an Oakland activist, posted what she called a love letter to Black people on Facebook, telling them, “Our lives matter.” Los Angeles activist Cullors turned it into a hashtag: #BlackLivesMatter. New York activist Opal Tometi built the digital platform.
A few days later, Cullors called her friend Abdullah and 30 others together to form the first chapter of what is now a network of 16 across North America.
The movement spread after protests erupted nationwide in 2014 when a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed Black 18-year-old.
Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, marches with others in Hollywood on June 7. It was the largest demonstration in Los Angeles since George Floyd’s killing. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Between instances of nationwide unrest, BLM L.A. has pursued racial justice reforms and supported the families of those killed by law enforcement in the region. The organization has been viewed by some as controversial for its confrontational tactics and rejection of so-called respectability politics. But its approach has also attracted young Black people and embraced those who are LGBTQ.
Despite its growing renown among Black Americans, only recently has Black Lives Matter become a household phrase among people outside the Black community. Cullors, 37, likens the organization to an underground cult band that has now broken into the mainstream.
Leadership within the movement is decentralized. But Cullors, who serves as chair of the BLM Global Network Foundation, the group’s international arm, assists her hometown chapter when needed. She also collaborates with organizers outside BLM under the broader Movement for Black Lives, a national coalition of more than 100 organizations.
With nearly 100,000 estimated protesters, the June 7 Hollywood protest was the biggest organized gathering so far in Los Angeles since Floyd’s death.
BLM has made it easier for people to lean into social justice, Cullors said, in part through use of social media and the engagement of celebrities like the rapper YG, who promoted that protest and used footage from it in a music video for his song “FTP,” which is an abbreviation for “F— the police.”
Black Lives Matter Los Angeles organizers Richie Reseda, left, Haewon Asfaw and Patrisse Cullors laugh at a Twitter post at Cullors’ home in South Los Angeles. (Gabriella Angotti-Jones / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s unheard of in L.A. to bring out 100,000 people to protest,” Cullors said. “That’s very New York, that’s very Chicago. L.A. is a very apathetic town.”
Before the march began, E’Layjiah Wooley approached Cullors to ask how she could join the movement. The 19-year-old with curly pink hair told Cullors that they’d met a year before at a march in Oakland and that she had just moved to Los Angeles.
“You’re in the right place,” Cullors told her.
Cullors, who grew up in Van Nuys in the 1990s, said her earliest memory of police is watching officers force their way into her home while looking for her uncle and ransacking the place without acknowledging the family. She was 7.
For Cullors, the mother of a 4-year-old boy, the current struggle is being waged for this generation — and those to come.
“This is a movement led and envisioned and directed by Black women,” she said. “Many of us are queer, we’re moms, and we really started this work because we wanted to see our children survive. We’re laying the groundwork and foundation for a new world, not just for our descendants but for right now.”
Haewon Asfaw, left, jokes around with Patrisse Cullors at Cullors’ home. (Gabriella Angotti-Jones / Los Angeles Times)
With 500 members, the L.A. chapter is one of the biggest and most influential in the BLM network.
The core leadership team consists of five people, including Abdullah, who manages messaging and strategy. She said she tries to ensure that members have a say in most decisions, though the core team takes on alone issues that could risk danger or arrest. None of the leaders are paid for their organizing work.
Scot Brown, a professor of African American studies and history at UCLA, said people like Abdullah are the “real heroes” for leading the resistance long before there was international support.
“There was a time when this movement was vilified,” he said. “Now it’s become the chant that affirms human rights.”
The current moment has brought a wave of support from other progressive organizations. But at times, good intentions have proved insufficient.
This month, the group behind the yearly LA Pride parade organized a march in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. But its leaders came under fire after they submitted a special event permit application to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Thousands participate in the All Black Lives Matter solidarity march along Hollywood Boulevard on June 14. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
As a matter of practice, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles does not collaborate with police on any of its events. Under pressure, LA Pride apologized and said it would step back from the event. The All Black Lives Matter solidarity march did take place at the direction of a newly formed group, Black LGBTQ+ Activists for Change, whose board is composed entirely of Black LGBTQ people.
For Abdullah, the situation illustrates the deeper thinking that must occur when people consider what solidarity really means.
“It’s more than just saying ‘Black lives matter’ or painting it on the street,” she said.
Abdullah, who is in her 40s, grew up the daughter of two schoolteachers in East Oakland during the rise of the Black Panther Party. She now teaches pan-African studies at Cal State L.A. — and was supposed to spend this year writing a book. In September, she took her first sabbatical in 18 years.
While Abdullah is more the academic theorist, Cullors flourishes in the world of art. Originally trained as a dancer, her work lives at the intersection of performance and activism. For her master’s thesis last year at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design, Cullors contrasted the “history of Black bodies being harmed, tortured and brutalized” with pieces designed to showcase respite and healing. This month, she performed “A Prayer for the Runner,” which centers on a prayer she contributed to writing after the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia.
Patrisse Cullors, who completed her master of fine arts degree at USC last year, has combined performance art and activism to help build the Black Lives Matter movement. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Cullors released her first book, a “poetic memoir” co-written with Asha Bandele about Black Lives Matter titled “When They Call You a Terrorist,” in 2018. Art, she believes, is essential to the movement.
“We didn’t build it as a policy think tank; we built it as a cultural movement,” she said. “That’s why everybody feels moved by it. It’s why it tugs at people’s hearts. It’s why it pisses people off. It’s why people felt like they had to pick a side.”
That’s what it did for the mother of Grechario Mack, 30, who was having a mental episode when he ran through the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza shopping mall with a knife and was shot dead by police. The Los Angeles Police Commission later ruled that the 2018 shooting violated department policy.
Catherine Walker, Mack’s mother, said the leaders of BLM L.A. have become like a second family to her during a three-year period when she lost three family members. She spoke at a protest June 3 that drew thousands.
Having that platform has made her feel validated, Walker said.
“Even though my son is gone, George Floyd opened our doors to show there is hope that justice can be gotten,” she said.
BLM L.A. helps families like Walker’s by ordering independent autopsies, which can cost upwards of $6,000. Abdullah said those autopsies can make all the difference in wrongful-death lawsuits. The organization also requests body-cam video from police departments, removes the narration by law enforcement officials and pushes the raw footage back out on social media.
“We try to strip it of their narrative, so that people can see what actually happened,” Abdullah said.
Melina Abdullah chats with her daughter Amara Abdullah while looking at a banner being painted at a Black Lives Matter event at Norman O. Houston Park on June 6. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
That kind of continued support is part of the core mission of BLM L.A., whose two main tenets are to prosecute police whose use of force is unjustified and to defund police departments while shifting resources toward social services including mental health, schools and housing.
BLM organizers, who take inspiration from the civil disobedience tactics of the Black Power era of the 1970s, have clashed at times with veteran activists in L.A.’s Black community, who say those actions distract from their message. Others question BLM’s follow-through after moments of confrontation.
Longtime community activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, said BLM’s tactics opened city leaders’ eyes to the seriousness of police violence. Without the recent protests, he said, leaders would never have agreed to reduce the LAPD budget.
“However, without sustained, focused political engagement and a structured organization to carry out a concrete program for police overhaul, the great danger is that when the moment passes they will take back every one of the gains,” Hutchinson said.
Juliet Hooker, a political science professor at Brown University who has studied the BLM movement, called it the most effective Black political mobilization since the civil rights era.
“It’s only seven years old and there are these massive protests all over the U.S., all over the globe in solidarity and raising questions about racism in their own local context,” she said. “That’s an enormous potential transformation in political consciousness.”
Melina Abdullah speaks during a George Floyd protest in downtown Los Angeles on June 8. (Gabriella Angotti-Jones / Los Angeles Times)
It’s too early, Hooker said, to judge BLM on legislative or policy outcomes. But she said that the groundwork for those changes is being laid now and that political candidates have no choice but to address systemic racism ahead of the November election.
Increasingly, BLM’s strategy appears to be working. At Los Angeles City Hall on Monday, Abdullah urged City Council members to stop relying on police and embrace new strategies for public safety.
“The world is speaking right now,” she said at the meeting. “They’re saying we don’t want a system of policing that puts targets on the backs of Black people.”
Abdullah’s remarks came during a special meeting devoted to the People’s Budget, an alternative spending plan for City Hall that would allocate 5.7% of the city’s general fund to the LAPD, a reduction of about 90% compared with Mayor Eric Garcetti’s spending plan for the upcoming budget year.
Garcetti said that the city needs more law enforcement reforms and that leaders are exploring how to respond to nonviolent 911 calls with medical and mental health workers. He announced a moratorium on adding people to the CalGang database and new processes for reporting police misconduct.
“But we can’t limit our law enforcement budget to a point that would deny our communities critical emergency services,” he said. “We have to continually work to improve all of our government services, including policing.”
Law enforcement officers have killed more than 880 people, including Twyman, in Los Angeles County since 2000. Almost all were men and nearly 80% were Black or Latino. In the vast majority of cases, the use of force was deemed legally justified by the L.A. County district attorney’s office.
Melina Abdullah, left, stands onstage as protesters rally outside the Hall of Justice on Wednesday to call for the resignation of L.A. County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey. Black Lives Matter has staged such protests weekly. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Local organizers with Black Lives Matter have built momentum through aggressive tactics — camping out at City Hall, shutting down freeways — and targeting top law enforcement officials and Garcetti. They advocated firing former Police Chief Charlie Beck and his successor, Michel Moore, as well as L.A. County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, over their perceived mishandling of police shootings and misconduct.
Though the Police Commission, a civilian panel that oversees the LAPD, was praised for passing reforms including de-escalation training, use of body cameras and limiting the use of chokeholds, Abdullah has maintained that those don’t go far enough.
Among Black Lives Matter organizers’ achievements, they count the firing of the five Inglewood officers who fatally shot Kisha Michael and Marquintan Sandlin in 2016; the end of a Los Angeles Unified School District policy of randomly searching students with metal detectors; the 2019 arrest of Democratic donor Ed Buck, accused of preying on gay Black men and forcibly injecting them with fatal doses of methamphetamine; and Police Commission rulings of wrongdoing by officers in the deaths of numerous L.A. residents at the hands of police.
They also say they forced Lacey into a November runoff election against progressive challenger George Gascón.
After public pressure last year, city prosecutors dropped eight misdemeanor charges against Abdullah after she allegedly grabbed the arm of an LAPD officer during a contentious Police Commission meeting. In February, Abdullah filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the police and city attorney’s office illegally targeted her for prosecution because of her activism.
A day before the primary election in March, Lacey’s husband pointed a gun at Abdullah and other unarmed Black Lives Matter protesters during a confrontation outside the couple’s home, telling them: “I will shoot you. Get off of my porch.”
In a still from video, Jackie Lacey’s husband points a gun at Black Lives Matter protesters outside the Laceys’ front door March 2. (Dahlia Ferlito)
State officials are reviewing whether Lacey’s husband committed a crime and should face prosecution. After the incident, Lacey apologized on her husband’s behalf but also derided the protesters for what she called repeated harassment and threats throughout her two terms in office.
Recent BLM protests have come against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately killed Black Americans. Abdullah said she’s fighting a more existential threat.
“We pray that we don’t get sick,” she said. “But if we do, it is what it is because my children are under greater threat by these officers who kill people than they are by COVID-19.”
After days of protests, which at times were marred by instances of vandalism and theft, local officials lifted curfews and pulled back the heavy police presence. Faced with growing criticism over the mass arrests of hundreds of peaceful demonstrators, top law enforcement officials said they will not pursue criminal or financial penalties against the protesters.
Garcetti committed to making a $250-million investment in communities of color. The money will be cut from city operations, including as much as $150 million from the Los Angeles Police Department, which has a budget of $1.8 billion. Abdullah called the cuts a positive step forward but said that commitment came after five years of pressure to defund police while the department’s budget increased.
On the Monday after the big Hollywood march, Abdullah’s day started with a radio interview at 4 a.m. She tuned into the city’s Budget and Finance Committee meeting and then spoke at a news conference in front of City Hall in support of defunding the Los Angeles School Police Department.
Melina Abdullah stands for a portrait in her Mid-City backyard. (Gabriella Angotti-Jones / Los Angeles Times)
When she got home close to 7 p.m., she pulled her hair into a bun and sank into her burnt orange sectional for a conference call.
During the initial weeks of the coronavirus stay-at-home orders, Abdullah said, she slowed down for the first time since Black Lives Matter Los Angeles was established. She returned to cooking family dinners of eggplant Parmesan and fried fish and greens. The family grew closer.
Then Floyd was killed. And though Abdullah regularly brings her children to protests and other actions, she worries she isn’t giving them the same attention as mothers who aren’t leading a social movement.
For Abdullah, this historic moment means 20-hour days that end with her answering emails until her eyes get blurry and she crashes on the couch. It’s a sacrifice she’s willing to make — for her own children, for those whose parents died at the hands of police and for a vision of a better United States that for so long has been maddeningly out of reach.
“We decided as a family — we talked about it, that we got to be all in in this moment,” she said. “But it’s not going to be forever.”