As 2008 comes to a close, I want to wish all of the residents of the City of Los Angeles a safe and healthy New Year. My prosecutors and I look forward to continuing in 2009 the important work of securing our neighborhoods, safeguarding our schools, and protecting consumers. I would also like to take a moment to review the important work our office has undertaken in 2008.
We began the year by expanding our Operation Bright Future anti-truancy/anti-gang program to sixteen new elementary schools. Since its inception in 2002, more than 90 percent of the students identified as chronically truant by the City Attorney’s Office are back in class. In addition to the 16 new elementary schools, Operation Bright Future currently operates in 30 middle schools across the City.
A few weeks later, I joined with City Council Member Jose Huizar of the 14th District to announce the establishment of two new Safe School Zones around a Skid Row child care center and charter elementary school. The new zones allow for increased penalties for crimes committed near Para Los Niños’ downtown child care center, an adjacent youth center, and the charter school.
In February, our office also launched our first-of-its-kind website to provide consumers with a forum to report health insurance industry fraud. The launch of www.protectingtheinsured.com came just a few days before we filed suit against Health Net for engaging in deceptive business practices that led to the denying or delaying of authorization of health insurance claims, or the outright cancellation of coverage after initially issuing a policy. As part of my office’s ongoing efforts to stop the illegal practice of post-claims underwriting/rescission, we also filed against Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
For several years, the City Attorney’s Office has sought to protect Los Angeles consumers from the dangers of toxic lead. In April, our office, working with California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr, secured a $2 million settlement from the Coca-Cola Company to eliminate lead paint in soft drink bottle labels imported from Mexico. The Coke settlement followed similar agreements our offices had previously reached with the makers of Pepsi, Dr. Pepper and 7-Up.
In December our two offices won another major victory in the fight against lead poisoning through a $1.7 million settlement secured with Mattel and several other toy companies over allegations of lead in toys – a violation of California’s Proposition 65.
Another front in our fight to protect consumers was our effort to hold Time Warner Cable responsible for their deceptive practices and false advertising following the company’s takeover of virtually all cable services in the City of Los Angeles in 2006. We filed suit against Time Warner in June, and are seeking a permanent prohibition from unfair business acts, as well as monetary penalties.
Utilizing new powers authorized by the passage of Senate Bill 1126, which was sponsored by my office and carried by State Senator Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), my gang prosecutors filed suit against the leaders of 18th Street gang seeking monetary damages as a result of the gang’s criminal and nuisance activities. This first-of-its-kind lawsuit seeks to make gang leaders pay for the pain they cause to communities, and would return the money won to the affected neighborhoods. We also shut down numerous notorious gang hangouts – including in South Los Angeles, Venice and Pacoima – through our Taking Out Urban Gang Headquarters (T.O.U.G.H.) initiative.
The beginning of the new school year brought great news from Markham Middle School, where a dedicated team from the City Attorney’s Office had been working for more than a year to enhance school safety and create an environment conducive to learning at one of the City’s most challenged schools. After a year and a half of our involvement at Markham, the students exceeded their growth target on the annual Academic Performance Index (API) by more than 55 percent. In fact, the students at Markham outpaced the growth of the majority of schools in LAUSD, and the state. The results at Markham demonstrated that a successful partnership between law enforcement, LAUSD and the community can lower the crime rate while raising test scores.
On the heels of our success at Markham, our school safety team announced the expansion of our safe schools initiative to nine new LAUSD middle schools, as well as the creation of the Safe School Division inside the City Attorney’s Office. A group of select prosecutors from the new division have fanned out across the City to the new nine priority middle schools. The Safe Schools Division also coordinates all of my office’s existing school safety initiatives.
Our office ended 2008 by joining with our counterparts in San Francisco and Santa Clara County to ask the California Supreme Court to invalidate Proposition 8, which stripped countless Californians of their fundamental right to marry the partner of their choice. Equal protection under the law is the bedrock principle of our constitutional democracy, and Proposition 8 flies in the face of that principle.
I look forward to working with the prosecutors in my office to build upon the hard work and accomplishments of 2008.
And I wish all of the residents of Los Angeles a Happy New Year.
-Rocky
Labels: gangs, health care, Safe Schools Division, TOUGH
