When plain old ski masks just won't do, what's a neighborhood robber to do? For one thief in such a predicament, the solution was to don a skeleton costume and to hit up a Jack In the Box and a mini mart in North Hollywood in an attempt to get some cash. The heist at the Jack In the Box on Lankershim was a bust, and so was the mini mart, where, according to ab7.com,......

Santee Village Apartments | Photo by atomicshakespeares via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr It's not the same thrill as being singled out as a draft pick when it's the police who want you: "An arrest warrant has been issued by the Irvine Police Department for St. Louis Cardinals utilityman Scott Spiezio on six charges stemming from a Dec. 30 incident." Police in Burbank are investigating the mysterious death of 47-year-old Glen Giles,......

It's hard to imagine someone surreptitiously making off with something that's 7 feet tall and made of bronze, but it seems that's what has happened in a park located in the Mid-City neighborhood of Carthay Circle. Last week, residents discovered that the statue honoring a miner that had stood in their small neighborhood park had gone missing. The initial fear of the community was that the statue was snatched for scrapping, since currently there is......

Not sure how to cap off your Super Tuesday voting experience? Why not grab a drink with LAist! We'll be at the Seven Grand in Downtown from 7-9 p.m., and your first drink is free if you're sporting the hottest accessory in town tomorrow: Your "I Voted" sticker! 21+ only, please. The body of a 32-year-old woman who fell off a cliff late Saturday morning near Chantry Flats on Mount Wilson has been recovered. Recovery......

As the dark settled over Los Angeles last night, we awoke to an unfortunate number of deaths. Any number is sad -- especially four. Vermont Knolls, Los Angeles: In an alley off of 73rd St. in South LA, the Los Angeles Fire Department reported a "vehicle fire in alley with apparent human remains" in a news alert. The LAPD is treating it as a homicide. 110 Freeway @ Manchester Ave: In another LAFD alert, there......

Just because the federal government can legally rob a medical marijuana dispensary in Los Angeles, it doesn't mean you can too. On Friday, in two separate incidents in the Valley, a dispensary on Cahuenga Boulevard in North Hollywood and Golden State Collective, 10369 Balboa Blvd., in Granada Hills, both got robbed in takeovers. On Sunday, the Granada Hills robbers were caught, according to the Daily News:During the heist, one shot was fired, ricocheting off......

As the early crowd began to show up at bars in Hollywood last night, a few blocks away at Highland and Sunset at Hollywood High School one of the 17 or so LAPD Airships was making an emergency landing on the football field due to mechanical problems around 9:40 p.m. It landed safely and no injuries were reported according to Cecil Manresa, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman. The LAPD reports that the helicopter is still......

Vitals details in the killings of two South LA residents who were found shot to death in their 11th Ave apartment remain unknown. The LAPD was notified late Monday afternoon of gunshots heard, and soon after discovered the bodies of Shelton Sumerall, 32, and Monica Youngblood, 23, both of whom suffered fatal shots to their heads. The motive and a shooting suspect have not been determined. A Van Nuys man was stabbed yesterday when he......

Before we all start shaking in our Ugg boots, rest assured that the mecca of trend and materialism known as The Grove has been spared from international threat. The LA Times is reporting that 20 year-old Jarrad Willis of Melbourne, Australia, has been arrested by authorities in his home country for allegedly threatening on a blog to cause some kind of harm to The Grove. He's been charged with something called "creating a false belief"......

No one likes the stigma of saying they live in Van Nuys, so they chip away making their own new neighborhoods. To that, Councilman Tony Cardenas, who we admittedly give a hard time to on this site, said something that is right on target about this so called community pride: "If I had that many people show up to a community cleanup or an anti-prostitution night out it would do much more than changing......

"This is not. . . targeting or profiling. It is an effort to understand communities." Police Chief William J. Bratton defending a LAPD counter-terrorism program that uses "U.S. census data and other demographic information to pinpoint various Muslim communities and then reach out to them through social service agencies." [LA Times] "Over my dead body." Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on any limit of his goals of expanding the LAPD. A fiscally conservative and wary City......

Last minute plans? Try some culture via ExperienceLA's calendar. Or try our picks for tonight: Canon at Union Station, Pee Wee's Big Adventure at Angel City Drive-In, or Tonight in Rock. Toady, Oprah Winfrey held a swanky fundraiser for Barack Obama south of Santa Barbara expecting to raise $3-million. Hot chick boards Southwest plane, finds her seat, gets kicked off for being too sexy. The LA Triathlon is tomorrow morning. Find out if you'll......

Dear LAist, Lordy, lord, lord. Today I called 311 about a issue: a noise complaint about a neighbor's dog that had been barking for 2 straight hours. The 311 lady asked me my zip code than transferred me to the LAPD. The annoyed LAPD operator explained to me that the police didn't handle barking dog noise complaints. I explained that this was where the 311 operator had transferred me. The LAPD operator then transferred......

Can we say embarrassing? The LA Times reports in an investigation that there are major problems with cell phone 9-1-1 emergency calls.Elementary school counselor Brad Edwards said he waited eight harrowing minutes last year before a dispatcher picked up his cell call about a boy who had collapsed on a Los Angeles schoolyard and begun foaming from the mouth. "The fire station is just a few blocks away. I could have run there faster......

Gee, I wonder what tipped them off: California transportation officials will immediately inspect 69 of the state's most vulnerable steel-deck bridges. And the frozen yogurt wars rage on... A man, believed to be a property caretaker, was fatally mauled by a dog on Ving Rhames' property. How desperate can you get? Fox News is offering Republicans $15 to attend an upcoming taping of the "Half Hour News Hour" - a right-wing (and shoddy) version......

120 year old Indian woman died this week. She claimed that smoking marijuana every day was the reason for her long life. - All Headline News "Weeds" star and Hollywood Blvd. preacher, Craig X, was arrested last month for distributing marijuana. He says the "sacrament" that he sold to people at Temple 420 on Hollywood Blvd. is protected under the freedom of religion and Prop 215. The LAPD, who officially pressed charges this week,......

Daily Bruin staff filed a formal complaint against the LAPD for mistreatment and denial of access to reporting early Sunday morning as students began to party hard in Westwood. The celebrations for the victory over USC on Saturday night reached the pinnacle when partygoers on Frat Row decided to pile trash in the middle of Landfair Ave and set it afire. Daily Bruin staff writers who produced identification were still denied access to see......

The LAPD has released the timeline of the events that led up to October 18, when the video in question, showing two officers appearing to use excessive force on a suspect they were trying to arrest, was posted on YouTube. August 11, 2006 • Officers Farrell and Schlegel arrested William Cardenas on a felony warrant for receiving stolen property (a stolen gun). The officers reported force used in the arrest report. • Officers’ supervisors......

Vote today! - Here's the election guide if you can't find it lying around in your stale mail pile. And here's a list of polling places. Sure, you may not be super-excited about the choices this time around, but you DO get a free sticker. school showdown - A 17-year-old was shot to death in the Venice High School parking lot yesterday as a fistfight between black and Latino students escalated. The fight began......

Judge nails jail Judge Dean Pregerson, who is presiding over a long-standing suit about conditions at the jail, left his chambers and visited Men's Central in downtown Wednesday. And he really didn't like what he saw. Inmates are being housed in a way "not consistent with basic human values." Jail in South Korea? Hwang Woo-suk, the respected South Korean scientist who was thought to be the first to clone human embroys and extract stem......

The LAPD, in one of its new webby moves, has used the Googlemaps API to create a handy tool. Just plug in your address on this form and find out what crimes have happened in and around your neighborhood recently. For the picture above we typed in the address of Parker Center, LAPD headquarters: it's the big yellow dot at 150 N. Los Angeles Street. The surrounding neighborhood — the surrounding two blocks, anyway......

Mayor V: A Q&A with Mayor Villaraigosa on immigration. He's definitely politic when speaking with the LA Times: My role, you know, my focus, is on the city that I was elected to serve, but I will continue to advocate for a sensible, bipartisan immigration reform. students: While we're on immigration, students plan another demonstration today starting at 10am in downtown LA, meeting at Olympic and Broadway and proceeding to City Hall. puppies and......

LA has a crime problem. Or, rather, LA has an endemic gang problem, and gangsters breed crime. It was true in Prohibition-era Chicago, and it's certainly true in current-day Los Angeles. Sometimes it seems that gangs operate with near impunity in LA, a condition which has led to an unbearable homicide rate in some areas of our city, with each murder of an innocent seemingly more callous and brutal than the last. The LAPD......

It looks like traffic cameras for busy intersections are only the beginning: Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said he is so impressed with results from MacArthur Park -- once known as a flourishing crime zone in the city's center -- that he believes the cameras are an essential part of fighting crime in an era of dwindling budgets and strained police personnel. "Basically, what you can do is virtual policing," said LAPD Assistant Chief......