Today’s Headlines: L.A. Mayor Karen Bass wants to rebuild LAPD’s ranks

Hello, it’s Monday, April 17, and here are the stories you shouldn’t miss today:

TOP STORIES

The LAPD has lost nearly 1,000 officers. Mayor Karen Bass wants to rebuild

The LAPD is hemorrhaging officers, with more leaving the force than are joining it.

Mayor Karen Bass is looking to confront the issue by ramping up hiring and lifting barriers to recruitment. Her proposed budget, to be released Tuesday, will call for the city to restore the department to 9,500 officers.

On paper, Bass is proposing what looks like a minor adjustment to the LAPD’s authorized staffing. For nearly a year, the department has been budgeted for 9,460 officers. On another level, however, getting to 9,500 would be an incredibly tall order. Sworn staffing has fallen to 9,103, and the department is expected to lose more in the coming year.

The call to rebuild the LAPD will almost certainly generate pushback.

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Fox News and Dominion head into a potentially historic trial

The courtroom showdown between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems is being called the media trial of the 21st century and that’s not an exaggeration.

In one corner, the conservative cable network that has a powerful and often polarizing influence on political discourse. Across the ring is the Denver-based voting equipment maker, which says Fox News damaged its reputation when guests and hosts on the network falsely said the company was a central player in rigging the 2020 election for President Biden, a myth promoted by the Trump camp.

Already, texts, emails and deposition testimony provided a glimpse into the inner workings of Fox News, showing how executives and hosts tried to balance their own disbelief of Trump’s allegations with their perceived need to mollify his supporters who habitually watch the network.

Opening arguments begin Monday in Delaware Superior Court — a development that is stunning in itself as legal experts noted that such defamation cases rarely go to trial.

$62,000 and three years later, long COVID continues to upend a California couple’s lives

Before getting sick in March 2020, Courtney Garvin worked as a storyboard artist and a touring musician. Her partner, Connor Mayer, was a graduate student.

Now Garvin spends much of her time at home. She stopped working after fatigue, migraines and shortness of breath made it difficult for her to walk more than a few steps and speak more than a few words. And Mayer is her caretaker.

While much of the public has begun to move on from the pandemic, people like Garvin are left to deal with the complex medical system and a condition that has no known treatments. Navigating the medical, financial, mental and physical challenges of this illness is challenging, especially when scientists are still trying to understand the condition some people developed after a COVID-19 infection.

Ghosts of the blood-soaked troubles haunt Northern Ireland

Years after the Troubles — three blood-soaked decades of sectarian and political violence that shook Northern Ireland and transfixed a watching world — separation barriers still snake their way between Belfast’s neighborhoods of low-slung red-brick row houses, keeping mainly Roman Catholic Irish nationalists and Protestants loyal to the British crown physically separated from one another.

Nearly 50 feet tall in some spots, daubed with slogans and topped by metal spikes, the dividing lines are known, with scarcely a trace of irony, as “peace walls.” In the quarter-century since the Good Friday agreement, the 1998 landmark deal that largely ended the conflict, successive target dates for dismantling the barriers have slipped past, one after another.

With some 3,600 people killed and many more maimed in the 30 years leading up to the accord, it is hailed as a vital lifesaving intervention. But caution has been a recurring theme amid commemorations of the anniversary of the agreement.

CALIFORNIA

At 19, he won a local school board seat. His first civics lesson? Age discrimination. Even in a progressive community such as Culver City, the position has not come without challenges. As part of a wave of Generation Z youth running for and winning office, Ezidore has dealt with angry comments from residents, disparaging him for his age and, at times, his race.

California’s shortage of diverse teachers is hurting students, educators say. The second-most diverse state in the U.S. after Hawaii is struggling to retain its educators, especially teachers of color. According to a 2022 survey, Black and Latino educators were likely to quit due to lack of career support and poor working conditions.

San Diego County taxpayers have now paid millions, and counting, for sheriff’s deputy’s sexual misconduct. In the six years since women began coming forward with allegations that they were sexually harassed by Richard Fischer, the county has paid more than $7 million to settle at least 18 civil lawsuits filed by his victims.

‘To me they’re punks’: Grieving families air concerns at town hall on deputy ‘gangs.’ Family members of people killed by sheriff’s deputies criticized the department and demanded change at an emotionally charged town hall meeting Saturday in East Los Angeles.

NATION-WORLD

Pentagon leak details reservations for support of Ukraine from U.S. allies Egypt, Israel and South Korea. Newly leaked secret U.S. government documents provide details of how some close non-European allies have been reluctant to provide arms to Ukraine, and in the case of Egypt, even considered supplying rockets to Russia, because of competing interests and concerns.

Dozens killed as army and rivals battle for control of Sudan. The Sudanese military and a powerful paramilitary group battled for control of the nation for a second day Sunday. They appeared to be unwilling to end the fighting despite diplomatic pressure and casualties.

Boston remembers deadly marathon bombing 10 years later. Ahead of the 2023 marathon on Monday, families of those killed in the Boston Marathon bombing marked the 10th anniversary of the tragedy early Saturday by slowly walking together to the memorial sites near the finish line and laying wreaths.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

The night scene at Coachella on Friday.

(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)

Blackpink made history at Coachella. Here’s how to watch their Saturday set. Don’t worry, Blinks — you can still watch the K-pop super-group’s electrifying performance, even if you didn’t score tickets to this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

An earthquake made Makoto Shinkai a disaster artist. Now he’s confronting it head-on. The Japanese filmmaker has been talking a lot about a catastrophic earthquake and its aftermath as he promotes his latest anime feature, “Suzume,” out now in theaters. But those familiar with Shinkai’s work know he’s been having a conversation about natural disasters through his films for years.

John Iacovelli, beloved L.A. theater set designer, dies at 64. The Emmy-winning prolific scenic designer for stage and screen, whose ability to balance poetics with pragmatism made him a beloved and invaluable collaborator for Los Angeles theater artists for many decades, died Friday after a long battle with cancer.

BUSINESS

After years of cuts and financial turmoil, L.A.’s famed Fashion Institute finds a lifeline. After years of downsizing and under an imminent threat of losing accreditation, Los Angeles’ Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising has formed a new partnership with Arizona State University that is likely to forever change the longtime fashion school — and save it from financial ruin.

Musk’s SpaceX gets U.S. approval to launch Starship rocket. The approval of the launch, scheduled for as early as 5 a.m. Pacific time Monday, marks key milestone in the company’s quest to send humans to the moon and eventually Mars.

SPORTS

Austin Reaves helps spark Lakers’ win over Grizzlies in series opener. The Lakers’ second-year guard from tiny Newark, Ark., screamed, “I’m him,” at the Lakers bench in the fourth quarter, his play 100 miles from his hometown pushing the Lakers to a 128-112 victory in Game 1 in the first round of the NBA playoffs.

Column: Heisman Trophy to best college QB ever? For Caleb Williams, the journey has begun. If Caleb Williams passes and runs and leads the Trojans through another season like last season, he could end it as the greatest quarterback in college football history, Bill Plaschke writes.

OPINION

Can an anti-immigrant bill turn Florida blue the way Prop. 187 did for California? Gov. Ron DeSantis is publicly supporting the bill, arguing that “illegal aliens” are destroying the Sunshine State. This bigoted brouhaha is the latest grandchild of Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative also sought to make life miserable for immigrants here illegally.

Trump and the NRA might be right about guns — and we mostly have ourselves to blame. It appears we’re stuck in a “doom loop,” when the sheer number of guns owned by Americans, and the violence and death they cause, is prompting still more Americans to buy more guns, leading to more violence and death, and so on.

ONLY IN L.A.

(Harrison Freeman / For The Times)

How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Rainn Wilson. A decade after “The Office” ended, Rainn Wilson is busy writing, acting, podcasting, producing, directing, co-founding a media company and, through all of it, pondering life’s big questions. But his weekends are relaxed: meditation, time with his animals and book store visits. Here’s what else Wilson would do on a perfect Sunday.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

April 15, 1957: The Pinwheel, a rocket-powered, strap-on-the-back helicopter, rises and hovers over a larger craft during its first demonstration.

(Larry Sharkey / Los Angeles Times)

This week in 1957, The Times reported on a new kind of aircraft — a rocket-powered, strap-on-the-back helicopter called the Pinwheel. On April 15, Times reporters got an look at the aircraft at the San Fernando Valley Airport — now the Van Nuys Airport — reporting that the test pilot “jumped off the ground with ease, soared to perhaps 150 feet, flew backward and sideways, hovered over trees and tables, then took off around the airport like a giant dragonfly.”

The 170-pound craft was designed and built by Rotor-Craft Corp., of Glendale, over seven years and ran on “hydrogen peroxide fuel broken down by catalytic action into steam.” At the time of the demonstration, The Times reported the Pinwheel was “scheduled for immediate Navy flight evaluation tests.”

About six months later, The Times reported that a pilot testing the machine lost control of it and fell 50 feet.

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