LA police want to stop serving non-violent calls

Good morning, I’m going to cheat by including two stories in the intro today. First: the Undergraduate Student Government’s election results came out yesterday.

And second, Annenberg Media’s own Ngai Yeung and Sam Moskow made it to the Los Angeles Times with a powerful report on sexual abuse within Southern California churches. Now, onto the (additional) USC, LA and California stories you need to know for today.

The LA Police Department’s largest employee union wants its officers to stop responding to a host of non-violent calls as a part of upcoming contract negotiations. The shift to unarmed responders would free up a police force that the union characterized as understaffed to focus on violent crime and improve morale.

David Zahniser / Los Angeles Times

USC shuttle drivers and dispatchers rallied Tuesday in support of their bid to unionize and join the Service Employees International Union Local 721, the largest public-sector union in Southern California. The shuttle workers’ effort will hinge on a March 23 election date set by the National Labor Relations Board, decided by a simple majority vote of the 32 workers in the prospective unit.

Tomoki Chien / Daily Trojan

The LA County District Attorney’s Office said it wrongfully convicted a man who’s spent 38 years in prison after new DNA evidence exonerated him beyond a shadow of doubt. Maurice Hastings, now 69, was found guilty in 1983 of killing an Inglewood woman and two additional attempted murders. Prosecutors had originally sought the death penalty, but failed.

Frank Stoltze / LAist

LA County agreed to pay Vanessa Bryant and three of her daughters nearly $30 million to settle a lawsuit after first responders shared graphic photographs of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. The county maintained that, while responders did share the photos with friends, they never made it to the internet and all copies have been destroyed.

Fred Shuster / City News Service

Perhaps never before has hand sanitizer caused USC so much grief — until earlier this month, when a battery-powered sanitizing station sparked a fire at an on-campus apartment. Now, USC Housing will swap all of its automatic hand sanitizing stations in favor of manual pumps. Housing officials originally told residents that the fire was a suspected case of arson, but changed their tune when they discovered the dispenser was battery-operated.

Tomoki Chien / Annenberg Media

You’re all caught up. Thanks for reading Morning, Trojan, and have a good day. Anna Hsu copy edited this newsletter.

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