(Sept. 2, 2018, 11:40 a.m., updated at 3:30 p.m.) -- Personnel from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Dept. Lakewood Station have arrested a suspect in connection with an alleged sexual assault of a female juvenile in a restroom at Lakewood High School, and for an alleged sexual assault roughly two and a half hours earlier of a 29 year old woman in Bellflower. VIDEO of an LASD press conference follows LASD's release text below:
On Saturday, September 1, 2018, at approximately 3:40 p.m., in the city of Bellflower, Lakewood Station Deputies arrested a suspect who was wanted in two separate sexual assault cases. |
LASD asks anyone with information about this incident to contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Special Victims Bureau toll free tip line at (877) 710-5273 or by email at specialvictimsbureau@lasd.org. If you prefer to provide information anonymously, you may call "Crime Stoppers" by dialing (800) 222-TIPS (8477), or use your smartphone by downloading the “P3 Tips” Mobile APP or “P3 Mobile” for the hearing impaired on Google play or the App Store, or by using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org. [UPDATE 3:30 p.m.] During 1 p.m. news conference at LASD HQ in downtown L.A., LASD Special Victims Bureau Captain Carlos Marquez said the suspect scaled a fence to gain entry to Lakewood High School. He said that at this point there's no indication the suspect was a gang member or had some relationship to the school. LASD Lakewood Station Captain Richard Harpham credited Lakewood Station patrol personnel for spotting the suspect (using security cam images from location(s) not disclosed.) Capt. Harpham noted that he coached football for about seven years at Lakewood High, said most of the school's fences are 10 feet high and it's a secure campus but "there's never a guarantee of 100% security...and they do a very good job there at the school." Capt. Marquez indicated that the suspect is a Bellflower resident and said one reason LASD isn't releasing releasing the suspect's photo is because "we want to do follow-up investigations [and] release of his photo could jeopardize somebody else saying 'that's the person who attacked me' without them independently being able to identify him, so we are looking for anybody else who can provide any information about this individual." Although Lakewood High is within the City of Lakewood, its student body includes many Long Beach students as the school is part of the Long Beach Unified School District (operated by LBUSD staff/management, governed by the LBUSD School Board.)
What's next? No City Council meetings are currently scheduled prior to the Council's regularly scheduled meetings on Sept. 4 and Sept. 11. At that time, Councilmembers can make budget motions and take budget votes. Any Councilmember(s) can make a motion to budget additional citywide deployable officers for taxpayers. This would require the Councilmember(s) or management to identify sources from which to fund any additional citywide deployable officers. LBREPORT.com is reliably informed that for budget purposes, the annual cost of an LBPD officer (fully equipped) is roughly $200,000. If the Council doesn't enact a budget by Sept. 15, the city manager's proposed budget takes effect. Once a budget is adopted, it's not set in stone; the Council can re-open most General Fund budgeted items "on any Tuesday" and make changes (and has done so.) To view the proposed FY19 budget documents in detail, click here.
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