L.A. Archdiocese considering $200-million fund-raising campaign

By Los Angeles Times staff

February 5, 2013, 2:44 p.m.

In the midst of renewed public outrage over its handling of priest molestation cases, the Los Angeles Archdiocese is considering a $200-million fund-raising campaign.

The archdiocese has hired a New York company, Guidance in Giving, to study the feasibility of a capital campaign that would shore up the church’s finances.

The archdiocese is $80 million in debt, according to a recent church financial report. In 2007, the archdiocese agreed to a record $600-million settlement with more than 500 alleged victims of priest abuse.

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Prosecutors move to revoke Chris Brown's probation

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Prosecutors have asked a judge to revoke Chris Brown's probation, saying there is no credible evidence he completed his community service sentence for beating Rihanna, and citing several other incidents that they say point to anger management issues.

The motion filed Tuesday by the Los Angeles County district attorney's office focuses heavily on issues with Brown's community labor in Virginia, citing numerous discrepancies and claiming the R&B singer essentially was unsupervised.

Brown's attorney Mark Geragos blasted the filing, telling The Associated Press that it was frivolous and defamatory and he planned to seek sanctions against prosecutors.

The prosecution's motion also notes several incidents in which Brown has lost his temper, including throwing a chair through a window after a "Good Morning America" interview in which he was asked about his beating of Rihanna on the eve of the 2009 Grammy Awards. The report also cites Brown's Jan. 27 fight with R&B singer Frank Ocean, including Ocean's claim that Brown threatened to shoot him in the brawl over a parking space.

Sheriff's officials have said they are unlikely to seek charges against Brown for the recent fight with Ocean, since Ocean has posted online that he does not intend to seek criminal or civil penalties. Ocean told investigators that Brown shouted that he and his entourage "can bust on you too," which authorities wrote was a street slang term for shooting someone.

Brown is due in court Wednesday for a probation hearing.

"The motion filed by the DA's office is shameful and a disgrace," Geragos said. "In essence, it calls everyone a liar in the Richmond Police Department and the Virginia Probation Department."

He claimed prosecutors ignored interviews "where sworn peace officers stated unequivocally that Mr. Brown was supervised and did all of the community service."

"I plan on asking for sanctions from the DA's office for filing in frivolous, scurrilous and frankly defamatory motion," he said. A spokeswoman for the district attorney's office declined to comment on Geragos' statements.

Brown's time serving community service in Virginia has been under scrutiny for months, and Tuesday's motion asked a judge to order the singer to repeat his entire 180-day service sentence in Los Angeles. Brown had been given permission to perform cleanup and manual labor duties in Virginia, but LA prosecution investigators found no evidence that he completed his work as ordered.

Richmond, Va., Police Chief Bryan Norwood was supposed to be supervising Brown and submitted paperwork last year indicating the singer had completed his sentence. But prosecutors cite numerous shortcomings and possible misstatements in those records, which show the singer performing double shifts in the city and at a day care center where his mother once worked.

"This inquiry provided no credible, competent or verifiable evidence that defendant Brown performed his community labor as presented to this court," Deputy District Attorney Mary Murray wrote.

The records submitted by Norwood are "at best sloppy documentation and at worst fraudulent reporting."

Richmond police spokesman Gene Lepley declined to discuss the allegations.

"We believe it would inappropriate to comment on a matter that's before the court," Lepley said.

According to the motion, officials with Virginia's probation office told investigators that Brown's arrangement to be supervised by Norwood was "extremely unusual" and had not been approved by the agency. No one from Virginia's probation department oversaw Brown's hours, the filing states.

The motion notes that the only records the department has to indicate Brown was supervised were officers' overtime sheets. Five of 21 days that officers logged overtime for Brown were spent providing security for the singer's concerts.

One-third of Brown's hours were logged at a daycare center where the singer spent time as a child and where his mother once served as director, an analysis performed by The Associated Press in September showed.

The center is an hour's drive from Richmond, and the prosecution motion says a detective checked on Brown on only nine occasions when he was working there. Each time, the singer was found at the center, accompanied by his mother and a bodyguard but no law enforcement personnel.

The hours Brown recorded as working at the center were done overnight when children were not present. Some of the records stated Brown waxed floors or did "general cleaning."

"Claims that the defendant cleaned, stripped and waxed floors at that location have been credibly contradicted," the prosecution motion states. A professional floor cleaner contracted to work at the daycare center told investigators he had been cleaning the floors throughout the months Brown reported working at the facility.

Brown's mother, Joyce Hawkins, no longer had a formal role at the Tappahannock Children's Center but had her own set of keys and coordinated her son's work at the facility, the motion states.

The filing also alleges Brown violated his probation with several violent outbursts that haven't resulted in arrests or charges. In addition to the fight between Brown and Ocean, the motion cites a 2012 incident in Miami in which Brown was accused of taking a woman's cellphone and the March 2011 incident in which Brown threw a chair through a window after appearing on "Good Morning America."

Brown and Ocean are both nominated for the Best Urban Contemporary Album category at Sunday's Grammys. Ocean, who has said his first love was a man, told authorities that someone may have shouted a gay slur during the fight, but he wasn't sure.

Ocean suffered cuts on his right index finger and minor cuts to his left temple.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .

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Well: Warning Too Late for Some Babies

Six weeks after Jack Mahoney was born prematurely on Feb. 3, 2011, the neonatal staff at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, N.C., noticed that his heart rate slowed slightly when he ate. They figured he was having difficulty feeding, and they added a thickener to help.

When Jack was discharged, his parents were given the thickener, SimplyThick, to mix into his formula. Two weeks later, Jack was back in the hospital, with a swollen belly and in inconsolable pain. By then, most of his small intestine had stopped working. He died soon after, at 66 days old.

A month later, the Food and Drug Administration issued a caution that SimplyThick should not be fed to premature infants because it may cause necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, a life-threatening condition that damages intestinal tissue.

---

Catherine Saint Louis speaks about using SimplyThick in premature infants.

---

Experts do not know how the product may be linked to the condition, but Jack is not the only child to die after receiving SimplyThick. An F.D.A. investigation of 84 cases, published in The Journal of Pediatrics in 2012, found a “distinct illness pattern” in 22 instances that suggested a possible link between SimplyThick and NEC. Seven deaths were cited; 14 infants required surgery.

Last September, after more adverse events were reported, the F.D.A. warned that the thickener should not be given to any infants. But the fact that SimplyThick was widely used at all in neonatal intensive care units has spawned a spate of lawsuits and raised questions about regulatory oversight of food additives for infants.

SimplyThick is made from xanthan gum, a widely-used food additive on the F.D.A.’s list of substances “generally recognized as safe.” SimplyThick is classified as a food and the F.D.A. did not assess it for safety.

John Holahan, president of SimplyThick, which is based in St. Louis, acknowledged that the company marketed the product to speech language pathologists who in turn recommended it to infants. The patent touted its effectiveness in breast milk.

However, Mr. Holahan said, “There was no need to conduct studies, as the use of thickeners overall was already well established. In addition, the safety of xanthan gum was already well established.”

Since 2001, SimplyThick has been widely used by adults with swallowing difficulties. A liquid thickened to about the consistency of honey allows the drinker more time to close his airway and prevent aspiration.

Doctors in newborn intensive care units often ask non-physician colleagues like speech pathologists to determine whether an infant has a swallowing problem. And those auxiliary feeding specialists often recommended SimplyThick for neonates with swallowing troubles or acid reflux.

The thickener became popular because it was easy to mix, could be used with breast milk, and maintained its consistency, unlike alternatives like rice cereal.

“It was word of mouth, then neonatologists got used to using it. It became adopted,” said Dr. Steven Abrams, a neonatologist at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. “At any given time, several babies in our nursery — and in any neonatal unit — would be on it.”

But in early 2011, Dr. Benson Silverman, the director of the F.D.A.’s infant formula section, was alerted to an online forum where doctors had reported 15 cases of NEC among infants given SimplyThick. The agency issued its first warning about its use in babies that May. “We can only do something with the information we are provided with,” he said. “If information is not provided, how would we know?”

Most infants who took SimplyThick did not fall ill, and NEC is not uncommon in premature infants. But most who develop NEC do so while still in the hospital. Some premature infants given SimplyThick developed NEC later than usual, a few after they went home, a pattern the F.D.A. found unusually worrisome.

Even now it is not known how the thickener might have contributed to the infant deaths. One possibility is that xanthan gum itself is not suitable for the fragile digestive systems of newborns. The intestines of premature babies are “much more likely to have bacterial overgrowth” than adults’, said Dr. Jeffrey Pietz, the chief of newborn medicine at Children’s Hospital Central California in Madera.

“You try not to put anything in a baby’s intestine that’s not natural.” If you do, he added, “you’ve got to have a good reason.”

A second possibility is that batches of the thickener were contaminated with harmful bacteria. In late May 2011, the F.D.A. inspected the plants that make SimplyThick and found violations at one in Stone Mountain, Ga., including a failure to “thermally process” the product to destroy bacteria of a “public health significance.”

The company, Thermo Pac, voluntarily withdrew certain batches. But it appears some children may have ingested potentially contaminated batches.

The parents of Jaden Santos, a preemie who died of NEC while on SimplyThick, still have unused packets of recalled lots, according to their lawyer, Joe Taraska.

The authors of the F.D.A. report theorized that the infants’ intestinal membranes could have been damaged by bacteria breaking down the xanthan gum into too many toxic byproducts.

Dr. Qing Yang, a neonatologist at Wake Forest University, is a co-author of a case series in the Journal of Perinatology about three premature infants who took SimplyThick, developed NEC and were treated. The paper speculates that NEC was “most likely caused by the stimulation of the immature gut by xanthan gum.”

Dr. Yang said she only belatedly realized “there’s a lack of data” on xanthan gum’s use in preemies. “The lesson I learned is not to be totally dependent on the speech pathologist.”

Julie Mueller’s daughter Addison was born full-term and given SimplyThick after a swallow test showed she was at risk of choking. It was recommended by a speech pathologist at the hospital.

Less than a month later, Addison was dead with multiple holes in her small intestine. “It was a nightmare,” said Ms. Mueller, who has filed a lawsuit against SimplyThick. “I was astounded how a hospital and manufacturer was gearing this toward newborns when they never had to prove it would be safe for them. Basically we just did a research trial for the manufacturer.”

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California accuses S&P of deception in $4-billion lawsuit

California has filed suit against Wall Street's biggest credit rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, charging the firm with violating the state's False Claims Act by using “magic numbers” and “guesses” to inflate ratings that ultimately cost California public pension funds an estimated $1 billion.

The action was filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court and came a day after federal prosecutors filed suit against the bond-rating agency, alleging that S&P gave top marks to troubled mortgage-backed securities that later failed, helping to trigger the financial crisis.

Document: U.S. Sues Standard & Poor’s over mortgage bond ratings

California will seek $4 billion in damages after S&P’s ratings cost state pension funds what it estimates are about $1 billion in losses. The state can seek triple damages, along with penalties, under the False Claims Act.

“Those who lost homes in California were first-grade teachers, firefighters ... we talk about the impact of S&P’s conduct, it’s profound,” Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris told the Times in Washington after a news conference there announcing the federal and state suits. “They pretended to be an independent agency and we believe the evidence is clear it was quite the contrary.”

The barrage of state and federal actions signal an aggressive new push against one of the mortgage crisis’ key actors. The California action is the first use of its False Claims Act by Harris to pursue a major player in the mortgage meltdown. Harris in 2011 created a mortgage fraud strike force to pursue investigations related to the housing crisis and said she would use her powers under the act to pursue securities cases.

Under the state law, which makes it a crime to defraud the state, damages of up to three times the amount of the claim can be awarded if the victim was an institutional investor, such as one of the state's pension funds. In particular, the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State Teachers' Retirement System invested heavily in mortgage-backed securities and other financial instruments rated by S&P during the boom years.

S&P, which is a unit of publisher McGraw Hill, on Tuesday denounced the state and federal actions.

“The [U.S. Department of Justice] and some states have filed meritless civil lawsuits against S&P," the company said in a statement. "We will vigorously defend S&P against these unwarranted claims.  S&P has always been committed to serving the interests of investors and all market participants by providing independent opinions on creditworthiness based on available information."

The California suit alleges that investors relied on S&P to rate securities because these big investors had access to only general descriptions of the mortgages and other investments backing these securities. Institutional investors relied on S&P because they were required to purchase investments that got a “AAA” rating, meaning they were highly sound and bore little risk.

While S&P has tried in other cases to argue that it was protected under the 1st Amendment to state an opinion about certain financial products, that argument may not hold up if federal or state investigators are able to prove that the ratings agency knowingly gave improper evaluations, said Kurt Eggert, a Chapman University law professor.

“I am not sure that defense will hold if California or the feds can prove that they knowingly did not provide effective ratings,” Eggert said. “If the feds and the states can show that the ratings agencies knowingly diverged from their system in order to make money, the 1st Amendment defense might crumble.”

The California suit alleges that, from 2004 to 2007, S&P misrepresented to the state pension funds that its ratings were not influenced by economic interests and were based solely on objective analysis. Instead, the company lowered its standards to make money, the suit alleges, and suppressed efforts to develop more accurate models.

ALSO:

Justice Department sues S&P over mortgage bond ratings

Boeing asks FAA for OK to begin 787 Dreamliner test flights

California sues BP and Arco, alleges violations at gas stations

Times staff writer Jim Puzzanghera in Washington contributed to this report.

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Child hostage safe, captor dead, ending Alabama standoff

Jimmy Lee Dykes held off authorities for seven days in Alabama. (Dale County Sheriff's Department)

By Michael Muskal

February 4, 2013, 2:38 p.m.

A 5-year-old boy held hostage for almost a week in an underground bunker in rural Alabama has been released and his captor is dead, officials said Monday.

Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, was dead at the scene, officials announced in a televised statement.

The boy, identified only as Ethan was in good condition and was being treated at a hospital in Dothan, Ala., Clouse said.

Last Tuesday, Dykes, a Navy veteran, stormed a school bus and shot the driver to death, then kidnapped the boy. Dykes held the child prisoner in a 6-foot-by-8-foot underground bunker on his property in Midland City, Ala, about 90 miles from Montgomery.

Killed in the attack was the driver, Charles Poland Jr., who was buried on Sunday after townspeople hailed him as a hero for protecting the more than 20 children on the bus.

Authorities maintained contact with Dykes through a 4-inch PVC pipe through which medicine was sent into the underground shelter, built by Dykes. Ethan was said to have an autism.

Before the news conference,  an ambulance that had been parked near the scene could be seen driving away, according to video from the scene.

ALSO:

In Chris Kyle's shooting death, postwar worlds collide

Texas judge faces 'court of inquiry' into wrongful conviction

Ed Koch remembered as 'Uncle Eddie' and a savior of New York

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Second-generation iPad mini could pack a display with 324 pixels per inch

Apple (AAPL) may be about to make up for delivering a disappointingly low resolution for its first-generation iPad mini display. BrightWire reports that supply chain sources have told Chinese website My Drivers that the next-generation iPad mini will indeed feature a 7.9-inch Retina display with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels, or 324 pixels per inch. For comparison, consider that the original iPad mini delivered a resolution of just 163 pixels per inch, less than both the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle Fire HD and the Google (GOOG) Nexus 7, which both featured displays with resolutions of 216 pixels per inch. BrightWire’s report also backs up earlier rumors we’ve heard about Apple choosing AU Optronics to make an HD Retina display for its next-generation iPad mini.

[More from BGR: iOS 6.1 untethered jailbreak now available for download, compatible with iPhone 5 and iPad mini]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Sheriff's Dept: Brown-Ocean inquiry will be closed

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A sheriff's spokesman says an investigation into a fight between Chris Brown and Frank Ocean will soon be closed without any charges being sought.

Los Angeles sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore says investigators will speak with Ocean before closing the case, but the agency is unlikely to pursue a misdemeanor battery charge against Brown.

Ocean has accused Brown of hitting him during an argument outside a West Hollywood recording studio last month, but wrote on the social media site Tumblr on Saturday that he wanted the matter closed. Ocean's post stated he did not want Brown prosecuted and he had no intentions of filing a civil lawsuit.

Brown remains on probation for the 2009 beating of Rihanna and is scheduled to appear in court for a progress hearing on Wednesday.

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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.

How I feared chemo, afraid

It would change me.

It did.

Something dissolved inside me.

Tears began a slow drip;

I cried at the news story

Of a lost boy found in the woods …

At the surprising beauty

Of a bright leaf falling

Like the last strand of hair from my head

Ms. Potvin, now 47 and living in Derry, N.H., recently published “Sound Travels on Water” (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about her experience with cancer. And she has organized the Prickly Pear Poetry Project, a series of workshops for cancer patients.

“The creative process can be really healing,” Ms. Potvin said in an interview. “Loss, mortality and even hopefulness were on my mind, and I found that through writing poetry I was able to express some of those concepts in a way that helped me process what I was thinking.”

In April, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, whose members include both medical doctors and therapists, is to hold a conference in Chicago with sessions on using poetry to manage pain and to help adolescents cope with bullying. And this spring, Tasora Books will publish “The Cancer Poetry Project 2,” an anthology of poems written by patients and their loved ones.

Dr. Rafael Campo, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, says he uses poetry in his practice, offering therapy groups and including poems with the medical forms and educational materials he gives his patients.

“It’s always striking to me how they want to talk about the poems the next time we meet and not the other stuff I give them,” he said. “It’s such a visceral mode of expression. When our bodies betray us in such a profound way, it can be all the more powerful for patients to really use the rhythms of poetry to make sense of what is happening in their bodies.”

On return visits, Dr. Campo’s patients often begin by discussing a poem he gave them — for example, “At the Cancer Clinic,” by Ted Kooser, from his collection “Delights & Shadows” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), about a nurse holding the door for a slow-moving patient.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails

of her clothes. The sick woman

peers from under her funny knit cap

to watch each foot swing scuffing forward

and take its turn under her weight.

There is no restlessness or impatience

or anger anywhere in sight. Grace

fills the clean mold of this moment

and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

In Ms. Potvin’s case, poems related to her illness were often spurred by mundane moments, like seeing a neighbor out for a nightly walk. Here is “Tumor”:

My neighbor walks

For miles each night.

A mantra drives her, I imagine

As my boys’ chant did

The summer of my own illness:

“Push, Mommy, push.”

Urging me to wind my sore feet

Winch-like on a rented bike

To inch us home.

I couldn’t stop;

Couldn’t leave us

Miles from the end.

Karin Miller, 48, of Minneapolis, turned to poetry 15 years ago when her husband developed testicular cancer at the same time she was pregnant with their first child.

Her husband has since recovered, and Ms. Miller has reviewed thousands of poems by cancer patients and their loved ones to create the “Cancer Poetry Project” anthologies. One poem is “Hymn to a Lost Breast,” by Bonnie Maurer.

Oh let it fly

let it fling

let it flip like a pancake in the air

let it sing: what is the song

of one breast flapping?

Another is “Barn Wish” by Kim Knedler Hewett.

I sit where you can’t see me

Listening to the rustle of papers and pills in the other room,

Wondering if you can hear them.

Let’s go back to the barn, I whisper.

Let’s turn on the TV and watch the Bengals lose.

Let’s eat Bill’s Doughnuts and drink Pepsi.

Anything but this.

Ms. Miller has asked many of her poets to explain why they find poetry healing. “They say it’s the thing that lets them get to the core of how they are feeling,” she said. “It’s the simplicity of poetry, the bare bones of it, that helps them deal with their fears.”

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Have you written a poem about cancer? Please share them with us in the comments section below.

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CVS' Medicare drug program causing headaches for enrollees

Deborah Shapiro decided a few months ago to switch her prescription drug coverage from her former employer's plan to Medicare. The Medicare literature made clear that she could save hundreds of dollars on the various drugs she and her husband required.

Shapiro, 76, of Woodland Hills, studied her options carefully and decided to enroll in SilverScript, the Medicare-approved drug program run by CVS Caremark.

That turned out to be not such a good decision after all.

Shapiro was one of many seniors who found themselves facing inexplicably large bills that CVS refused to negotiate. As a result of cases like hers, CVS was sanctioned last month by Medicare, which means the company can't enroll new people in SilverScript until it cleans up its act.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in a letter to CVS' SilverScript subsidiary that its inability to process prescriptions correctly "poses a serious threat to the health and safety of Medicare beneficiaries."

The federal agency blamed the problems on "widespread data system failures" that have "created disruptions in tens of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries' access to prescription medications."

SilverScript handles the drug requirements of about 4 million Medicare beneficiaries.

In Shapiro's case, she told me that she'd ordered a 90-day supply of an estrogen pill that was supposed to cost $85. Instead, SilverScript sent her a 30-day supply running $70.61.

Shapiro said she got the runaround from three separate CVS supervisors until a company representative finally insisted that she had to take what she was given and pay the amount CVS was demanding.

She said the company deemed the $70.61 bill a "transition fee" from her former drug insurer, which, as it happens, was also run by CVS.

"They need to charge me a transition fee from CVS to CVS?" Shapiro said. "That makes no sense."

CVS blamed its SilverScript troubles on "an enrollment system conversion" that "brought about an increase in call volume and issues related to claims processing."

"We take these issues very seriously and are committed to working swiftly with [Medicare] officials to address their areas of concern," said Jon Roberts, president of CVS' pharmacy benefit management business.

He also said the company will work to resolve any issues for patients that have come up as a result of the problem. Presumably that means Shapiro and others can expect their sky-high drug bills to be revisited in a more accommodating manner by CVS service reps.

Medicare says it received 2,340 complaints about SilverScript in just the first two weeks of January — a rate four times greater than for all other Medicare-approved drug programs combined.

The agency said in its letter to CVS that the sanction will remain in place until officials are "satisfied that the deficiencies upon which the determination was based have been corrected and are not likely to recur."

This isn't CVS' first brush with regulatory scrutiny. As I've reported, the company is now being investigated by federal and state authorities for having refilled prescriptions and billed insurers without patients' approval.

CVS has blamed such incidents on overzealous pharmacy managers and said the practice doesn't represent company policy. But internal emails and documents I've obtained suggest the unauthorized refills were more widespread than CVS would have customers believe.

The U.S. Justice Department also is looking into whether CVS violated a $17.5-million settlement reached with federal authorities in 2011 over allegedly falsified claims to Medicaid programs in California and nine other states.

The Justice Department is working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. California and New Jersey regulators also are probing CVS' refill practices.

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L.A. County removing metal detectors from some hospital facilities

It was typically chaotic in the emergency room at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center that February day in 1993. Richard May was treating patients in the triage area when a disgruntled man started ranting about the long wait. Then, without warning, the man pulled a gun and started shooting, hitting May in the head, chest and arm and seriously wounding two other doctors.

The carnage, coming after a series of violent incidents, prompted a wave of safety improvements, including the installation of metal detectors at hospital entrances, bulletproof enclosures in emergency rooms and the addition of more security guards.

Now, 20 years after the attack, officials want the metal detectors removed from parts of county hospitals to make them more welcoming to patients in the newly competitive marketplace being created by the Obama administration's healthcare overhaul. The machines in the emergency rooms will remain, but the others are to be taken out by summer. The proposal comes at a time when high-profile shootings have put the nation on edge and prompted emotionally charged debates about the availability of assault weapons and the presence of armed officers in schools.

The county's director of Health Services, Mitchell Katz, says metal detectors stigmatize poor patients and visitors and give the impression that the county facilities are dangerous. Security is paramount, but metal detectors aren't the best way to ensure that, he argues. Most other urban hospitals in L.A. County do not have the machines, relying on guards to provide safety, he said.

"It is a different moment to look and ask ourselves, 'What is the best way to do security?'" Katz said.

But the proposed changes have patients, nurses and doctors worried and are drawing opposition from law enforcement and union members.

May, 67, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, is among those asking administrators to reconsider. He works part-time at the county's Hudson Comprehensive Health Center south of downtown, where he says the metal detector gives patients and staff peace of mind.

"I feel angry, frustrated and resentful," he said of the proposal to remove the devices. "We wouldn't have been shot if they were there then."

Paul Kaszubowski, 64, another doctor shot in 1993, said the bullet shattered his arm and grazed his head. He still suffers problems with his arm and has occasional flashbacks. Removing the metal detectors doesn't make sense, he said. Providing compassionate and high-quality care is the best way to attract and retain patients, he said.

Beginning next year, uninsured patients will be eligible for Medi-Cal coverage and have more options outside of the county's healthcare system. That is driving safety-net hospitals to improve their customer service so they are no longer the providers of last resort.

But that push is running headlong into a record of violence at urban medical facilities, where healthcare workers are often the victims of assault. Hospitals are intrinsically high-risk places, and metal detectors can help prevent violent attacks, said Jane Lipscomb, a University of Maryland professor who has studied hospital safety.

The county's largest public hospital workers' union is trying to stop the removal of the scanners and sent a letter to Katz saying the action is a "huge decision" that could put patients and staff in harm's way.

Longtime County/USC nurse Sabrina Griffin, a union representative, vividly remembers the 1993 shooting and fears something similar could happen again if the screening equipment is removed. She particularly worries about gang retaliation spilling into the hospital after a shooting or stabbing.

"I just feel safer having the scanners," she said.

Sheriff's Department Capt. Chuck Stringham, who oversees security at the county healthcare facilities, said late Friday that the department is opposed to the wholesale removal of the metal detectors without another plan for weapons screening.

County hospitals mirror the crime and violence of surrounding communities, he said, and the scanners serve as the first line of defense — finding guns, knives, box cutters and other weapons.

The county removed the metal detector equipment from the outpatient building at County/USC in July, and no violent incidents have been reported there since doing so, according to the Sheriff's Department. By June 30, the county plans to remove 26 more machines from County/USC, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Olive View Medical Center and the Martin Luther King and Hudson centers.

Patients and visitors entering another County/USC facility last week emptied their pockets of cellphones, keys and wallets before stepping through the scanners. In a period of a few hours, guards confiscated two pocketknives.

Walter Johnson, 59, who had an eye appointment, said removing the machines is "crazy." "How would they know if anyone is coming in with a gun, or an AK-47, or a knife?" he said. "The minute you take these out, you are gonna give some idiot some excuse to do something."

Michelle Mendez, an ER nurse, said metal detectors are needed in the emergency room but not elsewhere. "I think [visitors] would feel more comfortable when visiting their loved ones, knowing we aren't so concerned about violence and crime and weapons," she said.

Tammy Duong, a medical resident in the psychiatric unit, said the machines can be intimidating. But she worries about what might happen without them.

"Just because it is a hospital," she said, "doesn't mean violence can't spill over."

anna.gorman@latimes.com

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