Inaction Action! In their hunt for additional pay and perks, Orange County sheriff’s deputies flexed their muscles again Friday by delaying the transfer of incustody folks to court for criminal hearings. The, if you will, inaction action is designed to frightened county supervisors at the negotiating table with union officials who represent the deputies. Union boss John Nichols tells Reg reporter Peggy Lowe that the protest demonstrates “frustration.” In the past, the union has won wildly generous concessions from all Republican county supervisors afraid they'd be tagged anti-cop if they balked. Now the deputies want a new taxpayer-funded package that allows them to work 20 hours a week until they are 45, immunity from all wrongdoing and a 110 percent pension for life. Kidding. Barely.
Times Neglect Continues: Once again, the top five online Times stories in the paper’s “Orange County news” section have nothing to do with Orange County. The top story is “Neighbors wary of Santa Monica construction.” Another story is about ninth-graders in Pasadena. There are OC stories on the site–like Christine Hanley's coverage of the Catholic Church sex scandal settlements, but they are inexplicably placed elsewhere. Go figure. Just go the Register, though its website was designed by blind intoxicated lab rats, there’s more OC news there. Why does the Times continually give OC the finger?
One Down, Three To Go: Jennifer Henderson DeLeon, 26, won “two consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility” on Friday for participating in the “murders-at-sea of a wealthy Newport Beach couple,” Larry Welborn at the Reg writes. (The Daily Pilot is erroneously reporting that the sentencing in Superior Court Judge Frank Fasel’s court occurred on Thursday.) DeLeon’s ex-husband, onetime child actor Skylar, and two other men face trial next year for tying Tom and Jackie Hawks to an anchor and throwing them overboard into the ocean alive in a 2004 plot to steal their 55-foot yacht. The bodies were never recovered. Dave Lopez at KCAL Channel 9 noted last night that Jennifer had rejected two immunity from prosecution deals proposed early in the case by Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy. Dumb move girl.
And Finally, Something To Do This Weekend: The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art is displaying “Mummies: Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt.” Go see the largest collection of mummies and coffins to ever leave the British Museum since their acquisition by way of pillaging Egyptian pyramids many a century ago. 2002 N. Main St., Santa Ana. For more information, call (714) 567-3600 or visit www.bowers.org
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.