LA authorities offer $500,000 for info on serial killer. Somebody’s killing a lot of Black people in Los Angeles, and authorities are offering a half-million to anyone who can help them catch the murderer. The killings, which date back to 1985, occurred during two separate periods in the same South Los Angeles neighborhood, according to police. Many of the women are believed to have been prostitutes, police say. Ballistics reports show that seven women and a man were slain by the same weapon between 1985 and 1988. The women had been raped and dumped in the same alley, police say. On Wednesday, the City Council approved the $500,000 reward, proposed by Councilman Bernard Parks, an African American. Parks was the Los Angeles Police Chief in 2001 who ordered his department to investigate the unsolved murder cases. Porter Alexander, whose youngest daughter, Alicia Monique Alexander, was the last known victim in the first round of killings, told The Associated Press that he never saw her again after she left for a quick trip to the store in September 1988. “I said make sure you go to the store and come back. She says, ‘OK,’” Porter Alexander said. “She left, and that was the last time I saw my baby.” Four days later, police found the body of the 18-year-old in a nearby alley with a gunshot wound in the chest, according to AP. It took 13 years before the next related case. “What accounted for that gap, we still don’t know,” police Capt. Denis Cremins said at a news conference Wednesday. “We try not to engage in conjecture.” In March 2002, Princess Berthomieux was found beaten and strangled in an alley in the city of Inglewood. DNA samples linked her to the suspect in the earlier murders, AP reports. The next year marked another killing. Most recently was the 2007 murder of Janecia Peters, a 25-year-old who was shot to death and found in a garbage bag in an alley. Only one description of the so-called “Grim Sleeper” exists. A victim who survived a 1988 attack described her attacker as a Black man in his 30s, driving an orange Pinto, according to AP. “But that’s one person’s account who was traumatized,” Cremins said.

Md. Lawmakers skeptical about new DNA law. Members of the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus are skeptical about a new law that permits authorities to collect DNA samples from suspects charged with anything from a violent crime, such as murder or rape, to a burglary. But caucus members, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, are concerned that the DNA gatherers are not being properly monitored. The members say that when they negotiated with the governor to enact the law, he guaranteed certain protections to ensure that DNA would not be mishandled, and that samples would be destroyed and records expunged when appropriate. The Baltimore County Crime Lab, the State Police Crime Lab and the Baltimore City crime lab have all had serious problems over the past decade when it comes to handling DNA evidence. Maryland Sen. Delores Goodwin Kelley of Baltimore County is one of the lawmakers who says the law is flawed. But Assistant Attorney General Sharon Benzil contends that “if the law is sort of the blue print, then the regulations are the instruction manual that provides the specifics to the local jurisdiction about how, when, where and what the law requires.”

“Beverly Hills Cop,” “Boyz N the Hood” make cut.

The Los Angeles Times top-10 list of movies that best reflect L.A. city life and culture is filled with Black star power. Among the contributions are: Jackie Brown, starring Pam Grier and Samuel L. Jackson; Boyz N the Hood, starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Laurence Fishburne and Ice Cube; Beverly Hills Cop, starring Eddie Murphy; and Collateral, starring Jamie Foxx. The movies included were all released within the past 25 years and feature the L.A. landscape as a “main character” in the script.

“Lakeview Terrace” minimizes its Madea factor

Apparently, Hollywood can only accommodate one crazy Black woman character at a time. Samuel L. Jackson’s new film Lakeview Terrace, co-starring Ray’s Kerry Washington, cut a scene in which Washington appears to “lose it” on camera. Washington, who plays the wife in a couple terrorized by their neighbor, pretends to seduce the next-door character, Jackson, but then pulls a knife on him. “It got removed,” she says. “The producers felt like, at that point in the film, my character was the only sane one and they needed her to stay sane in the mix. She was losing it.” Madea would surely be disappointed with the decision.

The university found a way around a state anti-affirmative action law

UCLA seems to have found away around a voter initiative that made it illegal to consider race and gender when deciding college admissions - but some believe the university’s policies are being manipulated in a way that cheats the voters of California . Twelve years ago, voters passed Proposition 209, which bars the state’s public universities from using race as a criterion in admissions. In the decade following the passage of the anti-affirmative action initiative, Black enrollment in the University of California system plummeted, and by 2006, only 103 of UCLA’s entering freshmen and 108 of its transfer students were African American - the shallowest level in 30 years. So UCLA got creative, adopting a “holistic” approach to admissions it says is much fairer. Under this plan, university officials began evaluating academic achievement, extracurricular activities and other criteria in context with applicants’ personal experiences. UCLA says it has struck pay dirt, as Black enrollment has crawled upward. For this school year, 230 of the 4,889 freshmen are African American - plus 100 transfer students. But critics, including political science Professor Tim Groseclose, say that UCLA isn’t as slick as it thinks. Last week, Groseclose quit the university’s Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations after accusing the campus’ top brass and his colleagues on the committee of a coverup. He had been denied the opportunity to officially study the rise in Black enrollment. “A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions,” he wrote in an 89-page report posted on a UCLA Web site. The university calls his claims bogus, saying he is drawing a false conclusion based on the increased diversity. What he fails to notice, officials say, is the university’s aggressive outreach, which was employed to counter an anti-minority law. “He’s taking an outcome and from that deducing a cause,” said Tom Lifka, associate vice chancellor for student academic services.

Blacks in the South have higher HIV rates. Blacks in the South have higher HIV and AIDS rates. Why? Read more at BET.com/Body & Soul.

Be Sickle Smart program hits major cities.

The Be Sickle Smart program is on the road, and likely will be in a city near you. “American Idol” season two Winner Ruben Studdard hosted the Be Sickle Smart Education Day in Jacksonville, Fla., last Saturday to raise awareness of the risk of iron overload, a serious condition that affects people living with sickle-cell disease. Transfusional iron overload is a serious condition that can arise from having 10 or more blood transfusions over one’s lifetime (which is common among people who suffer from sickle-cell disease). If left untreated, iron overload can lead to serious health problems, including liver and heart damage, to name a few. The nationwide Be Sickle Smart campaign is a community-based health education effort leveraging advocacy groups, churches, local media and community leaders to raise awareness of sickle-cell disease and iron overload. The program will continue in Birmingham on Sept. 13 and Chicago on Sept. 18, with other stops planned later for Atlanta, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Philadelphia. More than 70,000 people in America have sickle-cell disease. One in 12 African Americans carries the trait for sickle-cell disease. For more information, go to Ask About Iron.com.

Is L.A. driving the trans fat bandwagon off a cliff?
Vital Signs: Cities and states are helping you cut the fat from your diets. Cities like Los Angeles are going as far as to stop fast food restaurants from opening in poor communities to lessen the number of unhealthy restaurants there. But do we really need that kind of help in the fat fight, or is the city going too far? Vital Signs has more.

Blacks are most likely to be victimized because of their race

While most crimes went down dramatically over the past half-decade, those committed against people because they happen to be Black, White, Latino, Jewish, Asian or gay skyrocketed over that period, according to a recent report. reports. The Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission annual report shows that hate crimes rose by 28 percent, to 763 offenses, with hate-related vandalism leading the way, The Los Angeles Times. The spike in hate crimes is what Robin Toma, executive director of the Human Relations Commission, describes as an alarming trend. The most victimized have been Blacks, at the hands of Latino suspects, the report shows. Next, Latinos have been victimized at the hands of Black suspects. “Latinos also made up the largest number of suspects in hate crimes based on sexual orientation. Whites were the leading suspects in religion-based incidents,” the Times reports. “Overall, Blacks made up nearly half the hate crime victims, totaling 310.”

Judge resigns after calling crack a “Black man’s disease”

A White South Carolina judge who said that being addicted to crack cocaine is a “Black man’s disease” was forced to resign following a reprimand by the state Supreme Court. George Peter Lamb, former Beaufort County magistrate, had engaged in a series of actions deemed inappropriate by the Supreme Court, including his behavior toward women workers and his incorrect admonishment to a defendant about the penalty he could face if convicted. When the justices publicly reprimanded Lamb, they said it was the most severe penalty they could mete out, because Lamb already had stepped down. He also agreed not to seek any other judicial position within the state without permission from the high court.

Award-winning singing preacher is about to get a promotion

After 14 years of pastoring one of the fastest growing churches in New York City and in Bensalem, Pa., the Rev. Hezekiah Walker is about to add bishop to his resume. The 45-year-old singer and pastor will be named bishop in the Pentecostal church on Aug. 3, in Atlanta , in recognition of his work among young people and for starting new churches - five in the U.S. , and one in Cape Town , South Africa . “This is a very great honor,” said Walker, 45, founder of the Love Fellowship Tabernacle in East New York , and host of “Afternoon Praise” on WLIB-AM.