2. It always makes a better impression on a judge and possibly jury should it go that far if a defendant is well dressed and relaxed in the appropriate court room attire rather than an orange jump suit and held in shackles while in court.

3. Being out on bail gives a defendant a better chance to fight his or her case. It puts less stress to “make a deal” and allows the defendant ample time to find suitable legal representation.

The allegations are piling up, yet Sheriff Lee Baca and his top aides continue to insist that everything’s under control and that the department can police itself, thank you very much. But it can’t.

Baca, unfortunately, appears more interested in whining about the federal inquiry than uncovering the truth. He has spent a lot of time, for instance, complaining that as part of its investigation, the FBI paid a deputy about $1,500 to smuggle a cellphone to an inmate at Men’s Central Jail. The deputy was unaware that the prisoner was an FBI informant.

Instead of expressing outrage that one of his deputies took a bribe, or vowing to help the FBI get to the bottom of the misconduct and brutality allegations, Baca has criticized the FBI for failing to notify his office about the cellphone sting, and has suggested that agents committed a crime that put deputies’ and inmates’ lives at risk. He has dismissed past ACLU allegations as “unsubstantiated,” although in at least two of the cases cited in the most recent report, internal investigators never contacted witnesses, the civil liberties group said.

The county jails have a long history of trouble that precedes Baca. They have been under federal court oversight for overcrowding and other problems for more than 30 years. And over the last decade, there have been inmate riots, killings by inmates and even accusations that deputies in the jails have formed gang-like cliques. Deputies, mind you. Not inmates. At least a dozen deputies were fired for misconduct last year.

The county cannot afford to ignore these problems. Beginning next week, newly convicted low-level felons who until now have been sent to state prison will be sent to county jails. Baca must bring his deputies under control immediately; the potential for violence and misconduct will only grow as the inmate population increases.

If Baca is truly interested in demonstrating the integrity of his department and protecting the reputation of his deputies, he should welcome the FBI probe, not obstruct it.

James Coley can’t save all his clients. He can’t slay their demons or change the world they live in.

But he goes to work every day and gives it a shot. On a recent morning in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, his to-do list was growing fast, the day’s challenges lined up bumper to bumper.

The client he was supposed to meet was running late, and he needed to get over to County Jail to check on another client who had threatened to drink Clorox. Then there was a third client he was supposed to take from jail to a housing and treatment program in Pasadena. And he also had to deal with the call he’d just gotten about a fourth client who drank vodka for breakfast and was in trouble at a board-and-care facility.

I had hooked up with Coley because of something the father of Kelly Thomas said to me a few weeks ago. Ron Thomas had said that his 37-year-old son, who died violently in July after a run-in with Fullerton police, was in and out of treatment facilities after being diagnosed with schizophrenia 15 years earlier.

I hear that all the time — in and out of treatment. Thousands of people who fit that description wander the streets of Southern California.

But Marsha Temple, who runs the nonprofit Integrated Recovery Network, says it doesn’t have to be that way. A few years ago, Temple, an attorney who once represented hospitals, zeroed in on what she calls the “revolving door between Twin Towers and skid row.”

People would land in Los Angeles County Jail because of a crime committed due in large part to a mental illness, hang there for a while, then go back on the street, get into trouble again and land back in jail or prison. There was little chance of breaking the cycle because they were pretty much on their own, with no treatment plan and no one looking after them.

“It was shameful,” Temple said.

With public and private funding, her agency began connecting with clients while they were still in jail, steering them into therapy, medication and housing and then assigning caseworkers like Coley to check in with them regularly.

Temple’s staff now handles nearly 100 clients at a time. Since she began, she said, only 20% have gone back to jail — a success rate three or four times greater than estimates for those who get no such monitoring. The cost works out to roughly $10,000 per client per year, which is far less than the cost of churning people through hospitals and the criminal justice system.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas called recovery network a model program.

“It provides intensive wraparound services, helping with substance abuse issues, mental illness, employment and social skills training, walking people through the system and seeing to it that they do not fail. And they don’t let go. They don’t cut their clients loose once a program is complete or a problem appears to be solved,” Ridley-Thomas said.

No one can say whether Kelly Thomas might be alive if he were a client in such a program. As his father told me, Thomas often resisted help, and it can be difficult for family or even professionals to break through to someone who doesn’t want treatment, medication or even housing.

But you just keep going back to people like that, Coley told me, and try to develop a trust that will pay off eventually.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors should take note. They responded to the Kelly Thomas tragedy by vowing to look into implementing a controversial state provision, known as Laura’s Law, that allows for forced outpatient treatment.

There’s no doubt some people need to be ordered by the courts into treatment for their own health and safety, and Los Angeles County makes some use of Laura’s Law. But there wouldn’t be as great a need for forced treatment — which is no sure-fire approach, and can be as traumatic as it is helpful — if there were adequate intervention, supportive housing and other services to keep people from deteriorating in the first place.

The supervisors would be better off investigating why, despite having the second-highest population of chronically homeless people in California, Orange County has fallen way behind on its 2009 plan to use available Proposition 63 funds for the construction of 185 supportive housing units by 2012. Or they could take a close look at Temple’s program and try the same thing in Orange County.

The day I spent with Coley was typical for him. He was so busy that the transfer of the woman from jail to housing would have to wait. And after a long delay at the County Jail, it turned out that Coley’s desperately ill client had been moved to another facility.

In the courtroom where the day began, his 19-year-old client, a woman with bipolar disorder, showed up and was congratulated by Coley, the city attorney and the commissioner. She had completed a 120-day stretch in transitional housing and therapy, rather than jail, for a minor crime.

Coley did not let her leave until she told him her plans, and he promised to make a follow-up visit within a week.

The guy who had been drunk was still tipsy when we arrived at the board-and-care home where he lives.

“Why were you drinking?” Coley asked the man, who has multiple mental disorders and has made several suicide attempts.

“Because I’m alone and my life is sad,” said the client, who wrapped his arms around Coley and thanked his caseworker for being his savior.

NEW ORLEANS, La. (KTLA) — Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage who went on a bizarre tear in New Orleans’ French Quarter that ended with his arrest on several charges, including domestic abuse battery, won’t face criminal charges.

The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office said prosecutors determined Cage’s conduct did not amount to criminal conduct.

The incident began April 16 when the 47-year-old actor, who was in the city to work on a movie, began arguing with his wife on Dumaine Street, New Orleans, Police Officer Garry Flot said.

“He and his wife were standing in front of a residence that he insisted was the property the couple was renting,” Flot said. “She disagreed, and Cage grabbed her by the upper arm and pulled her to what he believed was the correct address.”

Cage then “began striking vehicles and later attempted to get into a taxi.”

Police, who had been called by on-lookers, arrived to find Cage heavily intoxicated,” he said. They ordered the actor out of the cab, “which prompted Cage to start yelling,” Flot said.

“The officers subsequently took Cage to Central Lock-Up,” the police spokesman said.

In the mugshot released by the Orleans Parish Sheriff, an unshaven Cage has his eyes closed.

Cage was charged with domestic abuse battery, disturbing the peace and public drunkenness, Flot said.

An Orleans Parish magistrate set his bond at $11,000 with a court date for May 31, according to the booking information online. It also said “stay away order waived,” indicating Cage is not prohibited from being with his wife.

“There were no visible signs of injury on his wife’s arm,” Flot said.

Cage was released from jail Saturday afternoon, according to the jail’s information line.

Duane Chapman — known as “Dog the Bounty Hunter” from the A&E reality show chronicling his life — bailed Cage out of jail, he said in a statement.

While he called himself “a truly dedicated fan of Mr. Cage,” Chapman insisted he was simply doing his job “as a bail bondsman and not in connection with our show.”

“There are two sides of my job: I release my clients after they have been arrested, and pick them up if they don’t show up in court,” Chapman said.

“I do not believe the latter will be the case for Mr. Cage.”

Cage and his third wife, Alice Kim, have a 5-year-old son. His previous two marriages, to Patricia Arquette and Lisa Marie Presley, ended in divorce.

The Academy Award winner has acted in dozens of films, but is best known for his roles in “Raising Arizona” and “Leaving Las Vegas,” for which he nabbed an Oscar.

Although one of Hollywood’s highest-paid movie stars, Cage’s financial troubles, including tax liens and foreclosures on houses, have been highly publicized in the past two years.

He sued his accountant in 2009, charging that he “lined his pockets with several million dollars in business management fees while sending Cage down a path toward financial ruin.”

The accountant, Samuel Levin, responding to the lawsuit by saying he warned Cage that he could face bankruptcy unless he scaled back his lavish lifestyle.

Thousands of new parolees are coming to Los Angeles County as part of the state’s effort to ease prison overcrowding. To deal with them, the Board of Supervisors faces two options, both abysmal. It could assign the former state prisoners to the foundering Probation Department, which has demonstrated an inability to keep adequate records, discipline wayward employees and properly supervise troubled youths, and is under scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice. Or it could pick the Sheriff’s Department, which has its own history of difficulties and is currently being monitored by the federal government for its failures in county jails.

With the parolees comes state funding, and each department is eager to take on the new task and accept the new money. Past behavior suggests neither department is up to the job — but in the end it has to be one or the other. The supervisors must be tempted to wash their hands of the problem and send the parolees to Sheriff Lee Baca, who is elected and whom the supervisors ultimately can hang out to dry if his program fails. But that would be the wrong move. For all its troubles, the Probation Department, which oversees residents on probation as well as the county’s juvenile detention facilities, is the proper agency to handle the coming population.

That should not be mistaken for a vote of confidence in the Probation Department. To the contrary, that department is, and long has been, a mess.

For more than a decade, the Justice Department has been monitoring the agency as a consequence of a host of appalling conditions in the juvenile justice portion of its operation. Juvenile halls were cited for deficient medical and mental healthcare. Education of youths in county custody was found to be woefully inadequate. The department was warned about its failure to protect youths from one another — and in some cases, from Probation Department staff. The juvenile halls, which are generally reserved for youths accused of crimes who are awaiting their court hearings, were instead being used as places of punishment.

At the youth camps, where young offenders are sent after being found guilty of crimes, the Justice Department found constitutional violations. And yet those problems persist.

Meanwhile, employees have been arrested for misuse of public funds, for theft and for inappropriate conduct with probationers.

That would seem to offer an argument for another department to take on the new duties, and that’s what Baca has proposed. The sheriff says his department is prepared to take over the job in October, when the state is expected to begin releasing inmates. Under Baca’s plan, his department would receive $37.5 million in the first year. The funds would not be used for any new hires; instead, the sheriff would transfer 146 deputies and support staff out of the jails and patrol services and into the role of supervising parolees. Los Angeles Police Department staff would also be brought in, Baca’s office said.

But Baca’s department has its own litany of difficulties, and it too is under federal scrutiny. In June, the FBI confirmed it was investigating allegations that two sheriff’s deputies assigned to the Twin Towers jail beat an inmate unconscious and then attempted to cover up the incident. The Department of Justice has been monitoring the jails since 1996 over failure to provide adequate mental health services to inmates. And since 1978, a federal court has repeatedly ordered the Sheriff’s Department to improve conditions and reduce overcrowding at the jails.

Moreover, the department’s chief responsibility is to enforce the law, not to help rehabilitate those who are trying to stay out of jail, which is a big part of what parole is about. L.A. County would be the first in the state to hand off the supervision of parolees to a sheriff’s department. This duty thus not only would tax the sheriff’s resources but would involve his department in areas beyond its traditional expertise. Baca has said his plan would take from six months to a year to be fully operational. Quite frankly, the county can’t afford to wait.

The tragedy of the county’s predicament is that the arrival of new state parolees ought to be an opportunity to focus on the reentry of these ex-prisoners into society. It should fall to churches, mosques and synagogues, to nonprofit organizations, to schools, but above all to county government to ensure that those leaving institutions and reentering their neighborhoods do so in a way that maximizes their chance to become productive and law-abiding citizens.

Even the parolees expected to come to Los Angeles County — those whose crimes were nonviolent, non-sexual and relatively low-level — are more likely than the state’s population at large to be sick, addicted, mentally ill, poorly educated and unemployable. Given that California’s state prison system has disinvested in prisoner care and rehabilitation, the parolees are unlikely to come home any better prepared to lead productive lives than when they went in. Indeed, the failure of the state’s parole efforts is one of the best arguments for turning this responsibility over to local governments, which at least have a fighting chance.

Los Angeles County has done little to prepare for this opportunity, and it must now suffer the consequences of its past mismanagement. Forced to pick between two troubled agencies, it should take the one that at least encompasses the mission. The county employees best experienced and oriented toward that task are probation workers.

The federal civil rights probe was prompted by the allegations of an American Civil Liberties Union representative who said she witnessed the assault while meeting with another inmate in the Twin Towers jail in January. Esther Lim, the ACLU’s observer in the jails, filed a court declaration stating that she was in another room when she heard a thud sound. Through a window, she said, she saw two deputies punching, kicking and Tasering an inmate.

The inmate never resisted, and his body was limp “like he was a mannequin” throughout the assault, Lim said, adding that she did not believe the deputies were aware she was there.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller confirmed that a probe had been opened into the incident. She declined to elaborate on the investigation other than to say that sheriff’s officials have been notified and that it’s specific to the alleged January beating. Sheriff’s officials had also launched their own investigation into Lim’s allegations.

During the incident, Lim said the deputies monotonously repeated “stop resisting” and “stop fighting,” as though they “were reading from a script.”

ACLU officials say they commonly receive complaints from inmates who say deputies beat them while repeating “stop resisting” commands even when the inmates aren’t resisting. Lim said she suspects the two deputies recited the commands as a ruse to later justify their actions with the help of a jailhouse recording or other deputies who may have heard their commands.

After Lim went public with her allegations, Sheriff’s Department officials publicly asked why she hadn’t immediately reported the beating to them. The ACLU, in turn, criticized the department for what they characterized as publicly questioning a potential witness’ credibility.

Representatives from the civil liberties group also complained that James Parker, the inmate who was allegedly beaten, was charged with felony counts of battery and resisting an officer before the sheriff’s probe into Lim’s allegations was wrapped up.
Lim told The Times she was interviewed a couple of months ago by federal authorities for about three hours.

Her attorney, Michael Proctor, said Lim remains a monitor in the jails, but has received a “chilly reception” since the incident. He said she has cooperated fully with authorities.

The FBI investigation was launched after ACLU officials called for federal involvement, saying the Sheriff’s Department has been “unwilling” to investigate its own jail deputies aggressively.

“The response we always get from the Sheriff’s Department is ‘Oh, prisoners lie,’ ” said Peter J. Eliasberg, legal director with the ACLU of Southern California. “We have real doubts about the Sheriff’s Department’s ability to do an impartial investigation.”

Spokesman Steve Whitmore said Sheriff Lee Baca is open to his department being scrutinized.

“The sheriff and by extension the Sheriff’s Department has never had any problem with anybody looking at whatever they do,” Whitmore said. “We certainly believe transparency is much more than a buzz word. It’s an actuality in the Sheriff’s Department.”

An internal sheriff’s log appears to confirm the Jan. 24 incident, but offers a different narrative than Lim’s. The log states that the inmate punched a deputy and charged at him. When another deputy tried to help, the inmate punched him as well and remained combative until he was Tasered, according to the sheriff’s log.

According to the department, one of the deputies injured his hand and had swelling on his face.

Allegations of deputy brutality in county jails are common but hard to substantiate. Generally the only witnesses, aside from other deputies, are inmates whose accounts are inherently considered less credible, experts say. Critics pointed to this incident as a rare instance in which a third party happened to observe.

Eimiller said the bureau’s findings will be presented to the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice in Washington once the probe is complete, at which time it will be determined “if prosecution is warranted.”

By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

James Fayed recounted paying one of his employees to organize his wife’s slaying. He angrily explained how he had arranged several opportunities for the killers to strike but said they blundered by carrying out the fatal stabbing in a well-lighted Century City parking garage and using a family vehicle as their getaway car.

Worried about being caught, Fayed plotted with the cellmate to kill his accomplices to “clean up the…mess.”

“I don’t want to go to the death chamber,” Fayed told his cellmate, who was secretly recording the conversation for authorities.

On Tuesday, a Los Angeles jury that heard the recording ignored the convicted murderer’s wish, deciding he should be executed for his role in the 2008 killing of his estranged wife, Pamela.

Fayed, 48, showed little emotion when the verdict was read but later described his journey from millionaire to condemned inmate as “a downfall of mythic proportions,” one of his attorneys, Steve Meister, told reporters.

Meister said that long delays in bringing California’s death row inmates to execution would probably mean that his client — who is overweight, in poor health and suffering from depression — would never be put to death.

Prosecutors said Fayed paid a worker on his Moorpark ranch $25,000 to carry out the killing with two gang members. Fayed, they argued, was embroiled in a bitter and potentially expensive divorce and feared that his wife would cooperate with a federal investigation into their international gold trading business.

Pamela Fayed, 44, was attacked by a hooded assailant on the third floor of an office tower parking garage. Surveillance footage showed that the killer fled with two other men in a red Suzuki SUV that had been rented by the Fayeds’ business.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Jackson said prosecutors were satisfied with the outcome of the trial and believed that Fayed had earned the death penalty.

Jury foreman Jason Pritchett said the nearly three-hour recording of Fayed in jail played a key role in Tuesday’s verdict. He said jurors rejected defense arguments that Fayed was adopting an aggressive “macho attitude” that his cellmate projected onto him.

“We didn’t feel that he had any remorse,” Pritchett said. “He only seemed interested in saving his own skin….He was still trying to kill three more people to cover up the evidence of the initial murder.”

Within days of the killing, federal authorities arrested Fayed on an indictment accusing him of making unlicensed money transactions. Though the charge was eventually dismissed, Fayed was incarcerated for several weeks at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown L.A.

There, he met Shawn Smith, a suspected drug dealer and felon who had recently pleaded guilty to illegally carrying a handgun.

While awaiting his sentence, Smith, then 47, told authorities that Fayed had made incriminating statements to him. Smith was fitted with a wire. One Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective told him he was a great actor, according to a transcript of the audio recording played in court.

“If it was in a different life, man, you could’ve probably got an Oscar,” the detective said before Smith returned to Fayed’s cell.

On the recording, Fayed criticized his dead wife, accusing her of taking drugs and trying to poison him. Jackson, the prosecutor, said there was no evidence to support Fayed’s accusations.

Smith egged Fayed on to criticize the way his accomplices had carried out the killing.

“There were four different other occasions where I had it so it was perfectly clean,” Fayed said.

By Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times

U.S. Central District Magistrate Carla Woehrle released the former star on $150,000 bond and ordered him to seek outpatient substance abuse treatment and surrender his passport.

Dykstra, who has been embroiled in a bankruptcy case, is accused of illegally removing and selling personal property from his $18 million mansion without permission of a bankruptcy trustee, according to a federal criminal complaint filed last Friday.

Dykstra was arrested by Los Angeles Police last Thursday on what police said was suspicion of fraudulent auto purchases.

In a complex series of events, he was held in lieu of $500,000 bail. Meanwhile, on Friday the federal criminal complaint was filed. Dykstra remained in local custody through the weekend and into the week, until state prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to file charges based on the police allegations of fraudulent auto purchases.

The former member of a New York Mets World Series champion team was transferred to federal custody Tuesday, and Wednesday he appeared in federal court where he was released after posting bond.

His attorney, Mark Werksman characterized the case as “a scorched-earth bankruptcy proceeding” and blamed the auto-related accusations as a “vendetta” by former caretakers.

“He’s been caged like an animal for seven days,” said Werksman who communicated with Dykstra through a glass partition, surrounded by several U.S. marshals.

According to the criminal complaint, Dykstra, who filed for bankruptcy in 2009 also is suspected of selling items belonging to the estate for cash, as well as destroying and hiding other items. An attorney hired by the bankruptcy trustee estimated that Dykstra stole or destroyed more than $400,000 worth of property in the estate, according to the criminal complaint.

In the bankruptcy filing, Dykstra listed assets of $24.6 million and overall debts of $37.1 million.

Among the assets he listed are two residences: a Ventura County mansion in Lake Sherwood Estates that he purchased from Janet and Wayne Gretzky, which he estimated was worth $18.5 million; and a home in Westlake Village that he estimated was worth $5.4 million. As a result of the bankruptcy filing, the residences and Dykstra’s personal property became part of the bankruptcy estate that would be used to pay off creditors.

Even though Dykstra was prohibited from liquidating any part of the estate, the complaint alleges he admitted in a bankruptcy hearing that he arranged the sale of sports memorabilia and furniture that were part of the estate.

Dykstra’s professional baseball career began in 1985 when he was drafted by the New York Mets at the age of 22. A year later, Dykstra hit a lead-off home run in Game 3 of the World Series at Boston’s Fenway Park, after the Mets had lost the first two games. That spark rallied the Mets to a seven-game Series victory over the Boston Red Sox.

He was traded in 1989 to Philadelphia, where the rest of his career was marked by successes as well as injuries, brawls and allegations of steroid use that he has denied. He earned the nickname “Nails” for his tenacity and confrontations on the field.

By the time he retired, Dykstra had earned $36.5 million from major league baseball, according to the website baseball-reference.com.

After retirement, Dykstra moved to California and started a profitable luxury car wash that he called The Taj Mahal. He expanded the business throughout Southern California and in 2007 sold it to investors, according to bankruptcy filings.

As a self-taught financial analyst, Dykstra proclaimed himself a financial guru and began writing a stock-picking website column. His prominence soared as a sports celebrity, entrepreneur and popular guest on numerous financial news broadcasts. In 2008, Dykstra began publishing the Players Club, a glossy financial advice magazine exclusively for pro athletes to help them with wealth management and investment banking.

His purchase of the palatial Gretzy estate in 2007 for $14 million occurred a few months before the mortgage market collapsed. By the time Dykstra filed for bankruptcy in July 2009, he had accumulated loans totaling $21 million, bankruptcy records show.

The bankruptcy case is still ongoing. Dykstra has listed his only income as a $5,700 monthly pension from Major League Baseball, records show. He faces a maximum of five years in federal prison if convicted on the federal charges. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 4.

From Stan Wilson CNN

Longtime opponents express a shared sense of outrage as a Giants fan remains in a coma after being attacked by two Dodgers fans.

Reporting from Los Angeles and San Francisco—
For a long time, for all the heroes and the heroics, the Koufaxes and Garveys and hobbled home run trots, the experience of going to a Los Angeles Dodgers game was largely about beating traffic. FOR THE RECORD:
Bryan Stow: In coverage of the beating on March 31 of Giants fan Bryan Stow at Dodger Stadium, The Times in three instances has misspelled his first name as Brian: on April 5, in an article in Section A about how the attack had united rival fans in calling for improved security, and twice on April 12, in captions on the covers of Section A and the LATExtra section. —

Fans arrived late, left early and — at least in the eyes of rivals — didn’t seem terribly concerned with what happened in the intervening hours.

But over time, being a Dodgers fan became an almost tribal identity to some. That helped to rebuild a fervent base of support for the team — but brought in, too, an unsettling pattern of fan abuse and boorish behavior that hit another low last week when a Giants fan was severely beaten on opening day. The violence left even the truest blue Dodgers fans saying something has to change.

“It’s not right,” said Tommy Lasorda, the Hall of Fame former Dodgers manager and, for many years, the face of the organization. “It’s just a baseball game.”

Brian Stow, 42, a Santa Cruz paramedic, a father of two and a Giants fan, was walking through the Dodger Stadium parking lot with two friends after the Dodgers’ 2-1 victory over San Francisco. Stow was wearing Giants apparel, police said, and two young men began taunting him. One of the assailants then cursed the Giants and blindsided Stow with blows to the back and head, police said.

The two assailants repeatedly kicked and punched Stow while he was on the ground. Stow’s friends attempted to help, and were also punched and kicked before the attackers fled in a car driven by a woman. Police said it appears there was also a 10-year-old boy in the car.

Stow has a brain injury and is in a medically induced coma at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. He remained in critical condition on Monday.

Part of Stow’s skull has been removed to reduce the pressure on his brain, said Rebecca Mackowiak, his colleague at a paramedic service. Even if he recovers physically, she said, “he won’t be the same person again.”

The attack has helped add to Dodger Stadium’s reputation as the home to what former major league player Dustan Mohr a few years ago told a reporter might be “the worst crowd” in baseball.

The beating stunned fans from both teams. In the games that followed over the weekend, San Francisco supporters were jittery; one removed his Giants license plate frame before the game so his car wouldn’t get vandalized. Two children, 9 and 14, forbade their San Francisco-raised mother from wearing a Giants cap to the game because they were afraid she would get hurt.

“I think it’s insane,” said Kevin Kafayi, a dentist with a practice at Union Square in San Francisco. Kafayi has been a Giants fan since moving from Iran in 1986.

“The guy is in a coma,” Kafayi added. “He was beaten unconscious. It’s unbelievable to me. I love the Giants. I hate the Dodgers. But to go that far, to beat someone into a coma is unbelievable. It’s taking it too far.”

A $50,000 reward has been offered for information that leads to arrests in the case. The mayors, police chiefs and teams from both Los Angeles and San Francisco took the rare step of issuing a joint statement decrying the violence as “unconscionable.”

“Baseball is a family sport that has unified our country after times of crisis and tragedy,” said the statement, which was signed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, San Francisco Police Interim Chief Jeff Godown, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and Giants managing partner Bill Neukom. “This senseless act of violence has no place in our society and certainly not in our national pastime.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich called Monday for the team to invest in even more security and to curtail alcohol sales.

“The Dodgers organization has an obligation to make security a top priority now,” he said. “Denying that lack of security played a role in this attack is simply sticking their head in the sand.”

That criticism appears to be directed at McCourt, who said over the weekend that the attack was “tragic” but insisted he was satisfied with security levels at the ballpark. Among a reported opening-day attendance of 56,000, the LAPD reported, 72 fans were arrested, most related to alcohol use, and another 48 were cited for traffic infractions and the like. That was a sharp decline from opening day 2010, when 132 arrests were recorded.

By Scott Gold, Richard Winton and Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times

A civilian jail monitor said she witnessed two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies treat an inmate like “a punching bag,” unjustifiably beating him as he lay unconscious for at least two minutes, according to a court declaration filed Monday by the ACLU.

The representative for the civil liberties organization was at Twin Towers jail for an unrelated meeting with another inmate when, according to her declaration, she heard thuds from outside the room she was in. Through a window, she said, she saw two deputies punching, kicking and Tasering an inmate.

Esther Lim, the ACLU observer, said the inmate never resisted, and his body was limp “like he was a mannequin” throughout the assault. In an interview with The Times, Lim said the deputies did not realize she was watching until after the beating stopped. A declaration from another inmate supports her account.

An internal sheriff’s log also appears to confirm the Jan. 24 incident, but offers a different narrative. The log states that the inmate punched a deputy and charged at him. When another deputy tried to help, the inmate punched him as well and remained combative until he was Tasered, according to the sheriff’s log.

Lim called the deputies’ account a fabrication, saying inmate James Parker was so still while being beaten that she worried he was dead. During the incident, she said the deputies monotonously repeated “stop resisting” and “stop fighting” as though they “were reading from a script.”

Lim said the ACLU commonly receives complaints from inmates who say deputies beat them while repeating “stop resisting” commands, even when the inmates aren’t resisting. Lim said she suspects the deputies involved in this incident recited the commands as a ruse to later justify their actions with the help of a jailhouse recording or other deputies who may have heard their commands.

A sheriff’s spokesman said the matter is being investigated, though “initial findings” indicate the inmate was combative, and one of the deputies injured his hand and had swelling on his face.

Allegations of deputy brutality in county jails are common but hard to substantiate. Aside from other deputies, usually the only witnesses are inmates, whose accounts are inherently considered less credible, experts say. This incident offers an especially rare instance in which a third party was there to observe.

One of the deputies involved in the incident was identified in court records as Ryan Hirsch. The other was identified by the ACLU by his last name, Ochoa. Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore declined to confirm their names. Both, he said, declined requests from The Times for an interview. The deputies remain on active duty, Whitmore said.

Parker, 35, was charged Monday with felony counts of battery and resisting an officer in connection with the incident. According to Lim’s account, Parker was lying on his stomach, looking “unconscious” or “even dead.” Hirsch and Ochoa, she said, simultaneously punched him and kneed him. Parker, she said, never put up his hands to protect his head, which Lim took as a sign that he had lost consciousness.

The deputies Tasered Parker’s leg up to four times, she said, and his torso up to three times. A minute into the beating, Ochoa motioned to the other deputy, bringing his index finger to his lips, Lim recalled. Hirsch yelled “stop resisting” and “stop fighting” just once more after Ochoa motioned, she said.

Soon after the incident, Ochoa looked at Lim through the window and signaled for her to move away from the window, she said.

During another visit the next day, she said, she recognized Ochoa and at one point noticed him “staring at me in an aggressive manner.”

Parker received stitches to his face, pain in his ribs and a swollen cheek and eye, according to the ACLU.

“This makes me feel even more strongly that these kinds of incidents go on a lot,” said Peter J. Eliasberg, managing attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “And every time we bring them to the Sheriff’s Department, they consistently say, ‘They’re all false, they’re all false, prisoners lie.’ ”

Whitmore said investigators will interview all the witnesses.

“It’s rare that you have a civilian eyewitness, and what we don’t understand is she never mentioned this to us,” Whitmore said. “Why didn’t she come forward? Why didn’t she talk to us?”

Eliasberg said the ACLU did not notify the Sheriff’s Department immediately because in the past officials there have been quick to deny any complaints.

A court declaration from the inmate who was meeting with Lim at the time of the incident also disputed the deputies’ telling. Lim said inmate Christopher Brown had seen the altercation develop before she did. Brown said Parker was not resisting.

“I saw him stumbling forward, towards me, falling to the ground,” Brown said in a court declaration. “He looked like he was knocked out.” After the incident, Brown said, another inmate had to mop up what appeared to be blood.

Brown said he was interviewed by deputies about the incident afterward. He said Ochoa was present at first. “As I was telling the sergeant that I saw Deputy Ochoa punching Parker, Deputy Ochoa stared at me in an aggressive manner, so I asked him ‘What?’ He aggressively said ‘What’ back at me.’ ”

Michael Gennaco, who heads the Office of Independent Review, the department’s official watchdog, said involved deputies should not be present during interviews. Whitmore said the deputy was not present and that Brown’s allegation was a “fabrication.”

After Ochoa was escorted away, Brown said, he saw the other involved deputy, Hirsch, who warned him not to get involved.

“My advice,” he said the deputy told him, “is to stay out of it. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times