By Diana L. Chapman

   The teacher at a Wilmington Elementary School kept the two boys behind at recess. Why, the fourth grade teacher asked, were they fighting -- a little tip he'd received. The boys shuffled about until the true confessions flowed out…

 When Emmanuel Catalan, 23, heard about the shootings of 26 first graders and educators in Connecticut, the Floridian was stunned along with everyone else. But when his friends who lived in the impacted state began to call and text him, he detected pain so enmeshed in them that he was even more shaken. The two women, who live in nearby…

By Diana L. Chapman

After three years of visiting her 9-year-old granddaughter at her grave, Mary Lou Martinez thought both of them deserved a better deal. They should be celebrating Devin Hamilton's life with the punctuations of joy she left in people's hearts.

Not in silence. Or in somberness.

That's when it hit. It seemed to Martinez that so…

By Diana L. Chapman

 Images that blossomed on Facebook pages of "ratchet" girls in the Harbor Area in early December were not criminal and were considered child "erotica," rather than pornography, says a lead investigator who heads a regional task force that deals with internet crime against…

By Diana L. Chapman

First a man shot his girlfriend to death in San Pedro on the street behind my house before killing himself. I knew him and his kids.

I also knew that Johnny O'Kane's actions had torn away the tethers of humanity, leaving two families in utter despair.

Still, I believed. Ever since I read "The Diary of Anne Frank" when I was 12 years…

By Diana L. Chapman

   The minute the facebook site -- called San Pedro Ratchets -- launched last week, some San Pedro High School girls found themselves posted there only in their bras and underwear and targets of alleged sexual exploits.

   Comments swarmed in about…

"We haven't solved it. He's still out there and could do it again."--LAPD Detective David Alvarez.           

By Diana L. Chapman

   Los Angeles Police Detective David Alvarez calls it the kind of crime that keeps him up at night: A tiny woman with the mind of a…

Left: Johnny O'Kane with his son Jonathan Andrew "Drew" O'Kane

By Diana L. Chapman

Johnny O'Kane's children who wanted to bury their father next to their mother who died of cancer in 2005 might not get the chance after his second wife resurfaced recently, claimed his body and had their father's account frozen, according to her face book page.

The…

By Diana L. Chapman

I drove by the house where it happened, just around the corner from where I live in San Pedro, not knowing what I was looking for. I don't know if I just wanted to be drenched in more sadness. Or if I just was looking for his kids, who are really adults now, but to me they are still kids.…

Former LAPD Deputy Chief Pat Gannon Who Headed the South Bureau Scores Top Job As Los Angeles World Airports Police Commander

By Diana L. Chapman

Former LAPD Deputy Chief Pat Gannon, who didn't want to retire from the Los Angeles police after 34 years but did so…