MORE COPS: Would Valley Councilwoman Laura Chick’s...

MORE COPS: Would Valley Councilwoman Laura Chick’s plan to beef up the Police Department really be an end-run around affirmative action? Police, personnel and city attorney’s officials agree it wouldn’t be, Chick said after her staff conferred with them Thursday (B1). Chick wants a quick addition of 50 officers by setting up a hiring gate for ex-officers and experienced reservists--mostly white men who otherwise couldn’t be hired. . . . Solution: a compensating Police Academy increase in minority and women cadets.

DISSED LIST: County Supervisor Mike Antonovich made Buzz magazine’s list--together with a judge, the sheriff, the L.A. city attorney and others. But he isn’t flattered. It names Buzz’s nominees for the county’s worst politicians. Antonovich’s reaction included the words “Outright lie . . . scandal sheet . . . raw sewage.” Most infuriating: the magazine’s crack that while he “denounces the children of immigrants, privately he’s dating them,” a reference to his Chinese-American girlfriend. See the Political Briefing, Page B5.

HIGH CROWD: It must be fun up there in the sky because that’s where many Valley thrill-seekers are going, escaping the heat in hang gliders, para-gliders, parachutes and balloons. See Valley Life Page 12

TENNIS COURTSHIP: Erin Boisclair of Agoura Hills is serving an in-your-face message to the tennis world. Daughter of former major league baseball player Bruce Boisclair, she’s only 13, but already intimidates her opponents (C12). . . . She is still polite enough, however, to win coveted sportsmanship awards.

WATER OF STRIFE: In a good quarrel, there is logic and passion on both sides. One of the best: that furor over the huge water bills that hit many Valley residents under the DWP’s new double-tiered rates. Outrageously unfair or sensible conservation move? Both sides score points in On the Issue (B2).