Mark Puente
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Mark Puente covered the Los Angeles Police Department for the Los Angeles Times from 2019-20. He previously worked at the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, the Baltimore Sun and the Tampa Bay Times. Prior to becoming a journalist, he spent 15 years driving a tractor trailer across the country. His real passion is smoking meat and honing his BBQ skills. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Latest From This Author
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The LAPD Metro Division’s work emphasizes guns and gangs and its officers felt pressure to produce statistics in a results-driven department, a source says.
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The LAPD’s methods for labeling someone a gang member. After a review of body-cam footage, at least 20 officers are suspected of falsifying such data.
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The widening inquiry is becoming a major scandal at the LAPD, raising questions about the criminal cases brought by the officers now under scrutiny.
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Four families whose relatives were among the 34 people killed in a fire aboard the dive boat Conception are suing the vessel’s owners.
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L.A. police say there’s an epidemic of car burglaries targeting tourists’ rental cars — carried out largely by gang members from the Bay Area.
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LAPD told a San Fernando Valley mother that her son was in a gang. She said he wasn’t. The ensuing investigation uncovered inconsistencies in officers’ reports.
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Bay Area gang members use rental cars to commit crimes in Los Angeles.
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There are growing questions about whether the operator of the Conception regularly had roving watches on its boats.
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Nationwide, 322 vessels, including the dive boat that burned in California’s worst maritime disaster, were allowed to skip rules on escape hatches and fire prevention systems, a Times analysis shows.
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Months before the disaster on the Conception, a lithium-ion battery caught fire on its sister vessel. The Coast Guard has lagged behind other agencies in making rules to limit such fire risk.