BREAKING NEWS (4:22AM PT): Man Arrested! | January 2 2012 3:40AM Update: Los Angeles Firefighters Respond to 11 More Arson Fires

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Major Update - Los Angeles Times Headline - 01/05/12 - 12:07AM...

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Officials ask public's help as LA arsonist strikes again
By Staff and Wire Services
Posted: 01/01/2012 09:30:50 AM PST
Updated: 01/01/2012 09:31:57 AM PST

Los Angeles police asked residents today to keep their porch and garage lights on at night and report suspicious activity, but announced no new arrests or leads into the string of 40 arsons that blistered the Hollywood and North Hollywood areas at the end of 2011.

Five more arson fires were set on New Year's Eve and early today in Los Angeles and two in West Hollywood, bringing to 39 the total number of suspicious blazes set since Thursday.

Overnight Friday, parked cars were torched on the street or in carports in North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Valley Glen and Sun Valley, officials said. Another blaze was reported early Saturday in Burbank.

At least six cars were torched in the fires set Saturday night. No arrests or new theories were announced at an 8 a.m. news conference in Hollywood, attended by police and fire officials from the Los Angeles and West Hollywood, where county agencies provide public safety under contract with that city.

"I'm not going to speak anything about the type of devices" being used to light the fires, said Pat Butler, an assistant Los Angeles fire chief. "We do believe we have incendiary, intentional fires that result in auto fires that result in apartment fires."

On Saturday, however, police said the suspect appears to be using a type of Molotov cocktail.

Detectives from the LAPD's Major Crimes and Robbery-Homicide divisions spent the night working on the crimes, including analyzing security video
camera pictures. But LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith said the agency was not prepared to released any video to the public.

"We've reassigned dozens of detectives," Smith said. "Those detectives are now working together around the clock... We've got hundreds of clues, dozens of witnesses, and countless pieces of evidence."

The police commander urged residents from the Fairfax District north across Hollywood and through the Cahuenga Pass into North Hollywood to examine their cars today and call police if they see they have been tampered with overnight.

Other than that, Smith urged people in the affected areas to "keep the lights on in their porches and in their carport areas, keep their cars locked, talk to neighbors, and if you see anything suspicious, the number to call is 911."

Butler declared the string of arsons to be "an attack on the heart and soul on these firefighters and public safety officers."

"Our firefighters have battled courageously in the face of danger, and responded quickly in these events," he said.

But the officials said it was too early to release any security camera tape, descriptions of possible suspects, or even a specific list of addresses that have been hit by the arsons. Firefighters and police are still gathering evidence at many of the scenes and are not ready to definitively link each site to the arsonist or arsonists, or even say how many people or teams of people may have participated in the firesetting, Butler said.

Smith said LAPD routinely puts extra police on the streets on New Year's Eve to track celebratory gunfire and arrest peiople who fire their guns into the air, which in years past has killed or wounded people. One man in Watts was hit by celebratory gunfire early today, and even LAPD Chief Charlie Beck was in uniform Saturday night working a gunfire suppression unit.

Some of those units were diverted into Hollywood and North Hollywood this year due to the arsons, Smith said.

It remained unclear if the fires were the work of one person or a crew, or if the new blazes were the work of a copycat inspired by arson fires overnight Thursday, said Villegas, adding that police were deployed heavily to respond quickly to any more fires.

LAPD earlier had released a description of a man driving a mid-1990s white-and-tan Lexus ES300. But callers were also reporting a green-and-black American muscle car seen at the time of the fires.

A reward offered by the city, county and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives for information leading to the capture of the arson or arsonists stood at $60,000.

Anyone with more information was urged to call 877-LAPD-247. Those wishing to remain anonymous can call Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.

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Arson fires destroy cars, homes in Hollywood, North Hollywood

Slideshow posted in Los Angeles News | Saturday, December 31, 2011

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A series of arson fires set over a period of two days destroyed cars and homes across the Hollywood and North Hollywood areas.

Twenty-one fires were set over six hours in the Hollywood area in the early morning hours of Friday, Dec. 30, 2011.

At least 10 more arson fires were set early Saturday morning in the North Hollywood area. The fires were started in parked cars. They then spread to nearby structures. No serious injuries were reported. (KABC Photo)

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http://www.mysafela.org/fire-safety/35-fire-safety-articles/308-arson-tips-a-inf...

ARSON TIPS AND INFORMATION...

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While your city's first responders are working around the clock to apprehend the person or persons responsible for the series of intentionally set fires (arson), did you know there are some steps you can take to help keep your family safe?
installing a CO-Smoke Alarm

Install Smoke/CO Alarms
First of all, make certain your family is safe inside your home. That means having working Fire/CO Alarms in your home or apartment.

If you don't have up-to-date Fire/CO Alarms, buy them. They're extremely inexpensive and can be found at any local home improvement store. Installing them is a snap as well. Once in place, should your home be compromised by fire, smoke, or carbon monoxide, you'll hear the alarm and have an opportunity to escape.

Create a family escape plan today
Create a Family Escape Plan

In order to escape from any emergency, you need a plan. Creating a family escape plan is easy and can be a fun project for the entire family.
A family escape plan will only work if you practice. Once you've determined how and where to escape to, then practice it with your family. And make certain to practice it at night as well as in the daylight. Many emergencies occur in the middle of the night, so make certain your family is prepared!

Don't let your car be torched
Tips to Protect Your Vehicles

If you park your family car or vehicles outside, then you can take some action to reduce the risk of an arsonist destroying your property. Keep your exterior lights on, or better yet, install a motion-sensor floodlight near your vehicles. If anyone approaches your cars, the light will automatically come on.

If you see something, say something. If a car is driving around your block over and over again, get the license number. If you see anything that appears out of the ordinary, don't be afraid to speak up. Often, the most simplistic action can lead to a bad guy being arrested.

Always dial 911 in an emergencyMake the Call - Dial 911

Make the call. Your Los Angeles Fire Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, and all of the other supporting and/or participating agencies are on the job. In today's complex society, you can be part of the team, too. That doesn't mean running around the city, but it does mean that when you see something near your home or business, you can support your first responders with a phone call.

IMPORTANT PHONE NUMBERS
213-893-9800 - LAFD Arson TIP Line
213-972-2971 - LAPD TIP Line

Catch an Arsonist with a quick Tweet
Use Social Media to Catch an Arsonist
If you use Twitter and you see an arsonist at work - DIAL 911 - and after you make your report, TWEET the description of what you saw. This is a simple, but potentially effective method of getting the word out to your friends and family - the current series of arson fires involves an individual or individuals who are on the move. Tweeting may help get ahead of their transportation methods and help secure an arrest.

Follow @ArsonWatchLA

For the latest news and information, please visit the LAFD News Blog

You may also "like" facebook.com/ArsonWatchLA

Be safe and protect your family. 2012 will be a terrific year, but it's up to you to make it happen.

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Number Of LA Fires Suspicious In Nature Now At 39 [Upgraded to 43]

January 1, 2012 4:00 PM

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Update (As Of 8:30 a.m Sunday.): At a briefing Sunday, fire officials said that 39 fires suspicious and similar in nature have occurred in the city of Los Angeles and West Hollywood within the past 72 hours.

However, fire officials do say they are investigating other incidents.

Authorities also report that since Dec. 30, firefighters have experienced a 17 percent increase in their call load citywide.

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HOLLYWOOD (CBS) — Firefighters and emergency crews had a very busy New Year’s Eve as relentless fires, believed to be arson, continued with at least six more in or around the West Hollywood and Hollywood areas.

The fires started in cars, similar to dozens set in recent days. The latest was reported at a building and carport on Sweetzer Avenue Saturday evening. Fortunately, no civilians or firefighters were injured.

At the scene of another fire Saturday – this one on Fountain Avenue and near Mansfield Avenue – arson investigators arrived on scene in time to collect evidence, including a pair of black gloves that were found underneath the front of a car.

Moments later and just one block away, neighbors said a glow came from under another vehicle in a carport.

“They’re looking at each one of these individually and then they are looking at them as a whole, as an umbrella to see how they all relate,” said Capt. Jaime Moore of Los Angeles City Fire.

“Our arson investigators are doing everything to canvas these fire scenes and take anything that looks suspicious away with them,” Moore added.

Authorities aren’t revealing much about the progress of their investigation but as KNX 1070′s Ed Mertz reports they are looking over surveillance video.

Meantime, a combination of rewards in the sum of $60,000 is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible.

Edward Lawrence, reporting for CBS2 at 11 p.m., said that police have already questioned three people about the arson attacks but no arrests have been made.

Authorities are urging the public to dial 911 to report suspicious activity. Police are also asking residents to keep their porch and carport lights on.

“If you see something, say something,” said Assistant Chief Patrick Butler of Los Angeles Fire Department.

Elsewhere in Glendale, two fires were reported within minutes of each other.

The first, reported around 9:30 p.m., broke out in a shed-type structure in the 5900 block of Pennsylvania Avenue.

The second was reported at 9:56 p.m. along 900 East Acacia Avenue. It’s still unclear if these fires are at all related to the arson attacks.

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Click on link to view CBS' video

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Residents watch over neighborhoods where fires have occurred

In West Hollywood, Beverly Grove, North Hollywood and Burbank, suspected arsons are keeping people awake.

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PHOTO: Resident Heidi Schroeder takes photos Sunday at the scene where a fire caused damage Friday to an apartment carport on Sweetzer Avenue in West Hollywood. (Ringo H.W. Chiu, For The Times / January 1, 2012)

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By Victoria Kim and Paloma Esquivel, Los Angeles Times

January 1, 2012, 10:24 p.m.

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Peter Farrant spent New Year's Eve sitting by his corner window, his ears attuned to the sounds of the street.

His watch was from 11 p.m. to midnight. His wife's turn was next, from midnight to 1 a.m. the next morning, in an improvised neighborhood vigil among about half a dozen residents of North Kings Road and 1st Street in the Beverly Grove area. At 3 a.m., two young women were scheduled to take a walk around the block.

The night before, the neighborhood awoke to find a black BMW engulfed in flames in the driveway of Farrant's building, a blaze suspected to be the work of what authorities say is a serial arsonist or arsonists. Neighbors had frantically tried to flag down passing fire engines to no avail. They later learned that the trucks had been en route to another car that was ablaze three blocks away.

In areas affected by the rash of fires, a deep sense of unease settled in Sunday as residents feared that they could be the next target in the seemingly random attacks.

"You sleep with one eye open," said Farrant, a contractor who has lived in the neighborhood for 17 years. "Until someone gets caught, I guess."

Longtime West Hollywood resident Cathy Cole spotted firefighters leaving the scene of a suspected arson on Sweetzer Avenue on Sunday morning. She stopped her bicycle and said: "There's no logic to any of this, is there?"

Cole said that in her nearly two decades living in the city, she had felt that West Hollywood was isolated from the violence and danger of surrounding areas. But on Sunday, she pointed to building after building on tree-lined Sweetzer Avenue and asked, "Why this one versus that one versus that one?"

"It's bizarre, so surreal and random," said Cole, a stockbroker who is originally from New York. "Time to move back to New York, I guess."

Jason Adam felt as though the fires were closing in on him. Thursday night, there was a fire two blocks east and three blocks north of his building. The next night, it was two streets west. Saturday night, it was north on Sweetzer.

A panicked neighbor who heard about the fire on Sweetzer called Adam on Saturday night and asked: "Is it our building?"

"Some people are really freaked out about it," he said.

Over the weekend, Adam began parking his car on the street, instead of in the carport behind his building — the type of target favored by the suspected arsonist or arsonists. Some neighbors followed suit. A friend who was going to leave her dog with a neighbor while she left town changed her mind when she realized that the neighbor's apartment was above a carport, Adam said.

A similar mood prevailed Sunday in North Hollywood as unnerved residents struggled to make sense of nearby fires.

The destruction began just before 1:40 a.m. Saturday when a Lexus parked at an apartment complex on Riverside Drive went up in flames.

"I'm just trying to understand the mind-set of a man who does something like that," said a 33-year-old resident who declined to identify himself, fearing that the suspected arsonist might retaliate. "I don't know what's going on."

Just minutes after that fire started, a BMW a few blocks north went up in flames. And then a carport on Burbank Boulevard, a few blocks further north, and just across the street from a police station, began burning.

"I just can't make sense of it," said Jeff Duncan, 45, a resident of the Burbank Boulevard complex. "I don't know why somebody would do something like that."

Amanda Hanniford, 34, who lives next to the carport that burned in that complex, said she slept downstairs Saturday night, fearing that she might have had to run out of her home again. Even the fireworks that rang in the new year were upsetting, she said. As county arson investigators examined the scene Sunday afternoon, Hanniford wondered what might happen next.

"The first night was West Hollywood; then they came here; then they went back to West Hollywood," she said. "So, are they going to come back over the hill? It's scary."

On Cleon Avenue near Bob Hope Airport, where a car parked in front of a single-family home burned early Saturday morning, neighbors said they were trying to be vigilant.

Manny Figueras said he went to nearby homes the day of the fire and asked neighbors to keep an eye out for one another and for any suspicious activity. Then he sent text messages to everyone he knows in the North Hollywood area, telling them about the blaze and asking them to do the same.

"It's just terrible," he said. "Whoever is doing this doesn't have the right mind-set."

Jose Arias, who lives next to the affected house, said he was worried about the safety of his home but was unsure of how to protect it.

"I'd like to have a way to protect us," he said. "But who am I protecting us from?"

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Seeking clues in the ashes of an L.A. arson spree

As authorities probe at least 39 arsons in the Los Angeles area that began Thursday morning, a 'person of interest' is seen on a video from a Hollywood garage.

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PHOTO: Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Michael Moriarty points out the "person of interest" walking along Hollywood Boulevard after a car fire nearby on Saturday. (Allen J. Schaben Los Angeles Times / January 1, 2012)

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By Victoria Kim, Ari Bloomekatz, Jason Felch, Los Angeles Times

January 1, 2012, 11:50 p.m.

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Inside a mobile command center parked in the heart of Hollywood, Los Angeles City fire captains huddle around a bank of radios, monitoring six frequencies used by local law enforcement agencies.

It was here on Friday night and early Saturday morning that reports of car fires streamed in, one by one. As the firefighters charted the locations on an ever-expanding map pinned to the wall, it quickly became apparent they were following the path of a serial arsonist.

"He's here, he's here, now he's here," said Capt. David Perez, ticking off what by Saturday morning would be 16 new blazes.

By Sunday night, the total had reached at least 39 fires and several botched attempts, all linked to one or more arsonists over some 72 hours.

At a news conference Sunday evening, task force officials announced what may prove to be a break in the case — images of a light-skinned man in his late 20s to mid-30s, between 5 feet 8 and 6 feet 2 inches, with a dark ponytail and receding hairline whom authorities described as a "person of interest."

"Obviously we're getting close," Perez said Sunday evening, watching a bank of televisions in the command center flash images of the person of interest. "We all just want this to end."

The footage, captured Friday just before 7 p.m., shows a man dressed in black walking hurriedly with an odd gait out of a Hollywood parking structure. Within minutes, a fire was reported. Officials believe the same man appeared in a separate video that they did not release.

MAP: Arson fires

Faced with an elusive fire starter moving over shifting territory, authorities are trying to anticipate where in the vast Los Angeles area the arsonist may strike next. It is a cat-and-mouse game played out over a broad landscape from the eastern San Fernando Valley to West Hollywood.

As of Sunday at 9:30 p.m., no new arsons had been reported.

Authorities are holding the details of their investigation close to the vest, mindful of tipping off the perpetrator or sparking copy-cats. But veteran arson investigators say they are most likely combing the dozens of crime scenes for some kind of pattern.

Were the targeted cars expensive or cheap? Did they have in-state or out-of-state license plates? How long would it take a single arsonist to cover the ground between fires on any given night?

"Sometimes there are various patterns to these fires that arsonists are establishing unwittingly," said Bradley Hamil, who was an arson investigator in San Bernardino for 25 years.

An arsonist in the Washington, D.C., area set a fire every year for more than a decade in fast-food restaurant parking lots before investigators finally found the pattern and linked the fires to a fry cook at the fast food chain.

Crime scene investigators have been hunting for forensic evidence — fingerprints left on a matchbook, DNA from skin cells left on a rag, a single strand of human hair — that survived the burn. Finding and processing such evidence from 39 fires could take weeks.

Meanwhile, the district attorney's office has been searching criminal files for any arsonists who have come under suspicion in the last several years.

"Usually someone setting these types of fires will have some kind of history behind them," said Brett Martinez, fire marshal in Suffolk County, N.Y., and an expert on arson investigations.

Most of all, investigators have been relying on shoe-leather detective work — asking around at local bars, scanning hours of video footage gathered near crime scenes and knocking on doors, hoping to find a witness who spotted an unusual person in the area late at night.

Arson is not uncommon. An average of 267,000 fires nationwide are set intentionally every year, and 20% involve vehicles, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Between 2004 and 2006, almost 28,000 intentional vehicle fires were set nationally, according to a more recent report from the agency's Fire Administration.

Serial arsonists are often difficult to stop — nationwide, only about 15% of arsons lead to convictions, experts say.

"It's going to be tough until they get some witness information or something left behind," said Hamil.

Given those challenges, authorities also announced Sunday that 25 federal investigators would be added to the task force, in part to help local officials target areas for increased patrols in the hopes of catching the arsonist in the act.

"This has been a full court press by this department," LAPD Cmdr. Michael Moriarty said, standing in front of large video screens showing slow motion images of the pony-tailed "person of interest" walking up a staircase two steps at a time and with his hands in his pockets.

Meanwhile, authorities are seeking the public's help finding the man in the video, whom police would like to interview. Police officials also asked Los Angeles residents to keep the lights on in their garages and carports overnight and to lock car doors.

Anyone with information about the arsons is encouraged to contact investigators at (877) LAPD-247, or CrimeStoppers, (800) 222-TIPS.

Psychologists say there is no single profile for serial arsonists. But given the facts of the Los Angeles case, several experts painted a portrait of the likely suspect.

He is probably between 20 and 40 years old, a loner from a broken home who feels angry about something or someone, and feels unable to communicate it in another way.

The arsonists' actions most likely had a precipitating event.

"This is a form of communication," said Dr. Jeffrey Geller, an expert on pathological fire setting at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. "Something causes him to be enraged and he doesn't know what to do with it."

"Often over the course of their life they've fused an association between angry feelings and fire," said Robert Stadolnik, a psychologist who runs FirePsych Inc., a treatment program for children and adult fire setters.

Half of all arson arrests involve juveniles, but experts say a teenager is unlikely in this case.

Why car fires? Cars can be a safe target for arsonists: easy to access, and less likely to lead to someone's injury or death. But often that impression is an illusion; fires can easily sweep out of control.

In some cases, the perpetrator defies the profile. In October, police in Maine arrested a 65-year-old woman suspected of setting at least 15 fires. The suspect was identified when a witness saw a partial license plate of her car leaving the scene of a fire. Elderly women are among the least likely to commit crimes.

"There's enough people in L.A., you're not going to find the person from a profile," Geller said.

But given that the person committing the arsons is likely out of control emotionally, some experts think he may soon make a mistake.

"I would expect that they will have this solved within the week," Stadolnik said.

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