The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 37

ppPP mini lyiiaiiriiPiiwifyfpyp" LOCAL NEWS WEATHER EDITORIAL PAGES Section FRIDAY ftoo Angeles (ftme0 FEBRUARY 10, 1995 CCt HIGHLIGHTS .) 4 FIREBOMB ARRESTS: Police in Hawthorne have arrested two suspects in an apartment firebombing that killed a 2-year-old. Police believe the motive was revenge against the boyfriend of the child's mother. Bl NEEDLE EXCHANGE: A San Fernando Valley treatment center has cautiously begun an effort to give sterile needles to addicts in an effort to slow the spread of AIDS among drug users. Bl SLIDE PREVENTION: Caltrans wants to scrape away a Malibu hillside to prevent mudslides on Pacific Coast Highway. B3 Error Forces MTA Panel to Accept Higher Bid Subway: Firm submitting lower figure checked the wrong box on its application.

The $1 -million difference angers mayor. By RICHARD SIMON TIMES STAFF WRITER Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan posed what seemed to be a straightforward question Thursday: If two firms bidding for a multimillion-dollar contract submitted similar proposals, why was the MTA selecting the company bidding nearly $1 million more than the other? The answer was anything but simple. "The low bidder was turned down because it checked the wrong box?" asked an incredulous Riordan when he heard the answer. "Somebody ought to get a little common sense." The mayor, deferring to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's legal advisers, joined the rest of the Construction Committee nonetheless in recommending the awarding of a construction Please see MTA, B4 I BUJIUJH I l.J I. I Ill 11 1 1 "I iii 2Heldin Firebombing That Killed 2-Year-Old Crime: Motive for blaze that badly burned a woman and her baby was apparently revenge against her boyfriend, police say.

By ERIC SLATER TIMES STAFF WRITER Hawthorne police Thursday announced the arrest of a man and a teen-ager in an apartment firebombing that killed a 2-year-old boy and gravely burned his mother and newborn sister. And for the first time they explained why they thought it happened: The motive, they said, was revenge over an argument about who would use the telephone. Dewayne Moore, 23, of Los Angeles and a 17-year-old Comp-ton youth are suspected of throwing two Molotov cocktails through a bedroom window of 20-year-old Valerie Rivers' first-floor apartment in the 4900 block of West 116th Street the night of Jan. 29, an attack that shocked even seasoned police and fire investigators. The suspects were booked on Please see FIRE, B4 wv'K MX A i 1 i -J (Ms 1 1 Pool Photo THE SPIN Step by step, the testimony of Officer Robert Riske, above, took us through the pools, spots and trails of blood where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman were stabbed to death.

A24 MahonyHas Praise for Hollywood Officer Won't Be Charged in Beating EDITORIALS Photos by JILL CONNELLY For The Times A longtime drug user lines up her dirty needles for exchange, top. Alex Adams, an HIV outreach worker for Tarzana Treatment Center, waits at program site in Pacoima alley, above. New Needle Exchange Effort NATIONAL LABS: The nation has a surplus of nuclear lab talent; adjustments are in store for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco. B6 ON THE RECORD "I thought Marcia Clark got hit right between the eyes." "-Michael Nasatlr, a defense attorney, referring to a statement by the first police officer on the scene of the Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman killings. Responding to a question from Clark, the officer said he had not received much Police Academy training in securing crime scenes.

Al By LARRY B. STAMMER TIMES RELIGION WRITER Nearly 2V6 years after declaring that the entertainment industry had a moral obligation to communicate "human values," Cardinal Roger M. Mahony on Thursday offered an upbeat review of Hollywood, saying there is much that is "quite good." The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles said that while motion picture and television productions have unquestionably lost the "innocence" of the 1950s when even the word pregnant was avoided on the "I Love Lucy" show there is still reason to be encouraged. Family-oriented films, he said, are as big or a bigger draw at the box office than those with more morally controversial themes. "Not all is bad in Hollywood.

In fact, much of the entertainment industry's output is really quite good," Mahony declared. Mahony's remarks were contained in a speech he was scheduled to deliver Thursday night in Redington Beach, at the 12th annual Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Banquet to honor excellence in communications. A Please tee MAHONY, B4 By EDWARD BOYER JR. and ERIC MALNIC TIMES STAFF WRITERS Insufficient evidence exists to prosecute a black Compton police officer videotaped last summer beating a Latino youth with a police baton, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said Thursday.

Activist Art Pulito called the prosecutors' decision a "slap in the face" to Compton's Latino community, and the youth's family said it will take the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice. The district attorney's office said that while it did "not conclude that Officer Michael Jackson's actions were entirely necessary there simply is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he violated criminal law." In his report Thursday to Compton Police Chief Hourie Taylor, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti said the incident began about 1:30 p.m.

July 29, when Beth Rodriguez, a Department of Children's Services social worker, went to a trailer park on West 156th Street to investigate allegations of child neglect. Please see BEATING, B3 traded used syringes for new ones and collected cotton, sterile water and other drug paraphernalia from staffers of a Tarzana drug rehabilitation group. Many studies have shown that needle exchanges can reduce the transmission of the AIDS virus and many cities, including New York and San Francisco, have had such programs for years. The Pacoima exchange is the third program begun in Los Angeles County in recent years. Those who appeared in the alley off Glenoaks Boulevard on Thursday praised the availability of free needles.

"They should have had this a long time ago," said Al, a onetime news photographer whose arms are covered with scars from 38 years of injecting heroin and cocaine. "It'll help, especially in places where people don't think about AIDS." An estimated 14,000 addicts in Los Angeles County are believed to have been infected wUh the human immunodeficiency virus as a result of using contaminated syringes. About 190,000 county residents take narcotics by injection and many continue to share needles despite the risk of AIDS, according to a UCLA study. Maurice Weiner, an administrator with the Tarzana Treatment Center, which operates the Pacoima estimated that there are about 80,000 needle -using addicts in the Valley. Weiner said addicts must turn in a dirty needle for each new one they receive.

He said that under the terms of the city grant, his group can only use the money to pay salaries and other administrative costs, but not to buy needles. A consor-Please see NEEDLE, B3 Health: Agency gives away syringes in Pacoima after asking residents' cooperation. The aim is to slow the spread of AIDS. By JACK CHEEVERS TIMES STAFF WRITER Chastened by previous controversies over public needle exchange programs for drug addicts, a San Fernando Valley treatment center on Thursday cautiously began a new effort to give sterile needles to addicts in an effort to slow the spread of the AIDS virus among intravenous drug users. The program, funded with a $52,000 city grant, attracted only about half a dozen hesitant addicts in a Pacoima alley, who Lottery Results SUPER LOTTO For Wednesday, Feb.

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B2 Air Quality, Weather B5 Editorials B6 Commentary B7 an Abduction Courts: A Mexican physician forcibly taken to the United States and imprisoned is suing the government for $20 million. By Patrick j. McDonnell i TIMES STAFF WRITER Humberto Alvarez Machain is reunited with his wife and four children in Mexico, practicing medicine once again, free to pursue a normal life. But even as the public memory of his notorious case fades, the Guadalajara physician says the hurt of his forced abduction and almost three years of subsequent incarceration in the United States has left irreparable scars. "It has been very difficult for me and my family," Alvarez told reporters Thursday in a telephone conference call from Mexico to the Los Angeles offices of the American 1 I Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU is representing the doctor Patrick downs Lo. in a $20-millionsuit against the US. government. Alvarez's 1990 abduction in Mexico, arranged by U.S. Dr.

Humberto Alvarez Machain spent 32 months in prison before he was acquitted in December, 1992. Piease see doctor, B3.