The Los Angeles City Council voted Friday to file a lawsuit against the school police officer accused of making up a story about being shot by an assailant near El Camino High School, triggering a vast and expensive police manhunt.

The council unanimously passed an emergency motion to demand that Jeffrey Stenroos, an eight-year veteran of the Los Angeles Unified School District police force, reimburse the city for the costs of the search, which involved not only the Los Angeles Police Department but city traffic officers, the county Sheriff's Department, the California Highway Patrol and the FBI, among others.

"We had thousands of dollars spent on police overtime," said Council President Eric Garcetti, who called the cost of responding to the alleged hoax "appalling" at a time when city workers are going on furlough.

"This wasn’t simply a human mistake by a police officer. This had a real dollar cost," he added.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, at a press conference Friday to discuss the arrest of a school police officer for falsely claiming to be shot, cited an earlier case with some similarities.

It occurred in 1984 and centered on LAPD Officer Jimmy Pearson, who was accused and later pleaded guilty to planting a bomb-type device on a bus carrying the luggage of a Turkish Olympic team.

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According to coverage at the time:

Pearson became the brief focus of international attention as the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games drew to a close, when he "discovered" a pipe bomb in the wheel well of the bus at Los Angeles International Airport. The officer ripped its wiring apart, sprinted 50 yards and tossed it onto a runway.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates praised Pearson for a "hell of a courageous act." But the next day, a grim-faced Gates announced the officer's arrest. The chief said that he had ordered an investigation after becoming suspicious of Pearson's story and that the officer failed a polygraph test and subsequently confessed.

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-- Richard Winton

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said there were early questions about Los Angeles School Police Department officer Jeff Stenroos' claims that an assailant shot him outside El Camino Real High School last week.

"There were some inconsistencies that emerged early on," Beck said Friday. "It was just recently that we were able to get accurate information."

Police announced Thursday that Stenroos' story of being shot was concocted. Stenroos has been booked on a felony charge of filing a false police report and was released on $20,000 bail Friday morning.

Beck said officials are trying to sort out what actually happened. The officer's vest was hit by a bullet, but it's unclear if the shooting took place near the school. Beck would not say whether detectives thought it was an accident.

"The entire city was led down a path of misinformation," the chief said.

Authorities arrested Los Angeles school police Officer Jeff Stenroos on suspicion of filing a false police report after he allegedly admitted to fabricating a story that he had been shot last week in Woodland Hills, according to a senior LAPD official close to the investigation.

The official said investigators are still piecing together how Stenroos pulled off the alleged hoax, which sparked a dragnet that inconvenienced thousands of people after police shut down a large swath of Woodland Hills in search of the supposed gunman.

The source added that Stenroos' protective vest showed obvious signs of having been struck by a bullet, and the officer also suffered bruising on his chest. Detectives later raised questions about whether the officer shot himself accidentally and then fabricated a story or concocted the whole scenario.

The source declined to say whether additional arrests would be made in the case.

"Obviously, it's as shocking to us as it is to anyone else," Steven Zipperman, chief of the Los Angeles Unified School District Police Department, said Thursday night. 

Zipperman, who recently left the Los Angeles Police Department, where he had been a captain, said his department is cooperating in the ongoing investigation.

The president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League called the incident an "embarrassment to law enforcement."

"The law enforcement community is disgusted," Paul M. Weber said in a statement. "While Mr. Stenroos is a disgrace to his badge, his individual and dangerous actions should not reflect on the hardworking men and women in law enforcement."

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-- Joel Rubin

A Los Angeles school police officer who was wounded last week in a shooting that prompted authorities to shut down a large swath of Woodland Hills concocted a story that he was the victim of the shooting, authorities said Thursday night.

The startling revelation came at a hastily called news conference by Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck, who said detectives became suspicious about the officer's story as they investigated the case. 

Police earlier had said that Los Angeles Unified School District Officer Jeff Stenroos was shot in the chest after he was confronted by a man Jan. 19 as he was attempting to break into vehicles in Woodland Hills, near the eastern boundary of the El Camino Real High School campus.

The incident generated a massive police response that inconvenienced thousands of people for the day as officers blocked roads, shutdown schools and refuse to let people in or out of a 7-square-mile area.

More than 300 officers swarmed the west San Fernando Valley, locking down nine schools and setting up the dragnet as they looked for a suspect described as a white man in his 40s, wearing a bomber or black hooded jacket and blue jeans.

[Corrected at 9:59 p.m.: An earlier version of this post incorrectly said 3,000 officers were involved in the search.]

While many expressed frustration and anger at the inconvenience caused by the size and length of the operation, LAPD officials defended the decision as necessary to protect the public. They noted that the incident was especially serious because it involved an attack against a fellow law enforcement officer.

Authorities had even offered a $100,000 reward for information of the case and compiled a composite of the shooting suspect.

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-- Andrew Blankstein and Joel Rubin

A nonprofit that examines the authorization of charter schools gave good marks Thursday to the Los Angeles Unified School District -- a finding that may surprise some local charter school operators who have long battled the school system.

The thumbs-up comes from the Chicago-based National Assn. of Charter School Authorizers, which is “devoted exclusively to improving public education by improving the policies and practices of the organizations responsible for authorizing charter schools.” The organization is regarded as pro-charter schools; in fact, its board chair, James Peyser, is a partner in the NewSchools Venture Fund, which has provided funding to propel the growth of charters.

Charter schools are free, publicly funded schools that are managed independently of the education agencies that allow them to open.

The researchers noted that L.A. Unified, the nation’s second-largest school system, has authorized more charter schools than any other school district.

The largest five authorizers in the nation are, in order, the Texas Education Agency, the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Chicago Public Schools and the North Carolina Department of Education, according to the report. All told, these five agencies oversee 26% of all charter schools. 

The commendation for L.A. Unified goes beyond just allowing charters to operate.

The football team from View Park Preparatory High School in Hyde Park has earned this year’s honor as the top football team -- academically -- among 72 local teams, a sports league official confirmed Thursday.

The 43-member team achieved a grade point average of 3.3 and finished as the California Interscholastic Federation, L.A. City Section, Division 3 champion, said Jo Ann Heller, who oversees the academic award for the Los Angeles area.

Division 3 is for small-school teams such as View Park, which is a public charter school. But the competition is among all varsity teams in the Los Angeles Unified School District and independently run charter schools in that region; 22 teams entered the academic competition this year.

View Park Head Coach Robert Ambers enforced and led mandatory 1 1/2-hour study hall sessions every other day for all football players and “visited the main office weekly to check the grades of players, who also had to submit weekly progress reports,” according to a spokesperson for ICEF Public Schools, the nonprofit that operates View Park.

“Students know that success in the classroom comes first, and I have no doubt that has led to our success on the field,” Ambers said in a statement.

The players and coach are scheduled to be honored Friday at the Los Angeles City Council.

-- Howard Blume

Philanthropist Eli Broad and three other donors announced Thursday a $100-million endowment to make Teach for America a permanent teacher-training program.

Broad's foundation pledged $25 million to the endowment, spurring three other matching donations from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Robertson Foundation and philanthropists Steve and Sue Mandel, officials said.

Education-reform efforts are a major thrust of the Southern California-based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Teach for America, which has a local regional office, currently has 270 teachers working in the Los Angeles area.

Teach for America typically draws from the brightest recent college grads, sending more than 28,000 recruits over the past 20 years to teach for two years in some of the nation’s most challenging urban schools.

Two-thirds of alumni continue to work full time in education, half of them as classroom teachers, according to the organization. More than 550 have become school principals or district superintendents.

Others hold influential positions in other fields, including journalism, public-policy foundations and government. A primary aim of founder Wendy Kopp was to draw talent and public interest to the challenge of supporting and improving public education.

“Under Wendy Kopp’s leadership, Teach for America has quickly evolved from an innovative idea into what has become nothing less than an enduring American institution that has forever changed the landscape of public education,” Broad said in a statement.

Among the most high-profile alums is outspoken former District of Columbia schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, a heroine to many school reformers and a bête noire to many teachers and teacher unions. Her stormy tenure included a much-watched initiative linking teacher evaluations to student performance on standardized tests. The results contributed to scores of teacher firings.

About 200 students, teachers and administrators at South Gate High School were on a "precautionary" lockdown Friday night after someone reported seeing a male brandishing a gun outside the school, officials said.

South Gate police and school officers have done a preliminary search of the campus and haven't found anything suspicious, said Susan Cox, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Students will be held a little longer as officers make sure it is safe to leave, she said.

Most students had already left for the day when the gunman reportedly was seen off-campus at 3:30 p.m., Cox said. Those students remaining are involved in athletics and after-school activities, she said.

No shots were fired and no injuries have been reported, Cox said.

[Updated at 6:30 p.m.: The lockdown has been lifted and students are being allowed to go home. Three suspects have taken into custody, Cox said. No weapon has been found.]

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The reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a gunman who injured a school police officer Wednesday in Woodland Hills has reached $100,000.

The Los Angeles City Council on Friday approved the largest portion of the bounty, $75,000. The Los Angeles Police Protective League, Los Angeles School Police Officers Assn. and Los Angeles Retired Fire and Police Assn. each added $5,000, and the 99 Cents Only stores kicked in $9,999.99. Councilman Dennis Zine reached into his pocket and came up with the final penny. 

The suspect was seen looking into cars outside El Camino Real High School. When school Officer Jeffrey Stenroos confronted him, the gunman shot him in the chest and fled. Stenroos was wearing a bulletproof vest and survived the shooting with minor injuries.

The suspect, a white male in his 40s or 50s, is still at large and police are seeking the public's help to bring him into custody. 

Photo: An artist's sketch of a suspect in the shooting of a Los Angeles Unified School District police officer.

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