Questcor Finds Profit for Acthar Drug, at $28,000 a Vial

Kevin Moloney for The New York Times

Christina Culver with her son Tyler, 6, at home in Colorado Springs this month. In 2007, Tyler was hospitalized when the price of Acthar soared.

THE doctor was dumbfounded: a drug that used to cost $50 was now selling for $28,000 for a 5-milliliter vial.

The physician, Dr. Ladislas Lazaro IV, remembered occasionally prescribing this anti-inflammatory, named H.P. Acthar Gel, for gout back in the early 1990s. Then the drug seemed to fade from view. Dr. Lazaro had all but forgotten about it, until a sales representative from a company called Questcor Pharmaceuticals appeared at his office and suggested that he try it for various rheumatologic conditions.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dr. Lazaro, a rheumatologist in Lafayette, La., says of the price increase.

How the price of this drug rose so far, so fast is a story for these troubled times in American health care — a tale of aggressive marketing, questionable medicine and, not least, out-of-control costs. At the center of it is Questcor, which turned the once-obscure Acthar into a hugely profitable wonder drug and itself into one of Wall Street’s highest fliers.

At least until recently, that is. Now some doctors, insurance companies and investors are beginning to have doubts about whether the drug is really any better than much cheaper alternatives. Short-sellers have written scathing criticisms of the company, questioning its marketing tactics and predicting that its shareholders are highly vulnerable.

 That Acthar is even a potential blockbuster is a remarkable turn of events, considering that the drug was developed in the 1950s by a division of Armour & Company, the meatpacking company that once ruled the Union Stock Yards of Chicago. As in the 1950s, Acthar is still extracted from the pituitary glands of slaughtered pigs — essentially a byproduct of the meatpacking industry.

The most important use of Acthar has been to treat infantile spasms, also known as West syndrome, a rare, sometimes fatal epileptic disorder that generally strikes before the age of 1.

For several years, Questcor, which is based in Anaheim, lost money on Acthar because the drug’s market was so small. In 2007, it raised the price overnight, to more than $23,000 a vial, from $1,650, bringing the cost of a typical course of treatment for infantile spasms to above $100,000. It said it needed the high price to keep the drug on the market.

“We have this drug at a very high price right now because, really, our principal market is infantile spasms,” Don M. Bailey, Questcor’s chief executive, told analysts in 2009. “And we only have about 800 patients a year. It’s a very, very small — tiny — market.”

Companies often charge stratospheric prices for drugs for rare diseases — known as orphan drugs — and Acthar’s price is not as high as some. Society generally tolerates those costs to encourage drug companies to develop crucial, possibly lifesaving drugs for these often neglected diseases.

But Questcor did almost no research or development to bring Acthar to market, merely buying the rights to the drug from its previous owner for $100,000 in 2001. And while the manufacturing of Acthar is complex, it accounts for only about 1 cent of every dollar that Questcor charges for the drug.

Moreover, the tiny “orphan” market soon became much bigger. Before long, Questcor began marketing the drug for multiple sclerosis, nephrotic syndrome and rheumatologic conditions, even though there is little evidence that Acthar is more effective for those other conditions than alternatives that are far cheaper. And the company did so without being required to prove that the drug actually works. That is because Acthar was approved for use in 1952, before the Food and Drug Administration required clinical trials to show a drug is effective for a particular disease. Acthar is essentially grandfathered in.

Today, only about 10 percent of the drug’s sales are for infantile spasms. The new uses, Mr. Bailey has told analysts, represent multibillion-dollar opportunities for Acthar and Questcor, its sole maker.

The results have been beyond even the company’s wildest dreams. Sales of Acthar, which accounts for essentially all of Questcor’s sales, totaled nearly $350 million in the first nine months this year, up 145 percent from the period a year earlier. In the same period, Questcor’s earnings per share nearly tripled, to $2.12. In the five years after the big Acthar price increase in August 2007, Questcor shares rose from around 60 cents to about $50, in one of the best performances of any stock in any industry.

But in September, the shares plummeted after Aetna, the big insurer, said it would no longer pay for Acthar, except to treat infantile spasms, because of lack of evidence the drug worked for other diseases. The stock now trades at $26.93.

Peter Wickersham, senior vice president for cost of care at Prime Therapeutics, a pharmacy benefits manager that has found the drug is possibly being overused, says the huge increase in Acthar’s price for patients “just invites the type of scrutiny that it’s received.”

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Creating the illusion of snow becomes big business for MagicSnow

On a recent Sunday morning in Los Angeles, Adam Williams and his crew set up their blowers outside a house in Hancock Park and blanketed the yard in 20 tons of snow.

Using 15-pound blocks of crushed ice, it took Williams and his crew about 2 1/2 hours to cover the front lawn and build half a dozen snowmen in a commercial for the cable channel FearNet. In the ad, a little girl cheerfully entombs someone who appears to be her father inside one of the snowmen.

To create the effect, producers of the commercial turned to MagicSnow Systems, a 10-year-old Los Angeles company. MagicSnow is best known for its twice daily snow show at the Grove shopping center that runs through New Year's Eve, but the rest of the time it specializes in manufacturing snow effects for commercial shoots, music videos, concerts and shows at malls, Hollywood premieres, and even cruise ships.

PHOTOS: Hollywood backlot moments

"When I first moved out here, I missed a lot of things about the holidays, including the snow," said Williams, founder and president of MagicSnow. "What we're doing is filling the void by providing the experience of snow in a warm-weather climate. It's not a hard concept to sell."

Williams, raised in a small town outside of Cleveland, moved to Los Angeles to pursue his career as a magician, performing at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. During a lull in work, he began to think of ways he could expand his act by creating the illusion of something that was a novelty in Los Angeles — snow.

"I never set out to start a special effects business,'' said Williams, 35. "My goal was to become a world-famous magician. I realized when I moved out here that that wasn't a realistic goal for me, but that didn't mean I had to give up my dream of creating illusions. I still feel like I'm a magician."

Williams initially used confetti to create the snow illusion, but that proved too messy to clean up. The type of simulated "snow" used in the film industry collects on the ground. Williams needed a snow-like substance that could be used in crowds, would vanish quickly and not leave a residue.

He and a chemist friend spent weeks experimenting with various ingredients in his kitchen, shooting samples into his yard from his back porch to test the mixture. Eventually, he developed his proprietary formula made of water and a foam substance. MagicSnow also makes real snow, which was used in the FearNet ad.

Williams launched his company in 2002 and got his first big break when he pitched his idea of putting on a Christmas magic show with falling snow to Rick Caruso, developer of the newly opened Grove in the Fairfax district.

GRAPHIC: Faces to watch in 2013

"Rick said he was more interested in the snow than the magic," said Williams. "He said, 'I'd love to have you come in and create this snowfall illusion,' so I jumped at the opportunity."

The fake snow, blown from rooftops and choreographed to Christmas music and the Grove's nightly fountain show, was a hit with shoppers, prompting Caruso to add MagicSnow shows to his other shopping mall, the Americana at Brand in Glendale.

"Adam and his team have the exceptional ability to transform spaces with their customized snowfall experiences, making our nightly holiday snow shows magical," said Paul Kurzawa, chief operating officer of Caruso Affiliated. With the exposure from the Grove, Williams' company expanded rapidly, installing snow-making systems in 55 shopping centers across the country operated by General Growth Properties. MagicSnow also made snow for the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall in New York and for numerous live television shows, concerts and movie premieres, including the 2003 premiere of "Elf" at the Grove.

More recently he has expanded into the television business, doing commercials for Land Rover and FearNet.

"It just snowballed," Williams said.

MagicSnow, which also sells and installs snow-making equipment, will generate about $3 million a year in revenue in 2012, up about 25% over the prior year, he said.

His company has gone global, installing snow-making systems for clients in Indonesia, Germany, Brazil and Mexico, where his equipment is used at a shopping center in the Polanco area of Mexico City — a deal that started after the son of the shopping center developer saw the snow show at the Grove and told his father about it.

MagicSnow's corporate clients include Princess Cruises and toy maker Mattel Inc., which recently recruited Williams and his team to create a winter wonderland theme for underprivileged children at the company's El Segundo headquarters.

Using more than 375 tons of snow supplied by MagicSnow, the volunteers and children built nearly 1,300 snowmen in an hour.

An adjudicator from Guinness World Records chronicled the work but disqualified about 20 snowmen. The reason: Their arms fell off, they didn't have a carrot nose or they were simply too short, Williams said.

"Unfortunately, we fell just short of a world record," he said.

richard.verrier@latimes.com

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Small-scale solar's big potential goes untapped

NIPTON, Calif. — Gerald Freeman unlocks the gate to the small power plant and goes inside. Three rows of solar collectors, elevated on troughs that track the sun's arc like sunflowers, afford a glimpse of California's possible energy future.

This facility and a smaller version across the road produce some 70 kilowatts of electricity, about 80% of the power required by Nipton's 60 residents, its general store and motel.

Freeman, a Caltech-trained geologist and one-time gold mine owner, understood when he bought this former ghost town near the Nevada border that being off the grid didn't have to mean going without power.

He contracted with a Bay Area company to install solar arrays on two plots of land. The town has a 20-year agreement to buy its power at a below-market rate.

Projects like these make do with scant financing opportunities and little support from the federal government.

The Obama administration's solar-power initiative has fast-tracked large-scale plants, fueled by low-interest, government-guaranteed loans that cover up to 80% of construction costs. In all, the federal government has paid out more than $16 billion for renewable-energy projects.

Those large-scale projects are financially efficient for developers, but their size creates transmission inefficiencies and higher costs for ratepayers.

Smaller alternatives, from rooftop solar to small- and medium-sized plants, can do the opposite.

Collectively, modest-sized projects could provide an enormous electricity boost — and do so for less cost to consumers and less environmental damage to the desert areas where most are located, say advocates of small-scale solar power.

Recent studies project that California could derive a substantial percentage of its energy needs from rooftop solar installations, whether on suburban homes or city roofs or atop big-box stores.

::

Janine Blaeloch, director of the nonprofit Western Lands Project, said smaller plants were never on the table when the federal solar policy was conceived early in President Obama's first term.

Utilities and solar developers wanted big plants, so that's what's sprouting in Western deserts, she said.

"There was a pivot point when they could have gone to the less-damaging alternative," Blaeloch said, referring to both federal officials and environmental groups that have supported large-scale solar projects.

"There's no question that it was a matter of choice, and it was the wrong choice."

Built in far-flung locations where there is plenty of open land, large-scale plants require utilities to put up extensive transmission lines to connect to the grid.

Utilities charge ratepayers for every dollar spent building transmission lines, for which the state of California guarantees utilities an annual return of 11% for 40 years.

By comparison, small-scale plants can be built near population centers and provide power directly to consumers, reducing the demand for electricity from the grid.

Rooftop solar goes one step further.

It not only cuts demand from the grid, but also can allow homeowners and businesses to sell back excess power.

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Makers of $99 Android-Powered Game Console Ship First 1,200 ‘Ouyas’

Like Nintendo’s Wii U game console, the Ouya (that’s “OOH-yuh”) has an unusual name and even more unusual hardware. The console is roughly the size of a Rubik’s cube, and is powered by Android, Google‘s open-source operating system that’s normally found on smartphones and tablets.

Ouya’s makers, who are preparing the console for its commercial launch, encourage interested gamers to pop the case open and use it in electronics projects … or even to write their own games for it. Especially if they’re among the 1,200 who are about to receive their own clear plastic Ouya developer consoles.

Not exactly a finished product

The limited-edition consoles, which have been shipped out to developers already, are not designed for playing games on. They don’t even come with any.

Rather, the point of these consoles is so that interested Android developers can write games for the Ouya, which will then be released to gamers when the console launches to the public. Fans who pledged at least $ 1,337 to Ouya’s record-breaking Kickstarter project will get one, and while they’re not quite suited for playing games on — “we know the D-pad and triggers on the controller still need work,” Ouya’s makers say — the clear plastic developer consoles serve as a preview of what the finished product will look like, and a reminder of Ouya’s “openness.”

You keep using that word …

In the food and drug industries, terms like “organic” and “all-natural” are regulated so that only products which meet the criteria can have them on their labels. In the tech world, however, anyone can claim that their product is “open,” for whatever definition of “open” they like.

The term was popularized by the world’s rapid adoption of open-source software, like Android itself, where you’re legally entitled to a copy of the programming code and can normally use it in your own projects (like Ouya’s makers did). But when tech companies say that something is “open,” they don’t necessarily mean that the code or the hardware schematics use an open-source license.

How Ouya is “open”

Ouya’s makers have released their ODK, or developer kit, under the same open-source license as Android itself. This allows aspiring game developers to practice their skills even without a developer console, and to improve the kit however they want. The hardware itself is currently a “closed” design, however, despite the clear plastic case. The makers have expressed enthusiasm for the idea of hardware hackers using it in projects, and have said, “We’ll even publish the hardware design if people want it,” but so far they haven’t done so.

What about the games?

The most relevant aspect of “openness” to normal gamers is that Ouya’s makers say “any developer can publish a game.” This model is unusual for the console world, where only select studios are allowed to publish their wares on (for instance) the PlayStation Network, but is more familiar to fans of the anything-goes Google Play store for Android. Several big-name Android developers — including console game titan Square-Enix — have already signed up to have their wares on the Ouya.

Preordered Ouya game consoles (the normal ones, not the developer edition) will ship in April. They will cost $ 99 once sales are opened to the general public.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
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Memphis Aims to Be a Friendlier Place for Cyclists

Lance Murphey for The New York Times

The Shelby Farms Greenline, which replaced a Memphis rail line.

MEMPHIS — John Jordan, a 64-year-old condo appraiser here, has been pedaling his cruiser bicycle around town nearly every day, tooling about at lunchtime or zipping to downtown appointments.

“It’s my cholesterol-lowering device,” said Mr. Jordan, clad in a leather vest and wearing a bright white beard. “The problem is, the city needs to educate motorists to not run over” the bicyclists.

Bike-friendly behavior has never come naturally to Memphis, which has long been among the country’s most perilous places for cyclists. In recent years, though, riders have taken to the streets like never before, spurred by a mayor who has worked to change the way residents think about commuting.

Mayor A. C. Wharton Jr., elected in 2009, assumed office a year after Bicycling magazine named Memphis one of the worst cities in America for cyclists, not the first time the city had received such a biking dishonor. But Mr. Wharton spied an opportunity.

In 2008, Memphis had a mile and a half of bike lanes. There are now about 50 miles of dedicated lanes, and about 160 miles when trails and shared roads are included. The bulk of the nearly $1 million investment came from stimulus money and other federal sources, and Shelby County, which includes Memphis, was recently awarded an additional $4.7 million for bike projects.

In June, federal officials awarded Memphis $15 million to turn part of the steel truss Harahan Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River, into a bike and pedestrian crossing. Scheduled to open in about two years, the $30 million project will link downtown Memphis with West Memphis, Ark.

“We need to make biking part of our DNA,” Mr. Wharton said. “I’m trying to build a city for the people who will be running it 5, 10, 15 years from now. And in a region known to some for rigid thinking, the receptivity has been remarkable.”

City planners are using bike lanes as an economic development tool, setting the stage for new stores and enhanced urban vibrancy, said Kyle Wagenschutz, the city’s bike-pedestrian coordinator, a position the mayor created.

“The cycling advocates have been vocal the past 10 years, but nothing ever happened,” Mr. Wagenschutz said. “It took a change of political will to catalyze the movement.”

Memphis, with a population of 650,000, is often cited among the unhealthiest, most crime-ridden and most auto-centric cities in the country. Investments in bicycling are being viewed here as a way to promote healthy habits, community bonds and greater environmental stewardship.

But as city leaders struggle with a sprawling landscape — Memphis covers about the same amount of land as Dallas, yet has half the population — their persistence has run up against another bedeviling factor: merchants and others who are disgruntled about the lanes.

A clash between merchants and bike advocates flared last year after the mayor announced new bike lanes on Madison Avenue, a commercial artery, that would remove two traffic lanes. Many merchants, like Eric Vernon, who runs the Bar-B-Q Shop, feared that removing car lanes would hurt businesses and cause parking confusion. Mr. Vernon said that sales had not fallen significantly since the bike lanes were installed, but that he thought merchants were left out of the process.

On McLean Boulevard, a narrow residential strip where roadside parking was replaced by bike paths, homeowners cried foul. The city reached a compromise with residents in which parking was outlawed during the day but permitted at night, when fewer cyclists were out. Mr. Wagenschutz called the nocturnal arrangement a “Cinderella lane.”

Some residents, however, were not mollified. “I’m not against bike lanes, but we’re isolated because there’s no place to park,” said Carey Potter, 53, a longtime resident who started a petition to reinstate full-time parking.

The changes have been panned by some members of the City Council. Councilman Jim Strickland went as far as to say that the bike signs that dot the streets add “to the blight of our city.”

Tensions aside, the mayor’s office says that the potential economic ripple effect of bike lanes is proof that they are a sound investment.

A study in 2011 by the University of Massachusetts found that building bike lanes created more jobs — about 11 per $1 million spent — than any other type of road project. Several bike shops here have expanded to accommodate new cyclists, including Midtown Bike Company, which recently moved to a location three times the size of its former one. “The new lanes have been great for business,” said the manager, Daniel Duckworth.

Wanda Rushing, a professor at the University of Memphis and an expert on urban change in the South, said bike improvements were of a piece with a development model sweeping the region: bolstering transportation infrastructure and population density in the inner city.

“Memphis is not alone in acknowledging that sprawl is not sustainable,” Dr. Rushing said. “Economic necessity is a pretty good melding substance.”

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Individual mandate in healthcare was year's top consumer story

This was the year of the healthcare mandate. No other consumer story of 2012 comes close.

In a split decision, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. casting the deciding vote, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the cornerstone of President Obama's healthcare reform law, the most sweeping overhaul of our dysfunctional medical system in decades.

The so-called individual mandate requires that most people have health insurance. It's the trade-off for the insurance industry's agreement to stop denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions and to stop charging higher rates if you get sick.

It's also the trade-off for insurers to remove limits on how much treatment they'll cover annually or over your lifetime.

"It's a huge deal," said Lee Goldberg, vice president of health policy for the National Academy of Social Insurance, a Washington think tank. "Without the mandate, you're much more likely to have spiraling healthcare costs and an unsustainable market for coverage."

Critics of the mandate, and there are plenty of them, say it represents a government takeover of healthcare, a socializing of medicine. The government, they say, can't make you buy something you don't want.

But that's not how the mandate works. No one's forcing you to buy insurance. No one's forcing you to be covered.

However, there will be a tax penalty if you decide that you want to take your chances. And there's a very good reason for this: Taking your chances is foolish.

Unless you're Superman, you're going to need healthcare at some point in your life. That's just a fact.

"No one's going to throw you in jail if you don't have insurance," said Richard Curtis, president of the Institute for Health Policy Solutions. "But if you ever have an accident and have to use the [emergency room], that tax penalty will help to defray the cost that will be covered by those who do have insurance."

Beginning in 2014, the penalty for going uninsured will be no more than $285 per family or 1% of income, whichever is greater. The cap rises to $975 or 2% of income a year later, and then up to $2,085 per family or 2.5% of income by 2016.

Opponents of healthcare reform conveniently ignore the basic economics of the insurance business. Insurers aren't service providers. They're risk managers. They examine the risk they face by covering a group or individual and price their policies accordingly.

The larger the risk pool, obviously, the cheaper the coverage. That's because the risk to health insurers goes down if younger and healthier people are included in the mix. The result: more affordable coverage for everyone.

Taken to its logical extreme, the most effective and efficient health insurance system for the United States would be something like a Medicare-for-all approach in which the risk pool comprises everybody in the country — young and old, healthy and sick.

In fact, we're already well down that road. Federal and state programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and veterans' assistance accounted for about 45% of total U.S. healthcare spending in 2010, according to a recent study by the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation.

The amount of public money spent on healthcare should serve as a wake-up call to all those who think the world would end if the U.S. followed Britain, France, Canada and other developed countries in enacting a national health insurance system.

For the U.S., it would simply be an expansion of a system that already exists but is hobbled by the inefficiency of denying Medicare and other programs access to healthier members of the population, thus saddling taxpayers with a disproportionately large number of higher-risk people.

The individual mandate won't radically change things. The healthcare insurance system will remain divided between a public sector that focuses primarily on aging and sick people and a private sector that, for purely financial reasons, provides increasingly less access to affordable coverage.

Average premiums for employer-sponsored family health insurance plans rose 62% from 2003 to 2011 to $15,022 a year, according to a recent report by the Commonwealth Fund.

Health insurance costs far outpaced people's incomes in all states during that time, the report found, with workers' average share of premiums for family plans soaring 74% and deductibles more than doubling, while the median household income rose only about 10%.

Still, the mandate is a big step toward remedying the system's economic irrationality. By extending coverage to about 30 million of the 50 million people who now lack insurance, the mandate will place medical care within reach of many who previously may have sought treatment only in emergencies.

As a result, national wellness will improve and, presumably, healthcare costs will go down, or at least will be better controlled as fewer people put off medical attention until an easily treated ailment becomes an expensive catastrophe.

"The mandate is the key to making this all work," said Devon Herrick, a healthcare economist at the National Center for Policy Analysis. "Otherwise people would just wait until they got sick before buying insurance and premiums would skyrocket."

There's still much to be done. The reform law's insurance exchanges are a work in progress, and it's unclear at this point how much coverage will be offered and how much it will cost.

But the Supreme Court has kept the ball rolling by maintaining the mandate as part of the equation. It was a decision that will change all our lives, probably for the better, and move us closer to a system under which all people can obtain affordable healthcare.

David Lazarus' column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. he also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.

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Media may argue against redactions in church files, judge rules

Media organizations will be allowed to argue against redactions in secret church files that are due to be made public as part of a historic $660-million settlement between the Los Angeles Archdiocese and alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday.

Pursuant to Judge Emilie Elias' order, The Times and the Associated Press will be allowed to intervene in the case, in which attorneys are gearing up for the release of internal church personnel documents more than five years after the July 2007 settlement. The judge's ruling came after attorneys for the church and the plaintiffs agreed to the news organizations' involvement in the case.

The Times and the AP object to a portion of a 2011 decision by a retired judge overseeing the file-release process. Judge Dickran Tevrizian had ruled that all names of church employees, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and other top archdiocese officials, should be blacked out in the documents before they were made public. In a hearing, Tevrizian said he did not believe the documents should be used to "embarrass or to ridicule the church."

Attorneys for the news organizations argued in court filings that the redactions would "deny the public information that is necessary to fully understand the church's knowledge about the serial molestation of children by priests over a period of decades." The personnel files of priests accused of molestation, which a church attorney has said were five or six banker's boxes of documents, could include internal memos about abuse claims, Vatican correspondence and psychiatric reports.

Contending that the secrecy was motivated by "a desire to avoid further embarrassment" for the church rather than privacy concerns, the media attorneys wrote: "That kind of self-interest is not even remotely the kind of 'overriding interest' that is needed to overcome the public's presumptive right of access, nor does it establish 'good cause' for ongoing secrecy."

An archdiocese attorney said Thursday that the church had spent a "great deal of effort" in redacting the files to comply with Tevrizian's order, and said the media attorneys misunderstand the legal process that both parties in the settlement agreed would be binding.

"We agree with Judge Tevrizian that enough time has passed and enough reforms have been made that it's time to get off this and move onto another subject," attorney J. Michael Hennigan said.

An attorney representing the victims also filed papers Thursday arguing that the church was "too broadly construing" Tevrizian's redaction orders, and asking Elias to release the files with church officials' names unredacted.

"Each of the higher-ups in the Los Angeles Archdiocese who recklessly endangered generations of this community's children by protecting pedophile priests will themselves be protected," wrote Ray Boucher, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

A hearing on the release of church documents is scheduled for Jan. 7. At the hearing, Elias will also hear objections from an attorney representing individual priests, who contend that their constitutional privacy rights will be violated if the files are made public. In a court filing this month, the priests' attorney, Donald Steier, said Tevrizian was "dead wrong" to rule that the documents can be disclosed because the public interest outweighs the clerics' rights.

"Under California law, it is the employees who own the information in the files, and the Archdiocese is merely the custodian who has a legal duty to defend the contents of the files and has no legal right to agree to disclose them," Steier wrote.

victoria.kim@latimes.com

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Police offer ‘virtual ridealongs’ via Twitter

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Riding side by side as a police officer answers a call for help or investigates a brutal crime during a ridealong gives citizens an up close look at the gritty and sometimes dangerous situations officers can experience on the job.

But a new social media approach to informing the public about what officers do is taking hold at police departments across the United States and Canada — one that is far less dangerous for citizens but, police say, just as informative.

With virtual ridealongs on Twitter, or tweetalongs, curious citizens just need a computer or smartphone for a glimpse into law enforcement officers‘ daily routines.

Tweetalongs typically are scheduled for a set number of hours, with an officer — or a designated tweeter like the department’s public information officer — posting regular updates to Twitter about what they see and do while on duty. The tweets, which also include photos and links to videos of the officers, can encompass an array of activities — everything from an officer responding to a homicide to a noise complaint.

Police departments say virtual ridealongs reach more people at once and add transparency to the job.

“People spend hard-earned money on taxes to allow the government to provide services. That’s police, fire, water, streets, the whole works, and there should be a way for those government agencies to let the public know what they’re getting for their money,” said Chief Steve Allender of the Rapid City Police Department in South Dakota, which started offering tweetalongs several months ago — https://twitter.com/rcpdtweetalong — after watching departments in Seattle, Kansas City, Mo., and Las Vegas do so.

On the day before Thanksgiving, Tarah Heupel, the Rapid City Police Department’s public information officer, rode alongside Street Crimes Officer Ron Terviel. Heupel posted regular updates every few minutes about what Terviel was doing, including the officer citing a woman for public intoxication, responding to a call of three teenagers attempting to steal cough syrup and body spray from a store and locating a man who ran from the scene of an accident. Photos were included in some of the tweets.

Michael Taddesse, a 34-year-old university career specialist in Arlington, Texas, has done several ridealongs with police and regularly follows multiple departments that conduct tweetalongs.

“I think the only way to effectively combat crime is to have a community that is engaged and understands what’s going on,” he said.

Ridealongs where “you’re out in the elements” are very different than sitting behind a computer during a tweetalong and the level of danger is “dramatically decreased,” he said. But in both instances, the passenger gains new information about the call, what laws may or may not have been broken and what transpires, he added.

For police departments, tweetalongs are just one more way to connect directly with a community through social media.

More than 92 percent of police departments use social media, according to a survey of 600 agencies in 48 states conducted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s Center for Social Media. And Nancy Kolb, senior program manager for IACP, called tweetalongs a “growing trend” among departments of all sizes.

There is no set protocol and departments are free to conduct the tweetalong how they see fit, she said.

In Ontario, Canada, the Niagara Regional Police Service conducted their first virtual ridealong in August over a busy eight-hour Friday night shift. The police department’s followers were able to see a tweet whenever the police unit was dispatched to one of the more than 140,000 calls received that night.

Richard Gadreau, the social media officer for the police department, said officers routinely take people out on real ridealongs, but there is a waiting list and preference is given to people interested in becoming an officer.

With tweetalongs, many calls also mean many tweets. Kolb said departments are cognizant of cluttering peoples’ Twitter feeds.

That’s why the Rapid City Police Department decided to create a separate account for the tweetalong, Allender said.

Kolb also said officers are careful not to tweet personal or sensitive information. Officers typically do not tweet child abuse or domestic abuse cases, and they usually only tweet about a call after they leave the scene to protect officers and callers.

But Allender, the chief of police in Rapid City, said tweetalongs also show some of the more outrageous calls police deal with on a regular basis — like the kid who breaks out the window of a police car while the officer is standing on the sidewalk.

“Real life is funnier than any comedy show out there and not to make fun of people, embarrass them or humiliate them, but people do funny things,” Allender said. “… I mean, that guy deserves a little bit of ridicule, and everyone who would be watching would agree. That’s just good clean fun to me.”

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Rapid City Police Department’s “Tweetalong” account: https://twitter.com/rcpdtweetalong

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Follow Kristi Eaton on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kristieaton

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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It's husband No. 3 for actress Kate Winslet

NEW YORK (AP) — Kate Winslet has tied the knot again.

The Oscar-winning actress wed Ned Rocknroll in New York earlier this month. The private ceremony was attended by Winslet's two children as well as a few friends and family members, her representative said Thursday.

It is the third marriage for the 37-year-old Winslet. She was previously married to film directors Jim Threapleton and Sam Mendes.

The 34-year-old Rocknroll, who was born Abel Smith, is a nephew of billionaire Virgin Group founder Richard Branson.

The couple had been engaged since last summer.

Winslet won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in the 2008 film "The Reader."

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Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.

NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.

While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.

The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.

“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.

“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.

The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.

The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.

Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.

The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.

The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.

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