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# Carmen the Clown's Weekend Circus in Full Swing
August 08 2011
Written by Joseph Mailander.
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COMMENTARY - LA City Attorney Carmen Trutanich has even become an embarrassment as a one-time protege to his former mentor.
From the [LA Times](http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-trutanich-20110808,0,7361790.story):
Trutanich's suggestion on how to spend the county's share of the legal settlement met with a rare rebuke from his friend Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, who said such a move would probably be unlawful and called it a "political ploy."
In an interview last week, Cooley said he supports testing DNA evidence from rape victims but noted that the sheriff's backlog of untested DNA rape kit evidence was recently cleared up. Cooley said he was skeptical of Trutanich's motives.
"Act like you're doing something to solve a problem that doesn't exist — that's a ploy," Cooley said, adding that the decision to hand-deliver the check was "bizarre."
Trutanich seems to get more publicity desperate daily. The news follows this weekend's equally bizarre employee picnic promotion [\[link\]](http://street-hassle.blogspot.com/2011/08/nuch-takes-city-time-off-to-promote.html) --a closed event--on the radio show of the son of a close friend from San Pedro. We also hear that this event was sparsely attended [\[link\]](http://losangelesdragnet.blogspot.com/2011/08/city-attorney-family-bbq-bombs-staff.html) --in spite of, or perhaps because of, Trutanich's bizarre public promotion of it.
You can already feel the film editors screening "Steve Cooley called his decision...a political ploy...bizarre."
*(Joseph Mailander is a writer, an LA observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He blogs at [street-hassle.blogspot.com](http://www.street-hassle.blogspot.com) where this column first appeared.)* –cw
Tags: Carmen Trutanich, City Attorney, Steve Cooley, District Attorney, DNA, rape kits, political ploy
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Vol 9 Issue 63
Pub: Aug 9, 2011
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