Medical Board of California could lose investigative powers

The Medical Board of California would be stripped of its power to investigate physician misconduct under a sweeping reform plan by legislators who say the agency has struggled to hold problem doctors accountable.

The medical board has come under fire for failing to discipline doctors accused of harming patients, particularly those suspected of recklessly prescribing drugs.

Under the proposed legislation, amended Thursday, investigations of doctors would be handled by the California attorney general, leaving the board to deal mostly with licensing doctors.

"I've heard repeated stories of difficulty in sanctioning physicians. It's cumbersome and takes a long period of time," said Sen. Curren Price (D-Los Angeles), who co-authored the proposal with Assemblyman Richard Gordon (D-Menlo Park). "I don't want anybody else to die."

Dying for Relief: A Los Angeles Times investigation

The proposed changes come a month after Price and Gordon wrote a letter to the board president threatening to "dissolve" the board unless it made significant progress in overseeing the state's more than 100,000 doctors.

The letter cited a Los Angeles Times investigative report that detailed cases in which doctors continued to practice despite having prescribed drugs to multiple patients who fatally overdosed. In some instances, the deaths occurred as the doctor was under investigation by the board and the inquiry dragged on for months or years.

Medical board President Sharon Levine, who was participating in a board hearing in Los Angeles, said she had been anticipating the move, but could not comment before the full board discussed the matter Friday.

Lynda Gledhill, a spokeswoman for Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, said the attorney general was still evaluating the proposal.

The idea of placing investigators in the attorney general's office is not a new one.

A similar plan was proposed in 2004 by a public interest lawyer who was appointed by the Legislature to examine the medical board's oversight of physicians.

The lawyer, Julianne D'Angelo Fellmeth, wrote a report recommending that investigators be transferred to the attorney general's office, where they would work more closely with deputy attorney generals who prosecute cases of physician misconduct. The proposed move was intended to foster cooperation and streamline the process.

The plan was supported by then-Attorney Gen. Bill Lockyer, the medical board, the California Medical Assn. and other key players. Ultimately, however, there was political opposition to the idea and it was dropped from proposed legislation, Fellmeth said.

Gordon said he hoped this time would be different. He said shifting investigative responsibilities away from the medical board would not only improve investigations, it would enhance public confidence in the oversight process.

If the investigators answered to another agency, he said, "it would provide far greater assurance to the public that the medical profession is being regulated in California."

"The way it is now, you could almost look at it and ask: Is this a situation of the fox guarding the henhouse," Gordon said. "Some say they're too cozy."

Price and Gordon's desire to reform the medical board seemed to grow more urgent after a public hearing in March that was part of a review process to renew the medical board's legislative authority. Much of the hearing focused on issues raised in a series of Times articles that found that drugs prescribed by doctors played a role in nearly half of the prescription drug overdose deaths in Southern California from 2006 through 2011. The Times reported that 71 physicians prescribed drugs to three or more patients who later fatally overdosed and several had a dozen or more patients who died. In most cases, the board was unaware of the patients' deaths.

At the hearing, lawmakers heard emotional testimony from parents — many of them wearing matching T-shirts with the word "ENOUGH" — who criticized the medical board for doing little or nothing to stop doctors from harming patients with their prescription pads.

After the hearing, Price and Gordon wrote the letter to Levine urging the board to "be more responsive" and "show significant progress." The lawmakers were critical of the board's hiring record, pace of investigations and failure to more often seek immediate suspensions of doctors in the most egregious cases.

Levine said Thursday that the board "took very seriously" the lawmakers' letter and had responded point by point. She said board officials planned to meet with them May 7 to discuss matters further.

Earlier this month, a broad package of bills aimed at reducing prescription drug abuse and overdose deaths won approval from a key state Senate committee. The package included a bill that would require coroners to report prescription-involved deaths to the Medical Board of California and one that would upgrade the state's prescription drug monitoring program, known as CURES, to help officials improve tracking of overprescribing doctors and drug abusing patients.

scott.glover@latimes.com

lisa.girion@latimes.com

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LAFD chief to shift firefighters from trucks to ambulances

Los Angeles Fire Chief Brian Cummings said Thursday he was pressing ahead with a controversial plan to move dozens of city firefighters from fire engines to ambulances, despite warnings from labor groups that the change would put lives at risk.

In the coming days, the chief plans to deploy 11 new ambulances by reassigning one firefighter per shift from 22 firetrucks across the city. Cummings says the department must adjust to fewer fires and a growing number of medical emergencies, and has limited funding to make the change.

"After asking for money and not receiving it, I am moving forward," he said.

Both candidates for mayor have expressed concern about the change.

City Controller Wendy Greuel, who has been endorsed by groups representing city firefighters and most commanders, said the new plan "continues to put our first responders and our communities at risk."

A spokesman for her rival, Eric Garcetti, said the councilman does not believe the changes should be implemented until the department can prove they make sense. "He wants to see the real data," spokesman Jeffrey Millman said.

Medical calls now account for more than 80% of 911 responses, and the chief says that figure is growing rapidly. In the first two months of this year, medical calls increased 6.2%, compared with the same period last year, Cummings recently reported.

Labor leaders said Thursday that the chief's plan was hastily drafted and thinly researched. They called on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council to provide more money to staff ambulances, rather than take firefighters from engines.

The firefighters' union president, Capt. Frank Lima, urged residents to complain to elected officials about cuts to the force in recent years. "It's time to speak up, it's time to get angry," he said.

He spoke at a news conference outside of the charred remains of a North Hollywood apartment where one person died and four others were injured earlier this week.

Two fewer firefighters would have responded to the blaze under Cummings plan, he said. "Without a doubt, there would have been more fatalities," he said.

Earlier in the day, labor officials tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Fire Commission to postpone the changes. Assistant Chief Andy Fox, president the Chief Officers' Assn., complained that Cummings had failed to show that firefighter safety would be protected.

"If you remove one firefighter, it's like asking the Dodgers to play without a center fielder," Fox said. "Yes, they can play the game. Over time, it would prove to be a very bad idea."

About 60 firefighters assigned to so-called light forces, teams made up of a ladder truck and fire engine, will be reassigned under the plan. Currently, each light force is staffed by six firefighters who perform specialized roles during fires and rescues, including car accidents.

The chief's redeployment would leave many light forces with five firefighters, but allow for the new ambulances, LAFD officials said. The ambulances would be staffed by firefighters trained to handle less serious medical emergencies not requiring a firetruck or more highly trained paramedics.

The department's fleet of non-paramedic ambulances will increase by about one-third, to 45, officials said. That will help free up about 90 paramedic units to respond to the most life-threatening calls, they said.

The shift also aims to reduce responses by heavy firetrucks to many medical calls.

"To send an aerial ladder truck, or let alone lights and sirens, to someone with abdominal pains is dangerous and foolish," said Marc Eckstein, the department's medical director.

A Villaraigosa spokesman said only that the mayor supports Cummings and Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck "in their efforts to respond to the needs of the city through changes in deployment plans."

Cummings said his plan was based on solid data analysis. But so far, his office has released only a draft report of less than two pages describing the changes.

The department's planning and data analysis has been under increased scrutiny since early last year, when fire officials admitted that they published response times that made it appear that rescuers arrived at emergencies faster than they actually did.

A task force of experts found that that fire officials charged with crunching numbers were poorly qualified and previous departmental data analysis "should not be relied upon." Subsequent Times investigations found delays in processing 911 calls and summoning the nearest medical rescuers from other jurisdictions, as well as wide gaps in response times in different parts of the city.

ben.welsh@latimes.com

kate.lincthicum@latimes.com

robert.lopez@latimes.com

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Boston bombing suspect transferred to federal site

Surveillance video provided by the Boston Regional Intelligence Center shows bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at a Bank of America ATM in Watertown, Mass. at 11:18 p.m. on April 18, 2013. The next day, police intercepted Dzhokhar and his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, in a gun battle that left the elder brother dead. (Uncredited, AP / April 18, 2013)

From the Associated Press

April 26, 2013, 3:48 a.m.

BOSTON -- The surviving Boston Marathon bombings suspect has been released from a civilian hospital and transferred to a federal medical detention center in central Massachusetts.

The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center overnight and was taken to the Federal Medical Center Devens about 40 miles west of Boston.

The facility, on the decommissioned Fort Devens U.S. Army base, treats federal prisoners and detainees who require specialized long-term medical or mental health care.

The 19-year-old Tsarnaev is recovering from a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during his attempted getaway.

The Massachusetts college student was charged with setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 260 at the marathon finish line April 15.

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Consumers' shift to older iPhones raises concerns on Wall Street

How strange to think that Vicki Macchiavello's decision to buy an iPhone after years of using a BlackBerry could be bad news for Apple.

And yet, because the Oakland resident opted to buy a cheaper, older iPhone 4 rather than the latest, pricier iPhone 5, she represents a trend that has become a growing concern on Wall Street.

In recent months, such an unusually large proportion of consumers are opting to buy older iPhone models that some analysts have begun to wonder whether Apple has lost its ability to create new versions that have enough dazzle to justify their high prices.

Not only has the shift toward cheaper phones nibbled away at Apple's profit margins, it's been dramatic enough for some analysts to view the iPhone 5 as a disappointment.

"I think it's no surprise then that the iPhone 5 is selling worse than expected," said Brian Colello, an analyst at Morningstar.

When Macchiavello went shopping recently for a new phone, she wasn't thinking about the bigger screen size of the iPhone 5, its faster processor, or the fact it could come with 32 gigabytes of memory. What she did think about was its price, ranging from $199 to $399.

So instead, she gravitated to the iPhone 4, which to some may border on heresy in the gadget-obsessed Bay Area. Macchiavello got the iPhone with a mere 8 gigabytes of memory for practically free from AT&T in exchange for signing a two-year service contract.

"I'm not one who feels like I need to get the coolest things right away," Macchiavello said. "After a short period of time, the coolest thing isn't that cool anymore, and then it gets a lot cheaper."

Apple would argue that it's happy to have customers like Macchiavello. The company has found that once people buy Apple products, they tend to keeping buying more Apple products over time. Customer satisfaction is so high, and loyalty so strong, that a customer that starts small today is likely to grow into a bigger one down the road.

"Apple's 'black hole' ecosystem captures subscribers who never leave," Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe wrote in a recent report that argues these factors will give Apple a long-term advantage over rivals that run on operating platforms such as Google's Android.

Many analysts are not entirely convinced.

That's because Apple has built its reputation and much of its business in recent years on the ability to consistently deliver new versions of it products, especially the iPhone, that consumers were more than happy to buy in ever greater numbers at premium prices.

That was true at first of the iPhone 5 that went on sale last September. Apple said it sold 5 million units in the first three days, compared with 4 million of the iPhone 4S in 2011 and 1.7 million of the iPhone 4 in 2010.

But sales growth has slowed. In January, Apple executives said the company could have sold more iPhones if had the ability to make more older models.

After the Apple earnings conference call Tuesday, several analysts noted that the average selling price of iPhones had fallen to $613 from $641 in the previous quarter, the result of what William Power, a Baird analyst, said in a report was "greater focus on the lower-priced iPhone 4."

Although Apple did not give specific breakdowns between versions, a recent report by Chicago-based Consumer Intelligence Research Partners found that for the first three months of 2013, 53% of those surveyed bought an iPhone 5, compared with 73% for the iPhone 4S for the same period after its launch.

Ben Reitzes, an analyst at Barclays, wrote in a note to clients this week that "the reception of the iPhone 5 and execution of late has tested our patience."

Beyond just profit margins in the short term, analysts also worry that people like Macchiavello who buy older phones with less memory are also less likely to buy other things like music and apps. Indeed, Macchiavello said she had downloaded only 11 apps for her phone so far.

And going forward, Wall Street wonders whether there will really be enough new features on the rumored iPhone 5S presumably coming this fall to generate the kind of enthusiasm to cause fans to set new sales records and return the company to the faster growth investors crave.

"It begs the question: Can Apple bounce back with an iPhone 5S?" said Colello of Morningstar. "Can they add enough that's new to make enough people believe it's worth it to buy a premium phone again?"

chris.obrien@latimes.com

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U.S. economy grows at 2.5% rate in 1st quarter

WASHINGTON -- U.S. economic growth accelerated from January through March, buoyed by the strongest consumer spending in more than two years. The strength offset further declines in government spending that are expected to drag on growth throughout the year.

The Commerce Department said Friday that the overall economy expanded at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the first quarter, rebounding from the anemic 0.4 percent growth rate in the October-December quarter.

Much of the gain reflected a jump in consumer spending, which rose at an annual rate of 3.2 percent. That's the best since the end of 2010.

Businesses responded to the greater demand by rebuilding their stockpiles. And home construction rose further.

But government spending fell at a 4.1 percent rate, led by another deep cut in federal defense spending. That kept growth below economists' expectations of a rate exceeding 3 percent. And broad government spending cuts that began in March are expected to weigh on the economy for the rest of the year, while higher taxes have started to make some consumers and businesses cautious.

Many economists say they think growth as measured by the gross domestic product is slowing in the April-June quarter to an annual rate of just 2 percent. Most foresee growth remaining around this subpar level for the rest of the year.

GDP is the broadest gauge of the economy's health. It measures the total output of goods and services produced in the United States, from haircuts and hamburgers to airplanes and automobiles.

The cuts in government spending have forced federal agencies to furlough workers, reduced spending on key public projects and made businesses more nervous about investing and hiring this year.

The cuts came two months after President Barack Obama and Congress allowed a Social Security tax cut to expire. That left a person earning $50,000 a year with about $1,000 less to spend this year. A household with two high-paid workers has up to $4,500 less.

Consumers' take-home pay is crucial to the economy because their spending drives roughly 70 percent of growth.

Americans appeared to shrug off the tax increase at the start of the year. They boosted spending in January and February, helped by a stronger job market. In part, that's why growth is expected to be solid in the first quarter.

But hiring slowed sharply in March. And consumers cut back their spending at retail businesses, a sign that many were starting to feel the tax increase. Economists expect spending to stay weak in the second quarter as consumers adjust to their smaller paychecks.

Ben Herzon, an economist at Macroeconomics Advisers, said the tax increases could shave roughly 1 percentage point from growth this year. He also expects the government spending cuts to reduce growth by about 0.6 percentage point.

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Boston bombings: A city can exhale

WATERTOWN, Mass. — A manhunt that locked down metropolitan Boston for 23 hours ended Friday night when police unleashed a barrage of gunfire and snatched the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings from his hiding place in a covered boat in a backyard.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was found huddled and covered in blood by officers who stormed the suburban neighborhood after receiving a tip from a homeowner. The suspect's brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, had died before dawn Friday in a fierce gun battle with police not far from the same section of Watertown.

Only a day earlier, pictures of the two men — wearing baseball caps and carrying backpacks that authorities said held bombs — had been spread across the country in an effort to identify them. Friday night, spectators broke out into applause as an ambulance with the younger brother made its way toward a hospital, and further celebrations broke out in central Boston.

"CAPTURED!!!" the Boston Police Department tweeted. "The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody."

"The people of Boston will be able to sleep tonight," Mayor Thomas Menino said.

President Obama, who watched the arrests unfold on television from the White House residence, congratulated police and federal agents on the intense, four-day investigation that successfully sifted through countless tips and thousands of photos. He pledged that the federal government would not stop its work with the arrests.

"Obviously, there are still many unanswered questions," he said. "Among them, why did young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and our country resort to such violence? How did they plan and carry out these attacks? And did they receive help?"

Friday's events ended an intense dragnet underway since two closely timed bombs went off during Monday's marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 170.

The climactic finale began shortly after 10 p.m. Thursday, authorities said, when the brothers shot a police officer to death at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hijacked a sport utility vehicle, then opened fire on pursuing officers with gunshots, explosives and homemade hand grenades, leaving one officer critically wounded.

The furious gun battle — with 200 rounds of ammunition exchanged as residents of a Watertown neighborhood crouched in their homes — ended with the elder Tsarnaev dead and the younger, also apparently wounded, fleeing on foot.

In scenes rare to modern American law enforcement, city authorities shut down the entire Boston transit system, asked businesses to close, searched trains and urged people to stay home and lock their doors. The search rendered bustling Boston eerily empty — a scary snow day, some Bostonians described it.

"Hurricanes, natural disasters — a city shuts down. But nothing like this," said Steven Feldman, a lawyer who works in downtown Boston.

Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis concurred, pointing to the dizzying array of ammunition and explosives deployed by the two suspects. "This is the stuff that [for] an urban police department, it's almost unheard of," he said.

By nightfall, authorities had decided to lift the advisory to stay indoors, warning that it still might not be entirely safe. But "we cannot continue to lock down an entire city," said Col. Timothy Alben of the Massachusetts State Police.

Residents of a 20-block area of Watertown near the shootout began venturing outside, some to go to the store, some for a short walk.

Outside, one resident noticed something amiss about the small boat in his backyard. When he lifted a tarp covering it, he found a man covered in blood. He quickly retreated and called 911.

A dozen police cars screeched into the neighborhood, witnesses said, followed by hundreds of officers. An FBI hostage rescue team, guided by a helicopter overhead looking for heat signatures, cautiously approached the boat, fearful that the suspect might have more explosives. They used a robotic arm to lift the tarp, officials said.

Within minutes, a new barrage of gunfire and stun grenade volleys erupted.

"It was pow pow pow pow pow, at least 15, 30 shots," said neighbor Deanna Finn, who dragged her 8-year-old son onto the bathroom floor and threw herself on top of him. She kept flushing the toilet to drown out the noise of the volleys outside.

"It felt like my entire life, I swear. I never had anything go so fast and so slow at the same time," she said.

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From gunfire to cheering in Watertown

WATERTOWN, Mass. — The sounds were the most terrifying — the shots and the booms, the sirens and the whir of helicopter blades, and then, from time to time, the silence.

But as a very long Friday wore to a close, it was the sound of cheering and applause that surged through the streets of this small town.

"I'm so, so glad it's over," said Lori Toye, who lives with her husband and son in the house next door to the home where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found in a boat covered in a tarp. Someone drove by and yelled: "America! Woo!"

Toye, 40, was still wide-eyed. "I looked at that boat all day," she said, shaking her head. "Who knew he was right there?"

It had been a harrowing 21 hours for the Toyes and others in Watertown. Late Thursday night, people near Dexter Avenue heard explosions and shots fired. Police had exchanged gunfire with two men suspected in the Boston Marathon bombing, killing one. By early Friday morning, residents learned that the other suspect was on the loose. The Watertown chief of police urged everyone to stay inside.

The spotlight on sleepy Watertown, which sits next to more affluent Belmont and Cambridge, was strange for residents such as Dan Nystedt, 28, who lives in a house with roommates on Franklin.

After the marathon, he said, "I felt very vulnerable in Boston. All I wanted to do was get back to Watertown because Watertown was a safe place to be."

Olga and Dumitru Ciuc, who live two doors down from the house where the suspect was apprehended, stayed at home all day. Dumitru spent some time sitting in his backyard, which has a full view of the boat, with the couple's dog.

In the morning, the Ciucs saw police outside doing a sweep of the area but by afternoon, it seemed that the hunt had moved on. Just a few hours later, police would evacuate them and use their home to conduct their operation, taking out the windows in the upstairs bedrooms.

By late afternoon, Gov. Deval Patrick had lifted the stay-in-place ban, and many felt resigned that it could be a while before police caught the suspect, if they ever did.

Daniela and Richie Salerno headed outside to catch a breath of fresh air after the ban had been lifted. But the saga wasn't over yet. The Salernos hadn't gotten to the end of the driveway before they heard a series of quick shots. They ran back inside.

The action was taking place on Franklin Street, less than a mile from the intersection on Dexter Avenue where police had exchanged fire with the two suspects. The Ciucs and Toyes were evacuated by police.

A few houses away, after hearing shots, Deanna Finn led her son, Sean, 8, into the bathroom and lay beside him on the floor, terrified. She flushed the toilet repeatedly to distract him from the sounds outside, and the knowledge that something was happening a few homes away.

"I said, 'All right, buddy, we have to get down on the floor,'" she said, later, standing on the porch of her house, still a little shaky. "My motherly instincts just kicked in."

Then police announced they had apprehended the suspect, and Watertown breathed a sigh of relief. As SWAT officers passed by afterwards, Finn and her son yelled out praise. Down the street, people yelled, "USA!"

"Good thing they catch him. It's not very funny when you think he is hiding there and the night is coming, you never know what he has on his mind," said Dumitru, who is originally from Romania. "It's a little scary."

For many in Watertown, it was still hard to believe that the suspect who had eluded a manhunt for days had been so nearby.

Emmanuel Der Torossian noticed his sensor lights going on and off after the earlier shootout. His neighbor's did too.

"Dad, is there somebody around?" Julie, his 13-year-old daughter, asked. Nothing.

"Maybe he was here since last night," Julie said. "I had a feeling. But everyone said, no, nothing like that could happen here."

alana.semuels@latimes.com

ashley.powers@latimes.com

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Death toll in China quake hits 113

Reporting from Beijing --  A strong earthquake struck China's mountainous Sichuan province  Saturday morning, leaving at least 113 people dead and more than 3,000 injured.

Chinese authorities assessed the magnitude of the quake at 7.0, while the U.S. Geological Survey reported 6.6.

Although nowhere near in magnitude, the tremor evoked troubling memories of the great earthquake almost exactly five years ago along the same fault line that killed almost 90,000.

The earthquake's epicenter was about 80 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu, in Lushan country near the city of Ya'an. The city of 1.5 milion is best-known for its panda breeding research center, which was reported not to have sustained serious damage.

 Jiang Haikun, an official with the China Earthquake Network Center, told the official New China news agency that Saturday's quake is similar to the May 12, 2008, disaster centered in Wenchuan -- about 150 miles away -- as both occurred on the same Longmen mountain fault zone.

 Officials also warned of aftershocks and secondary disasters such as landslides and road and cave collapses, especially since a light rain was falling over the mountainous  area Saturday.

 The 8 a.m. quake jolted residents out of bed, and people ran into the streets wearing their pajamas, according to reports from the scene.

"We were very calm. We have gained experience from the last earthquake. It took us 30 seconds to leave everything and run," one middle-aged man told Chinese media.

A 22-year-old woman despaired that her house survived the first earthquake, but not this latest one.

"When the May 12th earthquake happened, I thought I was lucky ....  I still had a home to go back to. Now our house can't be lived in anymore. I feel really lost. Where I should go? What I should do after all this?'' she wrote on a microblog posting.

 The rescue effort will be a test for the newly installed government of Xi Jinping, who took over as president in March. His premier, Li Keqiang, toured the earthquake-stricken area  Saturday.

"The current most urgent issue is grasping the first 24 hours after the quake's occurrence, the golden time for saving lives, to take scientific rescue measures and save peoples' lives," Li was quoted as telling state media.

About 2,000 soldiers from Chengdu command of the People's Liberation Army were rushed to the epicenter, while two helicopters hovered overhead assessing the damage below.  

Compounding the tragedy, a military vehicle carrying 17 soldiers slid off a cliff into a river, killing one soldier and seriously injuring three.

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Boston bombings: Social media spirals out of control

Over the last few days, thousands of people have taken to the Internet to play Sherlock Holmes.

Armed with little more than grainy surveillance camera videos, cellphone photos and live tweets from police scanners, they have flooded the Web with clues, tips and speculation about what happened in Boston and who might have been behind it.

Monday's bombings, the first major terrorist attack on American soil in the age of smartphones, Twitter and Facebook, provided an opportunity for everyone to get involved. Within seconds of the first explosion, the Internet was alive with the collective ideas and reactions of the masses.

But this watershed moment for social media quickly spiraled out of control. Legions of Web sleuths cast suspicion on at least four innocent people, spread innumerable bad tips and heightened the sense of panic and paranoia.

"This is one of the most alarming social media events of our time," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia. "We're really good at uploading images and unleashing amateurs, but we're not good with the social norms that would protect the innocent."

Even as first responders were struggling to tend to the needs of the three killed and more than 170 injured in the Boston Marathon blasts, Web forums were cranking out rumors that there had been four bombs instead of two, that an area library had been targeted and that the death count was well over a dozen.

In short order, forums like Reddit and 4chan were alive with speculation — based on little or no evidence — that the culprits were Muslim fundamentalists or perhaps right-wing extremists.

In a mad rush to be the first to identify the perpetrators, anonymous posters online began openly naming people they believed had planted the bombs. Caught up in the mania, some traditional media ran with that information. Thursday's New York Post cover showed a photo of two men at the marathon under the headline "Bag Men" and implied that the two were prime suspects. In fact, neither was a suspect and one of the men, Salah Barhoun, was a high school student from outside Boston and had nothing to do with the explosions.

Once the FBI released images of the actual suspects, things really got out of hand. Online gumshoes scoured the Web for faces that might match and illustrated their work with drawings, circles and other home-brewed CSI techniques.

Some amateur sleuths focused their suspicions on Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student who has been missing since last month. Using an animation tool, they used an image of Tripathi to highlight similarities between his face and the FBI photos of one of the Boston bombing suspects.

However, Tripathi has no apparent connection to the marathon bombing. That was underscored Friday, when authorities revealed the identities of their suspects, two ethnic-Chechen immigrant brothers — Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of Cambridge, Mass.

"We have known unequivocally all along that neither individual suspected as responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings was Sunil," Tripathi's family said in a statement on Friday.

Advocates of social media and crowd-sourcing have long touted its unrivaled power to gather huge amounts of information quickly in crisis situations. With tens of thousands of people on hand at the marathon, most armed with smartphones, the sheer volume of data available for analysis proved too tempting to ignore.

"People in the moment want to participate. They want to be a part of what's going on," said Nicco Mele, an expert on technology and social media at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

So as the Boston Police Department engaged in a gunfight with the two brothers in Watertown, Mass., early Friday, tens of thousands of Web denizens tuned in to live streams of police scanners, furiously tapping notes and ideas into Reddit and Twitter.

"I feel like we've reached a certain threshold here — the Internet is finally outstripping cable news completely," a poster using the handle PantsGrenades wrote on Reddit. "In fact, I wonder if we're inadvertently doing their work for them."

Their speculation was not limited to the events in Boston. The unusual confluence of tragic and suspicious events in the past week led many online to suggest that the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, might have been a terrorist attack as well and that the ricin-laced letters mailed to politicians could have come from those behind the marathon bombing.

According to Murray Jennex, a crisis management expert at San Diego State University, the huge influx of online voices enabled by social media can be extremely helpful because eye witnesses are holding cameras in almost every location.

But beyond the photos they upload, their speculation and theorizing don't necessarily lead to a more efficient resolution.

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Feuer leads Trutanich by 11 points in poll

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich has a steep hill to climb to keep his job in next month's election, a new USC Price/L.A. Times poll has found.

Challenger Mike Feuer, a former city and state lawmaker, held a lead of more than 11 percentage points over Trutanich, drawing support from 36.8% of voters, compared with 25.5% favoring the incumbent. With about a month to go before election day, nearly 38% of the voters surveyed had not made up their minds.

The USC Sol Price School of Public Policy/L.A. Times Los Angeles City Election Poll surveyed 500 likely voters by telephone over a three-day period beginning Monday. The poll was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group, a Democratic firm, and M4 Strategies, a Republican company. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Trutanich finished second with 30% of the vote in a four-way primary election last month. Feuer was first with 44%.

The city attorney could still make headway with the substantial number of undecided voters. "The race certainly hasn't been decided," said USC's Dan Schnur, director of the poll.

But he is in a tough — and somewhat unusual — position for an incumbent seeking reelection from voters who do not appear to be particularly unhappy, pollsters said.

"It's an uphill road for Trutanich," Schnur said. "This is not an angry, throw-the-bums out electorate, so you would assume [there would be] a better landscape for an incumbent."

Chris St. Hilaire of M4 noted that Trutanich was losing among Democrats, independents and Anglo voters "and that's a huge problem for him." A large number of voters who said they were undecided before the March primary election ended up voting for the city attorney, St. Hilaire said. In the May runoff, the new poll shows Trutanich would need to win undecided voters by almost 2 to 1 to overcome Feuer, he said.

Compounding Trutanich's problem, said Benenson's Amy Levin, is the "drop-off" factor, a tendency of some voters to mark their choices in the top races and skip voting in lower-profile contests.

The city attorney is one of three officials elected citywide, but races for that office, as well as city controller, have generally attracted less attention than mayoral contests. That is especially true this year when two well-funded candidates — Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel — are spending millions in their battle to succeed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Feuer, a Democrat, began his city attorney campaign in 2011 and has raised considerably more money than Trutanich. He's also collected support across the political spectrum.

Last year, Trutanich, a former Republican who is now registered without a party affiliation, ran for Los Angeles County district attorney, breaking a highly publicized promise to serve two terms at City Hall before seeking another office. He decided to go for a second term as city attorney after failing to make it past the county's June primary election. Many observers attribute his current campaign struggles to the ill-fated decision to run for district attorney before finishing his first city attorney term.

Trutanich has said his campaign for district attorney was "a mistake," but he argues that he has served the city well and deserves another term.

Interviews with some of those surveyed in the USC Price/L.A. Times poll found a lack of enthusiasm for either candidate, even among those who said they had made up their minds.

"I hate full-time politicians," said Joshua Mayo, 48, a laborer who lives in Hollywood. But he said he would vote for Feuer because "he seems to have done some good things." Suzanne Brewer, 50, of North Hills, a paralegal, prefers Trutanich as "the least of the worst" and because of his experience as a prosecutor.

John Short, a 35-year-old bookkeeper who lives in Hollywood, likes Trutanich because "he is somebody in office who seems to be doing all right … so we might as well keep him in." Fred Dee, 67, of Koreatown, said he prefers Feuer because he voted for Trutanich four years ago "and I've been disappointed."

"It's time for new blood to come in; that's the main thing," Dee said.

jean.merl@latimes.com

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