Suicides in Burbank

 

Coroner: Burbank FBI agent’s death ruled suicide

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

AUG. 6, 2012 7:03 PM PT

BURBANK, Calif. —  The Los Angeles County coroner has determined the death of an FBI agent who went missing from his Burbank home was a suicide.

Chief Coroner Investigator Craig Harvey said Monday that 35-year-old Stephen Ivens shot himself in the head with a handgun, and died of the wound.

Ivens was last seen by his family on May 10. His body was discovered July 30 behind a church near his home, with his gun nearby.

His family searched for weeks in the Verdugo Mountains north and east of Burbank.

FBI officials said the three-year veteran had a spotless record.

During the search, authorities had said he was despondent and possibly suicidal but wouldn’t say why.

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Burbank police officer commits suicide on public street

BURBANK – The suicide of a 50-year-old Burbank police sergeant who shot and killed himself on a public street is certain to raise public awareness about a federal investigation of alleged misconduct by at least a dozen officers in that department.

Sgt. Neil T. Gunn, who is listed in an ongoing FBI probe of officers employed by the Burbank Police Department, was found dead around 11:40 a.m. Thursday near Sunset Canyon and Harvard Road, authorities said.

Officers responding to a “shots fired, man down” call found Gunn with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Burbank police Lt. John Dilibert.

Gunn was pronounced dead at the scene.

Earlier this month, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller confirmed her agency was looking into possible civil rights violations by Burbank police officers, the Burbank Leader reported. The results of the FBI probe were be forwarded to the Department of Justice.

Eimiller would not specify when the probe began, how long it would last, or why certain officers were targeted in the probe, the Burbank Leader reported.

Several of the officers listed in the probe — Bill Taylor, Omar Rodriguez and Steve Karagiosian — have filed lawsuits against their department alleging racial discrimination, harassment and on-the-job retaliation, the Burbank Leader reported.

In September, the U.S. Attorney’s Office issued a grand jury subpoena for personnel records involving 12 members of the Burbank Police Department, seeking documentation on “use of force, defensive tactics, Tasers, pepper spray, or the rules and ramifications pertaining to the use of excessive force or a violation of civil/constitutional rights,” the Burbank Leader reported.

Gunn was a 22-year-veteran and patrol sergeant with the Burbank Police Department. He received numerous commendations for his work, including Ministerial Officer of the Year in 1992, and two departmental Professional Esteem awards.

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Doctors Behaving Badly: Body count tripped up prolific prescriber of painkillers

The medical examiner called Dr. Bernard N. Bass with some bad news: one of his

patients had been found dead. Bass refused to sign the death certificate.

This was a strange response, given that Bass had signed his name over and over in the

previous two years, every time Ryan Mazzola came into Bass' North Hollywood office asking for pain medication. Less of a surprise was the autopsy report: the patient died from a lethal mix of alcohol and hydrocodone.

Mazzola was 21 when he started going to Bass for pain medicine. He died in August 2005.

He was typical of Bass' clientele. According to Medical Board of California records, Bass saw a lot of twenty-somethings who had managed, in their short lives, to develop chronic back conditions that required massive doses of addictive painkillers. One patient was taking nine 10 mg tablets of Hydrocodone per day, 50% more than the recommended maximum daily dose.

These patients weren't satisfied with getting all their drugs from Bass, either. They went to other doctors who wrote them similar prescriptions. And when they ran out of drugs, they came back to Bass and said, among other things, that their girlfriend had flushed the drugs down the toilet, so they needed more. One of the patients, according to medical board records, "received 1,515 tablets of Lorcet 10/500 or Lortab 10/650 from three different providers," including Bass.

Now, how is a well-meaning doctor supposed to know that patients are doctor shopping? This has come up recently in the death of Michael Jackson, who had been trying to persuade several doctors to give him an anesthetic to help him sleep. How does one doctor know what another doctor is doing?

Over the course of two years, Bass was notified multiple times by the California Department of Justice's CURES program, which tracks prescriptions of controlled narcotics, that his patients were getting large amounts of drugs from him and large amounts of drugs from other doctors, too. In some cases, the state notified him three times that these patients were doctor shopping. Perhaps Bass saw this as competition. The medical board writes:

Respondent's notes indicate that he informed the patient about receiving the CURES reports showing treatment from two separate physicians for pain management. A note indicates that the patient agreed to have Respondent be his sole physician for pain management and Respondent provided prescription refills of Norco, Xanax and Soma.

More patients overdosed. A total of seven.

In May, Ventura County Sheriff's deputies raided Bass' Burbank home and his clinic. The Ventura County Attorney considered filing murder charges in connection with six patient deaths. The attorney ended up filing drug-distribution conspiracy charges. That alone was enough to stop Bass from practicing. He pleaded guilty and was facing a two-year prison sentence when, in June, Bass was found dead at his home.

John Kades, a Los Angeles County coroner's investigator told the Burbank Leader, "There were indications of a history of drug abuse and possible suicide."