The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest municipal utility in the United States, serving over four million residents. It was founded in 1902 to supply water and electricity to residents and businesses in Los Angeles and surrounding communities. The LADWP receives no tax support, and contributes about $190 million annually to the revenues of the city of Los Angeles.^{[citation needed]}

By the middle of the 19th century, Los Angeles's rapid population growth magnified problems with the city’s water distribution system. At that time a system of open ditches, often polluted, was reasonably effective at supplying water to agriculture but was not suited to providing water to homes. In 1853, the city council rejected as "excessive" a closed-pipe system that would serve homes directly. As a solution, the city allowed "water carriers with jugs and horse-drawn wagons…to serve the city’s domestic [water] needs". It took until 1857 for the council to realize that the system needed to be updated, which led them to grant William G. Dryden franchise rights to provide homes with water through a system of underground water mains. The initial system served only a few homes using an unreliable network of wooden pipes. In December 1861, heavy rains destroyed the system and Dryden gave up his franchise. The city attempted contracting out water distribution rights to others, but none of the systems that resulted from these contracts was successful.

Wally Knox was a Democratic Assemblyman from the State of California from 1994 until 2000. Due to term limits, he was ineligible to run again for the Assembly. Instead he ran for the 23rd district State Senate seat, but lost the Democratic primary to Assemblymember Sheila Kuehl.

Prior to his election, Knox served on the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District. He was an attorney specializing in labor relations, and owned a small business. He was on the Executive Board of the American Jewish Committee. The first in his family to attend college, he graduated from Harvard University and Hastings Law School. He served four years in the U. S. Army and is a decorated Vietnam veteran. He is married to Elizabeth Garfield, and has two daughters, Aviva and Tamara. They belong to Temple Israel of Hollywood.

Knox's 42nd Assembly district included the Los Angeles area communities of Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Beverly Fairfax, Bel Air, Century City, Hancock Park, Hollywood, Miracle Mile, Westwood, West Los Angeles and West Hollywood. In the San Fernando Valley, he represents Encino, Sherman Oaks, Studio City and Universal City.

Grim Sleeper is the nickname for an alleged serial killer in Los Angeles, California, believed to be responsible for at least ten murders, one suspected and one attempted murder in Los Angeles since 1985. The attacker was dubbed the "Grim Sleeper" because he appears to have taken a 14-year hiatus from his crimes, from 1988 to 2002.

On July 7, 2010, a suspect, Lonnie David Franklin Jr., 57, was arrested. Los Angeles County District Attorney, Steve Cooley, charged him with ten counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, and special circumstance allegations of multiple murders in the case.

After police discovered several dead women in alleyways and dumpsters in South Los Angeles, California during the mid-1980s, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and Los Angeles Police Department began investigating the murders setting up the "Southside Slayer" task force. At the time, the police thought that the murders were committed by one person labelled the "Southside Slayer". These crimes were announced to the public on September 23, 1985. Eventually, the LAPD and the Sheriff's detectives realized that several serial killers were murdering women and it was a difficult task for the detectives to decide which murders were linked. Amongst their other murders, Louis Craine committed at least two of the murders, and Michael Hughes, Daniel Lee Siebert and Ivan Hill at least one each. A separate series of killings commenced with the murder of Debra Jackson, with a different MO involving a firearm. These became known, misleadingly, as the "Strawberry murders". Two decades later the perpetrator of these crimes was named Grim Sleeper due to a long period of apparent inactivity between crimes.