The dozen in custody Wednesday came from South L.A. and Compton, Barkley said.
Police say the attackers appeared to be an organized group who knew one another. Officers swarmed the Hollywood area as helicopters for police and news media circled overhead.
More than 110 officers were brought in from other LAPD divisions to track down the robbers, Kato said, pitting police against the attackers in a massive cat-and-mouse game around Hollywood. Dozens of officers awaited orders at Wilton Place and Monroe Street.
At that intersection, two young black men were detained in handcuffs before being released with the terse explanation that they had mistakenly been stopped because they matched the general description of the robbers.
Nasty, that profiling thing. /sarc