LOS ANGELES – The man charged with 10 murders in the Los Angeles “Grim Sleeper” case was arrested at least 15 times over four decades but never sent to state prison despite recommendations of probation officers, including one who urged he receive a maximum sentence because it was a bad sign that a man in his 50s still committed crimes, court and jail records show.

Lonnie Franklin Jr., 57, was arrested for burglary, car theft, firearms possession and assaults. But his crimes never were considered serious enough to send him to state prison or to warrant his entry in the state’s DNA database, authorities said.

“He’s danced to the raindrops for a long time without getting wet,” Detective Dennis Kilcoyne, head of the task force investigating the killings, told the Los Angeles Times.

At a Saturday community forum on the murders, city councilman and former police chief Bernard Parks said law enforcement and police should not be faulted for their past handling of Franklin.

“That’s not unusual,” Parks said of Franklin’s short sentences and frequent quick releases. He said jails are “constantly evaluating who can be let go to make room.”

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Starting this month, colleges and universities that don’t do enough to combat the illegal swapping of “Avatar” or Lady Gaga over their computer networks put themselves at risk of losing federal funding.

A provision of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 is making schools a reluctant ally in the entertainment industry’s campaign to stamp out unauthorized distribution of copyrighted music, movies and TV shows.

Colleges and universities must put in place plans “to effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material by users of the institution’s network” without hampering legitimate educational and research use, according to regulations that went into effect Thursday.

That means goodbye to peer-to-peer file-sharing on a few campuses — with exceptions for gamers or open-source software junkies — gentle warnings on others and extensive education programs everywhere else.

Despite initial angst about invading students’ privacy and doing the entertainment industry’s dirty work, college and university officials are largely satisfied with regulations that call for steps many of them put in place years ago.

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