BELL, Calif.  The investigators from the district attorney’s office showed up at the mayor’s house early Tuesday morning, arrest warrant and battering ram in hand, banging on the door. When the mayor, Oscar Hernandez, ignored their shouts  “Come out!” and “Put your hands up!”  they rammed down the door and arrested Mr. Hernandez on charges of looting the treasury of his own city to enrich himself.

And it was not only Mr. Hernandez. To cheers and visible elation in this working-class town of small stucco houses south of Los Angeles, the authorities arrested eight former and current city officials of Bell  including the former city manager, who had been drawing an annual salary of nearly $800,000  just after 8 a.m. on Tuesday. The officials were accused, in effect, of turning this city into their personal piggy bank: misappropriating $5.5 million in city money to enrich themselves with pumped-up salaries, illicit loans and big payments to attend committee meetings that lasted just a few minutes, if they were held at all.

The arrests brought to a climax a distasteful tale that has gripped Los Angeles throughout the summer: The story of public officials apparently looting a working-class city  overwhelmingly Hispanic, with many living below the poverty line  in a state that is so broke and where so many people face a cutoff of social services.

The case began in July when The Los Angeles Times, in the first of what has been an almost daily run of articles detailing malfeasance in Bell, reported that Robert Rizzo, who resigned as city manager after the articles appeared, was paid almost double the salary of the president of the United States, while Randy Adams, who resigned last month as police chief, was paid $457,000 a year.