Unconventional Policing Gains New Impetus

When a string of bank robberies occurred in the Wilshire corridor a few years ago, Los Angeles Police Sgt. Sam Layton thought up a creative way of dealing with them.

Layton had photographs taken of himself with each bank manager, then had life-sized enlargements made and placed them at highly visible places inside the banks. For added measure, he put police hats on managers’ desks. The result: The robberies dramatically decreased.

The success in stemming a wave of robbery without arrests--or use of a huge task force--is cited as a successful example of what is known as “community-based policing,” a problem-solving approach usually involving one or two officers working with civilians outside conventional channels, meeting with community groups and listening to their concerns.

It is the opposite of direct crime fighting. Often, it is the graffiti, abandoned vehicles, or gangs gathering on street corners that come in for much of the community-based officers’ attention as they focus on what is bothering residents rather than the usual police priorities.

The concept has been around the Los Angeles Police Department for 25 years, sometimes falling into disuse, but it has gained a new impetus in the wake of the March 3 police beating of Rodney G. King. It is widely used in some other cities, including Houston, New York and St. Petersburg, Fla.

The Christopher Commission, which was formed in the wake of the King incident to conduct a sweeping review of the LAPD’s policies and practices, is expected to encourage the use of community-based policing when it issues its final report in July.

“We are driving hard to come up with some recommendations,” said commission chairman Warren Christopher.

Christopher declared that expert testimony given the commission has indicated “that where there is a relationship between the officer and the community there is less chance for excessive resort to force.” So, he suggested, such a policing technique is one way to establish better rapport between the LAPD and the various communities it serves.

Even where it has been tried the most, the commitment to it in Los Angeles has been limited to relatively few officers.

For instance, 10 of 311 officers in the Newton Division in South-Central Los Angeles are engaged in “Operation Cul-de-Sac.” This consists of barricading streets in a target one-square-mile area in an effort to cut down on drive-by-shootings and drug peddling. The officers patrol the neighborhood on bicycles and develop rapport with residents.

The division commander, Capt. Dennis A. Conte, says the program has been successful, but cautions there are insufficient resources to extend it to all areas that might benefit.

Meanwhile, six of about 200 officers in the Harbor Division are free from regular assignments to work with community leaders on alleviating a host of problems ranging from graffiti and abandoned cars to gangs and the dumping of refuse in such quantities that some East Wilmington streets have had to be closed.

Some LAPD divisions have no officers specially assigned to community-based patrols.

The Harbor commander, Capt. Joe DeLadurantey, is perhaps more identified with this kind of policing than any other LAPD officer at his level.

“This is not a program,” he remarks. “It’s an attitude, a management style and a way of doing business. . . . It’s finding out what the priorities of the community are, not what ours are.”

But pursuit of such matters often encounters resistance in the police bureaucracy because it takes officers away from the response to emergency calls that some view as the meat-and-potatoes of policing.

“When you allow officers to set their own hours and work in their own ways with community people, first-line supervisors become very nervous,” explains UCLA Prof. James Q. Wilson, a recognized expert on such techniques.

“They have a feeling their officers are becoming social workers or, as they sometimes put it, are ‘carrying rubber bullets,’ ” Wilson added. “A strong, devoted police chief can gain support for it, but even those most enthusiastic . . . are not completely successful in selling it to their departments.”

DeLadurantey, anxious to demonstrate firsthand what his officers are doing, arranged for a reporter to accompany three of them on their rounds. All six men assigned to community-based policing in the Harbor Division are senior lead officers, the top-most patrol position.

In quick order last Tuesday, officers Dale Saas and Phil Gasca, assigned to Wilmington:

* Stopped by a 4-year-old apartment project, where they have been helping a new owner paint out graffiti and evict tenants involved in drug peddling. Some walls in the neighborhood, Saas said, have been repainted 30 times to discourage those painting graffiti.

* Visited Hawaiian Avenue Elementary School, where they have been helping in an effort to discourage students from joining gangs. As part of this effort, Saas and Gasca have assisted in a $6,000 fund-raising effort to send sixth-graders to a three-day camp at a Boy Scout Center in nearby San Pedro. They also take students on ride-alongs and talk to classes about gangs.

The principal of the school, Tommye Kennan, noted that students may become involved with gangs at a very young age. She displayed a class picture in which one 6-year-old in the first grade was flashing a local gang’s sign.

* Paid a call on Susan Pritchard, field deputy to Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores. The three discussed plans for the next weekly Friday morning breakfast at Maya restaurant, which brings together 35 community leaders and the officers to discuss crime and other problems confronting the Wilmington community. Pritchard explained, “The breakfast group has become a family.”

* Visited Manual Louis, head of the Far East Wilmington Improvement Assn, in a neighborhood where many of the streets, within the city of Los Angeles, are unpaved and clogged with refuse--including hazardous wastes--dumped by people from outside the neighborhood.

Some streets, which are buried as much as 25 feet deep in trash, have had to be closed and police are helping Louis to seek municipal action to clear and reopen them.

Louis is effusive in his praise of the help given his association by Saas and Gasca. “These two gentlemen are our right arm and left arm,” he said.

Later, a tour of San Pedro with Officer Don Jenks displayed other elements of community-based policing.

Jenks is proudest of his success in helping to convert a number of small apartment houses, where he says calls to the police often ran 25 to 30 a month, to drug and alcohol rehabilitation houses where the number of police calls “have dropped to zero.”

But, Jenks confesses, not all desk officers at Harbor are supportive of the community officers. The night desks, he said, are particularly resistant to doing anything but responding to crime calls.

The history of community-based policing in LAPD is that many such efforts have been short-lived.

When DeLadurantey, for instance, was stationed in the Wilshire Division, such efforts were extensive. But he said most were abandoned after he moved on to Harbor Division.

Two decades ago, the LAPD had an extensive network of community relations officers, an approach developed in the wake of the Watts riot. But Mayor Tom Bradley removed funding for the community relations program from the city budget after some council members complained that the officers involved often were responsible for organizing community political pressure on the lawmakers and duplicating the work of council deputies in various neighborhoods.

Community-based officers today usually try to work with the council deputies, as Saas and Gasca are doing with Pritchard.

More than a decade ago, the passage of Proposition 13 resulted in police cutbacks that spelled an end to--or diminished--many community-policing efforts instituted by then-Police Chief Ed Davis.

Davis, now a state senator, remains proud of the “basic car” and “team policing” reforms he instituted as chief in the 1970s and supports community-based policing efforts now.

“It’s the only way to go,” he said. “It’s the most satisfying policy. You develop the best relationships with citizens. And actually, it’s the most cost-effective means of reducing crime.”

Davis’ predecessor, Tom Reddin, agrees. “We can’t afford not to have the money to do these things,” he told The Times.

But Reddin cautioned that in a city as large and diverse as Los Angeles, specialized SWAT teams and other elite units also are necessary to deliver mass, centralized resources when needed.

“You couldn’t police the city without a SWAT team . . . but they shouldn’t be the image of the department,” Reddin said.

He also urged that there be psychological evaluation by the department of how community-based officers are getting along after they have been assigned for a while.

“The big weakness with this concept is that there is no follow-up,” Reddin said. “My view is that after six months there ought to be an examination to determine whether the community-based officers are working out and have the proper attitude. It may be necessary to take the most stressed-out officer in the Southwest Division, say, and move him to Bel-Air.

Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon, currently the LAPD’s No. 2 official, said he believes that the most dedicated officers are frequently those most devoted to the community-based concept.

The LAPD, he said, properly has “a mission to make the community a better place to live” and he noticed in the past that the officers who supported the team policing concepts introduced by Davis were “committed,” while those who didn’t like it were “lazy and uncommitted.”

“Officers who develop their own initiatives, and work at mobilizing their communities will see their jobs greatly enlarged,” Vernon said. “Those who want that will love this.”

A more reserved assessment came from Deputy Chief Mark A. Kroeker, who is in charge of the LAPD’s San Fernando Valley operations.

Two weeks ago, in response to public criticism after the King beating, Kroeker assigned 31 senior lead officers in the Valley to community-based efforts.

But he quickly acknowledged that he considered the move “a calculated risk” that might not work out as well as hoped.

“We will re-evaluate and refine these efforts in three months,” Kroeker vowed. “We are being ambitious.”

Hubert Williams, former police chief in Newark, N.J., and now president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, is one of the biggest boosters of community-based policing, but he cautioned recently that it has its limitations.

“It clearly is no panacea,” Williams said. “It will not solve everything. If it’s effective, a community-based policy will have an impact, but it won’t happen overnight.”