In Trouble, Marty Sought Cop, Not Cop-Out

This is a story about a young man we’ll call Marty and the not-so-excellent adventure he had one night in September. It is also a story about the Los Angeles Police Department and cracks in the department’s system and sensibilities.

That’s what Joan Major thinks, anyway. She is Marty’s mother. Although the police have their own perspective about what did or didn’t go wrong that night, it’s much easier to empathize with Joan Major.

To empathize with Marty is trickier. First you have to imagine that you are 22 years old, but have the mental abilities and judgment of someone much younger. Imagine that you reside in a residential “independent living” program in Woodland Hills, trying to learn skills that will enable you to someday survive on your own.

Now imagine yourself sitting on a bus bench at the corner of Winnetka Avenue and Vanowen Street at 9 p.m. on a Friday, unaware that the bus line that would take you home had ceased service a half-hour before. Imagine yourself patiently sitting for three hours, listening to your Walkman. Then imagine yourself deciding to walk home--and heading in the wrong direction.

That’s what Marty did. Apparently disoriented in the darkness, he walked east to Tampa Avenue and called his group home at 12:15 a.m. to say he was fine and was walking home. Marty had his bus pass, but he didn’t have any more money, no change to make another phone call. Marty then walked about another seven miles farther east before stopping to rest on a bus bench at the corner of Woodman Avenue and Vanowen in Van Nuys.

It must have been about 3:30 a.m. when two men approached and sat on either side. One poked something into Marty’s side and demanded his money. Marty told them he had no money and pleaded with them not to take his wallet, because he’d just received his new state identification card. The criminals did not physically harm Marty and let him keep his wallet. They took his Walkman and wristwatch before driving away.

Marty knew what to do next. He found a pay phone and called 911. Police later told Joan Major that records show that his call came in at 3:58 a.m.

Within minutes--at 4:04 a.m., to be precise--a Van Nuys Division patrol unit met Marty and took a crime report. He later told his mother that he showed police his ID and told them he was trying to get home. “Anyone who has ever met my son realizes that he has a handicap,” Major says.

The officers, she figures, had to know that they were dealing with a mentally disabled young man who’d just been robbed and was alone on the streets in the dead of night, several miles from home. So how did officers assist this crime victim?

They officers did not offer Marty a ride or otherwise arrange for transportation. They did not attempt to contact his parents or his group home. They did not loan him a quarter to make a call.

The officers pointed out another bus bench and left him there. Marty waited until 5:30 for the first bus of the morning and made it home about 1 1/2 hours later.

“To me the main point is victims’ rights,” his mom says. “Whether my son asked for a ride or not, whether he appeared handicapped or not, the step that was never taken was, ‘Can I call someone for you? Can I drop you off at the police station?’ ”

Had the question been asked, maybe the police could have simply dropped her son off at her home. She lives in Van Nuys, just a couple of miles from where Marty was robbed.

What a relief that would have been. Joan Major was a nervous wreck that night. At about 2 a.m., a worker at the group home had called to notify her that Marty hadn’t returned and that the home had tried to alert police.

That’s another fact that angers Major: Eighty-four minutes had passed from the moment that a missing persons report was filed and the moment police responded to Marty’s call for help. Yet the officers were unaware that Marty had been reported missing.

To Major, in fact, the police should have been aware even earlier. When the group home first called police at 1:30 a.m. to report Marty missing, they learned that the LAPD won’t take such reports over the phone. The report wasn’t filed in person until 2:40 a.m.

Minutes later, Joan Major had called 911 herself to impress upon authorities her son’s disabilities. The 911 operator, she said, assured her that the report had been filed and officers were on the lookout for Marty.

But now she knows that obviously wasn’t true. What gives?

When I asked police about this, I learned that missing persons reports aren’t necessarily broadcast immediately--or even with much haste at all. Priorities are set based on the age of the missing, with children age 11 and under inspiring the most aggressive reaction. Authorities said it would not necessarily be unusual for 84 minutes between the official filing of Marty’s disappearance with West Valley Division and when Van Nuys Division officers took Marty’s crime report.

“The reports aren’t put on the air unless there’s some imminent danger,” said Capt. Brad Merritt of Van Nuys Division.

Merritt said officers, if time allows, often provide crime victims rides home, to shelters or the police station. “We frequently do that, especially at 4 a.m.,” Merritt said. He acknowledged that Marty may have “slipped through the cracks” but defended his officers’ actions.

Merritt said the officers were questioned after Joan Major made a verbal complaint.

“They found the son a little bit on the slow side,” he said. Marty, he said, gave good descriptions of the suspects. He told officers about his job and his girlfriend and that he was just waiting for a bus to go home. “He seemed capable of taking care of himself. He wasn’t disoriented, wasn’t confused. . . .

“It wasn’t like the officers were shirking their duty. By all indication this guy seemed to be fine.”

Not disoriented or confused? He had walked miles from home in the wrong direction.

*

Imagine yourself as Marty again. You know you’re not as bright as some people, but you have your pride. You want to be a regular guy. So when you get robbed and the police come, you don’t act scared. You tell the officers about your job and your girlfriend and make it seem like you have everything under control.

You know what Marty did after the cops left? He called 911 again and said he needed a ride home.

Maybe, Joan Major says, the police just need some better sensitivity training in how to deal with the mentally handicapped. And maybe they should figure out a better way to get those missing persons reports broadcast.

“Their job is to serve and protect, and I don’t think they protected him from harm in leaving him there.”

Marty, by the way, wasn’t angry at all.

“They showed him where the bus stop was. He thought that was nice,” his mother said. “It didn’t occur to him that they could have done more.”