Behind Swift LAPD Action, a Moral Issue

Hours after 13-year-old Joey Swift was fatally shot while leaving church, seven homicide detectives and more than 30 officers began searching for the killers. There followed news conferences, marches and community meetings. Newspapers ran photographs of the suspects, 150 volunteers passed out fliers, and a federal task force was deployed over two states. A suspect was arrested in Nevada earlier this month.

“A textbook example” of how to respond to such a killing, Wilshire Division Capt. Kirk Albanese summed up at a news conference after the arrest.

Textbook, perhaps. But not typical.

At least 30 other people have been murdered in Los Angeles since Swift, nearly all answered with a far more limited response from the Los Angeles Police Department and the public. Commonly, just two detectives are assigned to an L.A. homicide, even as they work on other cases. Most of their investigations generate little of the attention that helped solve Joey’s case.

The difference illustrates a paradox: The killings that make up the smallest share of L.A.’s homicide problem tend to get the largest share of attention.

Joey’s young age and lack of gang involvement made him a relatively unlikely homicide victim -- part of the reason his case sparked widespread outrage. But most murder victims in Los Angeles fit a different profile: They are far more likely to be young adult Latino and black males, many of them criminals. The deaths of such men, the bulk of the city’s homicide problem, tend to drive a cycle of revenge killings.

Over the last 12 years, the number of 21-year-olds killed was 11 times the number of victims Swift’s age, according to an analysis of LAPD data by The Times.

Attention and resources ought to go “where the numbers are,” said University of Wisconsin sociologist Marino Bruce -- that is, to the most likely, and sometimes less innocent-seeming, victims. Devoting extra police resources to an investigation because of the emotional appeal of a victim, he said, is “not a reasonable way to determine priorities.”

But LAPD Chief William J. Bratton argues that police must exploit fickle public and media concern as best they can. Bratton acknowledged that Joey’s case got more attention than most. But he said the police response reflected a pragmatic decision: to put the most resources where they were likely to have the most effect.

A case such as Swift’s is more likely to be solved precisely because it generates more sympathy, he explained. Bratton makes no apologies for “knowing how to work and use the media,” he said. His long-term strategy, he said, is to leverage outrage over crimes that awaken compassion into more resources for crimes that don’t.

Many detectives agree, but it doesn’t always sit right, especially for those who must work with families devastated by grief. Det. Jeffrey Sandefur, who helped direct the Swift investigation, is working on another case that triggered far less attention, the killing of a 26-year-old black gang member earlier this year.

“The difference is a completely innocent 13-year-old on one side, and an acknowledged gang member on the other side,” Sandefur said. “It makes no difference to us -- a murder victim is a murder victim. But the community response is different.”

It is not morally right, he said, “but what are you going to do?”

Detectives talk about trying to downplay the gang ties of victims when they need to enlist public help. “I always say ‘gang-affiliated,’ ” said Southwest Det. Stanley Evans. “We know what games the media play,” said Det. Tom Murrell of the LAPD’s Wilshire Division. “We know that if we were to tell you a [murder victim] is a well-known gang member, you would not cover it.”

It makes him “a little upset,” Murrell said. “It doesn’t matter if a person is a gang member. All those people out there are created in God’s image. Period.”

Members of Joey Swift’s family also took pains last week to argue that other homicides, not just his, should spark similar outrage. “Anyone who gets killed, it’s a loss. It’s pain for the whole family,” said Joey’s grandfather, William Arbuckle.

Publicity and public concern over murders can encourage reluctant witnesses to cooperate. Half of all solved LAPD homicides last year relied primarily on eyewitnesses. But distrust of police and fear of gang retaliation discourage such cooperation, particularly in poor black and Latino neighborhoods.

When Joey was shot March 23 on West Boulevard, just north of the Santa Monica Freeway near La Brea Avenue, authorities decided that, this time, they would launch an all-out offensive against the fear that had dissuaded witnesses from talking.

The eighth-grader was killed in front of witnesses after he had left a morning church service. All these factors -- Joey’s youth, his innocence, the time and place of the killing -- were emphasized to draw attention.

It worked. The death prompted an unusually strong public response.

Media and political attention served to counter the fear that gripped the neighborhood, nudged people to talk and provided a mandate for the LAPD’s large mobilization, police said. By the end, detectives had several witnesses.

By contrast, about two-thirds of the 19 killings in the LAPD’s 77th Street Division, located south of where Joey was killed, received no media coverage at all, according to Capt. James Miller.

Unlike Wilshire, the 77th Street station always ranks in the top three LAPD divisions in the number of homicides. Nearly all of the shootings are believed to have been committed by gang members, and many of those killed were in gangs, too. But for a given homicide to get reaction, there needs to be a “kind of emotional string attached to it,” Miller said.

It’s problematic, he said. “If we accept [homicide] because the criminal had it coming, or was a gang member, or whatever, then we become tolerant of violence,” Miller said. “Then the next time, they will miss, and they hit that innocent person who pulls at the heartstrings.”

Among the murders in the 77th division that occurred shortly after Joey Swift was killed, was that of Tyrone White, who was four years older.

The teenager was hit several times on a sunny morning, April 9, and was left lying on his back on the sidewalk in front of a day care center. His killer sped away in a light-green four-door sedan on South Western Avenue at 96th Street. The death received no media coverage, and no extra police deployment.

There is only Det. Scot Williams, of the 77th division, and his partner. Among his duties is keeping in touch with White’s grieving mother. “Wow,” said Williams of the resources that went into the Joey Swift case. “I have never seen anything like that here.”

Two days after Wilshire detectives held another news conference to tout the successful conclusion of the Swift case, Evans helped organize another news conference. He was trying to draw attention to the unsolved murder of Jerry Lankford, a 21-year-old black man killed in the 3000 block of Chesapeake Avenue in front of Lankford’s 1-year-old daughter.

Lankford’s age, race and the circumstances of his death place his among the most statistically typical homicides. Accounts of the killing did not appear in newspapers or on TV, and there has been little response and few willing witnesses.

Evans’ news conference last week was sparsely attended. Two television cameramen stopped by, then left. Lankford’s mother cried throughout the news conference. Lankford’s father, Jerry, spoke with frustration about what he perceived as anemic public and police reaction to the slaying.

He had seen the Swift case on the news and asked, “Why is my son not getting the same attention?”

The victim’s aunt, Jeralyce Lankford, said she thought it was because young black men Jerry’s age are stereotyped as gang members. Police wrongly described Jerry this way, she said. But even a gang member, she said, “is still a human being.”

The LAPD’s Albanese, who supervised the police response to Swift’s murder, insisted that the case merited extra attention because it set a new threshold for lawless acts.

“Some homicides cry out that they need to be solved,” he said. “A boy is killed in broad daylight leaving a church. We cannot let that occur. If we do, it is the beginning of the end.”

*

Times reporter Doug Smith contributed to this report