A Look at Police Deployment

The Los Angeles Police Commission has scheduled an outside analysis of the way the Los Angeles Police Department uses its forces.

The review will concentrate on a so-called “deployment formula” that decides the pattern in which officers are spread through the city. But it will go beyond that--studying, for example, the differences, if any, in the time that it takes police to respond to calls for help in various parts of the city. It will look at the jobs done by officers covered by the deployment formula and the way policemen who are not covered by the deployment formula spend their time on shift. It also will examine the question of whether civilians can do more of the desk work now done by officers.

From the analysis the commission hopes to learn whether police protection is equally available in all 18 divisions, a crucial portrait for a police force that is too small for its city. The commission will contract for the study, assuming that it will have greater credibility if outsiders conduct it.

So far, so good. The next step is to set a reasonable but firm deadline for completing the report so that the study does not become just another way to put off a decision on allocation.

The existing police deployment formula has been challenged by two community groups, the United Neighborhoods Organization and the South-Central Organizing Committee, which claim a combined membership of 130,000 families in the Eastside and South-Central neighborhoods of the city. They want their fair share of officers and squad cars, as does every neighborhood.

What’s fair is not as simple as one-for-you-and-one-for-me. Different sections have different needs. Victims of violent crime argue, persuasively, that life-threatening acts should get more weight than property crimes in determining how many policemen it takes to protect a neighborhood.

The decision to make the study leaves one stumbling block to more police protection in Los Angeles. The two community groups that challenged police allocation among neighborhoods have linked resolution of the deployment issue with their support of a new property tax that would pay for more police. As leverage to get the commission to act, the position had some validity. Once the study actually begins, it would serve only to damage the case for additional policemen, making all neighborhoods losers to that extent.

All the more reason, we think, for the commission to keep the pressure on for early completion of the study and for the community groups to get behind moves to expand the force.