LAPD Gets OK on New Facility : Explosives Bunkers in Park to Be Relocated

There are two concrete buildings in Griffith Park that people used to picnic near--until a barbed-wire fence was erected and police started patrolling the area.

There is enough dynamite, plus hand grenades and other military devices inside the structures to demolish a mid-size skyscraper, police say. The Los Angeles Police Department has been using them to store contraband explosives seized in investigations.

Officials say the 40-year-old ammunition bunkers are a threat to public safety. Police investigator Arleigh McCree, who is responsible for security of the bunkers, said they are falling apart and vulnerable to burglary because of their location.

Since 1980, the Police Department has been seeking a new facility away from public access, and this week a City Council committee agreed to spend $285,000 to build two new concrete bunkers on the Police Academy grounds in Elysian Park.

“We needed the new buildings at least six years ago,” said McCree, who also heads the Police Department’s bomb squad. “There is a terrible potential for a lot of destruction. We’ve done everything but hold a gun to people’s heads to make them realize that this is an issue critical to public safety.”

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the Finance and Revenue Committee, who supports the Police Department’s request, said delay in the construction of new bunkers was caused by “various changes in design criteria and conditional-use requirements.”

McCree said the Griffith Park bunkers do not meet current state and federal safety standards, and increased patrolling does not reduce their vulnerability to burglary.

Although not even most police officers know of the bunkers’ location, the buildings have been the target of one successful burglary and numerous attempted thefts, said Capt. John Madell, head of the scientific investigations division.

Only a Band-Aid

The department secured the storage facilities with a fence and locks two years ago, Madell said, but he called this only a “Band-Aid” to the safety and security problems. Among the violations he cited are a heat-conductive steel door that is not bulletproof, the lack of an alarm system and a rotting roof.

“Rain drips in and it has flooded three or four times, and we’ve come in to find explosives floating around,” McCree said.

The bunkers contain as much as four years’ worth of confiscated devices from the department’s average of more than 600 bomb calls a year, McCree said. Detonators are stored in one building and explosives in the other.

Madell said the department disposes of items that are no longer needed as evidence. The devices are taken to military bases and used in bomb squad training, he said.

Considered Other Sites

The department, Madell said, considered a variety of locations, including Ft. MacArthur in San Pedro and Fox Airfield in Lancaster, before settling on the Police Academy in Elysian Park as the best place to construct the new bunkers.

“We chose the Police Academy because it has around-the-clock security and is not publicly accessible,” he said. He also noted that the site is centrally located and in a sparsely populated area.

Madell said he hopes to see the new bunkers installed within the next three months.

McCree said the situation has been a source of frayed nerves and that he will not rest until the explosives are finally moved.

“I want to see them (the new bunkers) up tomorrow,” he said. “Only tamper-proof security will make me sleep easier at night.”