Reiner Forms Police Unit to Help With Asian Cases

Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner is forming a special investigative unit to meet the needs of Los Angeles County’s growing Asian community, it was learned Friday.

The unit will be headed by Jimmy Sakoda, who recently retired from the top position in the Los Angeles Police Department’s successful Asian Task Force, which was organized in 1975 at Sakoda’s recommendation.

Sakoda, 49, will serve under Jack White, named chief of the district attorney’s 190-officer bureau of investigations last December. White, also a veteran of the department, retired as a captain. Sakoda, who was a classmate of White at the Los Angeles Police Academy, retired as a lieutenant. They have worked together in several divisions of the Police Department.

“We need to do a better job of delivering services to the Asian community,” White said. “We need Asian investigators for the job because of language and cultural differences.”

White said details of the new unit, including the exact designation and number of investigators who will be assigned to it, have not been worked out.

White said that although Sakoda “already has been hired” for the post, he will be on temporary unpaid leave until he can take care of some personal business.

Sakoda himself estimated that it may be as late as July before the new unit becomes fully operational.

Among other things, White said, the new unit may review the investigation of the Miura murder case. His reference was to the still unsolved murder of Kazumi Miura, 28, who was gunned down on a Los Angeles street Nov. 18, 1981, in an apparent robbery. She died without regaining consciousness 14 months later in a Japanese hospital.

“There is a great deal of concern about that case in the Japanese-American community,” he said. “It is very likely that a review will be conducted to determine whether we can be of any assistance in that case. . . . A murder case always has a high priority.”