This Police Station’s Front Desk Is More Like the Front Lines

From behind the front desk, police officers at the Foothill Division in Pacoima have dodged snipers’ bullets, watched the dramatic end of a wild car chase and--on one memorable night--leaped out of the path of an oncoming car.

They have also held their breath when a woman presented officers with dynamite and, two days later, another woman offered a machete.

And all this excitement without ever leaving the lobby.

As one officer put it, last week’s dynamite scare was a reminder that it is perhaps “more dangerous working the front desk” than riding on patrol.

Although all police stations witness unusual events--the Southwest Division still talks about the man who walked in naked to file a crime report--the lobby of the Foothill Division has gained a reputation as the frequent site of strange incidents.

‘Weirdos’ Drop By

“Every weirdo stops in Foothill,” Los Angeles Police Sgt. Cary Kreps said Wednesday. Kreps and other officers described life at the front desk at 12760 Osborne St. as filled with the strange, the quirky and sometimes the downright dangerous.

Officers recall the time a woman drove to the station because her husband told her to seek out police if she ever suspected she was being followed. Unfortunately, Kreps said, her husband “didn’t tell her to park at the curb.”

The car plowed into the lobby but was stopped by the thick concrete blocks that support the front desk. Officer Brad Peters said no one was killed, but one officer retired from injuries suffered in the crash.

That was about three years ago, but the concrete wall had been built years earlier, Peters said, after snipers took pot shots at the station. “It gives you something to duck behind,” he said.

The strangest shooting that occurred at the Pacoima station involved a suicidal teen-ager a few years ago who fired gunshots into the lobby in hopes of being shot himself. Officers shot back, but, frustrating the boy’s plans, only wounded him.

The topic of conversation at the station these days is the woman who casually tossed a package wrapped in plastic and duct tape on the front desk before Officer Arcie Campos last Friday. Ignoring Campos’ repeated questions, the woman would not say what was in the package and told police to handle the matter as she backed out the door.

“That’s when I knew something was wrong here,” Campos said.

The officer lifted the duct tape and saw three sticks of dynamite covered with a white substance resembling melted candle wax--a sign that the nitroglycerin in the sticks had crystallized and become highly volatile.

Civic Duty

The station was evacuated for 90 minutes until the bomb squad detonated the dynamite by remote control in a container parked in front of the station. A bomb-squad officer walked up to Campos and patted her on the shoulder. “You are one lucky lady,” he said.

Detectives later learned that one of the woman’s friends had found the dynamite near Veterans Memorial Park in Pacoima. The woman decided it was her civic duty to give the sticks to police, said Detective Richard Kensic.

Things quieted down at the station, but not for long. Only six hours later, a high-speed car chase that was to lead police on a circuitous, 75-mile route started five blocks from the station. The chase eventually ended--where else--in front of the station.

Two days later, Officer Kelly P. Mulldorfer thought she was reliving the dynamite incident when a woman speaking in a Scandinavian accent plopped a large, towel-wrapped object in front of her. Like her dynamite-toting counterpart, the woman would not say what was inside the bundle and insisted that police confiscate it.

This package contained a razor-sharp, two-foot machete. “It could have cut the desk in half,” Mulldorfer said. The woman, she added, simply wanted to turn the machete in.

“It wasn’t hers?” Campos asked.

“No,” Mulldorfer replied. “A guy was chasing her around with it.”

The shootings and dynamite are extraordinary events, but even routine life at the front desk of a police station presents its problems, Campos said. Crime victims, some of them stabbed or shot, have stumbled into the station seeking help. Other citizens, often emotional and upset, have come in to report crimes and sometimes lashed out at the officers in frustration.

Arrests at the front desk are fairly common, Kreps said. Often the suspect is a criminal who has come to bail out a friend. “They forget they’re wanted,” Kreps said.

Despite the daily risks--and incidents like the dynamite episode--police have no plans to tighten security at Foothill, where there are no barriers to the ordinary glass doors, said Capt. Arthur M. Sjoquist, commander of the division.

Planners had more aesthetic considerations when the division was built about 25 years ago and did not use anti-terrorism designs now common at modern stations, Sjoquist said. He said he resists changes in the division’s design for philosophical reasons.

“My philosophy has always been that the citizens are the police and the police are the citizens,” he said. “I hope I’m not on the job the day we have to talk to the people that come in here through a TV monitor.”

Divisions throughout the department are encouraged to remain accessible to the public despite the risks, said Officer Fabian Lizarraga, a department spokesman.