Major Changes in Deployment of LAPD Urged

A study commissioned by the Los Angeles Police Department concludes that it takes officers an average of about a minute and a half longer to respond to emergency calls in the largely minority South-Central area of the city than it takes in the largely Anglo San Fernando Valley.

The 10-month, $183,000 study was ordered after complaints by politicians and citizens groups that the criteria used by the LAPD to allocate discretionary forces to the department’s 18 patrol areas tend to favor more affluent neighborhoods over the city’s minority communities.

Unacceptably Slow

Public Administration Service, a Virginia-based “think tank” commissioned to do the study, concluded that the LAPD’s response time to emergency calls throughout the city is unacceptably slow and recommends major deployment changes to rectify the situation.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and other top police administrators declined comment on the study Friday, saying they had not had a chance to review it thoroughly. However, Gates has said that he would be glad to use any improved system of allocating his forces.

Spokesmen for the United Neighborhood Organization and the South-Central Organizing Committee, two critics of the department’s current deployment policies, were not immediately available for comment.

The study showed that response times in the city’s four geographical bureaus averaged 12.253 minutes, 75% more than the seven-minute goal recommended by the authors of the study. That compares to an average of 5.9 minutes for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, according to sheriff’s statistics. Sheriff Sherman Block said this week that his department’s top priority is quick response to calls for emergency service, while the LAPD may concentrate more on other specialized assignments.

The slowest of the LAPD response times was in the South Bureau--where the average response time to emergency calls between July 1, 1986, and June 30, 1987, was 12.8 minutes, compared to 11.4 minutes in the Valley Bureau, the study said.

More specifically, however, the worst response time of all was found in Hollywood between 8 p.m. and midnight, when it took officers an average of 15 1/2 minutes to respond to an emergency call. The best response time was in the West Valley area, where it typically took officers seven minutes and 30 seconds to reach the scene of an emergency between 8 a.m. and noon.

“The root cause of long response times for emergency calls for service is dispatch delay caused by lack of available patrol units,” the report said. “The total deployment system utilized in Los Angeles should be changed so as to improve utilization of patrol officers.”

Among the study’s recommendations:

- Using more one-officer units and civilian personnel to handle cases involving minor offenses, thus freeing more uniformed personnel for field work.

- Revising the geographic areas to which patrol units are assigned to fix accountability for calls at the neighborhood level, with more officers assigned to “basic car” units in specific areas, and fewer discretionary assignments that can shift from area to area.

- Re-examining the roles of patrol officers to find ways to improve their productivity.

- Developing a more complex system of setting priorities for incoming calls to facilitate appropriate responses.

The study took note of several “strengths” it said the LAPD can draw upon to implement the necessary changes.

It said these strong points include a departmental atmosphere “in which change is expected, rather than feared,” “exceptionally high” skills and training of patrol officers, LAPD management’s commitment to “delivering high-quality services” and the common desire of leaders from all segments of the city for top-notch police service.

The study noted that its primary objective was to determine whether police service could be improved by adopting an alternative to the Uniformed Deployment Formula now used to assign about a third of the department’s 3,747 patrol officers. The department has about 7,250 officers in all.

As of Thursday, 2,537 patrol officers were assigned to “fixed posts,” that is, permanently staffed positions the department deems necessary to provide minimum patrol coverage in the 18 areas at all times.

Seven Criteria

Another 1,210 were “pool” officers assigned under the seven criteria calculated quarterly under the deployment formula.

The first criterion, which is weighted by a factor of 10, is actually a combination of five elements:

- Percentage of citywide crime. This is determined by adding up incidents of seven major crimes--homicide, robbery, rape, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft--in each area and dividing that number by the citywide figures. The crimes are not weighted as to their seriousness.

- Number of calls for service, with no distinction made as to the kind of crime reported.

- Total number of hours during which officers are too busy to respond to other calls.

- Percentage of citywide calls.

The five other criteria in the formula, each weighted by a factor of one, are officer overtime, the need for one-or two-officer cars to provide for officer safety, an area’s population, its street miles and population density.

Controversy Peaks

Controversy over this formula peaked in 1984, when community groups in the black and Latino South-Central area, joined by activists from the largely Latino Eastside of the city, charged that the formula resulted in more officers being assigned to wealthier areas of the city, such as the Westside and San Fernando Valley, than in poorer areas such as Watts and the Eastside.

The highest-ranking black officer in the city, then-Deputy Chief Jesse Brewer, joined in criticizing the formula.

On the other hand, Valley residents complained when it was suggested that officers there might be better deployed elsewhere

On Jan. 1, 1985, the City Council unanimously approved an outside study, but it was not until April, 1987, that the contract was actually awarded. Department sources said the delay was largely due to the time it took to assure that a highly qualified candidate got the job. They said the firm was selected because of prior experience with deployment studies.

Issue Resurfaces

The deployment issue resurfaced last week when some South-Central community leaders complained that a disproportionate number of officers had been assigned to the gang-related slaying of a young woman in Westwood. They said those killed in similar crimes in the South-Central area were not afforded the same intensive police and governmental response.

“Unfortunately,” said Councilman Robert Farrell, “there is a perception that a life lost in South L.A. or East L.A. does not measure up to a life lost somewhere else.”

Gates denied that his department treats poor neighborhoods differently than it treats affluent areas.

But the authors of the study said that 67 community leaders, representing a cross-section of city’s ethnic, racial, economic and political elements, had “an overall perception that neighborhoods with violent crime do not have enough officers assigned to them.”

The study said that many of those responding “believed that the department was more interested in protecting property than lives.”

Image of Insensitivity

The survey found that while the LAPD was respected for its “professionalism,” most respondents viewed Los Angeles police officers as “insensitive to citizens when they respond to calls for service.”

Officers were described as “sometimes being impatient and lacking in interpersonal skills. There is an overall perception that patrol officers are not interested in the . . . problems that affect the quality of life in a neighborhood. . . .”

EMERGENCY RESPONSE TIME

Here is a list of average response times to emergency calls in the 18 Los Angeles Police Department Divisions:

In Minutes Central Bureau 12.5 Central 11.6 Rampart 12.1 Hollenbeck 12.0 Northeast 13.5 Newton 13.1 South Bureau 12.8 Southwest 13.1 Harbor 11.0 77th Street 13.1 Southeast 13.3 West Bureau 12.3 Hollywood 11.7 Wilshire 13.0 West L.A. 11.9 Pacific 12.4 Valley Bureau 11.4 Van Nuys 12.1 West Valley 11.1 N. Hollywood 9.9 Foothill 12.6 Devonshire 11.2

SOURCE: Public Administration Service