Growth Puts Pressure on Devonshire Division

Nobody has gone so far as to start calling the place Fort Dev, but the Devonshire Division of the Los Angeles Police Department is struggling with the largest jump in crime in the city.

Known as “Club Dev” among police officers and long considered one of the quietest of the 18 police divisions in the city, the Devonshire area has seen a 16.6% increase in the number of crimes reported during the first three months this year over the same period in 1987.

Through March, 3,858 crimes were reported in the division, which includes Chatsworth, Northridge, Porter Ranch, Granada Hills and parts of Mission Hills, West Hills, Canoga Park and Sepulveda. The increase, which has concerned police and residents, has brought changes in how the area is policed and spurred a call for more community involvement in the fight against crime.

While the crimes reported in the division ranged from the petty to the heinous, the wide majority were property crimes--particularly auto theft and burglary of homes and autos--and are said by police to be the main reason for the overall rise.

Police said the increase is a reflection of the changes in the division, one of the fastest growing areas in the city, in recent years. It is no longer a “laid-back” division where patrol officers have time for a high degree of discretionary patrol, detectives have low caseloads and crime is routinely kept in check, police said.

“I haven’t heard it called Club Dev lately,” said Lt. Warren Knowles, commander of detectives. “It isn’t a club atmosphere at all.”

Instead, it is a division where patrol officers routinely have to move from call to call and detectives carry growing backlogs of cases.

The division’s two-man robbery team handled 157 reports in the first three months this year. That’s up from 132 last year. During the first quarter, there were 30 robbery arrests in the division.

“Things back up,” said robbery Detective Damon Loomis. “We are behind.”

Residents of Devonshire see the changes in their community, too.

“Crime is going up,” said Guy Swanson, homeowner association president of the 739-unit Rockpointe condominium complex in Chatsworth. “We have drug activity, gang activity, burglaries, thefts from autos. . . . The criminals have discovered the northwest Valley as a lucrative area for them.”

Capt. John E. Moran, supervisor of Devonshire patrol, has only to walk out his office door to get the picture. On the crime maps framed on the station’s walls, dozens of black and green dots designate each month’s crimes in the division.

Except for a few clusters, the dots make a fairly even spread across the map; the crimes are occurring from the upper- and middle-class neighborhoods of Chatsworth and Northridge to the less affluent areas of Sepulveda.

“There is no pattern,” Moran said. “We are experiencing an increase in crime that is spread out through the division.”

Police are quick to note that while crime may be on the rise in Devonshire, the total number of crimes is still well below that of most divisions of the city. Of the five divisions in the San Fernando Valley, only Foothill had a smaller total of crimes than Devonshire. Also coupled with the crime jump has been a 12% increase in arrests in Devonshire, the second best division improvement in the city.

But the crime numbers raise concerns when Devonshire is compared with itself.

In the first three months of this year, there were 848 burglaries reported in Devonshire. In the same period last year, there were 706. There were 793 auto thefts in the first quarter, compared to 614 last year. And burglaries and thefts from autos rose from 829 last year to 987 this year.

Police said the increases are the result of the growth of both the population and the division’s boundaries.

Beginning in 1987, 5 square miles of what had been part of the Van Nuys Division was placed in Devonshire’s jurisdiction under a plan to more equitably split the divisions according to the crime workload. With the addition came a high crime area in Sepulveda that runs along Roscoe Boulevard from the Golden State Freeway east to the Pacoima Wash, police said.

Population Growth

Added to that, the northwest Valley is second only to the northeast Valley in population growth, according to Rick Hill of the city’s Planning Department. City planners estimate that Devonshire’s anchor communities of Chatsworth, Northridge and Granada Hills have been growing by as many as 2,500 residents a year.

With the boundary and population growth, police conservatively estimate that the roughly 50-square-mile Devonshire Division now serves at least 212,000 residents, compared to 179,000 in 1984.

“The more people you get, the more victims you get,” Knowles said. “I have definitely seen crime and our workload increase with the growth of the community.”

Police also agreed with Swanson’s belief that criminals from outside the division have found the area’s upper- and middle-class neighborhoods to be lucrative targets. For example, Moran said analysis shows that many of the cars stolen in Devonshire are later recovered outside the division, often in the neighboring Foothill area.

Moran said the crime increase in Devonshire has impacted two key patrol elements--response time and discretionary patrol.

‘Chasing the Radio’

He said the division is handling so many calls that the amount of time that officers have left simply to patrol their beats is declining. “They are finding themselves chasing the radio, going from call to call, and not having the time for discretionary patrol,” Moran said.

With that lacking, the division loses a valuable crime deterrent, he said. He only had to look at the crime maps for an example--a small cluster of burglaries in a Granada Hills neighborhood.

“If I had a patrol car that was available to cruise those streets, he might see something,” Moran said. “I think we could have stopped this.”

The police call load has also increased response time to emergency calls. Two years ago, Devonshire had an average response time of 7.6 minutes. Now, it is 8.7 minutes. The reason, Moran said, is the workload. “One of the things that increases response time is not having the officers available to respond right away because they are already on other calls.”

The division now finds itself looking for ways of responding to the crime increase.

‘Not Panicked’

“We are not panicked,” Moran said. “We are taking measures, and I do expect us to reduce crime.”

Perhaps the most visible measure is that the department’s Metro Unit, a roving task force used to target the city’s high crime areas, has assigned 28 extra patrol officers to temporarily supplement the division’s 135 patrol officers. The Metro officers have been working the night shift, the busiest, for two weeks.

“We will be staying in the area until we see an impact on the crime problem,” said Metro Sgt. Gary Farnham, who added that the unit has been averaging six to 10 felony arrests a night in Devonshire.

Meantime, Moran has trimmed the number of officers on patrol during slow hours, particularly pre-dawn hours, and moved them to the night shift. The transfer has put more officers on the street during the time that most crimes are occurring, he said.

Additionally, more officers in the division are being assigned to work gang intelligence and juvenile crime, growing problems in the area. Also, a valleywide auto theft task force is expected to benefit the division because investigators will focus on thieves that move across division boundaries to steal cars.

Community Vigilance

Sgt. Paul Haberman, Devonshire community relations officer, said the crime increase has stimulated more interest in Neighborhood Watch programs. He said police will need the increased vigilance of the community to reduce crime.

“It’s cyclical,” Haberman said of crime increases and decreases. “We used to look so good, but now crime is up and everybody is concerned. But we have a good Neighborhood Watch” and the community will respond.

Mary Swanston, who heads the Crime Watch organization in the west side of Granada Hills, agreed.

“We see the crime statistics each month, and people are concerned about it,” she said. “I go in the station and look at the maps where they pinpoint the crimes, and sometimes my area looks like a war zone.

“In the last four or five months, the community interest in Crime Watch has been up. We are getting more people involved. There are always people who are apathetic until it hits their neighborhood. Well, our area is getting nailed right now. We have to do something about it before it gets out of hand.”