Delays, Too Little Money : Flawed Crime Aid Program ‘Re-victimizing’ the Victims

When the killers came, Alexandra Hernandez and her family were watching television. Without warning, the front of the East Compton home was strafed with automatic rifle fire from a Soviet-style AK-47. Alexandra’s 6-year-old sister died; her father was fatally wounded. Paramedics raced her mother, brother and young cousin to hospitals.

All alone, Alexandra, 16, notified relatives of the tragedy and then, as best she could into the early morning hours, answered the questions of sheriff’s deputies.

After a few hours’ rest at the home of a neighbor, Alexandra and a woman who sometimes baby-sat for the family began the grisly task of cleaning floors and walls, removing bloodstains and other signs of the carnage.

In California, which prides itself on caring for crime victims, help should have arrived for Alexandra not long after the paramedics came for her family--particularly in Los Angeles County where, in theory, around-the-clock aid is available.

Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, in his 1986-87 biennial report, boasted that for the last year, 24 hours a day, special teams of victim advocates “roll out to the scenes of major crimes and provide on-the-spot assistance to crime victims.”

Actually, a tentative version of the roll-out program did not start until April 4. Team members have yet to jump out of bed to aid a single victim. In the case of Alexandra, the failure to rush to her aid immediately after the attack was an example of the flaws in the Victim-Witness Assistance Program, which critics contend is so fraught with delays and frustrations that it actually “re-victimizes the victims.”

The problem, said Mia Baker in defense of the $4-million Los Angeles County victim aid program she administers, is as old as crime itself: too many victims and too little money.

In 1987, according to the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning, which finances the local efforts, 25,000 Los Angeles County crime victims sought assistance. That figure would more than double if the victims of all of the felony cases filed by the district attorney’s office last year had sought help.

Seriously Injured

Until the Legislature provides more money, Baker said, “we’re going to be performing a sort of triage in California, where the most seriously injured and the most seriously impacted victims are going to be the ones who get the services.”

But the money shortages are compounded by administrative and staffing problems within the county program and a major backlog in Sacramento that keeps money from flowing to victims.

The Los Angeles County victim aid program is most often praised for the direct services provided by 30 county and 19 city coordinators who, from field offices in county courthouses, sheriff’s substations and police stations, daily deal directly with people who have been assaulted, battered, beaten or robbed.

Although they are not counselors, the coordinators listen to the victims’ often gut-wrenching stories. They refer them to medical or psychological treatment associations and perform other services, such as putting the family of a murder victim in touch with a mortuary, sometimes going along when a family is notified of a death or occasionally standing by while a victim searches for his attacker in a line-up.

Below Strength

But the county’s 30 direct services coordinators are fully one-fourth below strength because there is not enough money to hire the 42 people authorized in the 1987-88 budget.

“Our employees become volunteers, in a way, while somebody is out sick or has a baby or whatever,” said Baker, who came to the county post from a similar city position when Reiner became district attorney in 1985.

Victim coordinators throughout the state, not just in Los Angeles County, increasingly have found another job added to their duties: fending off creditors on behalf of the victims.

A maximum of $46,000 is available to each victim for payment of documented, crime-caused expenses, such as medical bills, psychological counseling or lost wages. The cap for a victim’s family members is $10,000. Getting the money can be tough.

The victim compensation fund, collected in fines from convicted criminals, is administered by the state Board of Control, a majority of whose members were appointed by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian. This year, the board will pay out nearly $34 million in compensation to roughly 24,000 crime victims statewide.

Final Decision

By law, the state is required to make a final decision on the validity of a claim within an average of 90 days after the claim is filed.

Currently, according to the Deukmejian Administration’s own estimates, more than 9,000 claims are backlogged beyond 90 days, and it may well be Christmas before the backlog is under control.

“We didn’t do a great job of administering the thing,” acknowledged W. J. (Tony) Anthony, Board of Control chairman. “There are still problems, (but) it’s getting there.”

Angered by delays in correcting problems, state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) has moved to strip the Board of Control of its stewardship and turn the compensation program over to a fellow Democrat, Controller Gray Davis. A Deukmejian spokesman has vowed that the GOP will not relinquish control.

In Los Angeles as well as in a number of other counties, the district attorney’s office works under contract to the Board of Control to verify claims by checking with doctors, insurance companies, hospitals and law enforcement agencies.

Many Wait Months

But thousands of victims, pressured by creditors, wind up waiting months--even years--until the paper work is finished so that their bills can be paid.

The district attorney’s office here still was processing more than a hundred 1986 claims in the first few months of this year.

Two causes of delays may be beyond the control of either the state or the county. Victims have a year from the date of the crime to apply for financial assistance. Some either do not learn of their eligibility or otherwise do not apply until just before the deadline.

In other cases, workers who verify claims have to persistently keep after doctors and others to get them to fill out the paper work to qualify a victim for assistance.

If either a doctor or a claims worker makes a mistake on the forms--say, citing an automobile accident as the cause of injury when the bruises actually resulted from a beating--it can take months, if not years, for the paper work to get straightened out and the claim paid.

Pressure on Board

Rory Burke, seriously injured in a 1980 assault and attempted murder, received a final check from the Board of Control last month, after almost eight years. Burke said her case was resolved only because of the pressure and publicity put on the board in recent months.

“As horrifying as the attack was, it was far more horrifying what the state Board of Control did to me,” Burke said.

There were missed communications with doctors, long waits for documents and challenges to her claim, she said. Her experience with the district attorney’s office was no better.

“You deal with these jerks for eight years of fighting, fighting, fighting and, my God . . . ,” Burke said. “It’s incredible what I went through with these idiots.”

Another reason for delay is the inadequate training of state and county workers who verify claims. Each worker is supposed to receive two weeks of training by the state. Even when all the training is provided, there are major gaps in keeping workers up to date on changes in the programs. This leads to mistakes in paper work and more delays in payment of claims, state officials acknowledge.

Computer Equipment

The state spent thousands of dollars on computer equipment to speed communication between Los Angeles and Sacramento, but the equipment has been “gathering dust” for nearly two years because no one has been able to make it work, according to local and state officials. As a result, claims from all over the state are cumbersomely packaged and mailed to Sacramento.

A Board of Control official said he hoped all counties that verify claims will be hooked into computers “by next year.”

Although computers might help, personal contact is the key to aiding victims, according to G. Albert Howenstein, executive director of the Office of Criminal Justice Planning, which finances the local programs.

“To me, that’s the most important part of victim services, to provide that human support,” the former Marin County sheriff said.

To improve the contact, Howenstein’s office last year granted 10 counties, including Los Angeles, a maximum of $100,000, plus start-up costs, to make immediate aid to victims available 24 hours a day.

“Ideally,” Howenstein said, the counties will get someone to crime scenes, or wherever the victim is, as soon as law enforcement “gets the situation under control.”

Provide Help

The program is based on an Arizona effort launched several years ago; its goal is to reduce “the adverse effects of psychological trauma” by giving victims help as quickly as it is safe.

Howenstein said fast action is also good for police and prosecutors because victims are much more likely to report a crime, less likely to drop charges and more likely to increase their cooperation with prosecutors if they experience positive contact with law enforcement immediately after a crime.

Two counties that enthusiastically embraced the idea--and overwhelmingly declare it a success--are Alameda and San Joaquin. Although the two programs differ, both initiated full-time services during nighttime hours and persuaded police that their workers were trained to be a help, not a hinderance.

They accompany officers on family death-notification duties, help victims get in touch with relatives, find shelter for domestic violence victims, aid child-abuse victims and help arrange other needed services, such as rape crisis workers. Sometimes the victim assistance workers perform a much simpler service in the middle of the night: They sit and talk to the victims.

Emergency Response

There is another service provided by the San Joaquin County emergency response program that would have been a relief for Alexandra, the 16-year-old in East Compton, had it been available in Los Angeles County. The San Joaquin County program contracts with cleaning services to clean up after suicides and homicides before the family returns home.

Former police officer Harold Boscovich, administrator of the Alameda County program, said there was only enough money to start the 24-hour service in Oakland, but if he could, he would expand it to the rest of the county.

Although there is dead time when no calls are received, the overall impact of the help to victims justifies the program, Boscovich said.

He added that harried police officers in the field will simply not call on a service that is not readily available.

“If they have to wait 45 minutes or an hour for you . . . they won’t call you,” he said.

In Los Angeles, after-hours emergencies are handled differently.

Night Assignment

No one cruises in a car as they do in Alameda County, and no victim assistance worker is assigned to work a night shift, instantly ready to roll out of the office, as they are in San Joaquin County. Nor has anyone persuaded police or sheriff’s deputies to call the victim program for help.

Baker, the Los Angeles County victim program administrator, said she had a different interpretation of how Howenstein’s $100,000 grant was supposed to work. She spent the bulk of the money on two daytime victim coordinators, one at Lakewood and one at the Firestone Sheriff’s station.

Ten county workers and three volunteers take turns being “on call” after hours in case someone in law enforcement seeks help. When telephoned at home or paged by beeper, the workers are supposed to either refer law enforcement to other agencies or, if necessary, rush out on the call themselves. So far, no one has asked them to.

“There’s a lot of flexibility in this grant,” Baker said, explaining that her on-call deployment scheme, which covers only part of Los Angeles County, is the best way to serve a huge area and meet the grant’s after-hours criteria.

Insufficient Funds

There is not enough money in the grant to provide the on-call service for all Los Angeles County, Baker said. But, she said, “To the extent that we have the ability to respond in any area to law enforcement, we will.”

If deputies in Lynwood had called the victim program, someone would have gone to help Alexandra after her home was shot up, Baker said.

The captain in charge of the station said the deputies did not call because no one ever told them help was available so late at night.