Bond Will Pay for New Police Facilities, Speed Response Times

Shorter police response times and facilities for additional officers in the San Fernando Valley will result from passage of a $176-million bond issue, Los Angeles Police Department planners said Wednesday.

About $20 million from the bond issue will go toward construction of a police station for a new mid-Valley LAPD division to be carved out of four existing divisions, said Sgt. Roger Deranian, community relations officer.

The station, the department’s 20th and the Valley’s sixth, probably will be built near the Van Nuys Airport and will incorporate sections of the Foothill, Devonshire, Van Nuys and West Valley divisions, he said.

The bond issue, listed on the ballot as Proposition 2, was approved Tuesday by 69% of voters citywide.

Another $14 million from the bond issue will be spent on a new station for the North Hollywood Division, now housed in cramped quarters in the Valley’s oldest police station at 11480 Tiara St., said Capt. Greg Berg, coordinator of the department’s police facilities task force. The existing station was built in 1958, he said.

Berg estimated it would take about five years for both stations to be completed.

Shorter Response Times

Police said the new mid-Valley division will take some of the load off the existing stations, whose officers must patrol more than 50 square miles in some cases. That means police response times, which sometimes are as long as 20 minutes, will be considerably reduced, Berg said.

“They built those stations in the ‘60s, when two-thirds of the Valley was apple orchards and agricultural land,” Berg said. “But now you’ve got these huge areas that are no longer agricultural; they are housing tracts, shopping centers and apartment complexes.”

About 40% of the bond money earmarked for station improvements will go to the Valley stations, Berg said. Some of the remaining funds will help pay for a new station in the mid-Wilshire area west of downtown and for new facilities in the 77th Street Division in south Los Angeles, he said.

Bond money will pay for construction of a driver-training facility for police in the Valley, but no location has been announced, Berg said.

And bond money will be used to expand detective headquarters at the Foothill Division station, where more than 40 detectives work in an office designed for fewer than 16, he said.