Police Substation Goes Where Action Is : LAPD Shows Off Mobile Booking, Detention Truck Downtown

What is 22 feet long, has six wheels, can hold two police officers, four prisoners and half a dozen horses?

It’s the Los Angeles Police Department’s new “mobile substation,” a police headquarters-on-wheels and the department’s latest weapon in a campaign to reclaim downtown’s shopping district from the pickpockets, “chain snatchers” and car thieves who work the crowded streets on shopping days.

On Tuesday, the “police blue” van was parked outside Clifton’s Cafeteria on Broadway near 6th Street, where Sgt. Steve Twohy offered a tour to local merchants and curious passers-by.

“This is the front desk of a police station being brought to the people,” Twohy said. He explained enthusiastically that anyone could walk up to the mobile station and file a police report or alert officers about crimes in progress.

Besides the “front desk,” the $75,000 van includes cellular telephones and a computer terminal that will make the van an electronic extension of Central Division station on 6th and Wall Streets. In the back of the van--next to a small toilet--is a holding tank with room for three or four prisoners.

If a raid nets more than four suspects, one police officer watching the tour said, it might be possible to handcuff prisoners to a steel bar attached to the outside of the van. But the bar is really meant to be a hitching post, where horses of the LAPD’s mounted patrol can rest after trotting through the downtown streets, said Police Capt. Greg Berg.

The van’s computer is expected to save officers time traveling back and forth to the station and allow them more time for their foot patrols along Broadway and other downtown streets, Berg said.

“We can secure a suspect and the officers can process him for warrants and booking here,” Berg said. “Instead of having to do that at the station, the officer can go back to patrolling the street.”

The van was donated to the Police Department by the Community Redevelopment Agency, said agency spokesman Chuck Sifuentes. “We felt that we wanted to increase police visibility in that area. It’s the agency’s way of responding to crime downtown,” he said.

Use of the van will be limited to the “historic core” of downtown, between 1st and 9th streets from Los Angeles to Hill streets, Sifuentes said.

Taste of Reality

Another CRA spokeswoman, Gayle Anderson, said she got a real live taste of the area’s crime problems when someone snatched her purse outside the agency’s 4th Street office on Tuesday morning, only a few hours before the mobile substation’s unveiling.

“A security guard who was watching chased him and caught him,” she said.

Wandy Granados, a 26-year-old resident of a nearby hotel, said she has seen dozens of similar crimes. She seemed impressed and pleased as she inspected the new mobile station.

“Everyday, there’s shooting at night, people getting robbed and raped--it’s not safe,” she said. “(The mobile station) is a great idea. Maybe they’ll catch people in the alleys now.”

Berg said the mobile station will be posted at different locations, depending on the need. “We can be one day at 1st and Broadway, the next day at Pershing Square and the next day at 9th and Broadway or wherever we need to be. We’ll camp that police station there until the problem goes away.”

The station is expected begin operating downtown after the City Council formally accepts the CRA’s gift, probably in the next two weeks, Berg said.