Family Claims Police Ignored 911 Calls

Last week a teen-ager stepped out of a red car in front of the Rev. Leo Nieto’s Long Beach home and asked the youngsters playing in the yard where they were from. He didn’t like their answer, so he pulled a pistol from his pocket, fired six shots into the yard and sped off with two other teen-agers.

The bullets missed their targets and the five youngsters ran screaming to their homes. With her three children crouched on the floor, Mary Jean Nieto called Long Beach police on the 911 emergency number.

But it was not until six days later and repeated phone calls to the Police Department and city officials that patrolmen finally showed up at the Nietos’ door to take a report on the incident.

“We think about it. We could be having funerals now for our kids,” said Nieto, a Methodist minister who was so incensed by the Police Department’s apparent indifference that he has complained to everyone from his bishop to the city manager’s office.

The Nietos’ criticisms are but one of many in the community that Long Beach police are either slow to respond to emergency calls or, in some instances, never show up at all.

“They’re some of the major complaints from my constituents,” said Councilman Clarence Smith, who represents the high-crime district in which Nieto lives with his wife and children, all of whom are enrolled in gifted programs at local public schools.

In the Nietos’ case, Long Beach police say they dispatched two patrol cars within two minutes of receiving reports of the gunplay, which occurred about 6:40 p.m. Oct. 4. The patrols searched the area and, finding neither the car nor the suspects, left, patrol Cmdr. Kimball Shelley said.

Shelley, who met with the Nietos and Councilman Smith Tuesday night, declined to explain why it took nearly a week of complaints to get a patrol team to interview the Nietos. Long Beach Police Chief Lawrence L. Binkley said he did not know enough about the incident to comment.

Shelley did suggest, however, that the two patrols that initially answered the call might not have received all the details of the incident from the emergency dispatcher. “I don’t know whether what the officer got in the field was exactly the same information (Mrs. Nieto) gave the communications center.”

When the police cruised through the Nietos’ central Long Beach neighborhood immediately after the shooting, Mary Jean Nieto and her children were hiding in the living room of their lace-curtained, turn-of-the century house, fearing more bullets.

While her children--Nathan, 13, Michael, 12, and Carolyn, 11--recounted what had happened, she told the emergency dispatcher that someone had fired at them, gave a description of the three suspects, their car, and information about the direction it was traveling.

When the police failed to arrive, she phoned her husband in Dallas, where he was at a church conference. “I couldn’t believe it,” said Nieto, who tried unsuccessfully to reach Councilman Smith long distance. In the meantime, Mary Jean Nieto called the police again, about two hours after the shooting, to report suspicious cars in the neighborhood.

Police say they then sent a helicopter to scan the area. But “nobody ever came” to the Nietos’ house, said Nieto, who flew back to Long Beach the following morning and began calling the Police Department and members of city government.

Last Tuesday, he went to Long Beach City Hall with his family and some colleagues. He carried with him the smashed fragment of a bullet he had found near the curb of his house, along with two crayon illustrations of the shooting drawn by his children. On one drawing, black lines trace the path of the bullets, one of which had whizzed so near Nathan’s head that the boy felt the whoosh of the air.

Nieto missed the council meeting but was able to talk to an assistant in the city manager’s office. That night, Councilman Smith and Shelley met the Nietos at their home and a patrol car was called to take the report.

As members of their Neighborhood Watch anti-crime program, the Nietos have dealt with the police before.

“The police come and say, ‘We’re here to help you,’ ” Mary Jean Nieto, a teacher in the Wilmington school system, said Tuesday afternoon as she stood in front of City Hall. “Are we supposed to go and get guns now? . . . We’ve tried to work with the system and the system doesn’t work for us.”

Police statistics and internal department memos indicate that throughout Long Beach, it is taking police longer to respond to both emergency and non-emergency calls this year than last.

Police officials, embroiled in a prolonged contract fight with the police union, attribute the eroding service records to rising crime rates and inadequate staffing. As a result, city officials are considering proposals to hire more officers and reduce the number of two-man patrols in favor of one-man patrols, which would put more cruisers on the streets.

Nieto, who helps develop Methodist ministries for Latino congregations in Southern California, said his family will stay in their two-story house on Linden Avenue.

“I think our attitude is that even though we’ve really been frightened, we are not moving. We don’t want to run away from this problem. We want to help other people in the neighborhood improve it, including the police response.”