Glendale Approves $169,000 to Create Police Gang Unit

Reacting to the growth of gang violence, the Glendale City Council Tuesday approved funding for three new officers and one sergeant in the Police Department’s detective division.

Police Chief David Thompson said the additional personnel will be used primarily to create a full-time gang detail.

The council voted unanimously and without comment to allocate $169,000 to hire and train the officers and a part-time clerk typist beginning Jan. 1.

“The caseload assigned to detectives has gone up dramatically, both in complexity and numbers,” City Manager David Ramsay said. “Adding to that problem is the issue of gangs.”

Glendale’s gang problem, although relatively small compared to neighboring Los Angeles, has grown dramatically in recent years.

In the past year, police have investigated nine drive-by shootings, made more than 100 gang-related arrests and confiscated several weapons, including a military-style assault rifle, from alleged gang members.

The department currently has a part-time gang detail funded by overtime pay, Thompson said. The unit, which has functioned for the equivalent of 40 workdays this year, conducts preliminary investigations of gang-related crimes and later refers the cases to other police divisions such as juvenile, car theft or narcotics, depending on the nature of the crime, Thompson said.

The added personnel “will allow us to consolidate all the gang investigations under one unit,” he said.

While it takes up to 14 months to hire and train a new police officer, the new gang unit will begin operating on New Year’s Day, Thompson said. He will reassign to the gang unit investigators already on duty and spend the money on overtime pay for other officers to replace them.

Thompson would not comment on how many officers will be assigned to the gang detail, saying, “you don’t reveal your tactics to the enemy.”

But he predicted that on occasion he will deploy masses of officers on gang sweeps similar to the much publicized Operation Hammer, which led to hundreds of arrests in Los Angeles earlier this year.