Gates Hits Stride With Foot Patrols

Now’s the time Police Chief Daryl F. Gates plays tough politics.

Last Friday night, money ran out to finance the police foot patrols that have been on the streets of crime-ridden neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley, Mid-Wilshire, South-Central Los Angeles and Venice since fall. Today, the Los Angeles City Council is scheduled to vote on whether to appropriate the $500,000 needed to revive the patrols.

Everyone likes them. No politician dares speak against something that has proved so popular with residents of besieged neighborhoods. But they can’t agree on financing.

Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky of the Finance Committee thinks the money should come from funds the Police Department has set aside in a special overtime account for officers engaged in hot crime-fighting missions. The chief disagrees. He wants a special, additional appropriation from the council. The overtime account, he said, should be used for his top priority item--making sure every patrol car in the city responds to a call within seven minutes.

Going into this fight, it looks like Chief Gates is in trouble. Looking ahead to next year’s budget, the city’s facing a deficit.

But as I said, Chief Gates plays tough. Whenever the department has been in trouble financially with the council, it’s been able to mobilize an important network in the city. Those are the Police Department’s Neighborhood Watch groups, consisting of residents organized by police officers to support the department and help fight crime. We’ll see if these residents can help him win in the council today.

I got a feeling for neighborhood power on the last night of the patrol, when I rode around the Valley’s Devonshire area with Sgt. George Thomas, who was in charge.

Thomas is a friendly, talkative man, easy to be with even though he has that unnaturally formal manner adopted by cops when they’re addressing people like me. For instance, he called crooks “the criminal element” rather than using the term police employ among themselves: “Scumbags.” But he was fairly open, even slightly putting down some of the chief’s favorite tactics--the massive anti-drug sweeps and the “Hammer” assaults against gangs.

“We’ve reduced burglaries and robberies 38%,” he said. “Nothing the department has done, the big Hammer task forces, the sweeps, nothing had reduced crime 38% and I’ve been here on the department for 17 years.”

We drove near the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area down Columbus and Orion avenues, where the six-officer patrols have chased out drug dealers. On Orion, visitors from another turf had left their graffiti calling cards, “Langdon Street” and “LST.” These are working-class apartment neighborhoods, east and west of the San Diego Freeway. Most of the residents are Latino, with a minority of black families. On that warm evening, children played and parents visited in front of the apartments.

The cops, who work the patrols on their days off, walk down the streets, stopping to talk to residents, checking on abandoned cars, noting the graffiti. At times, they get the Neighborhood Watch together with the local Chamber of Commerce and hold street cleanup parties, removing the graffiti from trees and sidewalks. The police have old cars towed away, force property owners to clean up garbage-filled lots--even give kids baseball cards, donated by the Dodgers.

When neighbors complain about drug dealers, the cops walk up and knock on the person’s door. “We’ve had a lot of complaints about you,” they say. “We’ll be watching.”

As Thomas talked, I could see the importance of the Neighborhood Watch, and the other residents, as supporters of the department. He told me about Officer John Girard, a foot patrol supervisor. After the foot patrols began, Girard revived the Neighborhood Watch in the Devonshire area, and 400 people showed up one night for a meeting at Our Lady of Peace Church. Afterward, they marched through the area in a demonstration against drug dealers.

Four hundred people? No candidate for mayor’s drawn 400 in years.

These are just the sort of people that Chief Gates is counting on as he begins to play the annual budget game. If past patterns are followed, Neighborhood Watch people have been phoning council offices to support the department’s position on the budget fight. And, there’ll be department boosters on the council floor.

Whatever happens, it will be a short-term fix. The real question is whether there’ll be money in the coming budget for the foot patrols in light of the expected deficit. That’ll be decided in June when the council votes on the new budget.

View this fight as round one, the year’s first test of Daryl Gates’ political clout.