Officers’ Folksy Tactics Pay Off in Gang Domain : Crime: Police on foot, bicycle and horseback stress contact with residents. They say violence is down, and a study finds fear lessened also.

In a gritty South-Central neighborhood that reported more drive-by shootings last year than any other in the city, the Los Angeles Police Department has begun shedding its hard-nosed “Dragnet” image for a folksy approach more akin to “Mayberry RFD.”

Hoping to coax wary residents back onto streets they had abandoned in fear, officers on foot, bicycle and horseback have flooded the 30 square blocks surrounding Hooper Avenue and 41st Street, ringing doorbells, leaving business cards and inviting nervous families on evening strolls.

Through a program launched Feb. 1 under the nickname “Operation Cul-De-Sac,” police have moved away from the hammer-like tactics that have characterized recent anti-gang sweeps, and instead have painted over graffiti, hauled away trash, attended high school dances and even hosted picnics, complete with pinatas and pony rides.

Officials say that since the program began, crime in the neighborhood has been cut 12% compared to the same period last year, from 483 major felonies to 425. Drive-by shootings have dropped 64%, from 14 to 5.

Residents--many of whom lived behind barred windows, slept on the floor as protection against nighttime shootings and made sure their cars, clothing and houses were of a gang-neutral hue--have gradually begun to unchain their doors and reclaim the streets.

“It’s been a real psychological transformation--both for the police and for the residents,” said James R. Lasley, a Cal State Fullerton criminal justice professor who conducted a study of the program. “The people had become captives of their own fear, and the police, instead of perpetuating the fear environment, tried to make them feel at home again.”

Officers acknowledge that their new tack may seem unlikely for a department not exactly known for its down-home geniality. But faced with a 1/2-square-mile neighborhood that last year reported 37 drive-by shootings, they decided it was time to get back to basics.

In hundreds of other police departments across the country, from Portland, Ore., to Houston to Newark, programs placing officers in the role of social mobilizer have begun to take hold, according to the Michigan-based National Center for Community Policing.

“What we’ve seen is that the more things of a positive nature that police do to interact with the public, the greater the feeling of security,” said Hubert Williams, president of the Police Foundation, a Washington research group. “If people feel safer, they’ll use the streets more, and if people use the streets more, you have a kind of safety net out there.”

Spending more than $250,000 in overtime pay, officials at the LAPD’s Newton Street Division, the rough-and-tumble area known to the troops as “Shootin’ Newton,” initially assigned 70 officers to the neighborhood. Over the last few months, police say the number has been trimmed to about 10--still a sizable boost over the lone patrol car that used to pass through.

Unlike most crackdowns, however, the squads were assigned to small sectors of the community, where they were instructed to meet the neighbors, make friends and try to ease fears. Although officers continued to hunt down suspected criminals, they were told the number of arrests was not important.

“Before, they were stereotyping people and harassing them,” said Daryl Brown, 24. “A young black guy like myself can take that in a negative way. But the way they’re doing it now can be accepted and respected as something positive.”

Residents of the low-income, racially mixed neighborhood have shown their appreciation by baking sweet potato pies for the officers, inviting them in for glasses of cold water and shouting “I love you” from their front porches as the bike patrols pass by.

“It’s a whole different atmosphere out here,” said Sang Brown, a Neighborhood Watch block captain who has lived on 40th Place since 1947. “It’s a long way from being the way I’d like to see it . . . but it makes you feel that at least somebody’s trying to help you.”

Some skeptics fear the gang-banging and crack-dealing will return as soon as the police pull out. Others have complained that drug dealers are eluding the beefed-up patrols simply by strolling outside the boundaries of the targeted area--33rd Street and Central, Compton and Vernon avenues. And a few residents point out that even increased police attention does not address other needs, such as jobs, economic development and a major supermarket.

“I don’t know if it can really be effective if it is limited to a certain, rather small, geographic area,” said Ron Dungee, editor of the Los Angeles Sentinel, a black community newspaper whose Central Avenue office is in the neighborhood. “It sounds good . . . but it’s not a cure.”

Officers said they want to intensify and expand the program.

Later this year, they plan to begin running an after-school tutoring and athletic program for about 250 youths, funded by a $150,000 grant from the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning.

The two concrete barriers for which the operation is named--creating dead-end streets on Central at 34th Street and 40th Place--will be landscaped. Eight more cul-de-sacs, designed to limit access to the area and foster a sense of community on once noisy thoroughfares, are planned.

Finally, officials, who call the neighborhood Reporting District No. 1345, are going to ask residents to select a name for the community and post it on signs. “Rancho Jefferson,” in honor of the local school, Jefferson High, has been suggested.

“This is definitely a prototype,” said Assistant Police Chief Robert L. Vernon, adding that the program is not expensive to operate once initial start-up costs are funded. “If it turns out as good as some think it will, this could revolutionize law enforcement.”

So far, the program’s success has been borne out in criminologist Lasley’s study, which he conducted with a $30,000 grant from the John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation, a Los Angeles organization that funds social science research.

Lasley said that in a telephone survey done in January, a month before the program began, he found the residents fearful, intimidated by gang members and not particularly impressed by the police presence. He talked to people in 79 households, or about 10% of the homes in the neighborhood.

“It had gotten to the point where people had totally reorganized their entire lifestyle around this all-consuming fear,” said Lasley, who also contributed to a recent Claremont Graduate School study of LAPD attitudes. “I called it ‘gangphobia.’ Every bit of humanity had been stripped.”

Lasley said that when he phoned the people again in September he found a different story. When he asked them to measure their fear of being hurt by gangs on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “extremely concerned,” the average had fallen from 3.62 to 1.95.

Asked if they were concerned about their property being damaged or stolen, the number dropped from 3.6 to 2.05. Asked, “Is the gang problem in your neighborhood getting better or worse?” the response “much better” scored 4.39, up from 3.1.

“It’s not Beverly Hills by any stretch of the imagination and probably never will be,” said Sgt. George Gascon, who is coordinating the operation. “But it’s a tremendous improvement. We’re just trying to break the cycle of fear . . . so these people can take back control of their own lives.”