COLUMN ONE : Crime--a Matter of Priorities : Minor crimes and non-emergency calls get less attention from a beleaguered Los Angeles Police Department.

Heading home not long ago, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates spotted a motorist slumped over his steering wheel at a stop sign, in an intoxicated stupor. Fearing that the drunk might lurch into traffic and kill someone, Gates and his driver pulled over, handcuffed the man and radioed for assistance.

It did not matter that Gates identified himself as “Staff One”--radio code for the chief of police. An hour and 15 minutes elapsed before officers arrived to take the drunk away.

“Our people,” Gates said, “have been overwhelmed by the amount of work.”

In a city of 3.4 million, where the numbers of murders and robberies this year threaten to set records, low-priority crimes and non-emergency calls get less attention than ever before, by most accounts.

Los Angeles police often take hours getting to anything from residential burglaries to drunk drivers. Officers no longer respond in person to vehicle thefts, non-injury traffic accidents, car stereo rip-offs, barking dogs and myriad other everyday calls to which police in many other cities still roll when summoned.

Detectives assigned low-priority crimes complain of being overwhelmed by so many cases that they can barely investigate any. And even when a suspect is arrested, they say, he is often back on the street within hours because there are only enough cells in jail for the very worst offenders.

Police commanders, meanwhile, sometimes spend hours a day trying to calm disgruntled citizens who do not think police response to their non-emergency needs is what it should be.

“In terms of quality of service, really being there to prop up a person who has been punched in the eye or had their car stolen, it’s terrible service,” Gates said.

Joen Lewis, a waitress and part-time actress, was sitting in her dining room at 3:30 a.m. one morning last year, watching a movie, when she heard two cars pull up in front of her Mt. Washington home. Glancing outside, she saw three men running back and forth between the cars.

“I went outside,” Lewis recalled, “and I said, ‘Excuse me, what are you doing?’ One guy turned and looked at me as if to say, ‘What are you doing?’ And I thought, Oh, my God, they’re stripping this car!”

Lewis ran back to her house, jotted down the license plate numbers of both cars and called the police. “They told me that one of the cars had been stolen that afternoon,” she said. “I said, ‘If you hurry, maybe you can catch them.’ They said, ‘OK, we’ll be right out.’ ”

Lewis waited . . . and waited.

Eight hours later, the police finally arrived.

The officers explained that there were only three patrol cars instead of the usual five working that night in northeast Los Angeles. And the computers had broken down. “They said there was no way they could respond,” Lewis said, “because it was not a life-or-death situation.”

For nearly a decade, with their ranks frozen by budget constraints, Los Angeles police administrators complained of having to fight crime with a comparatively small force of officers.

The situation has improved in recent years. With a series of incremental expansions, the Police Department today fields about 8,400 officers, or approximately 2.5 for every 1,000 residents. The 1989 national average in America’s largest cities was 2.7 officers per 1,000 residents, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

But with a budget-related hiring freeze imposed in November, the Police Department is expected to shrink to about 8,200 officers by mid-1991, even as violent crime shows no sign of abating.

The rate of violence last year in Los Angeles was nearly triple the average for major American metropolitan areas, Department of Justice figures show. Only in Miami and New York were there higher reported rates of violent crime--murder, rape, robbery and assault.

There were 874 homicides and 30,739 robberies in Los Angeles last year. As of Dec. 1 of this year, there were already 912 slayings and 32,891 robberies.

Los Angeles police dispatchers logged 158,553 emergency calls for service in 1989--nearly 50% more than in 1986, according to Police Department records.

“There are some cities where the police are Johnny-on-the-spot when there’s a crime,” said Capt. Robert W. Riley of Rampart station, northwest of downtown. “But they do not have to deal with the level of violence that we do here in Los Angeles. In my 22 years, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

With so many homicides and life-threatening crimes to cover, police say, there is often little time left for more minor crime.

Consider the experience of Pedro S. Covarrubias, who was on his way home from work, driving through Boyle Heights in the pre-dawn hours of June 3, when something curious caught his eye in the shadows along East 4th Street.

A man was making repeated trips in and out of a darkened transmission repair shop, stashing boxes on the curb. Realizing that a burglary was in progress, Covarrubias drove to the LAPD’s Hollenbeck area station, half a mile away.

Covarrubias told the desk officer about the ongoing burglary. The officer told him that there were no police units available to respond. So Covarrubias set off to catch the burglar himself.

“I was kind of a little excited, you know, not to let him go,” he would later explain.

Covarrubias drove back to the shop, but by then the thief was gone. He found him standing at the corner of 1st Street and Boyle Avenue. The man was carrying a box of tools stolen from the transmission shop.

“I ask him how much he wants for the tools . . . and he says, $5,” Covarrubias would say later. “And I say, come on, cheaper. And I told him . . . I give you $3 for them.”

Covarrubias persuaded the man to get into his car to work out a price. As they dickered, Covarrubias pulled away from the curb and drove back to the Hollenbeck station and pounded on his horn.

Officers ran out and arrested Raymond D. Brindley, 24, a Texas native who had done stints in the Los Angeles County jail for burglary, petty theft and, most recently, auto theft. He was on probation at the time.

On July 10, Brindley pleaded guilty to commercial burglary. Superior Court Judge Marsha N. Revel sentenced him to 16 months in state prison. With 57 days of pretrial credit, Brindley will do about six months.

Capt. Robert C. Medina, Hollenbeck’s commander, described the episode as unusual but not unheard of.

“We had a somewhat similar one since then,” Medina said. “Somebody called to report a car break-in. By the time we could get there, 12 cars had been broken into.”

How long did it take officers to get to the scene? “About two hours,” Medina said.

There were three homicides in Hollenbeck that day, he said, and officers who normally would have been out on patrol had to secure murder scenes for detectives.

To be sure, the Police Department’s average response time to emergency calls has dropped from 9.2 minutes in 1986 to 6.8 minutes today. And even when the situation is not life or death, some residents still find that the police come running.

But many others have discovered that service in non-emergencies is often lacking.

A year ago, Brown Padden called the Rampart Station to complain that gang members broke into his apartment building on Colton Street and took up illegal residence. When Padden ordered them to leave, he said, they threatened to kill him.

An officer at Rampart said that Padden would have to go to the station to file a complaint. When he got there, Padden said, he was informed that police would not take a report unless he could identify the gang members by name.

“I asked to talk to the watch commander and he wouldn’t even sit down with me for two minutes,” Padden said. “He said, ‘This is not going to help us any; it’s not going to help you any.’ ”

Padden ultimately hired a private security company to help remove the gang members.

“If these guys had been holding a gun to my head, the police would have come,” Padden said. “But this kind of thing, the police clearly don’t take it seriously. It’s like they could care less, and to me that’s not quite right.”

There were 107 murders and 2,986 robberies last year in the 8-square-mile Rampart area, among the Police Department’s busiest divisions. There were also 251 reported burglaries and 7,024 car thefts.

The sheer volume of cases, detectives at Rampart say, is overwhelming.

“Most detective units of the LAPD have been relegated to a secretarial service,” said Detective R.J. Fox, a Rampart burglary supervisor who has been in the department 26 years. “Rarely do we have the luxury of doing an investigation.

“We’ve become a bunch of body processors,” said Fox. “That’s all we do. That’s why we hate TV shows like ‘Hunter.’ They remind us of what we are not.”

The half-dozen burglary detectives who work for Fox are lucky if they can get away from their paperwork and out of their decrepit squad room, let alone draw guns and kick down doors as on television. Much of their time is spent sitting in creaking swivel chairs, hunched over metal desks, filling out reports on suspects who have already been arrested--usually by the station’s uniformed patrol officers.

Although the situation may be particularly glaring at Rampart, it is hardly unique.

Before transferring recently from the Bunco-Forgery Division at police headquarters, Detective Tony Sanchez pointed to the foot-thick stack of case files collecting dust on his desk and questioned aloud whether the taxpayers were getting their money’s worth.

“Sometimes, I think, I’m making, what--48, 50 grand a year? For what?” Sanchez said. “I’ll tell you what, if I was a crook, I’d hope that Tony Sanchez would get my case, because he will never get to it.”

Sanchez is not alone in his pessimism. A survey of nearly 400 officers conducted recently by The Times Poll found that about one-third believe that their service to the community has deteriorated in recent years. In addition, 45% of detectives surveyed believe that crimes in Los Angeles are not investigated as thoroughly as they were 10 years ago.

LAPD investigations of property crimes are categorized by detective supervisors to determine which cases are most solvable and should receive the most attention from investigators.

So-called C-1 cases, those in which a license plate on a getaway car or other leads have been reported, are given the highest priority. A detective assigned a C-1 burglary, car theft or other crime must prepare a report showing that he has taken some action toward solving the case within 10 days of receiving it.

C-2 crimes, those with possible leads, require a 30-day follow-up. C-3 cases, in which there are no viable leads, require no action.

The reality is that most burglaries, vehicle thefts, car stereo rip-offs, stolen bicycles and the like occur with no witnesses present and are thus designated C-3 crimes. With so many higher priority cases, detectives sometimes do not read, let alone investigate, the C-3 reports assigned them.

The crime that Barbara Bates reported was categorized as C-3.

Bates, an insurance executive from Colorado Springs, Colo., was visiting relatives in Los Angeles last summer when someone broke into her car and stole everything from stereo cassette tapes to her raincoat. She telephoned the police, expecting that an officer would be dispatched to the scene.

“When I called, the officer said they’d just take the information over the phone,” Bates said incredulously. “He told me I was lucky the car wasn’t stolen. Then he told me to have a nice day.”

Detectives who are assigned the task of solving car break-ins and the like sometimes can barely muster such pleasantries. Like Rampart burglary detective Bertram J. (Burt) Dimauro, they usually do not have time.

“This,” Dimauro said, “is not a job you love coming to.”

A sad-eyed investigator who wears reading glasses and sips his coffee from a “World’s Greatest Dad” mug, Dimauro, 49, used to work homicide but grew tired of having to watch autopsies and respond to murder scenes at night. Today, assigned to burglary, his routine is no less vexing.

On a typical Monday several months ago, Dimauro came to work to find on his desk a fresh stack of reports taken over the weekend: 12 burglaries, 11 thefts, 3 stolen bikes, 3 vandalisms, an attempted burglary and a lost passport.

More than half of the crimes had been designated C-3 cases--no witnesses, no leads. Of the others, only six had tangible information to pursue. But Dimauro would not be getting to even those any time soon.

Like most detectives assigned to the Police Department’s 18 station houses, Dimauro’s caseload is backlogged. That means it might be weeks before he can track down and arrest the perpetrator of a freshly reported crime. By then, the suspect may have committed dozens of other burglaries or thefts.

Instead of digging into the new reports on his desk, Dimauro will have to spend much of this morning interrogating a heroin addict arrested over the weekend by patrol officers who spotted him dragging a chest of drawers out of an abandoned house.

“I live off my old lady,” the addict says woozily when Dimauro asks him how he makes his living.

“That’s bull,” the detective responds. “You know it and I know it.”

Later, Dimauro and other burglary detectives with guns strapped to their hips will spend the better part of half an hour on their hands and knees, trying to fix the lines leading to the telephones on their desks.

“Great equipment we got around here,” Dimauro remarks.

“Top of the line,” says Fox, his boss. “We’re No. 1.”

After making nearly a dozen calls trying unsuccessfully to find the owner of the abandoned house, Dimauro will climb into one of the three aging police sedans shared by the six members of his squad. He will drive to the dank, foreboding house, tramping over piles of garbage and urine-stained mattresses before returning to the station.

Only then, after putting the finishing touches on all of the necessary paperwork, will he drive to the district attorney’s office downtown to have charges filed against the heroin addict.

Meanwhile, the other burglary and theft reports taken over the weekend will sit untouched on his desk. By tomorrow, there will probably be another 15 or 20.

“You never catch up,” Dimauro said.

Investigations can be further delayed, detectives say, by a change made two years ago in department pay policy. Instead of being allowed to bank up to 500 hours in overtime, which officers generally received as compensatory time, detectives today can save up no more than 136 hours. Beyond that, they are forced to take the time off--which can cut short an investigation--or lose the hours.

To keep up with their cases, some detectives say they have stopped logging the extra time and are working, in effect, for free. Others say that, come quitting time, they simply stop working.

Their jobs offer mostly tedium and frustration but are not without danger, those at Rampart say. Over the last three years, four of the station’s detectives, all in their 40s, have had heart attacks.

Dimauro talks of retiring soon. He plans to sell real estate.

In 1989, there were 51,196 burglaries reported in Los Angeles. Of the total, 14% were “cleared by arrest,” the process by which police arrest a suspect and declare the case solved regardless of whether the suspect is ever prosecuted.

More than 69,973 cars, trucks and motorcycles were reported stolen in the city last year. While most were eventually recovered, only 12% resulted in arrests.

By contrast, 63% of the 874 homicides in Los Angeles were cleared by arrest, as were 57% of the city’s 43,670 reported aggravated assaults.

These statistics illustrate the relative difficulty of solving different types of crimes, as well as the priorities attached to investigating them.

Crimes against persons, including murder and assault, are usually easier to solve, detectives say, because the victim or witnesses often know the assailant and are able to lead investigators to an arrest.

Property crimes, on the other hand, most often are committed by strangers. Police attach a lower priority to these offenses, not only because they have a much slimmer chance of solving them, but also because the victims usually are insured and do not suffer injury.

“We’ve learned to tolerate a whole variety of crimes,” said Jack White, a former police commander who today is chief investigator for the district attorney’s office.

Such resignation is felt not only within law enforcement but among crime victims themselves. Like fouled air and clogged freeways, many have come to accept crime unchecked as one more distasteful facet of life in the big city.

Roland Poindexter, a waiter, has suffered three car break-ins over the last couple of years. The first time his car radio was stolen, Poindexter called the police. The second and third times, he did not bother.

“They didn’t treat me bad the first time,” Poindexter said, “they just didn’t make me feel like this was the kind of crime that was worthwhile for them. . . . One part of me says, ‘Yeah, go tell them.’ But the greater part of me says, ‘What could they do?’

Police response, administrators point out, probably would not have been much better had Poindexter’s car been stolen along with his radio.

“A stolen car used to be a big deal,” said Chief Gates. “We used to send a radio car out, take a report, do a preliminary investigation, check around the neighborhood. Now what happens? You call in, we don’t send anybody out, we don’t write, we don’t call, we don’t say we love you, we don’t do anything. We just take a report. . . .”

Former FBI Agent F.W. (Scoop) Evans, who heads security for Arco, knows many of the crimes that occur at his company’s convenience stores in Los Angeles are also of relatively low priority for police.

Even when a stickup occurs at one of the stores, known among police as “your friendly neighborhood stop and rob,” it may be a day or longer, Evans said, before detectives arrive on the scene.

“A guy who comes in today, steals a case of beer, he gets out the door, he’s home free,” Evans said. “There’s no follow-up on the part of the police. I don’t fault them. They’ve got priorities. Even if they caught him, so what? What’s going to happen to him? Nothing.”

Shoplifters are not alone in often escaping the consequences of their criminal actions.

Before he retired in November, Detective Robert E. Readhimer spent the bulk of his workdays investigating thefts of scrap metal--an obscure but burgeoning crime problem.

Instead of going to state prison as felons, metal thieves almost always go to County Jail as misdemeanor offenders, only to be back on the streets within months--or weeks--stealing more scrap metal.

“We’ve had companies that have had so many thefts,” Readhimer said, “they’ve had their insurance policies canceled, but there’s nothing we can do to help them.

“We’ve had guys that have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of scrap metal, and if it’s their first offense, they get probation. If it’s their second offense, 30 days is the most they’ll get.”

If it is the 17th conviction, and the suspect’s name is Calvin W. Edwards, no more than 90 days in jail is what he can expect.

Edwards, court records show, has made a virtual living over the last 10 years by stealing rolls of lead-coated copper wire from Los Angeles Department of Water and Power supply yards, then selling the copper to local scrap yards.

He has been found guilty on charges ranging from grand theft to trespass to receiving stolen property and has never done more than a year in custody. His most recent conviction, a misdemeanor for receiving stolen property, came in February after Readhimer happened upon Edwards at a scrap yard south of downtown.

In Edwards’ car was a roll of distinct, square-shaped DWP wire that had been reported stolen. It was the eighth time since 1982 that Readhimer said he had personally arrested Edwards.

Edwards pleaded no contest on Feb. 23 in Municipal Court and was sentenced to 90 days in the County Jail.

Given Edward’s record and the fact that he was on probation, why wasn’t his case prosecuted by the district attorney’s office as a felony petty theft with a prior conviction?

“I don’t know why,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Norman Shapiro, who heads the D.A.’s criminal complaints section. “Maybe we dropped the ball. We get a lot of stuff like this.”

George Prengaman, who oversees security for the Department of Water and Power, said he was not surprised by the treatment Edwards receives.

“The character of the city is changing,” he said. “The increasingly violent nature of crime pushes us lower and lower on the scale.”

Readhimer and other detectives still on the force sympathize with victims of lower-priority crimes, but also understand the limitations of the system.

“If you have only so much room and resources,” Readhimer said, “it comes down to a question of who do you want in jail--the guy who rapes little girls or the guy who steals scrap metal?”

The Times Poll: Police Service

Nearly half of Los Angeles’ police detectives contend that their department does not investigate criminal cases as well as it did 10 years ago, while most patrol officers say that they usually do not respond in a “timely way” to non-emergency calls for help.

In surveying 398 investigators, patrol officers and staff personnel--all below the rank of captain--the Los Angeles Times Poll found that about one-in-three are convinced that police service to the community has deteriorated in recent years, with detectives being the most critical of their department’s performance.

Only 14% of patrol officers surveyed say they respond with equal vigor to all types of radio calls.

Given the demands of their jobs, half of the officers say that they are likely to respond in timely fashion to calls regarding murder and robbery, but only one in 20 officers say they are likely to come promptly following calls involving auto theft and disturbing the peace.

Despite the increasing workloads of which many officers complain, less than one in five surveyed reported working any harder or putting in longer hours. Almost half said they approach their jobs no differently today than when they were first assigned them.

“I approach the job enthusiastically and aggressively,” said Sgt. Jimmy W. Greyson, a veteran bank robbery detective, “just like I always have.”

When asked if they administer “street justice”--such as striking suspects--because they feel that arrestees are not treated harshly enough by the courts, 88% of officers questioned said “never.” Of the remainder, 6% said they “rarely” administer street justice, 4% refused to respond and 1% said they take such action “occasionally.” Another 1% answered “not sure.”

Are crimes investigated as thoroughly as they were 10 years ago? (asked of investigators) Yes: 42% No: 45 Don’t Know: 13 Do you approach your job differently today than when you started it? If so, why? (asked of all officers) No Difference: 46% Deal More With Gangs: 22 Deal More With Drugs: 21 Worker Harder and Longer: 18 Given the demands of your job, which kinds of radio calls are you more likely to respond to in a timely way? (asked of patrol officers) Murder: 50% Armed Robbery: 50 Rape: 43 Assault: 41 Burglary: 11 Auto Theft: 5 Disturbing/Peace: 4 Disorderly Conduct: 3 Respond Equally to All Calls: 14 Has police service to the community increased or decreased over the past 10 years?

Investigators Staff/Administrative Patrol Total Increased 44% 51% 55% 50% Remained Same 15 20 13 16 Decreased 36 28 29 31 Not Sure 5 1 3 3

Overall, would you say that citizens are satisfied or dissatisfied with police service in their community?

Police Municipal Superior Public Judges Judges Defenders Prosecutors Satisfied 54% 50% 32% 27% 31% Dissatisfied 40 36 47 57 53 Don’t Know 6 14 21 16 16

Probation Officers Satisfied 29% Dissatisfied 63 Don’t Know 8

Source: Los Angeles Times Poll Arrests and Depositions While felony arrests for the most serious crimes have risen sharply in the past decade, the percentage of arrestees ultimately prosecuted has declined. The decline has been greatest in felony arrests that end up being treated as misdemeanors. But there has also been a drop in the percentage prosecuted as felonies--from 22% in 1980 to 17% in 1989. Meanwhile, the percentage of those released without being prosecuted hit nearly 60% in 1989. Source: Los Angeles Police Dept. Location of L.A. Police Stations Central Bureau 1 Central: 251 E. 6th St. 2 Rampart: 2710 W. Temple St. 4 Hollenbeck: 2111 E. 1st St. 11 Northeast: 3353 San Fernando Rd. 13 Newton: 1354 Newton St. West Bureau 6 Hollywood: 1358 N. Wilcox Ave. 7 Wilshire: 4861 Venice Blvd. 8 West Los Angeles: 1663 Butler Ave. 14 Pacific: 12312 Culver Blvd. Valley Bureau 9 Van Nuys: 6240 Sylmar Ave. 10 West Valley: 19020 Vanowen St. 15 North Hollywood: 11480 Tiara St. 16 Foothill: 12760 Osborne St. 17 Devonshire: 10250 Etiwanda Ave. South Bureau 3 Southwest: 1546 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. 5 Harbor: 2175 John S. Gibson Blvd. 12 77th Street: 235 W. 77th St. 18 Southeast: 145 w. 108th St. Source: Los Angeles Police Department