Reserve Officer Honored for Innovation in Arrests

A Los Angeles police reserve officer who is confined to a wheelchair received one of the department’s highest awards Wednesday for helping to develop a program used to immediately book and release arrestees in the field.

Charles Mason, 46, of Van Nuys was presented with the Meritorious Service Medal in his bed at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where he is in therapy for multiple sclerosis.

Mason and three other officers were to be honored at a ceremony next week, but Mason will not be able to attend so Police Chief Daryl F. Gates came to the hospital to present the award.

The award recognizes Mason, a drywall contractor, for his work developing the Immediate Booking and Release System (IBARS) used by officers in the field to process large numbers of arrestees quickly.

Mason and other reserve officers were instrumental in starting the program, which is used nearly every weekend in various department operations.

Mason joined the department in 1984 after organizing and supervising Neighborhood Watch programs for four years.

He was trained at the Los Angeles Police Academy and began work in the Devonshire Division, where he was named reserve officer of the year in 1986.

That same year, however, Mason was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease that attacks the nervous system.

It did not slow him down.

Working in the department’s Traffic Coordination Section downtown, Mason continued to coordinate scheduling for the IBARS program.

Supervisors said Mason often works two to three shifts a week, four times the duty required for reserve officers.

Reserves are paid $15 per month, but Mason said the satisfaction he gets from the job is priceless.

“It’s what keeps me going,” he said, adding that he will return to work as soon as he is released from the hospital.

The other three officers--Charles Nicgorski, Bonnie Wellner and Howard Herron--will receive awards at a presentation next week for their work on the IBARS program.