L.A. Anti-Crime Plan Draws Praise : Barricades: Researcher says barriers and a saturation police presence in South-Central neighborhood contributed to drop in serious incidents and made residents feel safer.

A controversial anti-crime project that involved erecting barricades around a South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood and then saturating the area with police officers was declared “the most progressive community-based policing program in the nation” Tuesday by a California State University researcher.

James R. Lasley, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Cal State Fullerton, reached his conclusion about the LAPD’s “Operation Cul-de-Sac” after he studied the pilot project for a year with a $30,000 foundation grant.

His research, he said, showed that serious crime dropped 17% in the first year of the program, including the almost total elimination of gang-related drive-by shootings. Residents took more pride in their environment after alleys were cleared of mounds of debris and derelict homes were cleaned up, he said.

“People who used to literally sleep on the floor at night because they were afraid of being shot feel safer,” Lasley said.

Lasley made his remarks to representatives from about 15 Southern California police agencies during a presentation at the campus. He said programs such as the 18-month-old Operation Cul-de-Sac are the “trend of the future” in law enforcement.

“You have to look beyond the barricades to the comprehensiveness of the program,” Lasley said.

The target area is one square mile bounded by 33rd Street on the north, Vernon Avenue on the south, Central Avenue on the west and Compton Avenue on the east.

For the first six months of the program, which was launched at the beginning of 1990, the entire area was ringed with sawhorses, police patrols were beefed up, debris was removed from alleys and graffiti scrubbed off walls.

In addition, 10 officers were permanently assigned to do little more than act as community liaisons, using bicycles instead of squad cars during the summer. The officers worked with other city agencies to ensure that residents were consistently provided with basic city services.

Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Dennis Conte said Tuesday that nine of the streets will remain closed. Concrete barriers, which replaced the sawhorses, will soon be replaced by permanent, raised islands with flowers and wrought-iron gates, he said.

Conte said the program is too expensive to implement citywide, but that a second target area adjacent to the current one has already been identified.

Lasley said that he arrived at his conclusions after spending time in the target area interviewing residents and police officers and examining LAPD crime statistics.

Phil Salvidar, principal of Jefferson High School, which is in the middle of the target area, told the audience that as a result of stepped-up police patrols and personal contacts officers have made with students, attendance at his school had increased and nighttime school activities, once considered too dangerous, are now possible.

A brief survey of residents Tuesday afternoon found one man who fully supported the project and several residents who didn’t.

David Barrera, 46, said he had “no problem” with the barricades even though they prevented him from entering his street from one direction.

Martha Parks, 70, said the barricade at the end of her street reminded her of how it was in the segregated American South when she was young.

“It tells me that’s as far as you can go,” she said.

Jarrett Fellows, a reporter for the Los Angeles Sentinel weekly newspaper, whose offices are also in the target area, said there is a sense among some residents that they are living in “an armed camp.”

A recent tour of the neighborhood showed that graffiti were not less of a problem there than in other nearby areas. In fact, as a reporter watched, a boy of about 10 spray-painted a “tag” on a wall that had recently been cleaned of graffiti.