Valley Cleanup Helps LAPD Polish Its Image After King Beating : Community relations: Police and volunteers remove graffiti, junk and litter from streets during Operation Sparkle.

The Los Angeles Police Department conducted a sweep through the San Fernando Valley on Saturday. But this time officers used brooms instead of warrants.

The department’s Operation Sparkle, an effort to clean up graffiti and litter throughout the Valley--as well as improve community relations damaged by the Rodney G. King beating--was a shining success, according to police and city officials participating in the one-day event.

More than 2,000 volunteer residents, business owners and community service workers turned out with paint rollers, rakes, brooms and shovels to clean up neighborhoods scarred by mountains of trash, gang markings, abandoned furniture and cars.

“I’m absolutely astounded,” Deputy Police Chief Mark A. Kroeker said as he surveyed one large group picking up trash in Northridge. “This is the biggest outpouring of community spirit I’ve seen in a long time. This proves that given a little opportunity and a few rollers and supplies, people will show pride in their area.”

The volunteers worked at 30 locations. Officers acted as crew leaders and helped cart away some of the larger trash items. Youths with ponytails and earrings stood side-by-side with police as they dipped rollers into some of the 2,000 gallons of paint that had been donated by paint stores.

Crews wearing white T-shirts with a “Great San Fernando Valley Operation Sparkle” logo could be spotted most of the morning along major streets such as Van Nuys and Balboa boulevards and on smaller avenues such as Blythe Street.

“All we can do is our best,” said Tracy Gordsky, a Van Nuys cosmetics employee who picked up cans and garbage while wheeling her young daughter around in a grocery cart. “If it gets messed, we come back and clean it up again and again until someone gets the message on how important it is to keep things clean.”

Kroeker said Operation Sparkle II is planned for October.

The cleanup was part of the “healing process” that Kroeker set out to implement in the wake of the King beating. He was appointed as the Valley operations commanding officer the same day that four Valley officers were indicted in the beating of a motorist stopped for speeding in Lake View Terrace.

“There has been an estrangement between the community and the police, but this will put the public and the police shoulder-to-shoulder to each other, with the same mission,” he said. “It helps eliminate the ‘us versus them’ element and puts things on a ‘we’ footing.”

Residents seemed to have nothing but praise for the project.

“This is a good thing, a very good thing,” said Irma Estrada, who manages an apartment building on Blythe Street near Van Nuys Boulevard. Police have called the block one of the most graffiti-ridden areas in the Valley. Most of the residents on the street helped with the cleanup.

“This will help things get better, for sure,” Estrada said as she helped coordinate some of her neighbors in freshening up walls and curbs. “It’s a lot better than it was eight years ago, and I hope events like this continue.”

Some residents in other neighborhoods peered curiously out their doors and windows as the crews appeared, but did not join in. At other locations, onlookers seemed to catch the infectious spirit of the cleanup drive and pitched in.

A group of homeless people who were sitting on tattered furniture near a railroad track at Cedros Avenue and Bessemer Street in Van Nuys saw some of the Operation Sparkle volunteers in action, and they started cleaning up the trash around them. Then they joined the volunteers in hauling away some of the furniture and carpets.

“I like this,” said John Gibbons, one of the homeless people. “Things should be a little cleaner around here.”