Foothill Station to Be LAPD Site for Recruiting : Pacoima: The division is chosen in an effort to double Latino and female staffing, and as part of the department’s attempt to regain community trust.

The Los Angeles Police Department will begin a special recruiting effort at its Foothill Division station Saturday in an effort to double its Latino and female staff and improve its image in the patrol area where the Rodney G. King beating took place.

The Pacoima-based division was chosen as a recruiting site because of its large Latino population, which has yielded many new employees during earlier hiring campaigns, and also as part of the Police Department’s ongoing effort to regain the community’s trust after the now-famous King beating, spokeswoman Theresa Adams said.

“Our success rate there is a large factor,” said Adams of the police force’s personnel department. “But also, with the Rodney King incident, our getting back out there is a way to touch base with the community in that particular area.”

The station at 12760 Osborne St. will be open at 9 a.m. Saturday so job candidates can obtain information and then take a written aptitude test. The department offers the screening exams weekly at the Police Academy and at its North Hollywood station, but also rotates additional recruiting events throughout the city, Adams said. Foothill was a site in April, 1990, and November, 1989, she said.

Adams said the department is seeking 450 new officers citywide to fill jobs vacated through attrition. The department hopes to increase its percentage of Latino officers from a current 21% of the force’s 8,300 officers to 40%, which would make it comparable to the city’s Latino population according to 1990 U.S. Census figures, Adams said.

The force also has to increase the percentage of female officers from its current 13% according to the terms of a consent decree reached in a gender-discrimination lawsuit, Adams said.

The decree calls for female officers to make up 20% of the force, but Adams said the department hopes to increase that number to 25%.

African-American officers currently make up 14% of the police force, about the same percentage of blacks in the city’s population, Adams said.

Latina activist Irene Tovar, who serves on a Police Department committee studying relations between officers and non-English speaking residents, praised the use of the Foothill station as a recruiting center.

“But I must caution that I want to make sure that the officers we get, Spanish-speaking or not, are sensitive to the multiethnic community they are serving,” Tovar said.