Rash of Transfers Changes Makeup of Foothill Division : Police: The jurisdiction in which the Rodney King beating took place now has 10 new minority supervisors and 15 minority officers.

It didn’t take long for Los Angeles Police Lt. Thomas Maeweather to feel needed in the Foothill Division. One night in April, just after his assignment to the patrol area where Rodney G. King had been clubbed by police, the trim, 43-year-old black officer was introduced at a town meeting as part of a new team brought in to restore public confidence.

Standing quietly to the side, listening to residents’ questions and complaints about police misconduct, Maeweather couldn’t help noticing two black women looking in his direction. After the meeting, Maeweather recalled last week, the women “worked their way over to me. One touched me on the arm and said, ‘We are really glad to see you here.’ ”

“That made me feel good,” said Maeweather, a laborer’s son who grew up in South-Central Los Angeles. “The inflection in her voice made me know that they felt like, ‘Yeah, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a black person in charge at the Foothill station.’ ”

It was such a cry from the community that has brought Maeweather and nine other new minority supervisors, along with 15 minority officers, into the Foothill Division in the 4 1/2 months since the history-making arrest of King in Lake View Terrace.

All told, more than 25% of Foothill’s 252 officers and supervisors are new to the division. According to LAPD statistics, 56 officers, the majority of them white males, have been transferred. In their place are 71 officers, including several black and Latino supervisors.

Before the March 3 beating, only one black sergeant and four Latino sergeants were assigned to Foothill, whose officers patrol more than 60 square miles in the Northeastern San Fernando Valley, by area the second-largest division in the city. There were no minority lieutenants or captains in the ethnically diverse beat, which is home to 275,000 residents and includes the predominantly Latino and black community of Pacoima.

Today, Foothill has six black sergeants, six Latino sergeants and 17 white sergeants. Its five lieutenants include Lt. Richard Meraz, a Latino who is now the night watch commander, and Maeweather, the assistant supervisor of detectives. Patrol Capt. Paul Jefferson, the division’s new second-in-command, also is black.

The number of black patrol officers has risen from 10 to 16, and Latino patrol officers from 39 to 46. White patrol officers have dropped from 121 to 98 since the King beating, a 19% decrease.

Police and community leaders alike credit the changes to the Valley’s top police official, Mark A. Kroeker, a lanky, earnest deputy chief who assumed his position the same day four Foothill officers were indicted for the King beating.

“What we’re after is a sensitizing to the demographics of the service population,” he said. “In a sense, to orient ourselves towards service . . . requires us to put our best effort forward, and our best effort is to move in a way that makes us culturally compatible with a community.”

The division is also about to receive a Spanish-speaking, black female officer from the department’s Northeast Division. Officer Stephany Payne, 34, will be assigned full-time to community relations in Pacoima, Kroeker said.

Kroeker said he appointed Payne after realizing there were no blacks among the 31 officers recently assigned to public relations duty throughout the Valley’s five patrol divisions.

The mass transfers angered many longtime Foothill officers, who felt that they and their colleagues were made scapegoats for an incident in which they were not involved.

Two reassigned Foothill officers, both white men, considered filing reverse-discrimination suits against the department but could not find attorneys willing to represent them, police sources said.

“I told my commanding officer I felt just like the people that had been discriminated against in the past and it was wrong,” said one transferred officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Another source of anger among Foothill officers and the community has been the ability of Foothill’s commander, Capt. Tim McBride, to survive the shake-up despite the huge turnover in his rank and file. McBride’s reassignment was sought not only by the Greater San Fernando Valley Ministers Fellowship, which represents 41 black congregations, but was recommended by two top police officials, retired Assistant Chief Jesse A. Brewer and Assistant Chief David D. Dotson.

“That eroded the credibility and the confidence that was being redeveloped under the leadership of Mr. Kroeker,” said the Rev. James V. Lyles, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Pacoima and the fellowship’s president.

“We are still significantly concerned that change has not taken place at the top in Foothill, and at the top in Parker Center,” said Lyles, who otherwise praised the changes at Foothill.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates had planned to reassign McBride, according to transcripts of Brewer’s and Dotson’s testimony before the Christopher Commission. But Gates was persuaded by McBride supporters and by the captain himself that McBride had too much support in some segments of the community to be reassigned at a time when the force needed all the friends it could find.

Among those who contacted Gates on McBride’s behalf were Granada Hills businessman and police booster Ed Cholakian and council members Ernani Bernardi and Hal Bernson, the latter a staunch supporter of Gates.

“In many cases, life would’ve been far easier for me to transfer,” said McBride, who said he clocked many 12- and 16-hour days after the beating. “I think someone with a history in the community and with the officers needs to be here to help bridge the gap.”

In other changes, McBride and Kroeker have also made sure a Spanish-speaking officer is scheduled at the station’s front desk at least 16 hours a day, if not overnight. Before the King beating, Spanish-speaking officers often were not available to the public, the police officials said.

Lyles said he already sees an improvement in the division’s image. “People are beginning to feel that if they are pulled over, even if they are a black male, that the chances are they will not be beaten, maimed, shot or killed just for a minor infraction of the traffic rules,” Lyles said.

“When the spotlight is no longer there, we hope they will not go back to business as usual,” he said.

The Changing Face of the Foothill Division

Capt. Tim McBride 49, Foothill Division commander since October, 1988, joined the Police Department in 1964. He worked as a patrol captain in the Van Nuys Division prior to moving to Foothill.

Capt. Paul Jefferson 46, was placed in charge of Foothill’s patrol officers in April. He joined the Police Department in 1968 and was the patrol captain in Van Nuys prior to his assignment at Foothill.

Lt. Richard Meraz 48, is the night shift watch commander at Foothill. He joined the department in 1964 and was transferred to Foothill from the Central Los Angeles vice operation.

Officer Stephany Payne 34, will be a community relations officer based in Pacoima for the Foothill Division. She joined the department in 1983 and was assigned to the Northeast Division before her transfer.