Police Update Tactics in Effort to Quell Gangs : Crime: A community-based strategy, in which officers emphasize communications with residents, is employed in North Hollywood.

To Marta, the anti-gang sweep Friday night in her North Hollywood neighborhood was “a minor miracle.”

“We have scary guys out here every night,” said the young woman as she cradled her small child in her arms and watched police question several tough-looking youths in front of her home in the 11900 block of Runnymede Street.

But to one of those men, a 17-year-old gang member whose street name is “Puppet,” the police are a nuisance.

“They are really overdoing it,” said Puppet, wearing a white tank top and baggy black pants. “This is our ‘hood and they shouldn’t come here and disrespect us like this. We’re doing fine without them.”

These two opinions reflect the range of responses to the Los Angeles Police Department’s latest experiment in community-based policing, a tactic known as Community Oriented Police Strikeforce or COPS. The purpose of the program is to combat gangs while also trying to build goodwill among neighborhood residents, police said.

On Friday, six police officers and 20 reservists blocked off Runnymede between Laurel Canyon and Lankershim boulevards, stopping every car that came by and questioning its occupants. As of 8:30 p.m., they had arrested three suspected drunk drivers and impounded four cars for various violations but had not detained any of the gang members or drug dealers whose activities had brought the operation to the neighborhood.

The COPS program has been touted as an example of the much-hailed community policing concept in action. Under community policing, which was among the top recommendations for departmental reform by the Christopher Commission, officers are encouraged to spend more time communicating with residents and less time responding to radio calls.

Although community policing has become something of a catch phrase for a wide variety of techniques, it has been translated into action in the San Fernando Valley with the assignment of 31 veteran patrol officers to walk beats full time and to work with neighborhood groups. The department also announced this month that it would recruit 335 community volunteers to help coordinate anti-crime activities.

But on its face, Friday’s sweep differs little from anti-gang and anti-drug sweeps of the past--before community policing came into vogue--when police nicknamed them Operation Hammer. The main point of such operations previously was to make a show of force, to scare gang members and others into behaving and obeying the law.

“In Hammer we were pressured to show some numbers” of arrests, said Officer Jim O’Riley, who coordinates COPS for the North Hollywood Division. “In Hammer we had the police attacking the gangs. Often, all that would do is make them want to attack us back. Here, we are trying to build something. We’re trying to show the community that the gangs don’t have to run these streets.”

Ideally, neighborhood watch group members and police work together all of the time to keep a lid on crime, but not on Runnymede Street. There, residents were too scared of retribution by gang members or drug dealers to organize a neighborhood watch group.

The gangs “know everything that happens here,” said one man, who would not give his name, referring to Boyz From The Hood, the dominant gang on the street.

Still, residents were bold enough to file several hundred complaints with police in recent months.

“We rely on the community to tell us what’s going on around here--they’re our eyes and ears,” said Esther Niell, a reserve officer involved in setting up Friday’s sweep. “We’re doing this because we’ve received so many complaints. We work closely with people in the neighborhood to identify the problems.”

She said the new sweeps differ from the old ones in that they make more extensive use of reserve officers--who are not paid for their time but have virtually all the same powers as police.

“In the past we used regular officers on overtime--but now most the officers are here because they care,” said Niell.

Because the sweeps are less expensive, the department can afford to do more of them. This allows police the chance to follow up their deployment and drive drug dealers out of the neighborhood for good.

“It’s important that we show it’s not just a one-time thing,” Niell said. “We’ll be back here. We’re just not saying when.”

Some residents of Runnymede said they don’t want the police to leave--ever.

“These guys are going to make trouble when they leave,” said Romero, a middle-aged man, in Spanish, referring to gang members who live nearby. “I’m very worried. These cocaine guys are too crazy.”